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This course will study the topic of slavery in the United States. We will consider slavery as an economic and social institution that played a dominant role in determining the history of the period.

We will examine why the South developed an economy based on slavery and the North did not, whether slavery contributed to the South's slower economic development relative to the North, and how slavery disrupted the American political process leading to the war.

The course will be divided equally between the economics of slavery and its social/political effects. The course will focus primary on the period from 1846 to 1860, and on the American experience, although some topics will deal with earlier or later periods, or with material from outside the United States, and seminar papers may deal in part with these topics as well.

The main objective of this course is to teach students how to develop knowledge of a specific topic by locating relevant texts and critically evaluating them and expressing this evaluation both orally and in writing. As a foundation for the research process students will be expected to develop a broad knowledge of the research on slavery and its economic and political aspects.