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Slavery as a positive good was the prevailing view of Southern U.S. politicians and intellectuals just before the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
, as opposed to seeing it as a
crime against humanity
Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...
or even a
necessary evil
A necessary evil is an evil that someone believes must be done or accepted because it is necessary to achieve a better outcome—especially because possible alternative courses of action or inaction are expected to be worse. It is the "lesser evi ...
. They defended the legal enslavement of people for their labor as a benevolent, paternalistic institution with social and economic benefits, an important bulwark of civilization, and a divine institution similar or superior to the free labor in the North.
This stance arose in response to the growing
anti-slavery
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The Britis ...
movement in the United States in the late 18th century and early 19th century. Various forms of slavery had been practiced in North America and across the world for centuries, but during the
Revolutionary War era, slavery became a significant social issue in North America. At this time, the anti-slavery contention that slavery was both economically inefficient and socially detrimental to the country as a whole was more prevalent than philosophical and moral arguments against slavery. However this perspective rapidly changed as the worldwide demand for sugar and cotton from America increased and the
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase (french: Vente de la Louisiane, translation=Sale of Louisiana) was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. In return for fifteen million dollars, or app ...
opened up vast new territories ideally suited for a plantation economy.
By the early 19th century, anti-slavery arguments turned away from claims that slavery was economically inefficient and towards the contention that it was inherently immoral. In response, pro-slavery advocates fought against the abolitionists with their own morality-based arguments, which invariably stressed their view that slaves were both well treated and happy, and included illustrations which were designed to prove their points. A writer in 1835 asserted that American slavery is the best slavery there ever was:
The "positive good" defense of slavery
Characterizing American perceptions of slavery at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the 1998 documentary series ''Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery'', the historian Douglas R. Egerton said:
The planter class in the Age of Revolution
The Age of Revolution is a period from the late-18th to the mid-19th centuries during which a number of significant revolutionary movements occurred in most of Europe and the Americas. The period is noted for the change from absolutist monarc ...
never believed for a moment the blacks were happy in their condition and wouldn't try for freedom, the way that white planters in the 1830s and '40s tried to convince themselves that their slaves loved their situation. Americans who lived through the American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...
understood that this was a violent world and that slaves were held in place only by white military power.[ See also .]
A narrative that enslaved African peoples lived in a care-free, comfortable state dates back to the late eighteenth century.
This argument mostly focused on the economic feasibility of enslaving people for their labor despite the inherent subjugation and degradation of human beings. The enslaved people of the time were members of what historian
Ira Berlin
Ira Berlin (May 27, 1941 – June 5, 2018) was an American historian, professor of history at the University of Maryland, and former president of Organization of American Historians.
Berlin is the author of such books as ''Many Thousands Gone: ...
called the and in his pivotal 1998 work ''Many Thousands Gone'' he described the transition in popular sentiments about the Africans and their descendants among ethnically European
settler
A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established a permanent residence there, often to colonize the area.
A settler who migrates to an area previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited may be described as a pioneer.
Settl ...
s of North America as,
If in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries transplanted Europeans denounced Atlantic creoles as audacious rogues and if in the eighteenth century the nascent planter class condemned the newly arrived Africans for their "gross bestiality and rudeness of their manners," nineteenth-century white Americans redefined blackness by endowing it with a new hard edge and confining people of African descent to a place of permanent inferiority.[.]
But by the 1810s a new rationale arose that began to treat legalized enslavement as a "positive good" and not as an economically "necessary evil," while still affirming its alleged economic benefits. It appears that this new premise was first expressed by Robert Walsh in 1819:
The physical condition of the American Negro is on the whole, not comparatively alone, but positively good, and he is exempt from those racking anxieties—the exacerbates of despair, to which the English manufacturer and peasant are subject to in the pursuit of their pittance.
Such justification about the "goodness" of enslavement for those who were enslaved became more common in the 1820s. By the late 1820s, the defense of institutional slavery saw it as mutually beneficial for state governments, enslavers, and enslaved people alike. Legal enslavement drifted from being seen as an economic system of private enslavers to a political and philosophical position that portrayed enslavement as possessing national importance, providing benefits to the states, including more tax revenue.
A well-known example of this new pro-enslavement approach was voiced by Governor
Stephen D. Miller in his 1829 speech to South Carolina's legislators:
Slavery is not a national evil; on the contrary, it is a national benefit. The agricultural wealth of the country is found in those states owning slaves, and a great portion of the revenue of the government is derived from the products of slave labor—Slavery exists in some form everywhere, and it is not of much consequence in a philosophical point of view, whether it be voluntary or involuntary. In a political point of view, involuntary slavery had the advantage, since all who enjoy political liberty are then, in fact, free.
Not long after Governor Miller's speech, the general defense of involuntary servitude drifted towards a position where a "proper social order and foundation of social welfare played a major role" in the pro-enslavement debate.
Another economic defense of enslaved labor came from economist
Thomas Roderick Dew
Thomas Roderick Dew (1802–1846) was a professor at and then president of The College of William & Mary. He was an influential pro-slavery advocate.
Biography
Thomas Dew was born in King and Queen County, Virginia, in 1802, son of Captain Th ...
, professor at and then president of the
College of William and Mary
The College of William & Mary (officially The College of William and Mary in Virginia, abbreviated as William & Mary, W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded in 1693 by letters patent issued by King William III ...
, who downplayed the evil of owning humans after the
Virginia House of Burgesses
The House of Burgesses was the elected representative element of the Virginia General Assembly, the legislative body of the Colony of Virginia. With the creation of the House of Burgesses in 1642, the General Assembly, which had been established ...
almost passed legislation for the emancipation of enslaved people in 1832. Dew supported enslavement on philosophical, economic and Biblical grounds, arguing that chattel slavery was not necessarily an immoral system.
[ In portraying Southern enslavement-based society as "superior" to Northern free society, Dew's pro-slavery argument turned into a "positive good" defense.
]
James Henry Hammond and Mudsill Theory
On February 1, 1836, Congressman James Henry Hammond
James Henry Hammond (November 15, 1807 – November 13, 1864) was an attorney, politician, and planter from South Carolina. He served as a United States representative from 1835 to 1836, the 60th Governor of South Carolina from 1842 to 1844, and ...
from South Carolina spoke on the House floor for two hours about the perceived menace of abolitionism. He launched an attack on pro-human rights opponents in the North, while defending the social and economic benefits to whites of enslavement in the South. Hammond's speech on enslavement was considered a new departure in the American Congress, distinguished as the "first explicit defense of slavery as a positive good."
In that 1836 speech, Hammond attempted to justify the practice:
Slavery is said to be an evil… But is no evil. On the contrary, I believe it to be the greatest of all the great blessings which a kind Providence has bestowed upon our glorious region… As a class, I say it boldly; there is not a happier, more contented race upon the face of the earth… Lightly tasked, well clothed, well fed—far better than the free laborers of any country in the world,… their lives and persons protected by the law, all their sufferings alleviated by the kindest and most interested care....
Sir, I do firmly believe that domestic slavery regulated as ours is produces the highest toned, the purest, best organization of society that has ever existed on the face of the earth
A Democrat, Hammond was elected Governor of South Carolina in 1842. He was best known during his lifetime as an outspoken defender of the South and the institution of slavery.
After traveling through Europe, Hammond concluded that free laborers were being exploited by soulless materialism in England and the North, where workers had the "liberty only to starve," while Southerners were far more protective, assuming "responsibility for every aspect of the lives" of their slaves.
Hammond co-authored ''The Pro-Slavery Argument'' with William Harper, Thomas Roderick Dew
Thomas Roderick Dew (1802–1846) was a professor at and then president of The College of William & Mary. He was an influential pro-slavery advocate.
Biography
Thomas Dew was born in King and Queen County, Virginia, in 1802, son of Captain Th ...
, and William Gilmore Simms
William Gilmore Simms (April 17, 1806 – June 11, 1870) was an American writer and politician from the American South who was a "staunch defender" of slavery. A poet, novelist, and historian, his ''History of South Carolina'' served as the defin ...
, who composed part of the "sacred circle" of proslavery intellectuals.
In his famous ''Mudsill Speech'' (1858), Hammond articulated the pro-slavery political argument during the period at which the ideology was at its most mature (late 1830s – early 1860s). Along with John C. Calhoun, Hammond believed that the bane of many past societies was the existence of the class of the landless poor. This class of landless poor was viewed as being inherently transient and easily manipulated, and as such often destabilized society as a whole. Thus, the greatest threat to democracy was seen as coming from class warfare that destabilized a nation's economy, society, government, and threatened the peaceful and harmonious implementation of laws.
This theory supposes that there must be, and supposedly always has been, a lower class for the upper classes to rest upon: the metaphor of a mudsill theory
Mudsill theory is the proposition that there must be, and always has been, a lower class or underclass for the upper classes and the rest of society to rest upon. The term derives from a mudsill, the lowest threshold that supports the foun ...
being that the lowest threshold (mudsill) supports the foundation for a building. The theory was used by Hammond to justify what he saw as the willingness of the non-whites to perform menial work which enabled the higher classes to move civilization forward. With this in mind, any efforts for class or racial equality that ran counter to the theory would inevitably run counter to civilization
A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system).
...
itself.
Southern pro-slavery theorists asserted that slavery eliminated this problem by elevating all free people to the status of "citizen", and removing the landless poor (the "mudsill") from the political process entirely by means of enslavement. Thus, those who would most threaten economic stability and political harmony were not allowed to undermine a democratic society, because they were not allowed to participate in it. So, in the mindset of those in favour of it, slavery was for protecting the common good of slaves, masters, and society as a whole.
These and other arguments fought for the rights of the propertied elite against what were perceived as threats from the abolitionists
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The Britis ...
, lower classes, and non-whites to gain higher standards of living. The economic self-interest of slaveholders certainly played a role, as slaves represented a massive amount of wealth – at the time of the Civil War some historians estimate the over 20% of private wealth in the US was slaves.
John C. Calhoun and "positive good" slavery
The best-known political figure to defend black slavery as a "positive good," was John C. Calhoun, a political theorist and the seventh Vice President of the United States. Calhoun was a leader of the Democratic-Republican Party
The Democratic-Republican Party, known at the time as the Republican Party and also referred to as the Jeffersonian Republican Party among other names, was an American political party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the earl ...
in the early nineteenth century who, in the Second Party System
Historians and political scientists use Second Party System to periodize the political party system operating in the United States from about 1828 to 1852, after the First Party System ended. The system was characterized by rapidly rising levels ...
, initially joined the proslavery Nullifier Party
The Nullifier Party was an American political party based in South Carolina in the 1830s. Considered an early American third party, it was started by John C. Calhoun in 1828.
The Nullifier Party was a states' rights, pro-slavery party that s ...
but left by 1839. Despite having refused to attend the inauguration of Democratic president Martin Van Buren
Martin Van Buren ( ; nl, Maarten van Buren; ; December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was an American lawyer and statesman who served as the eighth president of the United States from 1837 to 1841. A primary founder of the Democratic Party, he ...
two years before, Calhoun voted with the Democratic Party for the remainder of his career. To Calhoun, slavery was a great benefit for an inferior race that had no ability to exercise their freedom positively. Calhoun argued:
Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually… It came to us in a low, degraded, and savage condition, and in the course of a few generations it has grown up under the fostering care of our institutions.
The concept of slavery as a positive good came to the forefront in Calhoun's February 6, 1837, speech on the US Senate floor. In an attempt to disarm the abolitionists' moral outrage over slavery as "man-stealing," ignoring the anti-slavery tradition of the Founders, Calhoun, like many proslavery Southerners, pointed to the ancient world to help them defend the institution of slavery, especially Aristotle's theory of natural slavery. Greek democracy along with the grandeur of the Roman republic provided Southerners with a perspective that great cultures and slavery were inseparable.
Attempting to claim the moral mantle for the social defense of involuntary servitude, Calhoun declared:
"But I take higher ground. I hold that, in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by colour, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding states between the two is, instead of an evil, a good — a positive good. I feel myself called upon to speak freely upon the subject, where the honour and interests of those I represent are involved."
In that 1837 speech, Calhoun further argued that the slaveholders took care of their slaves from birth to old age, urging the opponents of slavery to "look at the sick, and the old and infirm slave, on one hand, in the midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintending care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poor house" found in Europe and the Northern states.
Such an assertion was predicated on the virtues of benevolent paternalism, the glory of past civilizations, and the traditions of white supremacy
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...
. In an effort to illustrate that the North was also guilty of treating and exploiting its free laborers like slaves, Calhoun declared in his speech "that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilised society in which one portion of the community did not...live on the labour of the other."
Most Southern slaveholders and intellectuals favored Calhoun's ideas and maintained that the institution of slavery "benefited both master and servant." In that arrangement, the slaveholder acquired his labor and the slave was given a standard of living far beyond what he could ever hope to achieve on his own.
While Calhoun sought to defend slavery as a positive good, he expanded his argument to condemn the North and industrial capitalism, asserting that slavery was "actually superior to the 'wage slavery
Wage slavery or slave wages refers to a person's dependence on wages (or a salary) for their livelihood, especially when wages are low, treatment and conditions are poor, and there are few chances of upward mobility.
The term is often us ...
' of the North." He believed that free laborers in the North were just as enslaved as the Negro workers in the South. However, in the case of slaves in the South, Calhoun argued that Negros were receiving special protection under a caring and paternalistic master, and therefore were more fortunate.
In his manifesto, ''A Disquisition on Government
''A Disquisition on Government'' is a political treatise written by U.S. Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina and published posthumously in 1851. Written in response to what Calhoun saw as the growing subjugation of the Southern United Stat ...
'', Calhoun opposed equality upon birth assertion that the Founders declared in the Declaration of Independence
A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of th ...
, arguing that not all people are "equally entitled to liberty." To bolster the prospects of slavery, he asserted that liberty was not a universal right but should be "reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving," which would exclude both free and enslaved Negros. Moreover, in 1820, Calhoun explained to John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams (; July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States ...
that slave labor was the mechanics by which to maintain social control, calling it the "best guarantee for equality among whites."
Effects of the "positive good" argument for slavery
Before the 1830s, the support for slavery was weakening in the South. During this period many Southerners agreed that, in the abstract, slavery constituted an evil. They claimed that they had no participation in its introduction, and laid blame of the existence of the institution on "old Grandam Britain." Nonetheless, few Southerners were willing to also call slavery "a sin".[ This attitude resulted in a situation where "slave states contained a great many more anti-slavery societies than the free states."]} After the abolitionists escalated their intellectual attacks against slavery, pro-slavery Southerners felt threatened, and retaliated with their own philosophical and morality-based justifications to defend involuntary servitude. The pro-slavery adherents felt compelled to take a hardline stance and engaged in a vehement and growing ideological defense of slavery. Pro-slavery intellectuals and slaveholders began to rationalize slavery as a positive good that benefited both owners and the enslaved. Calhoun believed that the "ownership of Negros" was both a right and an obligation, causing the pro-slavery intelligentsia to position enslavement as a paternalistic and socially beneficial relationship, that required reciprocal "duties" from the enslaved.
Another aspect of "slavery as a positive good" motivated some Southern white women to offer the enslaved on plantations material goods, as well as maternal care of those they considered "unfit or feeble-minded Negros". However, all black people were generally, though not universally, believed to be a genetically inferior "race
Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to:
* Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species
* Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...
", the schooling of whom would be a waste, as they could not be educated. Some plantation mistresses spent considerable time in an attempt to "civilize" their enslaved laborers by providing food, shelter, and affection. In this sense, antebellum Southern women saw the enslaved as childlike, in need of protection. While engaging in this type of activity, they also attempted to convince the plantation enslaved, who were denied contact with the many abolitionist newspapers, that their condition was far better than those of the white or black factory workers in the industrial North.
George Fitzhugh's extreme defense of slavery
George Fitzhugh
George Fitzhugh (November 4, 1806 – July 30, 1881) was an American social theorist who published racial and slavery-based sociological theories in the antebellum era. He argued that the negro was "but a grown up child" needing the economic and ...
was a slave owner, a prominent pro-slavery Democrat, and a sociological theorist who took the positive-good argument to its final extreme conclusion.[ Fitzhugh argued that slavery was the proper relationship of all labor to capital, that it was generally better for all laborers to be enslaved rather than free.][ He insisted that slavery was not a question of race, that in principle anyone of any race could be enslaved, and that this was beneficial to those enslaved as well as to their masters.][ Fitzhugh argued that Southern slaves had a "guarantee of livelihood, protection and support," and that if a master failed to perform his duties, he could be forced to sell his slaves to a more capable slaveholder.][ In this way, Fitzhugh contended that "Slavery protects the infants, the aged and the sick," along with the healthy and the strong.
Fitzhugh declared that "the unrestricted exploitation of so-called free society is more oppressive to the laborer than domestic slavery." In later years, Fitzhugh not only supported slavery for blacks, but like other proslavery intellectuals, came to the conclusion that it was also suitable for whites, if considered unfit. He believed that whites, if trained well and domesticated, could be as "faithful and valuable servants" as blacks.
Taking an authoritarian position, Fitzhugh argued that "All government is slavery," and that "No one ought to be free." And yet he, like other proslavery theorists, believed that "slavery ultimately made democracy work," by referencing the history of Classical Athens, the ]Roman Republic
The Roman Republic ( la, Res publica Romana ) was a form of government of Rome and the era of the classical Roman civilization when it was run through public representation of the Roman people. Beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Ki ...
, and other ancient societies with democratic characteristics, all of which had slavery.[ Fitzhugh summed up his pro-slavery stance with the following argument:
]'It is the duty of society to protect the weak;' but protection cannot be efficient without the power of control; therefore, 'It is the duty of society to enslave the weak.'
Fitzhugh's views were influential and widely acknowledged in the South. The ''Richmond Enquirer'' found Fitzhugh's pro-slavery sentiments to be sound, declaring that the justification of slavery was not an issue of "mere negro slavery," but that in of itself "slavery is a right, natural and necessary." Fitzhugh maintained that slavery was the best institution to ensure "the rights of man."[
]
The Democratic Party's role in reshaping the issue of slavery
Founded in 1828, the Democratic Party's success and prominence across the political landscape has been attributed to its ability to reshape the issue of slavery as a "morally beneficial institution," especially to the more radical faction of Southerners within the Democratic Party. By the mid-nineteenth century, Democrats had become not only the most ardent defenders of slavery, but the most important institutional supporter of slavery.
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as ...
, who owned throughout his life up to 300 slaves, was the first U.S. President (1829–1837) to be elected from the newly founded Democratic Party. Jackson was accused of beating his slaves, and also of banning the delivery of anti-slavery literature through the mail, calling abolitionists monsters who should "atone for this wicked attempt with their lives."
In the Democratic South, many pro-slavery activists within the Southern intelligentsia and political community took the position that they were simply "upholding the great principles which our fathers bequeathed us." They regarded the practice of holding other humans in chattel bondage as a "constitutional freedom" that was enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.[ James Henley Thornwell, ''Our Danger and Our Duty'', Columbia, South Carolina, Southern Guardian Steam-Power Press, 1962, p. 5.]
By 1860, the Democratic Party was seen as "irrevocably wedded to the institution of Slavery...hand and heart." As the Southern armies began suffering defeats in the battlefield, the ''New York Times'' opined that the Southern Democrats' devotion to slavery held a "stubbornness of fond infatuation such as the world has seldom seen."
See also
* Anti-Tom literature
*Fire-Eaters
In American history, the Fire-Eaters were a group of pro-slavery Democrats in the Antebellum South who urged the separation of Southern states into a new nation, which became the Confederate States of America. The dean of the group was Robert R ...
*Holocaust trivialization
Holocaust trivialization is any comparison or analogy that diminishes the impact of the Holocaust, the Nazi genocide of six million European Jews during World War II. The Wiesel Commission defined trivialization as the abusive use of compariso ...
*Proslavery
Proslavery is a support for slavery. It is found in the Bible, in the thought of ancient philosophers, in British writings and in American writings especially before the American Civil War but also later through 20th century. Arguments in favor o ...
* Tom Cotton's statements about slavery
* White defensiveness
References
Further reading
* {{cite book
, title=Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson's University
, editor-first1=Maurie D.
, editor-last1=McInnis
, editor-link1=Maurie D. McInnis
, editor-first2=Louis P.
, editor-last2=Nelson
, year=2019
, publisher=University of Virginia Press
The University of Virginia Press (or UVaP) is a university press that is part of the University of Virginia. It was established in 1963 as the University Press of Virginia, under the initiative of the university's then President, Edgar F. Shanno ...
, location= Charlottesville, Virginia
, isbn=9780813942865
, first1=Thomas
, last1=Howard
, first2=Alfred
, last2=Brophy
, author-link2=Alfred Brophy
, chapter=Proslavery Thought
, pages=141–170
Slavery in the United States
Philosophical problems
Justification (epistemology)
White supremacy in the United States
Historiography of the American Civil War
Social history of the American Civil War
Politics of the Southern United States
Lost Cause of the Confederacy