James L. Huston, professor of history at Oklahoma State University, has written books on The Panic of 1857 and the Coming of the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987) and Securing the Fruits of Labor: The American Concept of Wealth Distribution, 1765–1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998), as well as numerous articles on topics in antebellum history. In this book Huston argues that the cause of the Civil War was economic, generated by the southern defense of property rights in slavery, which would have created an unfair labor market that would have ruined the opportunities for free northern village labor. It was the reaction in the North to this growing slave system, with the possible expansion of slavery into the North, lending to the ruination of that society, that generated the late antebellum political changes that made compromise between the sections impossible. The title of the book, drawn from an 1829 comment by Thomas Cooper, president of South Carolina College and a political economist, on the tariff debates, suggests the southern willingness to make a decision on secession on the basis of a simple benefit-cost calculation.

Calculating the Value of the Union is based on extensive archival research and a thorough reading of the secondary literature on antebellum political and economic history. The 41 page bibliography includes 78 manuscript sources and 126 newspapers and periodicals. In addition there are two detailed appendices on political history, one tracing out “A Theory of Political Realignment” to describe the political changes of the 1850s, and the other providing graphical presentations of the changing pattern of voting by state in the last two antebellum decades. The basic presentation of the volume is in two parts, the first relating to the issue of property rights, particularly those in slaves, to sectional conflict, and the second a rather more traditional narrative on the role of slavery in the political struggles between North and South in the years 1846 to 1860.

There is much of considerable interest said about northern and southern attitudes towards slavery, free labor, and property rights. The author's major contention that the war was fought over property in slaves, although perhaps not as novel as suggested, does point to a basic aspect of the sectional debate. Whether republican ideology is so easily dismissed as “puny ideals” in contrast with the “brute fact” of slave values, perhaps draws too sharp a distinction. As Adam Smith pointed out, the demand for morality is downward sloping and some trade-offs may exist—between wealth maintenance and belief—although, given the value of southern slaves a compensated emancipation would have been quite expensive for the North (as was also the war). This was undoubtedly the reason that compensation of slaveowners, as done in most previous cases of slave emancipation, was seldom discussed in the United States, but Huston does not say much about the compensation discussions or of the emancipation practices of other countries. He does describe the beliefs in the natural death of slavery held at that time, but little is said in any detail about the period of time over which this would occur, a crucial issue for setting policy.

The timing of the Civil War is linked to what is described as the “North's paranoia,” due to the fears of competition from slave labor affecting the middle and lower classes in northern agriculture. Southern paranoia, on the other hand, reflected the fear of changes in the nature of property rights in slaves. Transportation improvements and market integration led to more competition between free and slave labor, and a drive toward territorial expansion in both sections. An interesting counterfactual proposed by Huston (p. 100) is that in the absence of the slave emancipation resulting from the Civil War, “it is not inconceivable to think that around 1890 or 1900 the North would have seceded from the Union to protect its economy from slave labor domination,”—but it is not hypothesized what the southern reaction to northern secession might have been in that circumstance.

Huston's analysis of the economic and political debates about slavery is first-rate, drawing together a great deal of information. Whether or not one is fully convinced of his interpretations of northern and southern society, much that is useful is presented about the experience with slavery in the United States. Little, however, is said about slavery and abolition in other countries, or why the North ended slavery before the South and in a quite different manner, so that some possible comparative dimensions are not explored. None of this, however, detracts from the contributions made in this most thoughtful and stimulating work.