book.
Much of the book's claims are backed by statistics, whether or not those statistics are true or not. As the critics of the book point out, statistics can be selected and twisted and interpreted to give whatever conclusion the writer is seeking. In many cases, however, the authors seem to be trying to put the best light possible on slavery, without statistics. For example, they say that the picture of the lazy, stupid slave picking cotton is not a true picture. Instead, Fogel and Engerman write that
While the great majority of slaves were agricultural laborers, it is not true that these agriculturalists were engaged only in a very few, highly repetitive tasks that involved no accumulation of skills. . . . Slaves engaged in the full range of agricultural activities. These included the planting, raising, and harvesting of virtually every type of crop, as well as animal husbandry, dairying, land improvement, use and maintenance of equipment and machinery, and the construction of buildings.
Even if this is true, even if slaves did do much more around the plantation than earlier historians claimed, Fogel and Engerman seem to fo
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