Following the lead of Adam Smith, classical economists considered free labor more efficient than slave labor because the free worker is stimulated by the fear of want and the desire for betterment. A slave, wrote Smith, “can have no other interest but to eat as much, and to labour as little as possible.” Yankee opponents of slavery agreed. “Enslave a man,” declared Horace Greeley, “and you destroy his ambition, his enterprise, his capacity. In the constitution of human nature, the desire of bettering one’s condition is the mainspring of effort.”
