Not quite an AH question, but a project I've been given at work and one that the board is the obvious place to come to.
What were the major arguments raised in the period 1750-1850 against the idea of the abolition of slavery: and specifically, does anybody know any online resources from where I can obtain some direct quotes? A quick google has left me struggling somewhat, with only bitty and vague information to be found. This really isn't my historical period, either!
From my vague understanding, the anti-abolitionist arguments included the basic economics, plus arguments that slavery was for the own good of the slaves, and a good dose of racial superiority stuff...?
Thanks in advance to anybody who can help!
From the vantage point of the 21st century, it's really tough to wrap our minds around pro-slavery thought unless we first consider the
basis for pro-slavery thought. As with any school of thought, proslavery thought was underpinned by an ideology--racism. In the modern world, we frequently equate racism with bigotry. To the extent that we're talking about the modern world (where racism is discredited as an ideology), that's fine. But when we're looking at the 19th century, it's wrong to make that same assumption. Racists were bigots, to be sure. But as ideologues, they were much more. As a Marxist views the class struggle as the engine of history and the Fascist views the man of action as the engine of history, racists as ideologues looked at race as the guiding principle driving the engine of history; the determinative variable.
Today, the power of capital is ascendant; banks are the most powerful institutions in the world. Its mother ideology, capitalism, has been utterly dominant as a way of thought for about three decades now, and it was mostly dominant for a long time before that.
In the antebellum period, the coming ascendancy of capitalism was far less apparent. Nowhere was this more true than in the South, but capitalism wasn't the force it became anywhere in the country. The conflict of the day-- between North and South, between abolitionist thought and proslavery thought, between Whigs and Democrats--is (IMO) a conflict between an emergent capitalist ideology and an entrenched racist ideology. The South was the locus of ideological racism, but it certainly wasn't confined to the South. To a lesser extent, ideological racism permeated the thought of agrarians across the country, and was strong amongst the recently rural immigrants in big cities.
For example, the Southern elite didn't look at the accumulation of wealth in and of itself as a respected aspirational goal. Indeed, the perceived greed and money grubbing tendencies of Yankees were widely derided. In contrast, the proper goal of a member of the Southern elite (or a wannabe member of the elite) was the classical (and mythical) plantation lifestyle. While this
required wealth, the wealth wasn't the point. The plantation itself was the point, because the plantation served as a living representation of ideological racism.
(Much like the system of collective farming was of great symbolic importance in the Soviet Union)
The plantation was so important ideologically because it was a constant demonstration of white supremacy, and white supremacy was the foundational article of faith for ideological racism. According the ideology, the plantation is fate; the natural order of the world. As individuals who had realized ideological destiny, planters were therefore at the apex of Southern society--not bankers or traders of equal net worth.
The closest ideological parallel to ideological racism is feudalism and monarchism. In feudal society, money was great, but what really counted was land and a title. Those were the legal representations of the amorphous idea of "noble blood." The baronial estate with its accompanying serfs was a powerful symbolic reinforcement of the feudal ideal, which goes a long way toward explaining why it persisted long after it made economic sense. Ideological racism's connection to ideological feudalism is clear; race displaced nobility. According to ideological racism, membership in the white race conferred nobility upon the recipient. Black people replaced serfs. American Indians replaced outlaws.
Although there were those who attempted to reconcile the contradictions of capitalism and racism as ideologies in the antebellum period, such as JDB DeBow and Hinton Helper, they were not tremendously successful. (In the case of Helper, who advocated freeing the slaves and keeping the racism, they were reviled.) After all, in the long run, slavery doesn't make the best sense from a moneymaking proposition. Free laborers are more efficient than slaves and they don't require cradle-to-grave welfare or an expensive police state.
There were many arguments developed to advance the cause of enslavement, but economic arguments didn't always strike Southerners as the most compelling, unless the economics could be made to serve the racism. The Southern police state is a good example. The system of slave patrols and state militias, along with constant individual vigilance against and suspicion of black people, was enormously costly from a social standpoint, even though the system made white people superficially prosperous. Since the racism was unquestioned, defraying the costs of the police state through taxation seemed like a bargain, and only the resulting cost savings to the white race would be factored into the argument.
So when you're studying this period, keep in mind that the development of pro-slavery thought occurs in order to reinforce ideological racism. It wasn't "a good dose of racial superiority stuff." The reinforcement of racial superiority is the goal of all of the arguments, and the argument that slavery is the natural order of the world (an argument from Natural Law) is really the clearest example. "Slavery is good because it is usual and blacks are the most inferior race, so therefore they must be enslaved."
“In his native land, the African is a barbarian … laws and self-control are unknown, and cruelty is esteemed an appropriate manner of manifesting the most elevating emotions, – religion, grief, joy for victor. … Polygamy, theft, violence and falsehood, are virtues; nothing is so ennobling as the gratification of revenge, and the more cruel the means, the more credit to the actor. The shedding of blood is grateful to their God, whose attributes are of the most bestial description. … Add to this a dislike of foreigners as manifested in the assassination of travellers, and we have a faithful picture of negro life at home.” --JJ Pettigrew
For an explicitly ideological take on the goodness of slavery, see George Fitzhugh's
Cannibals All! or Slaves Without Masters at
http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/fitzhughcan/menu.html
Here's another, this time from TW Hoit:
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/rbaapc:@field(DOCID+@lit(rbaapc13300))
Note the chapter titles.
That should get you started, but in general, the writings of James Hammond, John C Calhoun, William Porcher Miles, Robert Barnwell Rhett, and William Lowndes Yancy.
To further demonstrate the ideological basis for proslavery thought, an excerpt from a petition by a
Northerner in 1866 to
re-establish slavery:
"But let us not linger in discussion on either the Indian or Malay nature; but, in the emergency of time, turn to that division of man, which, with reference
Page 6
page image }
to your long and unceasing disquisitions, has been termed, and by no means inappropriately, the "Eternal Negro."
He is the opposite of the white man in color, and, as we shall presently see, alike so in instinct and turn of mind. He also differs from the Indian, for, unlike him, he does not seek an exclusive independence, but inclines to the presence of his opposite race--the white man. He seeks it by choice, and wheresoever found with it, no matter what may be his condition before the law, equal or unequal, he will be found menial and of secondary rank. He will brush his hair, groom his horse, wait on his stables, dust his coat, and black his boots, and when held as a slave, will value himself, not by his own, but by his master's worth. Why is this so, if nature does not give the disposition?
His brain is from ten to fifteen per cent. smaller than the Caucasian's, and, at the same time, darker colored and differently disposed. His back brain, or cerebellum, is comparatively larger, while his fore brain, or cerebrum, the organ of thought, is much smaller. Thus is he inferior as well as differently molded in the organ of mind. Why, then, is he not below the white man in the scale of being, and designed by nature for a secondary rank in the great work assigned to man of "subduing the world?"
He is inferior as a mental being. But though less endowed in one particular, is higher favored in
Page 7
page image }
another; for, while his brain is smaller, his nervous system is larger, and, as a consequence, stronger. This gives him power where the white man not unfrequently fails. But it is a power which comes with greatest adaptability to his condition as a slave; for it fortifies him against the wounds of reproof, and aids his inferior mentality in overcoming the sting of degradation under which the white man pines when subjected to the lash.
Other properties of a defensive nature pertain to him in a similar way. He shows his keeping as does a horse, an ox or an ass. If he be well fed, he will be sleek, black and glossy; but if ill fed, he will be of a dull, dirty or ashy color. Thus is he defended, for in this peculiarity of his nature is there a secret monitor telling the world of a master's care or of a master's neglect.
But returning from properties to structure, we find his feet larger and flatter than the white man's, his arms longer, his head rounder, his lips thicker, his nose flatter, and his eyes smaller; and what is equally a mark of specific nature, we find his eyes and his hair, with its kinks, always of the same color--invariably black. These are marks of his being. But in descending the stream of reproduction, an even more important peculiarity is displayed in transmission. All of his offspring partake, in exact proportions, of these general characteristics. They are all black eyed and black haired--rigidly
Page 8
page image }
so fixed in nature. But no such uniformity follows the reproduction of the white man. On the contrary, his children are never exact copies of himself, nor, like beans,
fac-similes of one another, but vary throughout--in the color of their hair and their eyes, and in the different shades and tinges of their complexions."
Read the whole thing at
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/rbaapc:@field(DOCID+@lit(rbaapc23910div1)).
