Saturday, February 22, 2020 | 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM
Event Location:
Hamilton Grange
414 West 141st Street
New York, NY 10031
In this talk, historian Robert Wright will explore Alexander Hamilton's views on slavery and what they may have become had he lived as long as Aaron Burr did. It is likely that Hamilton would have created a Hinton Helper-esque view of slavery by the 1820s, if not earlier, because of his known views on the economics of slavery and the fact that the natural experiment between North and South, free and enslaved, was sufficiently advanced by that point to reveal what Wright calls "The Poverty of Slavery" -- the fact that enslaving others may be profitable, but that it never leads to economic growth and development.
About the Speaker
Robert E. Wright is a business, economic, financial and monetary historian and the inaugural Rudy and Marilyn Nef Family Chair of Political Economy at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He is the the editor or co-editor of 21 volumes and the author or co-author of 18 books, including The Poverty of Slavery: How Unfree Labor Pollutes the Economy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). He is also a research economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a recipient of the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society's National Hamilton Scholar Award. Dr. Wright is one of the Museum's guest curators and has served on the Financial History editorial board since 2008.
This program is presented by the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society, Hamilton Grange National Memorial, the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) and Revolutionary NYC. Additional details can be found here.