What did Pro-slavery advocates believe should be used to determine if a state was slave or free?
Advisor: Peter A. Coclanis, Albert Ray Newsome Distinguished Professor of History and Managing director of the Global Enquiry Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; National Humanities Center Fellow
©2012–2015 National Humanities Center
How did proponents of slavery in antebellum America defend it every bit a positive good?
Agreement
With an statement that was as much a critique of industrialism every bit it was a defence force of slavery, Southern spokesmen contended that chattel slavery, every bit it was good in the American South, was more humane than the system of "wage slavery" that prevailed in the industrial Due north and United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland.
"Oh Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny," 1859 (particular)
Text
George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters, 1857, excerpts.
Text Blazon
Advisory text with moderately circuitous purpose and very complex text structure, language features, and noesis demands. Tier ii vocabulary words are defined in pop-ups (full list at lesser of page). Tier 3 words are explained in brackets.
Text Complexity
Grades xi-CCR complexity band.
For more information on text complexity see these resources from achievethecore.org.
Click here for standards and skills for this lesson.
X
Common Core State Standards
- ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.4 (Decide the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text…)
Advanced Placement U.s.a. History
- Key Concept 5.ii (IC) (Defenders of slavery…)
Teacher's Note
While under the Common Core Standards Cannibals All! qualifies as an informational text, information technology is first and foremost a passionately argued slice of persuasive writing. Published in Richmond, Virginia, in 1857, and aimed at both Northern and Southern readers, it sought to merits for the Due south the moral loftier ground in the increasingly fierce national debate over slavery. Fitzhugh maintained that both free labor, as good amid industrial workers in the North and Smashing Britain, and slavery, as practiced in the American Southward, exploited workers. However, considering slave masters endemic their workers, they took better care of them than capitalists who simply rented theirs.
To assistance students grasp Fitzhugh'south argument, you might ask two questions: How many would launder a rental car? How many launder their own or pay to have it done?
To prepare students to judge Fitzhugh's argument, assign three essays in Liberty'due south Story from the National Humanities Eye's TeacherServe®: "The Varieties of Slave Labor", "How Slavery Affected African American Families", and "Slave Resistance". (These essays are designed for teachers, just they are useful to students. You might divide the class into iii groups and assign each an essay, then have each grouping reply to Fitzhugh in the calorie-free of their reading.) From these essays a serial of questions emerges. How different in their response to the demand to make a profit were Southern plantations from Northern factories? How free were people whose family lives could be disrupted at the whim of a principal? If the slave organisation was so proficient for slaves, why did they spend considerable time and energy trying to undermine and escape it?
Encourage students to challenge Fitzhugh'southward definition of freedom. Take them come at it inductively. Why, according to Fitzhugh, are capitalists and slaves costless? Why are slaveowners and laborers non gratis? Fitzhugh sees humans solely equally economic entities. His definition of freedom is based entirely on the commutation of labor for reward. While it does include a sense of one person's responsibility to some other, that responsibility is based on the extent of ane'south financial investment in the other person. Substantially, he thinks a person is free to the extent that he or she is not responsible for the economic well-being of others and to the extent that i's economic needs are addressed by the efforts of others. Is that an acceptable basis for a moral order? Does Fitzhugh's idea of freedom take room for such concepts equally equality, personal choice, or mobility?
A note about the interactive exercises. The offset allows students to explore vocabulary in context. The 2nd prepares them to write an essay, an argument from authority, refuting Fitzhugh's case. It links to a PDF you can impress and distribute. The PDF includes excerpts from the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl from which students can mine show to deploy confronting Fitzhugh. Selecting passages to serve every bit testify and providing rationales for those choices offering an fantabulous opportunity for small grouping piece of work. The PDF also features a model essay and an assay of it that students tin use to guide the writing of their own essays.
This lesson is divided into two parts, both attainable beneath. The instructor's guide includes a background note, the text assay with responses to the shut reading questions, admission to the interactive exercises, and an optional follow-up assignment. The student'due south version, an interactive PDF, contains all of the to a higher place except the responses to the close reading questions and the follow-up assignment.
Teacher's Guide (continues below)
| Student Version (click to open)
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Teacher'southward Guide
Background
Contextualizing Questions
- What kind of text are nosotros dealing with?
- When was it written?
- Who wrote it?
- For what audience was it intended?
- For what purpose was it written?
Equally they fired dorsum at their critics, defenders of slavery in antebellum America ofttimes maintained that slavery, as practiced in the South, was more than humane than the system of "wage slavery" under which, they claimed, Northern and British industrial workers suffered. One of the near violent proponents of this argument was George Fitzhugh (1806–1881), a Virginia lawyer, writer, and slaveowner. He believed that civilization depended upon the exploitation of labor. This led him to enquire which organization — slavery or free labor — exploited workers less. He concluded that slavery did, and made his case in Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters.
In the book Fitzhugh unapologetically acknowledges that the Due south is a slave order, but he claims that the North is, too. In both, capitalists seek to live off the musculus of others as much as any "Fiji chieftain" seeks to dine "on human being flesh." Hence, all capitalists — Northern and Southern — are cannibals. The central question is what form of society nigh finer curbs their appetites.
Fitzhugh draws the distinction between the North and the South on the principle of capital'south obligation to labor. The problem, every bit he sees it, is that in the "gratuitous" Northern economy — he uses the words "free" and "respectable" with sneering irony — capital letter and labor are separate. Thus capitalists in the North endeavor to make "respectable" livings by squeezing the greatest amount of piece of work out of laborers for the least amount of pay, simply to abandon them when they end to be useful. In the Southern slave economy, on the other hand, "labor is capital." Slaves, of class, do the piece of work of the plantation, but they too stand for a substantial upper-case letter investment. Owners pay dearly for them and thus it is in their best interest to "protect… not oppress them." "When slaves are worth near a thousand dollars a head," Fitzhugh writes, "they volition be carefully and well provided for," fifty-fifty when their working days are over. Different the Northern "slaves to capital," "the negro slaves of the South are," in his view, "the happiest and, in some sense, the freest people in the globe."
Text Analysis
Extract
Close Reading Questions
Activeness: Vocabulary
Learn definitions by exploring how words are used in context.
1. Fitzhugh uses the give-and-take "avowal" twice in this paragraph. How might that discussion bear upon his pro-slavery readers? his anti-slavery readers? Test its bear upon past substituting other verbs: "maintain," "contend," "claim." How exercise those verbs change the tone of the paragraph?
The word "boast" would probably become a long way in winning over Fitzhugh's pro-slavery readers. Here, they might retrieve, is one of us — unapologetic, unashamed, confident. The word would probably repel his anti-slavery readers and dampen their willingness to entertain his argument. Substituting any of the suggested alternative verbs tones down the paragraph, makes Fitzhugh seem more than reasonable, less truculent. Information technology also makes united states realize only how much of an in-your-face discussion "avowal" is every bit Fitzhugh uses information technology. And, realizing that, we can legitimately enquire why Fitzhugh is writing: to persuade Northern readers or eternalize to Southern ones.
2. In the low-cal of the Freedom's Story essay on the slave family, how might you lot respond to Fitzhugh's assertion that "cares of the family and household" deprive laborers of their freedom?
Certainly, family cares might burden free workers, but they would not deprive them of their freedom. Still encumbered, Northern laborers would, unlike the enslaved, be gratuitous to marry legally, kickoff families, and live together in a single household. Above all, they would be gratis from the fearfulness of being separated because of a master's fiscal needs, stipulations in his will, or mere whim.
1. [W]due east not only boast that the White Slave Trade is more exacting and fraudulent (in fact, though non in intention) than Black Slavery, but we too boast that it is more cruel, in leaving the laborer to take care of himself and family out of the pittance which skill or capital letter have immune him to retain. When the twenty-four hours's labor is ended, he is free, but is overburdened with the cares of family and household, which make his freedom an empty and delusive mockery.
iii. What definitions of freedom are implied in Fitzhugh's 2d paragraph?
Fitzhugh sees freedom purely in economic terms. For him freedom is not having to work and being unburdened by worries nigh economic well-being, either your own or that of others.
four. Based upon Fitzhugh's definitions of freedom, why are laborers non free? Why are employers free? Why are slaves free? Are the slave owners costless? Why or why not?
Following upon Fitzhugh's implied definitions of freedom, laborers are not gratuitous because they, first, must work and, second, because they are burdened with worry about their economical well-being and that of their families. Employers are free because they do not work; they turn a profit from the toil of other people. Moreover, they do not have to worry about the physical well-existence of workers: their responsibleness ends when they dole out wages. While slaves must work, they are costless because, according to Fitzhugh, their physical well-being is assured by their masters. In Fitzhugh's calculations slave owners are non gratuitous. While they profit from the labor of others, similar employers, they are encumbered with the responsibility of providing for the well-being of their slaves.
2. Only his employer is actually free, and may relish the profits made by others' labor without a care or a trouble as to their well-being. The Negro slave is free, too, when the labors of the day are over, and gratuitous in heed as well as trunk, for the principal provides nutrient, raiment, firm, fuel, and everything else necessary to the concrete well-being of himself and family. The master'south labors commence merely when the slave's end. No wonder men should prefer white slavery to capital, to Negro slavery, since it is more than assisting, and is free from all the cares and labors of black slave-belongings.
5. What image of slavery does Fitzhugh create paragraph three? Cite specific evidence from the text to support your answer.
Fitzhugh creates an image of happiness, contentment, ease, security, and freedom. Some slaves "piece of work not at all," yet they "accept all the comforts and necessaries of life provided for them." They "are oppressed neither by intendance nor labor" and spend considerable time "in perfect abandon" or luxuriating "in corporeal and mental repose," or sleeping.
6. How does he portray capitalists? Cite specific words from the text to support your reply.
Capitalists are predatory and oppressive. They are ever "wily and watchful," always "devising means to ensnare and exploit" workers and deprive them of their liberty and rights.
7. Compare Fitzhugh's portrayal of slaves with that of gratuitous laborers.
As noted in the respond to question nine, Fitzhugh portrays slaves as happy, content, secure, and at ease with life. Gratuitous laborers, on the other hand, lead precarious lives, threatened past exploitation and starvation, oppressed and denied their rights, encumbered by the cares of life during their productive years and faced with penury in their sometime historic period.
8. In light of the Liberty'due south Story essays on slave labor and slave resistance, how might you lot answer to Fitzhugh's claim that "negroes luxuriate in corporeal and mental serenity"?
Working from sunrise to sunset, as well-nigh slaves did, at back-breaking, heed-numbing tasks would leave trivial time for luxuriating, and mental repose would be difficult to achieve with a whip-wielding overseer e'er watchful nearby.
three. The Negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. The children and the aged and infirm work not at all, and yet have all the comforts and necessaries of life provided for them. They bask liberty, because they are oppressed neither by intendance nor labor. The women do little hard work, and are protected from the despotism of their husbands past their masters. The Negro men and stout boys piece of work, on the average, in good weather, not more than than ix hours a twenty-four hours. The balance of their time is spent in perfect abandon. Besides, they have their Sabbaths and holidays. White men, with then much of license and liberty, would die of ennui, but Negroes luxuriate in corporeal and mental serenity. With their faces upturned to the sun, they tin slumber at any 60 minutes, and quiet sleep is the greatest of human enjoyments. "Blessed be the man who invented sleep." 'Tis happiness in itself — and results from contentment with the nowadays, and confident assurance of the futurity. We do not know whether free laborers ever slumber. They are fools to practise so, for whilst they sleep, the wily and watchful capitalist is devising ways to ensnare and exploit them. The complimentary laborer must work or starve. He is more of a slave than the Negro considering he works longer and harder for less allowance than the slave and has no holiday, because the cares of life with him begin when its labors end. He has no liberty, and not a single right.
nine. According to Fitzhugh, why does the purchase of labor plough an investor into a slave owner?
Because purchasing labor through investing enables one to earn income, not through one'due south own exertions, simply through the labor of others. Living off the labor of others is, to Fitzhugh, exploitation and is thus slavery.
4. But, reader, well may you follow the slave trade. It is the only merchandise worth following, and slaves the only property worth owning. All other is worthless, a mere caput mortuum [worthless remains], except insofar as information technology vests the owner with the power to control the labors of others — to enslave them. Give you a palace, 10 thousand acres of land, sumptuous clothes, equipage, and every other luxury; and with your artificial wants, yous are poorer than Robinson Crusoe or the lowest working man if you take no slaves to capital, or domestic slaves. Your capital will not bring you an income of a cent, nor supply one of your wants, without labor. Labor is indispensable to give value to holding, and if you owned everything else and did non own labor, you would exist poor. Only l m dollars means, and is, fifty thousand dollars worth of slaves. You tin command, without touching on that capital, three thousand dollars' worth of labor per annum. Y'all could do no more were y'all to buy slaves with it, and so you lot would be cumbered with the cares of governing and providing for them. You are a slaveholder now, to the amount of fifty g dollars, with all the advantages, and none of the cares and responsibilities of a master.
Notation: When Fitzhugh refers to labor giving "value to wealth," he is referring to deriving income from capital. Merely by investing capital — that is, buying labor with it — will upper-case letter generate income. When he refers to $50,000 commanding "three thousand dollars worth of labor per annum," he is referring to the income that might be obtained from investing $l,000.
x. According to Fitzhugh, why is the system of free labor more than brutal than slave labor?
Fitzhugh contends that both Southern slave owners and Northern capitalists seek profit: for both it is better "to make good bargains than bad ones." But the social context in which slavery exists — a combination of public opinion, self-interest, affection, and constabulary — curbs "the selfishness of man'southward nature" and protects slaves from maltreatment. No such context exists in the Northward, and and so the impulse to exploit worker for maximum turn a profit is unrestrained and hence the labor system more savage.
Activeness: Refuting Fitzhugh
Use showtime-hand evidence to write an statement from authority which refutes Fitzhugh'south 3 main claims for the humaneness of slavery.
5. Public opinion unites with self-interest, domestic amore and municipal law to protect the slave. The man who maltreats the weak and dependent, who abuses his potency over wife, children or slaves, is universally detested. That aforementioned public opinion which shields and protects the slave encourages the oppression of free laborers — for information technology is considered more than honorable and praiseworthy to obtain big fees than pocket-sized ones, to make good bargains than bad ones (and all fees and profits come ultimately from mutual laborers) — to alive without work by the exactions of accumulated capital letter, than to labor at the plough or the spade, for one'southward living. It is the interest of the capitalist and the practiced to allow free laborers the least possible portion of the fruits of their own labor, for all capital is created past labor, and the smaller the assart of the costless laborer, the greater the gains of his employer. To care for free laborers badly and unfairly, is universally inculcated equally a moral duty, and the selfishness of homo's nature prompts him to the most rigorous performance of this cannibalish duty.
Follow-Upward Assignment
The following passage comes from The Cotton wool Kingdom, an 1861 volume in which announcer Frederick Police Olmsted compiled the dispatches he sent back to New York newspapers every bit he travelled through the South in the 1850s.
Have your students read the passage and write a brief essay in response to this question: Would Olmsted agree or disagree with the argument Fitzhugh makes in Cannibals All!? Have them support their arguments with specific evidence from the text.
As a general dominion, the larger the body of negroes on a plantation or estate, the more completely are they treated equally mere property, and in accordance with a policy calculated to insure the largest pecuniary returns [profits]…. It may be true, that among the wealthier slave-owners there is oftener a humane disposition, a ameliorate judgment, and a greater ability to deal with their dependents indulgently and bountifully, but the effects of this disposition are importantly felt, fifty-fifty on those plantations where the proprietor resides permanently, among the slaves employed about the house and stables, and perhaps a few old favourites in the quarters. It is more than than balanced past the difficulty of acquiring a personal interest in the units of a big body of slaves, and an acquaintance with the individual characteristics of each. The handling of the mass must exist reduced to a organization, the ruling idea of which will be, to enable one homo to force into the same channel of labour the muscles of a large number of men of various and often conflicting wills.
Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton fiber Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations on Cotton fiber and Slavery in the American Slave States, 1853–1861 (New York: Mason Brothers, 1861), p. 192.
Vocabulary Pop-ups
- pittance : small, inadequate amount of coin
- majuscule : In these excerpts, capital is used to mean (1) money as profit, accumulated wealth; (two) money invested to brand coin in business and finance; (3) the northern workingman's employer, i.eastward., the northern capitalist-industrialist.
- delusive : deceptive, illusionary
- raiment : clothing
- infirm : enfeebled, disabled
- despotism : unjust and cruel authority; tyranny
- ennui : boredom; listlessness resulting from lack of interest
- corporeal : actual
- cumbered : burdened
- inculcated : instilled, taught
Image: "Oh Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny," tobacco package label, lithograph past Robertson, Seibert & Shearman, New York, 1859 (detail). Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-08346. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Source: https://americainclass.org/a-pro-slavery-argument/
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