"Offering new research on strategic factors in the development of the nineteenth century American economy--labor, capital, and political structure--the contributors to this volume employ a methodology innovated by Robert W. Fogel, one of the leading pioneers of the "new economic history." Fogel's work is distinguished by the application of economic theory and large-scale quantitative evidence to long-standing historical questions." "These sixteen essays reveal, by example, the continuing vitality of Fogel's approach. The authors use an astonishing variety of data, including genealogies, the U.S. federal population census manuscripts, manumission and probate records, firm accounts, farmers' account books, and slave narratives, to address collectively market integration and its impact on the lives of Americans. Students of labor history will find essays that reveal which laborers gained from early industrialization, how labor markets of the period responded to macroeconomic disturbances, and what role was played by contract labor in northern agriculture. For those with interests in monetary and financial history, there are essays that examine antebellum financial market integration, the effects of disturbances in financial markets on the real economy, and the accumulation and distribution of wealth. Demographers will benefit from five innovative studies: one setting forth new period and cohort mortality estimates, another on nutrition and health among free African-Americans, a revealing portrait of the slave family, and, lastly, two explaining the fertility decline. Finally, three essays are devoted to political economy, one to railroad financing in Canada and two to the economic consequences of urban politics in the United States.".

"The volume also includes two appreciations of Fogel written by Stanley L. Engerman and Donald N. McCloskey, and a bibliography of Fogel's writings. Economic historians will find the volume indispensable because of its wealth of new findings and conjectures about the nature of economic development in the nineteenth century; it also provides a basis for appreciating the contribution of the new economic history and Fogel's central role within it."--BOOK JACKET.