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In 1443, the transatlantic slave trade began with the sale of African slaves to Nuno Tristao at Arguin. Prior to this, slavery had been an accepted practice in many nations but the trade of slaves on transatlantic proportions had not yet begun. Rather, slavery primarily involved the subjugation of neighbouring peoples by a conquering nation; enslaving a nation was considered the right of the conqueror. The strong conquer the weak. The transatlantic slave trade, however, elevated the institution of slavery to a new level. Because of the traditional view that slaves were property, slave traders could, with impunity, treat them as no more than cargo on their voyages. As such, they were neglected the very basics of life. They were horribly confined, starved and subject to enormous abuse. In their chains, slaves were thrown overboard without thought. Eventually these cruelties, however, were exposed and the intelligentsia, having just affirmed the rights of man through enlightened discourse, was challenged to uphold their great principles. William Wilberforce and a host of others met this challenge and championed the rights of the slave. They claimed for the slaves the right to equality, liberty and fraternity as professed during the Enlightenment and proclaimed by the Bible. The initial profitability of the slave trade, however, prevented most European nations from abolishing transatlantic shipments. This even though most European societies did not rely on slave labour (except in their colonies). Yet, as a tradable commodity, slaves were invaluable in obtaining other goods, such as sugar. The American South, however, felt, rather uniquely, that slavery was vital to the continuation of its livelihood and, therefore, Southerners became the defenders of the institution of slavery. However, the abolitionists would eventually win out and the American Civil War would force the South to end the practice of slavery. The cruelties of the transatlantic voyages and the cruelties endured by slaves at the hands their slave masters served as incontrovertible evidence of the evils of slavery; evidence that was too substantial to be justified by detached socio-political, economic and religious philosophies.
The Southern philosophes, however, were, in some measure, great theorists. Their ability to defend the institution of slavery as an ideal for society should be considered and evaluated. Eugene D. Genovese, in his book The Slaveholders’ Dilemma, rightly states:
We could, if we would, profit greatly from a reasoned engagement with the thought of Calhoun, Dew, Bledsoe, Thornwell, and others as we grapple today with the staggering problems of a world in headlong transition to the Lord knows what. The finest aspects of their thought, shorn of the tragic commitment to slavery and racism, constitute a searing critique of some of the most dangerous tendencies in modern life (Genovese 3).
Historians should never gloss over the past and avoid the ugliness of our actions. Instead, it is these events that we should concentrate on so that we might learn the methods of evil and heed Jesus’ warning, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Mt 7:15 RSV).
Of all the areas with which the Southern philosophes contended the socio-political arena was probably their strongest. It is in this area that they had history and the law to support their assertions. With the recent exception of the British, the slave trade had been, and still was, an intimate part of the economies of many nations and the slaves were the labour by which many empires attained greatness. As Eugene D. Genovese points out, “the proslavery theorists never tired of proclaiming that the greatness of ancient Egypt, Israel, Greece, and Rome had been based on slavery” (5). Southerners envisioned an American empire and that required slave labour.
In addition, the Enlightenment, that had so revolutionized thought in Europe, was strongly opposed in the American South. The American South (and, to a certain extent, even the North) rejected the enthronement of reason over faith and the rights of man over his social responsibilities. They rejected the “social and political abominations of egalitarianism and popular democracy” as well as the “political offensive against Christianity and the social order” (Genovese 37).[1] The political culture of the American South demanded strong authority and a social hierarchy. In fact, the Governors of the American South were “new money” aristocrats. They were landowners and slave owners and their wealth determined their political power. They espoused a “social theory that stressed obedience to constituted authority, beginning with that of the male head of family and household, and they especially stressed the ubiquity and necessity of class stratification” (Genovese 38). The importance of social system governed their beliefs on the institution of slavery. For Southerners, slaves were an extension of the household. To them, the move to abolish slavery represented as radical an attack on the traditional family as the issue of homosexual marriages represents to the Judeo-Christian family of today. Southerners contended that the institution of slavery “afforded the best foundation for a free society” (Genovese 34).
Of course, the American North differed in its view of the social hierarchy. The North, though holding to some of the principles espoused by the South, saw slavery as a direct contradiction of the Declaration of Independence. As such, the North wanted to avoid the obvious hypocrisy of upholding the Declaration and, yet, at the same time condoning slavery. The South, however, in its support of the institution of slavery elected to challenge the validity of the Declaration. John Adger, a Presbyterian minister, in his opposition to the enlightened assertion of natural universal rights for all men that was so embedded in the Declaration, stated that “it is a mistake to believe that because rights are natural they must be accorded to all human beings” (Genovese 53). Adger explained his viewpoint with a convincing example when he said, “the rights of a father are natural, but they belong only to the fathers. Rights of property are natural, but they belong only to those who have property (Genovese 53).
Adger’s philosophies and those of his other Southern contemporaries were, indeed, carefully articulated apologies to the enlightened philosophies. Albert Taylor Bledsoe, for instance, even challenged the validity of the natural rights doctrine outright. He wrote that the search “for any authority for man’s natural rights” has been in vain and that “if [man] had any [rights], they existed before the fall” (Genovese 53). For Southern philosophes, the Declaration of Independence and the enlightened tradition on which it stood were precarious doctrines at best and complete heresy at worst.
The Southerners, however, did not end their defence with arguments in philosophy. They also pointed out that the laws of the United States protected the institution of slavery. Article I, section 9, clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States affirmed the South’s right to allow “the migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit” (USC). At least, until 1808. The Constitution also implicitly supported the institution of slavery in article IV, section 2, clause 3, which stated:
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due” (USC).
Similar state laws as well as the introduction of other Federal laws and compromises further supported these constitutional articles. The Missouri Compromise, the Gag Rule of 1836 (to 1843), the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act all at the very least allowed but in many cases affirmed the South’s slaveholding system.
With these proofs established, the Southerners then attacked the Northerners for being hypocrites. The Southerners argued that slavery or personal servitude guaranteed the very freedom and liberty that the North enjoyed. The Northern system of slavery, however, was merely sugar coated (pun intended). The South regarded the northern system of labour with as much contempt as the reverse was held. The industrial North exploited the worker and, furthermore (and perhaps the greater evil), neglected to ground the worker in a Christian society. Douglas Egerton, Professor of History at Le Moyne College, points out that Southerners “began to articulate a fairly new idea, which was that slavery was not a bad thing in any way, but that it was a positive good for all concerned; that it allowed American civilization to advance” and that “it allowed Africans to be civilized by bringing them into contact with allegedly superior white culture and the Christian faith” (“Douglas Egerton”, Africans in America Website [AIA]). The Southerners “came to view the freedom of labour as a brutal fiction that undermined the propertied classes’ sense of responsibility for the moral and material welfare of society” (Genovese 34). This attack forcefully shifted the burden of guilt upon the North. The Industrial Revolution was ripe with stories of crimes and abuse against employed labour. Even today, rarely a day passes without the news agencies declaring the existence of sweatshops and their intolerable working conditions. “How then was the northern system any better?” Southerners asked. Moreover, was it not worse because it released the employer from any obligation to the employee beyond that of wages? As mentioned previously, the Southerners argued that slaves were a part of the family. As such, slave owners provided for not only the economic needs but also the material and spiritual needs of their slaves.[2] And, therefore, the Southern system was infinitely better than the northern system.
In light of Adam Smith’s convincing attack on the profitability of slave labour, the Southerners were on weak ground when it came to an economic justification for slavery. In fact, the Southerners largely ceded to northern opinion on this issue. The success of the Industrial Revolution was based heavily on the freedom of labour and the South accepted that if a society were to be primarily concerned with the pursuit of wealth, the northern system would be better. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, however, did present one prevailing opinion among Southerners. He stated, “I am . . . thoroughly convinced . . . that the nature of our climate, and the flat, swampy situation of our country, obliges us to cultivate our lands with Negroes, and that without them South Carolina would soon be desert waste” (Garraty and Gay 897). Yet, it is obvious that this view was largely based on a selfish desire to avoid menial labour. Moreover, the quote, I find, is nonsense for it asserts that swampy land would become desert if it were not cultivated. This seems somewhat ridiculous and exposes Pinckney for the lazy bigot he is. The majority of Southern philosophes, on the other hand, carefully avoided arguments that belied a lazy bigotry. Instead, they aimed to claim the moral high ground on the issue.
The South recognized that freedom ultimately engendered progress. However, they also believed that free labour, with its stress on personal liberty and choice, was destructive to the moral fabric of society. William J. Grayson defended this view by stating:
Slave labour is the only organized labour ever known. It is the only condition of society in which labour and capital are associated on a large scale in which their interests are combined and not in conflict. Every plantation is an organized community, a phalanstery, as Fourier would call it – where all work, where each member gets subsistence and a home and the more industrious larger pay and profits to their own superior industry” (Genovese 71).
In other words, the Southern community espoused a sort of socialistic, communalistic principle on their plantation but, in the marketplace, capitalism prevailed. In this way, Southerners argued that the benefits of both systems were realized. Granted the restrictions placed on individual freedom impeded progress but this was necessary to avoid the moral decay of free labour. For Southerners, slavery was, in fact, the best method for ensuring moral, social, political and economic order.
Southerners also presented the “it is too late to change now” theory. The belief of many Americans, Northerners and Southerners alike, was that the emancipation of slaves would catapult the United States headlong into economic distress. The cost of supporting a “vast multitude of unprincipled unpropertied, revengeful and remorseless” people would be enormous. Moreover, without the support of their slave owners, emancipation would mean “Neglect, Famine and Death to the black Infant” (“Pro-Slavery”, AIA). To support their fears, slave owners pointed to the brutal violence of slave revolts, including Nat Turner’s revolt that resulted in the deaths of over 50 white Virginians. Even Thomas Jefferson, the great Founding Father who penned the phrase “all men are created equal” in America’s Declaration of Independence, remarked, “Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort, the slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture” (Garraty and Gay 897). In other words, Jefferson believed that emancipation would only be possible if it were “conditional upon expatriation to Africa” (Garraty and Gay 898). This, of course, was a highly unlikely and very likely impossible alternative. Therefore, the obvious Southern response was to fortify their position of the necessity of slavery. In this sense, slavery was a way for the minority white population[3] to control the majority black population. The Southerners essentially feared the revenge of the Negro.
Sadly, for the history of the church, the Southerners often took support from the proslavery positions of the Presbyterian, the Baptist, the Methodist and the Unitarian clergies. The seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries featured many debates among church leaders on the question of slavery. Congregations and governments, in order to either promote or oppose slavery, called upon Church leaders.
Most Southern clergy called upon Abrahamic tradition to claim support for slavery. Eugene D. Genovese points out that “Abraham was, in their oft-expressed view, simultaneously a great slaveholder and God’s favoured patriarch of a household that included his many slaves” (38). The Southerners held that the biblical texts admonishing slave owners and slaves on their responsibilities promoted the institution of slavery. Southern clergy believed that slaveholding was never condemned in the Bible, that Jesus and his disciples never espoused abolition principles and, further, that the master-slave relationship was superior, and more Christian like, than the employer-employee relationship of the free labour system. Furthermore, the Southern clergy argued that God never gave permission to sin and consequently God’s laws to Moses regarding the institution of slavery, if slavery was sinful, would constitute a major contradiction. N. L. Rice, in a debate with Rev. J. Blanchard on the question of slavery, explained:
My first position is this: God did recognize the relation of master and slave among the Patriarchs of the Old Testament; and did give express permission to the Jewish church to form that relation.—But God who is infinitely holy, could not recognize a relation in itself wrong, or give men permission to form such a relation. Therefore the relation of master and slave is not in itself sinful (Blanchard 259).
Yet, despite their support of the institution of slavery, the majority of clergy did not support the perpetuation of slavery. In fact, many clergy called for the gradual emancipation of slaves in a manner that would prevent government from falling into the hands of “degraded men” in those States where there was a black majority (Blanchard 33). Most southern clergy held that while the institution of slavery itself was not evil, there were evils connected with it. As such, the clergy often fell into disfavour with the extremists of the proslavery movement. N. L. Rice, for instance, in the same debate mentioned above, stated:
In denying that slave holding is in itself sinful, I do not defend slavery as an institution that ought to be perpetuated. I am not a pro-slavery man. I am opposed to slavery; I deplore the evils connected with it. Most sincerely do I desire its removal from our land, so soon as it can be effected with safety to the parties involved in it. (Blanchard 33)
Perhaps, had the abolitionists listened to the message of the clergy, the American Civil War could have been avoided and a negotiation process set in motion. Many Southern philosophes supported, in some measure, the position of the clergy. Yet, they did not wish to abandon their system suddenly and without an adequate replacement. Southerners believed that free labour promoted infidelity, secularism, liberal theology, perversities, egotism and personal license to the detriment of “God-ordained authority” and the Christian social order (Genovese 37). Regardless of this “if”, the Southern philosophes ultimately lost the debate in the Supreme Court, Congress and in the court of public opinion (North). The issue of slavery would lead the Americans into war and decades of racial chaos.
In studying the Southern defence of slavery, it becomes apparent that Southerners were not necessarily lazy, racist bigots. They were thinking men who believed in a way of life. Many believed that the institution of slavery was the better of two evils, others believed that it was the very foundation of a free society and yet others saw it merely as a means to an end. Yet, as stated earlier, all political, economic and religious arguments aside, the evils associated with the transatlantic trade demanded an end to the institution of slavery. It should not, however, have forced Americans to neglect the views of Southern philosophes who warned of the end of all absolutism and the beginnings of social relativism and western secularization. As a society facing the ills that Southerners foretold, we must re-evaluate their thoughts, detached, of course, from their sometimes racist assertions, and consider for ourselves how we can rebuild a free society based upon the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Blanchard, Jonathan. A debate on slavery, held in the city of Cincinnati on the first, second, third, and sixth days of October 1845 upon the question: Is slave-holding in itself sinful, and the relation between master and slave, a sinful relation? Affirmative: J. Blanchard. Negative: N. L. Rice. Cincinnati: W. H. Moore, 1846. Detroit: Negro History Press [1969?].
Garraty, John A. and Peter Gay. The Columbia History of the World. New York, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1972.
Genovese, Eugene D. The Slaveholders’ Dilemma: Freedom and Progress in Southern Conservative Thought, 1820 – 1860. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1992.
Jordan, Winthrop D. “Unthinking Decision: Enslavement of Negroes in America to 1700.” Slavery in American Society. Ed. Richard D. Brown. Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company, 1969. 1-22.
Kishlansky, Mark A., Patrick Geary, Patricia O’Brien, and R. Bin Wong. Societies and Cultures in World History, Volume II 1500 to the Present. New York, New York: HarperCollins College Publishers, 1995.
Holy Bible and Concordance (Revised Standard Version).
“Africans in America/Part 2/Pro-Slavery Petitions in Virginia” [online]. Available from Internet: <URL: http://www2.pbs.org/wbgh/aia/part2/2h65.html>.
“Africans in America/Part 3/Douglas Egerton on the ‘positive good’ theory of slavery” [online]. Available from Internet: <URL: http://www2.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3i3113.html>.
“United States Constitution – Article I” [online]. Available from Internet: <URL: http://www.law.emory.edu/FEDERAL/usconst/art-1.html>.
“United States Constitution – Article IV” [online]. Available from Internet: <URL: http://www.law.emory.edu/FEDERAL/usconst/art-4.html>.
[1] The Americans rejected “popular democracy”? In light of America’s great democratic tradition this would seem to be false. However, the social elite controlled the government in the South. Certain wealthy families almost always had representatives in power. So it was that at this time in America’s history, these new money aristocrats essentially rejected the idea of popular democracy in favor of an oligarchy.
[2] Of course, this was a fanciful ideal that held about as much truth as the suggestion that it was in the best interests of transatlantic traders to treat their cargo (slaves) humanely to increase profitability.
[3] In many Southern counties, blacks accounted for more than fifty percent of the population.