许多新的发现曾一度令计量经济史学家和本书的读者一样感到不可置信黑人奴隶制所存在的时代以及其后废除了奴隶制度的南北战争,是美国历史上一段被钉在十字架上的时代。如果说在美国人的记忆中,曾有什么令他们深以为耻,那一定是奴隶制的存在。迄今为止,有大量文献对奴隶制经济的运行进行研究与阐释,数百名历史学家对这一体制的每个方面几乎都进行了细致的考察。尽管学者对其中的一些具体问题仍然各执一 Many of the new discoveries have for some time convinced econometricians and readers of this book that the era in which black slavery existed and the subsequent Civil War that abolished slavery was a time of crucifixion in the history of the United States . If there ever was anything in American memory that shame them deeply, it must have been the existence of slavery. To date, there has been a great deal of literature on the study and interpretation of the operation of the slavery economy, with hundreds of historians undertaking a detailed examination of almost every aspect of the system. Although scholars still hold one for some of these specific problems