Slavery

• Why did the vast majority of Southerners support slavery, even though only 25% owned slaves?

• What were the arguments used in defense of Slavery and against Slavery – the pro and anti slave arguments?

Who Owned Slaves? The majority of slave-owners were small farmers,

engaged in subsistence farming, but the majority of slaves lived on plantations with big workforces

The majority of white southerners - 75% - did not own slaves. Only 25% owned slaves.

Less than 0.5% of the population owned more than 100 slaves

Even though only 25% of southern whites owned slaves, and only 0.5% owned more than 100 slaves, nearly all southern whites supported the institution.

Why?

1. Fear of Revenge

Fear, hysteria, terror of black uprisings (Nat Turner – 1831. Va., 60 killed) prompted many non-slaveholders to support an increasingly rigid slave system. Fear of rebellion by slaves or retribution by freed slaves put an end to any potential white Southern opposition.

Slave rebellions created a wave of hysteria and a bonding between rich and poor whites, between slave and non slave owners.

2. Siege Mentality

As the abolitionist movement gained strength in the North – Garrison, Douglass – the South was more and more aggressively assailed from pulpit, by the press, and by politicians – this constant bombardment of its way of life knitted the South together in support of a Southern institution.

The South developed a siege mentality. It seemed like the North condemned all Southern ideas – on tariffs, states rights, migration west ……leading to a “backs to the wall” approach

Slavery, more than any other single factor, isolated the South from the rest of American society. And as that isolation increased, so did the commitment of Southerners to defend the institution. They closed ranks in the face of the Northern onslaught.

3. Competition for Jobs

Many non-slaveholders also were afraid that emancipation would bring them into direct economic competition with blacks for menial jobs - work as farm laborers, urban laborers etc. This would drive down wages

4. Interdependence

Small Southern farmers depended on the local plantation aristocracy for many things: for access to cotton gins, for markets for their modest crops and their livestock, for financial assistance in time of need.

They were not going to condemn a system from which they benefitted so much even if only indirectly

5. Ties of Kinship

Throughout the South there were extensive networks of kinship linking lower and upper class whites. The poorest resident of a county might well be a cousin of the richest aristocrat / slave-owner.

These mutual ties – a system of vaguely paternal relationships – helped mute what might otherwise have been pronounced class tensions.

Poor Southern whites were not going to condemn a system that some of their extended family might benefit from

6. Social Mobility

Rather than trying to end the institution, most poor Southern whites hoped that they could become slave owners themselves one day. This would bring them status and move them up the social ladder - Social Mobility.

They wanted slavery to continue, to keep this prospect open. Owning a slave one day was a goal, which would come with a lot of prestige. Poor whites wanted to become slave owners, not eliminate the institution

7. Force of Race

Perhaps the single greatest unifying factor among the Southern white population – the one force that was most responsible for reducing tensions among the various classes – was the force of race.

However poor and miserable white Southerners might be, they could still consider themselves members of a ruling race; they could still look down on the black population of the region and feel a bond with their fellow whites, born of a determination to preserve their racial supremacy

They found consolation in the fact that they had someone on a lower level of the social ladder than them, someone they could look down on. someone inferior to them.

The Plantation owners deliberately used the Race Card to separate white from black labor, to prevent them combining, to prevent social revolution – and create class solidarity

8. “Slaveocracy”

Although large planters represented only 0.5% of the white population, they virtually controlled the economic, social, legal, and political institutions of the South and even of the nation.

This became known as Slave Power / Slaveocracy (Snobocracy). Southern planters exercised powers in excess of their numbers. The South was an oligarchy – governed by an elite. They controlled the state legislatures, governorships, and legal system.

Slave Power dominated National / Federal politics:

Democratic Presidents and their cabinets: Jackson (condemned abolitionists in 1835, urged Congress to ban anti-slavery literature from the US mails), Van Buren (supported “Gag Resolution” in Congress to stop the flood of abolitionist literature) Polk, Taylor defended slavery

Controlled Senate – balanced at 15/15, could veto legislation passed by House (Wilmot Proviso)

Congress passed the Gag Resolution in 1836, which did not allow any debate in Congress on antislavery resolutions – limited freedom of speech and the right to petition

Congress also restricted and then banned the distribution of abolitionist literature through the mail in 1835, by ordering southern postmasters to destroy abolitionist material – put limits on the freedom of the press.

Slave Power controlled the Supreme Court: Taney and Dred Scott Decision

Difficult to oppose a system that is so well connected

Pro and Anti

Slave Arguments

Defense of Slavery

To defend their peculiar institution, white southerners constructed a remarkably complete (creative) and diverse set of arguments (“persuasive, interesting, but ultimately indefensible from a moral point of view”)

see McKitrick, p.2

1. “A Positive Good”Senator Calhoun (1837) and many white southerners maintained that slavery was not an evil but a positive good because it had introduced the “barbarous” Africans, inferior in color, physicality, and intellectually, to civilized American ways and, more importantly, to Christianity.

Calhoun talked about the childlike, dependent nature of African slaves, insisting that they could never cope with life outside the paternalistic and benevolent institution of slavery.

Master-slave relationship between whites and blacks was natural.

Calhoun, Harper, Fitzhugh

2. Better than Wage Labor

Slavery, they maintained, was actually a far more humane system than northern capitalism. After all, slaves were well fed, well clothed, well sheltered, well cared for when they were ill, and supported in their old age, compared to northern factory workers who were paid pitifully low wages, used, and then discarded when no longer useful. Slave-owners argued that their slaves were generally content.

Calhoun

3. Stability

Also, in the south, compared to the industrial North, there were no mobs, no trade unions, no strikes for higher wages, little jealousy of the poor for the rich…

South avoided the dangers to order and property posed by the laboring classes in free society. Slavery would save the South from Revolution, Socialism, Communism…

Calhoun

4. Bible / Religion

Tried to show that there was divine approval for the system. In their theological defense they quoted scripture/Bible.

a. They first identified the Negroes as the descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham, of whom Noah said, “Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.”

b. The second pointed to the law of Moses, which authorized the Jews to make bondsmen “of the heathen that are round about you.”

c. The third noted that neither the prophets of the Old Testament nor Christ and his apostles ever condemned slavery. Rather they repeatedly admonished servants to obey their masters – “servants obey thy master” – and to submit to their earthly lot. The proper role of the ch, therefore was not to attack slavery but to bring spiritual salvation to the slaves and to urge benevolence on their masters.

Fitzhugh #6 (instituted by God…as in the instances of Moses and Joshua; not condemned)

5. Aristotle

Throughout history, they argued, all great civilizations were based on slavery. Slavery was essential for material and cultural progress. Aristotle, whose thoughts permeate the proslavery argument, taught that in every organized society the men of superior talents would become masters over those of inferior talents. Slavery thus enabled a class to emerge that could devote its genius to art, literature, and other intellectual pursuits. Society must have a class to perform the “drudgery of life.”….

Calhoun

6. Economy

South’s economy, and indeed the economy of North too, depended on cotton, which depended on slavery. By the 1830s, cotton had become vital to the national economy, as well as to the Southern economy, British and World economies – “Cotton Became King:”

In 1800, the US exported $5m worth of cotton, or 7% of the value of the nations total exports. By 1810 this had increased to $15m, in 1840 to $63m, and by 1860 cotton exports were valued at $191m for that year, or 57% of the value of all US exports by 1860.

Vital to prosperity of South, prosperity of North – cotton was shipped to Britain mostly from Northern ports and by Northern shippers: Southerners borrowed from Northern banks – vital to prosperity of Britain – 75% of her supply of cotton (one fifth of Br pop depended on Br cotton ind for work?) came from the South, vital to prosperity of world economy – the US produced half of the entire worlds supply of cotton.

Slave system brought Economic Stability – no strikes, riots…

The Southern Economy was hardly affected by the Economic Crisis of 1857 (the North was deeply affected)….suggesting that it had a sound basis (cotton / slavery…)

Harper

7. Political / LegalPolitical / Legal Argument: Protected under the Constitution

- Three fifths compromise- Fugitive slaves to be returned- Slave trade could not be abolished for another 20 years – 1807

States Right – not forbidden in the Constitution, left to individual states under 10th Amendment

Protected by a series of Fugitive Slave Laws

Supreme Court / Taney, in the Dred Scott decision, approved of Slavery

Calhoun

Summary of Pro-Slave Arguments

• 1. Positive Good • 2. Better than Wage Labor • 3. Stability• 4. Bible / Religion• 5. Aristotle• 6. Economy• 7. Political / Legal

Arguments of North / Abolitionists Against Slavery

1. Moral and ReligiousSlavery was morally wrong and against all Religious beliefs….religion encouraged brotherhood, compassion….

It was wrong to enslave another, to deprive them of humanity, and treat them like animals or property: It inflicted severe physical, emotional, psychological, damage on the enslaved; it was maintained through brutality and suffering

It was a malignant, brutalizing institution: cruel, unjust, inhumane…split slave families, sexual exploitation, use of force and terror

Henry Clay argued that it also compromised the humanity of the slave-owner, it had a corrupting impact, it “was a curse to the master and a wrong to the slave,” turning the owners into brutish, punishing, inhumane people

It was contrary to the teachings of Christianity, to the doctrine of universal brotherhood preached by Jesus: one of the cardinal principles of Christianity was that all men were created in the image of God.

Condemned by Bible, as “manstealing”

Clay, Weld

2. PoliticalPolitically it was hypocritical, a betrayal of the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, with inalienable rights, and of the spirit of the Constitution; violation of Republican values of freedom and equality - slaves had no rights

maybe not against the letter but against the spirit of the laws, documents…

Garrison

3. Economic

Slavery was economically unsound because the slaves could not be expected to be efficient and there was much waste of physical and human resources in the plantation economy.

Wage labor would be far more productive and efficient than slave labor…..wage incentive

Ending slavery would create jobs for free laborers, in the South, from the North, and esp. in new territories in the West (Hinton Helper)

4. Stability?

Abolitionists condemned slavery as a menace to the peace and safety of the country. Whites lived in constant fear of widespread slave uprisings and violence, which could spread to the North….slave rebellions far more dangerous, deadly than any kind of disturbance in North

Stono, Prosser, Vesey, Turner

5. Beacon on a Hill / Image

Peculiar since rest of world had abolished slavery from the 1830s, led by Britain – William Wilberforce; US is out of step. The British banned slavery from their empire in 1833 (inc Br West Indies). Liberals argued that a modern, civilized country such as the US could not continue to tolerate slavery – tarnished image of US

Destroyed US image as beacon / model for rest of the civilized world: Wendell Phillips described it as a moral blot on American society – reform of prisons, education system, temperance etc… but slavery was an embarrassment to the United States – esp. slave auctions. Reformers described slavery as the greatest social evil in the way of the nation’s moral regeneration.

Summary of Anti-Slave Arguments

• 1. Moral / Religious

• 2. Political

• 3. Economic

• 4. Stability

• 5. Beacon on a Hill / Image

Abolitionism took several forms

1. Moral Persuasion – debate, speeches, sermons, and literature

2. Political action; bringing anti-slavery petitions / resolutions before Congress and forming third parties; Liberty Party and Free Soil Party, then Republican Party: attempts to prevent expansion – Tallmadge Amendment, Wilmot Proviso

3. Boycotting goods made by slave labor…. (minimal effect)…Wendell Phillips

4. Call for slave rebellions – David Walker’s (1829) “Appeal to the Colored People” – “rise up and throw off the yoke of slavery” - you are three million strong – had you not rather be killed than be a slave to a tyrant……also John Brown and Harpur’s Ferry

5. Underground Railroad….helping slaves escape…Tubman

Abolitionists – who opposed Slavery in the Americas? And why?

• Abolitionist Agitators – Lundy, Garrison• Preachers – Weld, Lane Rebels• Freed Slaves – Black Abolitionists – Douglass, Walker,

Tubman…. biographies, autobiographies, speeches, underground railroad

• Writers of Fiction – Stowe• Politicians – Tallmadge, Wilmot, Northern Democrats…

Radicals – Browne, Walker (then Republicans: anti-slave, and anti-extension….Lincoln)

• Historians….Rhodes, Elkins• Slaves themselves – rebellions, Stono, Prosser, Vesey,

Turner

Readings for Pro and Anti Slavery Arguments

• Pro• 1. Harper’s Apology• 2. George Fitzhugh• 3. Calhoun

• Anti• 1. William L. Garrison• 2. Theodore D. Weld

• To answer the question on the Pro and Anti Slave arguments you can approach it

– Arguments by argument, and plug in the commentators as you explain each argument

– Or commentator by commentator (contemporary)…Calhoun, Harpur, Fitzhugh, Garrison, Weld

– Find a way to mention historians who agree with the contemporaries (Rhodes and Elkins with Garrison and Weld…..Phillips with Harpur and Fitzhugh….)

Argument Proponent /Contemporary/ Historian

• 1. Positive Good • 2. Wage Labor • 3. Stability• 4. Bible • 5. Aristotle• 6. Economy• 7. Political / Legal

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• 1. Moral / Religious• 2. Political• 3. Economic• 4. Stability• 5. Beacon on a Hill