Toward a New Synthesis on the Role of Economic Issues in the Political Realignment of the 1850s

59 Pages Posted: 27 Jun 2007 Last revised: 5 Feb 2023

See all articles by Robert W. Fogel

Robert W. Fogel

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Date Written: January 1992

Abstract

After sketching various ways in which economic issues influenced the political realignment of the 1850s, the paper concentrates on five questions: (1) the timing of the economic issues and the disjunctions in economic developments across regions and classes; (2) the size of the nonagricultural male labor force of the North toward the end of the 1850s and the ethnic and residential distributions of these workers; (3) changes in the ethnic composition of the northern electorate and the sharp shift in the partisan affiliations of "Old Americans," especially between 1852 and 1860; (4) problems in measuring the ups and downs in the standard of living of northern nonagricultural workers between 1840 and 1860 and provisional estimates of the decline in their real wages between 1848 and 1855; (5) a provisional estimate of the excess supply of labor during 1854-1855 created by the unfortunate phasing of three cycles (the collapse of a long cycle in construction, the coincident trough of a relatively mild trade cycle, and the continued upswing of a long cycle in immigration).

Suggested Citation

Fogel, Robert W., Toward a New Synthesis on the Role of Economic Issues in the Political Realignment of the 1850s (January 1992). NBER Working Paper No. h0034, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=995695

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