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LIT-1388: The Political Legacy of American Slavery

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StatusActive — read in full 2026-10-22 (NOTE-1089) from the journal's typeset PDF posted by the second author (mattblackwell.org), without the online appendix; worth reading as a careful persistence study: white Southerners in counties with more slavery in 1860 are today somewhat less Democratic, less supportive of affirmative action and more racially resentful (about a tenth of a standard deviation), not accounted for by present black share, and the difference in voting appears after Reconstruction, not before the war (THEORY-889). The association is strong; the causal reading rests on an instrument with an untestable exclusion restriction; the intergenerational transmission is argued with thin evidence. What persists is attitude, not party.
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Tagssociety-and-governance, social-science, causality
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1089 — Acharya, Blackwell & Sen — The political legacy of American slavery
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-1225 — Among white Southerners today, those living in counties where a larger share of the 1860 population was enslaved are somewhat less Democratic, less supportive of affirmative action and more racially resentful, by about a tenth of a standard deviation per standard deviation of slave share, and colder toward black Americans, by about a third; the difference is not accounted for by the present black share of the population, and in voting it appeared after Reconstruction rather than before the war, which supports its origin in the incentives that emancipation gave planters to repress black labor and votes, and its local transmission thereafter, THEORY-889 — In Acharya, Blackwell and Sen's analysis, white Southerners surveyed in 2006 to 2011 who live in counties where a larger share of the 1860 population was enslaved are, with state fixed effects and 1860 county controls, somewhat less Democratic, less supportive of affirmative action and more racially resentful, by about 0.09 to 0.13 standard deviations per standard deviation (about 20 points) of slave share, and in 1984 to 1998 survey data colder toward black Americans, by about 0.32; a cotton-suitability instrument gives larger estimates; the direct effect estimated with present black share held fixed is about as large; and in county presidential vote, which counts black voters until disenfranchisement, the difference appeared after Reconstruction rather than before the war

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Acharya, A., Blackwell, M., & Sen, M. (2016). The political legacy of American slavery. The Journal of Politics, 78(3), 621–641. doi:10.1086/686631.

Read in full (NOTE-1089), without the online appendix.

Key takeaways

From the reading, NOTE-1089.

  • Small, consistent effects. A 20 point rise in 1860 slave share goes with “a 2.3 percentage point decrease in the share of whites who currently identify as Democrats”; across the CCES outcomes, “approximately a 0.09–0.13 standard deviation change” (p. 626).
  • Not racial threat. Holding present black share fixed leaves the direct effect about the same (Table 3).
  • Born after emancipation. “the data show that regional differences emerged after the end of Reconstruction” (p. 634); the 1851 elections on secession show little relation to slavery.
  • Attitude, not party. “it is sociopolitical attitudes, rather than partisanship, that are passed down from parent to children” (fn. 23).
  • Transmission is the weak link. A parent–child correlation in 241 Southern respondents, not tied to county slavery, and equal effects in those born after 1965.

Why this is here

A29 cited it against the owner’s U29 framing, to separate a statistical association from a causal transmission of a perspective. Bears on CASE-133 and CLAIM-420.

From the reading, 2026-10-22. CLAIM-420 calls this “the hard case, where association has to be told from transmission”. The reading bears that out: the association is well supported, transmission much less so. It adds that the transmitted attitude was formed after slavery’s abolition, as a reaction to it, so the case joins descent from an institution to transmission of a later perspective. For CASE-133 it shows in vote data an attitude that stayed in place while its party changed. See NOTE-1089.

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