Learning Module 2 – Activity One -
History 101[1]
Justifying Slavery; Justifying Freedom.
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Overview: The institution of slavery became part of the United States when it was sanctioned by the U.S. Constitution. At the time of the ratification of the constitution (1789), southerners who owned or aspired to own slaves, considered that existence of slavery was a “necessary evil”:” Slavery was necessary to support the agricultural system dependent upon tobacco and cotton.
Yet, in the 1830s, slaveholders shifted their position on justifying slavery. Instead of shrugging their shoulders and saying that “slavery is a necessary evil,” they sharpened their tongues and pens to argue that slavery was a “positive good.” In sum, they claimed that enslaving African Americans was part of the natural order of things – it was part of God’s law, part of history, part of the US legal system and part of sociological principles racial superiority and inferiority.
The essential reason that slaveholders and other advocates of slavery in the South changed their rationale for slavery was that they were under attack from white and free black abolitionists in the northern states. These abolitionists argued that slavery was immoral and contrary to the basic principles of American democracy.
Thus, by the 1830s and 1840s, we find that there were two groups debating the existence of slavery in the United States. Those who justified slavery as a positive good waged the “proslavery argument.’ Those who damned slavery as immoral and undemocratic shaped the agenda for the abolitionist movement.
In this activity, you will be asked to evaluate the arguments of both sides of this debate. To make a fair evaluation of each argument, you will be asked to identify the central idea and support for each to the two points of view. Then, after sharing this with your classmates, you can make judgment about the logic of the two points of view.
It is anticipated that in this though process you will gain an increased
appreciation that there can be several points of view about a topic. Equally important, the subject matter
and discussion will be used as a basis for one of the exam essays for this
learning module.
General Information
Timing: February 23
Assessment: 20 points.
Process
- Review the video excerpt on the Louisiana Purchase (Talon Net).
- Read the following sections of
- Chapter 11: Introduction (pp. 375 – 376); The Proslavery Argument, Slavery & Liberty, Slavery (p. 386 – 390)
- Chapter 12: The Emergence of Garrison, Spreading the Abolitionist Message, Slavery and Moral Suasion (pp. 422 – 425)
- Read the two primary source documents.
Documents: (Attached & on Website)
· Proslavery Argument: George Fitzhugh, "The Universal Law of Slavery"
· Black Abolitionists: Frederick Douglass, The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro
Study Questions: To prepare for the quiz, answer these questions.
- What is the connection between the Louisiana Purchase and slavery in the southern states and territories?
- What is the central argument of the Proslavery Argument?
- Did most white southerners, including those who did not own slaves, support the proslavery argument?
- How did the actions and assumptions of the abolitionist movement prompt white southerners to formulate the proslavery argument in the 1830s?
- What are the rationales (justifications) applied in the proslavery argument?
- Does George Fitzhugh argue that slavery is a necessary evil or a positive good?
- What is Fitzhugh’s key assumption in his proslavery argument?[2]
- What are some of the biographical details of Frederick Douglass’ background?
- Among the various approaches in the abolitionist movement, which one did Douglass support?
- What is Douglass’ underlying assumption in his speech, “the Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”?
- How does the argument and text of Douglass’ speech demonstrate that Fitzhugh’s proslavery argument is wrong?
- Besides abolitionism, what other reforms did Douglass advocate before and during the Civil War?
George Fitzhugh Advocates Slavery
Background: In the antebellum period, pro-slavery forces moved
from defending slavery as a necessary evil to expounding it as a positive good.
Some insisted that African Americans were child-like people in need of
protection, and that slavery provided a civilizing influence. Others argued
that black people were biologically inferior to white people and were incapable
of assimilating in free society. Still others claimed that slaves were
necessary to maintain the progress of white society.
George Fitzhugh was a Virginia lawyer and the author of two books and numerous
articles advocating slavery. Says Fitzhugh, "... the negro
race is inferior to the white race, and living in their midst, they would be
far outstripped or outwitted in the chaos of free competition." This is
only one of many arguments which he presents in this piece.
The Document: "The Universal Law of Slavery," by George Fitzhugh
He the Negro is but a grown up child, and must be governed as a child, not as a
lunatic or criminal. The master occupies toward him the place of parent or
guardian. We shall not dwell on this view, for no one will differ with us who
thinks as we do of the negro's capacity, and we might
argue till dooms-day in vain, with those who have a high opinion of the negro's
moral and intellectual capacity.
Secondly. The negro is
improvident; will not lay up in summer for the wants of winter; will not
accumulate in youth for the exigencies of age. He would become an insufferable
burden to society. Society has the right to prevent this, and can only do so by
subjecting him to domestic slavery. In the last place, the negro
race is inferior to the white race, and living in their midst, they would be
far outstripped or outwitted in the chaos of free competition. Gradual but
certain extermination would be their fate. We presume the maddest abolitionist
does not think the negro's providence of habits and
money-making capacity at all to compare to those of the whites. This defect of
character would alone justify enslaving him, if he is to remain here. In Africa
or the West Indies, he would become idolatrous, savage and cannibal, or be
devoured by savages and cannibals. At the North he would freeze or starve.
We would remind those who
deprecate and sympathize with negro slavery, that his slavery here relieves him
from a far more cruel slavery in Africa, or from idolatry and cannibalism, and
every brutal vice and crime that can disgrace humanity; and that it
christianizes, protects, supports and civilizes him; that it governs him far better
than free laborers at the North are governed. There, wife-murder has become a
mere holiday pastime; and where so many wives are murdered, almost all must be
brutally treated. Nay, more; men who kill their wives
or treat them brutally, must be ready for all kinds of crime, and the calendar
of crime at the North proves the inference to be correct. Negroes never kill
their wives. If it be objected that legally they have no wives, then we reply,
that in an experience of more than forty years, we never yet heard of a negro man killing a negro woman. Our negroes
are not only better off as to physical comfort than free laborers, but their
moral condition is better.
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 enjoy liberty, because they are oppressed neither by
care nor labor. The women do little hard work, and are protected from the
despotism of their husbands by their masters. The negro
men and stout boys work, on the average, in good weather, not more than nine
hours a day. The balance of their time is spent in perfect abandon. Besides'
they have their Sabbaths and holidays. White men, with so much of license and
liberty, would die of ennui; but negroes luxuriate in
corporeal and mental repose. With their faces upturned to the sun, they can
sleep at any hour; 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 present, and
confident assurance of the future.
A common charge preferred against slavery is, that it induces idleness with the
masters. The trouble, care and labor, of providing for wife, children and
slaves, and of properly governing and administering the whole affairs of the
farm, is usually borne on small estates by the master. On larger ones, he is
aided by an overseer or manager. If they do their duty, their time is fully
occupied. If they do not, the estate goes to ruin. The mistress, on Southern
farms, is usually more busily, usefully and benevolently occupied than any one
on the farm. She unites in her person, the offices of wife, mother, mistress,
housekeeper, and sister of charity. And she fulfills all these offices
admirably well. The rich men, in free society, may, if they please, lounge
about town, visit clubs, attend the theatre, and have no other trouble than
that of collecting rents, interest and dividends of stock. In a well
constituted slave society, there should be no idlers. But we cannot divine how
the capitalists in free society are to put to work. The master labors for the
slave, they exchange industrial value. But he capitalist, living on his income,
gives nothing to his subjects. He lives by mere exploitations.
The Black American; A
Documentary History, Third Edition,
by Leslie H. Fishel, Jr. and Benjamin Quarles, Scott, Foresman and Company,
Illinois, 1976, 1970
Frederick Douglass,
“The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro”
Biographical Background: Frederick
Douglass stood at the podium, trembling with nervousness. Before him sat
abolitionists who had traveled to the Massachusetts island of Nantucket. Only
23 years old at the time, Douglass overcame his nervousness and gave a
stirring, eloquent speech about his life as a slave. Douglass would continue to
give speeches for the rest of his life and would become a leading spokesperson
for the abolition of slavery and for racial equality.
The son of a slave woman and an unknown white man, "Frederick Augustus
Washington Bailey" was born in February of 1818 on Maryland's eastern
shore. He spent his early years with his grandparents and with an aunt, seeing
his mother only four or five times before her death when he was seven. (All
Douglass knew of his father was that he was white.) During this time he was
exposed to the degradations of slavery, witnessing firsthand brutal whippings
and spending much time cold and hungry. When he was eight he was sent to
Baltimore to live with a ship carpenter named Hugh Auld. There he learned to
read and first heard the words abolition and abolitionists. "Going to live
at Baltimore," Douglass would later say, "laid the foundation, and opened
the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity."
Douglass spent seven relatively comfortable years in Baltimore before being
sent back to the country, where he was hired out to a farm run by a notoriously
brutal "slave breaker" named Edward Covey. And the treatment he
received was indeed brutal. Whipped daily and barely fed, Douglass was
"broken in body, soul, and spirit."
On January 1, 1836, Douglass made a resolution that he would be free by the end
of the year. He planned an escape. But early in April he was jailed after his
plan was discovered. Two years later, while living in Baltimore and working at
a shipyard, Douglass would finally realize his dream: he fled the city on
September 3, 1838. Traveling by train, then steamboat, then train, he arrived
in New York City the following day. Several weeks later he had settled in New
Bedford, Massachusetts, living with his newlywed bride (whom he met in
Baltimore and married in New York) under his new name, Frederick Douglass.
Always striving to educate himself, Douglass continued his reading. He joined
various organizations in New Bedford, including a black church. He attended
Abolitionists' meetings. He subscribed to William Lloyd Garrison's weekly
journal, the Liberator. In
1841, he saw Garrison speak at the Bristol Anti-Slavery Society's annual
meeting. Douglass was inspired by the speaker, later stating, "no face and form ever impressed me with such sentiments [the
hatred of slavery] as did those of William Lloyd Garrison." Garrison, too,
was impressed with Douglass, mentioning him in the Liberator. Several days later Douglass gave
his speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's annual convention in
Nantucket-- the speech described at the top of this page. Of the speech,
one correspondent reported, "Flinty hearts were pierced, and cold ones
melted by his eloquence." Before leaving the island, Douglass was asked to
become a lecturer for the Society for three years. It was the launch of a
career that would continue throughout Douglass' long life.
Despite apprehensions that the information might endanger his freedom, Douglass
published his autobiography, Narrative
of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written By Himself. The year was 1845. Three years later,
after a speaking tour of England, Ireland, and Scotland, Douglass published the
first issue of the North Star,
a four-page weekly, out of Rochester, New York.
Ever since he first met Garrison in 1841, the white abolitionist leader had
been Douglass' mentor. But the views of Garrison and Douglass ultimately
diverged. Garrison represented the radical end of the abolitionist spectrum. He
denounced churches, political parties, even voting. He believed in the
dissolution (break up) of the Union. He also believed that the U.S.
Constitution was a pro-slavery document. After his tour of Europe and the
establishment of his paper, Douglass' views began to change; he was becoming
more of an independent thinker, more pragmatic. In 1851 Douglass announced at a
meeting in Syracuse, New York, that he did not assume the Constitution was a
pro-slavery document, and that it could even "be wielded in behalf of
emancipation," especially where the federal government had exclusive
jurisdiction. Douglass also did not advocate the dissolution of the Union, since
it would isolate slaves in the South. This led to a bitter dispute between
Garrison and Douglass that, despite the efforts of others such as Harriet
Beecher Stowe to reconcile the two, would last into the Civil War.
Frederick Douglass would continue his active involvement to better the lives of
African Americans. He conferred with Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and
recruited northern blacks for the Union Army. After the War he fought for the
rights of women and African Americans alike.
Background
of the speech:
During the
1850s, Frederick Douglass typically spent about six months of the year
traveling extensively, giving lectures. During one winter -- the winter of
1855-1856 -- he gave about 70 lectures during a tour that covered four to five
thousand miles. And his speaking engagements did not halt at the end of a tour.
From his home in Rochester, New York, he took part in local abolition-related
events.
On July 5,
1852, Douglass gave a speech at an event commemorating the signing of the
Declaration of Independence, held at Rochester's Corinthian Hall. It was biting
oratory, in which the speaker told his audience, "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn." And he asked them,
"Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day?"
Within the now-famous address is what historian Philip S. Foner has called
"probably the most moving passage in all of Douglass' speeches."
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals
to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty
to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your
boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity;
your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants
brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery;
your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-giving, with all your religious
parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and
hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of
savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking
and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
"The Meaning of
July Fourth for the Negro"
Fellow Citizens, I am not
wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the
Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too ‹
great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation
to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I
am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I
cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen,
patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they
contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory....
...Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak
here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national
independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural
justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble
offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout
gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an
affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would
my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful.
For who is there so cold, that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so
obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that
would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and
selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's
jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not
that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the
"lame man leap as an hart."
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the
disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious
anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance
between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in
common.‹The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and
independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The
sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has
brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may
rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated
temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were
inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by
asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let
me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes,
towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying
that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a
peeled and woe-smitten people!
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we
wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst
thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song;
and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing
us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do
not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."
Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail
of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous
yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that
reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding
children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and
may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass
lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be
treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God
and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall
see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view.
Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I
do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of
this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we
turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the
conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to
the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the
future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion,
I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which
is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are
disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with
all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery
‹ the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will
not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not
one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by
prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right
and just.
But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, "It is just in this
circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable
impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, an denounce less; would
you persuade more, and rebuke less; your cause would be much more likely to
succeed." But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued.
What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of
the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove
that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The
slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their
government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of
the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia which, if
committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the
punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man
to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a
moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is
conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered
with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of
the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws in reference
to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the
slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the
cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl,
shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with
you that the slave is a man!
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is
it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using
all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building
ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while
we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and
secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors,
editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of
enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the
whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living,
moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and
children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian's God, and
looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon
to prove that we are men!
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the
rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the
wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be
settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great
difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard
to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing,
and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? Speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and
affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to
offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of
heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their
liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations
to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the
lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at
auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their
flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I
argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is
wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than
such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God
did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is
blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can
reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I
cannot. The time for such argument is passed.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O!
Had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out
a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and
stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the
gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the
earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the
nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the
hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man
must be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals
to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty
to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your
boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity;
your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants,
brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery;
your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious
parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and
hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of
savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking
and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and
despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every
abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the
everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for
revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival....
...Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this
day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country.
There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of
slavery. "The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of
slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing
encouragement from "the Declaration of Independence," the great
principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is
also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in
the same relation to each other that they did ages ago….