Wealth, Slaveownership, and Fighting for the Confederacy: An Empirical Study of the American Civil War

Hall, Andrew B.; Huff, Connor; Kuriwaki, Shiro

doi:10.1017/s0003055419000170

Cited by 28 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Similarly, in longer run causal studies, selection can similarly occur through birth. For example, Hall, Huff, and Kuriwaki (2019) show that winners of an 1832 land lottery in Georgia had more sons than losers of the land lottery. We can measure the actions for individuals who are born, but the actions of individuals who would have been born under a different treatment assignment are undefined.…”

Section: Implications For Research Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phantom Counterfactuals

Slough

2022

American J Political Sci

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Researchers often seek to identify the effects of a treatment on a sequence of behaviors, such as whether citizens register to vote and whether they then cast ballots. I show that average treatment effects (ATEs) are only identified until the first behavior (registering to vote) that affects the set of possible subsequent actions (voting). When one action changes the set of possible subsequent actions, it creates ‘phantom counterfactuals,’ or undefined potential outcomes, which render ATEs unidentified. I show that applied theory allows researchers to diagnose phantom counterfactuals, which helps to recognize unidentified ATEs and focus instead on other estimands that are identified. I illustrate this approach using a stylized model of crime reporting, showing how different theories generate different sets of identified estimands while holding constant an experimental design. I thereby establish the necessity of applied theory for causal identification in empirical research with sequential behavioral outcomes.

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Section: Implications For Research Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phantom Counterfactuals

Slough

2022

American J Political Sci

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“…These studies make clear that partisanship corresponded with greater Civil War mobilization among white northerners and that they expressed political motives in writing. These studies also offer some evidence that race-related views were not significant factors motivating mass northern enlistment, in contrast with motives relating to slave ownership in white southern military participation in the rebellion (Hall, Huff, and Kuriwaki 2019). But existing scholarship has not yet systematically distinguished the role of partisanship from racial attitudes, i.e., the possibility that the apparent effects of partisanship simply reflect variation in attitudes toward slavery and Black Americans' status more generally.…”

Section: Motivations Among the Mass Publicmentioning

confidence: 90%

Partisanship and Racial Attitudes in U.S. Civil War Enlistment

Ramanathan

Kalmoe

2022

J. Race Ethnicity Politics

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In this article, we investigate why millions of northern white men volunteered to fight in the Civil War. Prior studies have found that Republican partisanship played a significant role in boosting Union enlistment but do not test the competing hypothesis that views about slavery and race motivated them instead. Such views were highly salient among party elites before and during the war, which was sparked by a presidential election between parties divided over the expansion of Black enslavement. However, among the white mass public, we argue that partisanship rather than race-related attitudes explains patterns of war mobilization. Linking Union war participation records with election returns, we show that county-level war participation is better explained by Republican partisanship rather than views about the status of Black Americans (as measured by support for equal suffrage referenda and the Free Soil party). Analyzing a sample of partisan newspaper issues, we further show that Republican elites de-emphasized slavery as they sought to mobilize mass war participation while antiwar Democrats emphasized antiabolition and white supremacy, suggesting each party’s elites saw antislavery messaging as ineffective or even detrimental in mobilizing mass enlistment. This analysis offers additional evidence on the power of partisanship in producing mass violence and sheds more light on political behavior during a critical period in the history of U.S. racial politics.

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“…14 This includes the wartime experience and direct effects of the war on soldiers as well as post-war impacts on veterans, their families, and local communities. Work that focuses on soldiers, their military units, and their wartime experience directly has studied peer effects on survival rates in prisoner of war camps (Costa and Kahn, 2007), the impact of group homogeneity on desertions (Costa andKahn, 2003, 2008), formation of social and human capital among black soldiers (Costa and Kahn, 2006), and health outcomes (Costa and Kahn, 2010), how leadership styles affected desertion rates (Costa and Kahn, 2014), as well as the economic factors that influenced individuals' decisions to join the conflict (Hall, Huff and Kuriwaki, 2019).…”

Section: Historical Background and Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Fatherless: The Long-Term Effects of Losing a Father in the U.S. Civil War

Dupraz¹,

Ferrara²

2023

J. Human Resources

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We estimate the causal effect of losing a father in the U.S. Civil War on children's long-run socioeconomic outcomes. Linking military records from the 2.2 million Union Army soldiers with the 1860 U.S. population Census, we track soldiers' sons into the 1880 and 1900 Census. Sons of soldiers who died had a lower occupational income score and were less likely to have a high-or semi-skilled job as opposed to being low-skilled or farmers. These effects persisted at least until the 1900 census. Our results are robust to instrumenting paternal death with the mortality rate of the father's regiment, which we argue was driven by military strategy that did not take into account the social origins of soldiers. Pre-war family wealth is a strong mitigating factor: there is no effect of losing a father in the top quartile of the wealth distribution.

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Wealth, Slaveownership, and Fighting for the Confederacy: An Empirical Study of the American Civil War

Cited by 28 publications

References 37 publications

Phantom Counterfactuals

Phantom Counterfactuals

Partisanship and Racial Attitudes in U.S. Civil War Enlistment

Fatherless: The Long-Term Effects of Losing a Father in the U.S. Civil War

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