Defending Slavery
Exploring the Proslavery Arguments of Antebellum America
“… No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king,”[i] insisted James Henry Hammond in his speech to the U.S. Senate in 1858[ii], three years before the outbreak of the Civil War. It was an emphatic statement, and for good reason. Large-scale cotton cultivation, jump-started by the invention of the cotton gin in 1793[iii], proved the savior of the Old South, whose tobacco-based economy had reached a standstill by 1790[iv]. The U.S. saw its cotton production increase eighteen fold and its slave population double between 1790 and 1820[v], and with this economic change came a distinct shift in Southern racial relations. Before the introduction of King Cotton, many white southerners (inspired by the ideals of the Revolution) saw slavery as a necessary evil[vi], but after the developments of the 1790’s, Southern proponents of slavery increasingly described slavery as a positive good. As illustrated by the proslavery arguments of John Calhoun, George Fitzhugh, and James Henry Hammond, the Southern belief in a naturally inferior black race rendered race-based slavery not only an economic necessity but also a moral right for the South between 1830 and 1860.
The driving force behind John C. Calhoun’s “Speech on the Reception of Abolition Petitions” (which, as its title suggests, was a reaction to petitions submitted to the Senate in 1837 for an end to slavery in the District of Columbia) [vii] is the argument that slavery is the South’s solution to what he describes as the eternal “conflict between “labor and capital.”[viii] First, he calls upon history to illustrate the need for some sort of subordinate laboring class in every working society: “…There never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of another.”[ix] And by believing that whites and blacks are “Two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual,”[x] Calhoun allows himself to conjecture that blacks are naturally inclined to take on a role of subservience. Calhoun tries to further his argument that slavery is beneficial for both whites and blacks by painting a pretty picture of this brutal institution. Using the deceivingly[xi] passive expression “came among us”[xii] to describe how slaves were first introduced to the U.S., Calhoun claims that since Africans’ arrival in the Americas, “[their] rapid increase of numbers is conclusive proof of the general happiness of the race.”[xiii] Ignoring the artificial roots[xiv] of said “increase of numbers,” Senator Calhoun rejects the Northern notion that slavery is a sin[xv]. The senator simply sees slavery as a Southern attempt (parallel to Northern capitalism) to resolve the fundamental question that faces all societies: how wealth is to be generated and divided among its constituents. “Compare [the slave’s] condition with the tenants in the poor houses of the more civilized portion of Europe,”[xvi] challenges Calhoun, revealing his belief in a responsible Southern patriarch who provides for all the physical necessities of his human chattel. In short, Calhoun’s staunch belief in white supremacy renders slavery a structural solution fit for any society, not just the South, which seeks harmony between its different races and economic classes.
Twenty years after Senator Calhoun’s speech, social theorist George Fitzhugh defended Southern slavery in his essay “The Ethic of the Master Race” by means of omission rather than active argument. This is to say that throughout his essay, Fitzhugh refuses to justify the race-based nature of slavery in the United States, as if the morality of a race-based institution were so self-evident it didn’t need to be argued. Instead, Fitzhugh seeks to persuade his reader of the humanity of Southern slavery in comparison to Northern capitalism. He calls the northern factory owner “a master without the obligations of a master,” [xvii] and northern white laborers “slaves without the rights of slaves.” [xviii] In short, Fitzhugh boldly accuses the North of practicing slavery as well—only under a different name. And being that the North doesn’t call its practice of slavery “slavery,” Fitzhugh argues that northerners are not bound to their workers with the same ties of social obligation that bind masters to their slaves. And because of this, suggests Fitzhugh, “the men without property, in free society, are theoretically in a worse condition than slaves.”[xix] But all of George Fitzhugh’s arguments rely precariously on the assumption of a responsible Southern patriarch who faithfully executes his duties as a “moral” slaveholder. His claims that “the women do little hard work, and are protected from the despotism of their husbands by their masters,”[xx] for example, would only be true if one ignored the countless accounts quite to the contrary. The historical account Celia, A Slave by Melton A. McLaurin illustrates how the men from whom slave women needed most to be protected were their very own masters. Yet still our southern intellectual insists, “the negro slaves of the South [are] the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world… The master provides food, raiment, house, fuel, and everything else necessary to the physical well-being of himself and family.”[xxi] The word “physical” here reveals the core, racist assumption from which Calhoun and Fitzhugh’s arguments stem. These two men could not concede that a poor freeman is richer at least in free choice than a slave in material comfort, as their belief in black inferiority prevented them from seeing that blacks, too, had higher, non-corporeal needs.
Senator James Henry Hammond’s “’Mud-Sill’ Speech,” which was prompted by the threat of Kansas’ admission as a free state in 1858[xxii], invokes the law of superior and subordinate social aims to justify the institution of slavery. “In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government,” [xxiii] claims Hammond. [xxiv] This belief that every civilized society is built on compromise explains for Hammond why the capitalist North has been able to eradicate the “name, but not the thing”[xxv] of slavery. Like Fitzhugh, Hammond asserts that the North has turned to a form of white slavery because it refuses to accept the most natural mud sill of all: black slaves. “Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race. The status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in which God first created them, by being made our slaves,”[xxvi] Hammond asserts, revealing his fear of the North’s ruining a perfectly harmonious Southern hierarchy. For Hammond, abolitionism goes against the very idea of “society,” which requires the existence of a subordinate class, and the fiat of nature, which has conveniently produced an inferior race to fill that role. Ironically, radical abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison also constructed their arguments about slavery in the name of natural law. But the fundamentally different notions of “natural law” possessed by slave holders and abolitionists led to Southern and Northern conclusions on the morality of slavery that were a world apart.
America has been a nation of slavery almost a century longer than it has been a free nation. This statistic may perplex students of the 21st century, for whom the idea of “slavery” seems a glaring moral disaster. But we as historians must resist the temptation to label antebellum supporters of slavery as “wicked”; we must not commit the injustice of imposing our modern sense of justice on men who reasoned differently from the way we do today. For if the proslavery arguments of John Calhoun, George Fitzhugh, and James Henry Hammond reveal anything, it is that these men were a product of their times. In this particular period of American history, a number of racist assumptions (as we can only consider them today) made it possible for well-educated men to defend the institution of race-based slavery with a clean conscience. But it is because of the prejudices these men held that their treatises on slavery are still worth examining. These speeches illustrate a truth about the human race— that our sense of “right and wrong” has throughout history been in a constant state of evolution. Luckily, this state of evolution renders us capable always of changing for the better, a goal best achieved through a close examination of our past, including slavery, which we recognize today as one of the greatest American tragedies there ever was.
Exploring the Proslavery Arguments of Antebellum America
“… No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king,”[i] insisted James Henry Hammond in his speech to the U.S. Senate in 1858[ii], three years before the outbreak of the Civil War. It was an emphatic statement, and for good reason. Large-scale cotton cultivation, jump-started by the invention of the cotton gin in 1793[iii], proved the savior of the Old South, whose tobacco-based economy had reached a standstill by 1790[iv]. The U.S. saw its cotton production increase eighteen fold and its slave population double between 1790 and 1820[v], and with this economic change came a distinct shift in Southern racial relations. Before the introduction of King Cotton, many white southerners (inspired by the ideals of the Revolution) saw slavery as a necessary evil[vi], but after the developments of the 1790’s, Southern proponents of slavery increasingly described slavery as a positive good. As illustrated by the proslavery arguments of John Calhoun, George Fitzhugh, and James Henry Hammond, the Southern belief in a naturally inferior black race rendered race-based slavery not only an economic necessity but also a moral right for the South between 1830 and 1860.
The driving force behind John C. Calhoun’s “Speech on the Reception of Abolition Petitions” (which, as its title suggests, was a reaction to petitions submitted to the Senate in 1837 for an end to slavery in the District of Columbia) [vii] is the argument that slavery is the South’s solution to what he describes as the eternal “conflict between “labor and capital.”[viii] First, he calls upon history to illustrate the need for some sort of subordinate laboring class in every working society: “…There never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of another.”[ix] And by believing that whites and blacks are “Two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual,”[x] Calhoun allows himself to conjecture that blacks are naturally inclined to take on a role of subservience. Calhoun tries to further his argument that slavery is beneficial for both whites and blacks by painting a pretty picture of this brutal institution. Using the deceivingly[xi] passive expression “came among us”[xii] to describe how slaves were first introduced to the U.S., Calhoun claims that since Africans’ arrival in the Americas, “[their] rapid increase of numbers is conclusive proof of the general happiness of the race.”[xiii] Ignoring the artificial roots[xiv] of said “increase of numbers,” Senator Calhoun rejects the Northern notion that slavery is a sin[xv]. The senator simply sees slavery as a Southern attempt (parallel to Northern capitalism) to resolve the fundamental question that faces all societies: how wealth is to be generated and divided among its constituents. “Compare [the slave’s] condition with the tenants in the poor houses of the more civilized portion of Europe,”[xvi] challenges Calhoun, revealing his belief in a responsible Southern patriarch who provides for all the physical necessities of his human chattel. In short, Calhoun’s staunch belief in white supremacy renders slavery a structural solution fit for any society, not just the South, which seeks harmony between its different races and economic classes.
Twenty years after Senator Calhoun’s speech, social theorist George Fitzhugh defended Southern slavery in his essay “The Ethic of the Master Race” by means of omission rather than active argument. This is to say that throughout his essay, Fitzhugh refuses to justify the race-based nature of slavery in the United States, as if the morality of a race-based institution were so self-evident it didn’t need to be argued. Instead, Fitzhugh seeks to persuade his reader of the humanity of Southern slavery in comparison to Northern capitalism. He calls the northern factory owner “a master without the obligations of a master,” [xvii] and northern white laborers “slaves without the rights of slaves.” [xviii] In short, Fitzhugh boldly accuses the North of practicing slavery as well—only under a different name. And being that the North doesn’t call its practice of slavery “slavery,” Fitzhugh argues that northerners are not bound to their workers with the same ties of social obligation that bind masters to their slaves. And because of this, suggests Fitzhugh, “the men without property, in free society, are theoretically in a worse condition than slaves.”[xix] But all of George Fitzhugh’s arguments rely precariously on the assumption of a responsible Southern patriarch who faithfully executes his duties as a “moral” slaveholder. His claims that “the women do little hard work, and are protected from the despotism of their husbands by their masters,”[xx] for example, would only be true if one ignored the countless accounts quite to the contrary. The historical account Celia, A Slave by Melton A. McLaurin illustrates how the men from whom slave women needed most to be protected were their very own masters. Yet still our southern intellectual insists, “the negro slaves of the South [are] the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world… The master provides food, raiment, house, fuel, and everything else necessary to the physical well-being of himself and family.”[xxi] The word “physical” here reveals the core, racist assumption from which Calhoun and Fitzhugh’s arguments stem. These two men could not concede that a poor freeman is richer at least in free choice than a slave in material comfort, as their belief in black inferiority prevented them from seeing that blacks, too, had higher, non-corporeal needs.
Senator James Henry Hammond’s “’Mud-Sill’ Speech,” which was prompted by the threat of Kansas’ admission as a free state in 1858[xxii], invokes the law of superior and subordinate social aims to justify the institution of slavery. “In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government,” [xxiii] claims Hammond. [xxiv] This belief that every civilized society is built on compromise explains for Hammond why the capitalist North has been able to eradicate the “name, but not the thing”[xxv] of slavery. Like Fitzhugh, Hammond asserts that the North has turned to a form of white slavery because it refuses to accept the most natural mud sill of all: black slaves. “Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race. The status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in which God first created them, by being made our slaves,”[xxvi] Hammond asserts, revealing his fear of the North’s ruining a perfectly harmonious Southern hierarchy. For Hammond, abolitionism goes against the very idea of “society,” which requires the existence of a subordinate class, and the fiat of nature, which has conveniently produced an inferior race to fill that role. Ironically, radical abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison also constructed their arguments about slavery in the name of natural law. But the fundamentally different notions of “natural law” possessed by slave holders and abolitionists led to Southern and Northern conclusions on the morality of slavery that were a world apart.
America has been a nation of slavery almost a century longer than it has been a free nation. This statistic may perplex students of the 21st century, for whom the idea of “slavery” seems a glaring moral disaster. But we as historians must resist the temptation to label antebellum supporters of slavery as “wicked”; we must not commit the injustice of imposing our modern sense of justice on men who reasoned differently from the way we do today. For if the proslavery arguments of John Calhoun, George Fitzhugh, and James Henry Hammond reveal anything, it is that these men were a product of their times. In this particular period of American history, a number of racist assumptions (as we can only consider them today) made it possible for well-educated men to defend the institution of race-based slavery with a clean conscience. But it is because of the prejudices these men held that their treatises on slavery are still worth examining. These speeches illustrate a truth about the human race— that our sense of “right and wrong” has throughout history been in a constant state of evolution. Luckily, this state of evolution renders us capable always of changing for the better, a goal best achieved through a close examination of our past, including slavery, which we recognize today as one of the greatest American tragedies there ever was.