In a recent review of my book, The Real Lincoln, for an economic history website (EH.Net) Gerald Gunderson of Trinity College in Connecticut creates a straw-man and then attacks it by misstating what I say about the profitability of slavery in the mid nineteenth century. He claims that I "dismiss" slavery "as an inefficient institution, lacking incentives for growth such that it probably would have disappeared if left alone." I do not say this at all, however. I basically concur with Jeffrey Hummel’s analysis in his book, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, that antebellum slavery was propped up by such … Continue reading The Economics of Slavery