Daniel R. Goodloe of North Carolina wrote in 1846 in a similar tone but with original arguments.  Beginning with an exposition of the South’s comparative backwardness in economic development, he showed a twofold working of the institution of slavery as the cause.  For one thing it lessened the vigor of industry by degrading labor in the estimation of the poor and engendering pride in the rich; but far more important, it required employers to sink large amounts of capital in the purchase of laborers instead of permitting them to pay for work, as the wage system does, out of current proceeds.  It thereby particularly hampered the growth of manufactures, for in such lines, as well as in commerce, “the fact that slavery absorbs the bulk of Southern capital must always present an obstacle to extensive operations.”  The holding of laborers as property, he continued, can contribute nothing to production, for the destruction of the property by the liberation of the slaves would not impair their laboring efficiency.  Hence all the individual wealth which has assumed that shape has added nothing to the resources of the community.  “Slavery merely serves to appropriate the wages of labor—­it distributes wealth, but cannot create it.”  It involves expenditure in acquiring early population, then operates to prevent land improvements and the diversification of industry, restricting, indeed, even the range of agriculture.  The monopoly which the South has enjoyed in the production of the staples has palliated the evils of slavery, but at the same time has expanded the system to the point of great injury to the public.  Goodloe accordingly advocated the riddance of the institution, contending that both landowners and laborers would thereby benefit.  The continued maintenance of the institution, on the other hand, would bring severe loss to the slaveholders, for within the coming decade the demand of the Southwest for slaves would be sated, he thought, and nothing but a great advancement of cotton prices and an unlimited supply of fertile land for its production could sustain slave prices.  “It is evident that the Southern country approaches a period of great and sudden depreciation in the value of slave property."[9]

[Footnote 9:  [D.R.  Goodloe], Inquiry into the Causes which have retarded the Accumulation of Wealth and Increase of Population in the Southern States, in which the question of slavery is considered in a politico-economic point of view.  By a Carolinian. (Washington, 1846.) See also a similar essay by the same author in the U.S.  Commissioner of Agriculture’s Report for 1865, pp. 102-135.]

The statistical theme of the South’s backwardness was used by many other essayists in the period for indicting the slaveholding regime.  With most of these, however, exemplified saliently by H.R.  Helper, logic was to such extent replaced with vehemence as to transfer their writings from the proper purview of economics to that of sectional controversy.