Reading report

2021/ 10/ 11 A Defense of Slavery (1854) GEORGE FITZHUGH

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G E OR G E F I T Z H U G H

A Defense of Slavery (1854)

In the 1830s abolitionists increasingly began to assault slavery

on moral grounds, an approach that naturally put slave owners

on the defensive. The South’s reaction in many cases was to

defend—with varying degrees of sophistication—that region’s

“peculiar institution.” Slavery’s apologists employed biblical

justifications (the Old Testament includes numerous rules

governing the treatment of Jewish and non-Jewish slaves),

“scientific racism” (allegedly scientific evidence “proved” black

inferiority), and history (after all, slavery dated from ancient

times and so must be legitimate) in their published writings. A

number of southern politicians and intellectuals began to make

the case that slavery was not a necessary evil necessitated by

their region’s labor needs, as they had previously argued, but

that the institution was in reality a “positive good,” beneficial to

slaves as well as masters, given the paternalistic instincts of

benevolent white slave owners.

One of slavery’s most interesting and notorious defenders

was George Fitzhugh (1806–1881), an attorney with close ties to

his native Virginia’s planter elite. Fitzhugh lived most of his life

in Port Royal, Caroline County, Virginia, an area where the

population was composed mostly of slaves. His close

observations of his own slaves, combined with his voracious and

wide-ranging reading, were the basis for the contents of his book

Sociology for the South, published in 1854. Most notably,

Fitzhugh defended slavery by attacking the free society of the

North. In the excerpts that follow, consider the role that

Fitzhugh’s writings, along with famous abolitionist works like

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, might have played in elevating sectional

tensions and pushing the nation closer to civil war.

From George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, or the Failure of

Free Society, (Richmond, Va.: A. Morris, 1854), 82–85, 88, 92, 94–

95.

e have already stated that we should not attempt

to introduce any new theories of government and

of society, but merely try to justify old ones, so far

as we could deduce such theories from ancient and almost

universal practices. Now it has been the practice in all countries

and in all ages, in some degree, to accommodate the amount

and character of government control to the wants, intelligence,

and moral capacities of the nations or individuals to be

governed. A highly moral and intellectual people, like the free

citizens of ancient Athens, are best governed by a democracy.

For a less moral and intellectual one, a limited and

constitutional monarchy will answer. For a people either very

ignorant or very wicked, nothing short of military despotism will

suffice. So among individuals, the most moral and well-informed

members of society require no other government than law. They

are capable of reading and understanding the law, and have

sufficient self-control and virtuous disposition to obey it.

Children cannot be governed by more law; first, because they do

not understand it, and secondly, because they are so much

2021/ 10/ 11 A Defense of Slavery (1854) GEORGE FITZHUGH

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under the influence of impulse, passion and appetite, that they

want sufficient self-control to be deterred or governed by the

distant and doubtful penalties of the law. They must be

constantly controlled by parents or guardians, whose will and

orders shall stand in the place of law for them. Very wicked men

must be put into penitentiaries; lunatics into asylums, and the

most wild of them into straight jackets, just as the most wicked

of the sane are manacled with irons; and idiots must have

committees to govern and take care of them. Now, it is clear the

Athenian democracy would not suit a negro nation, nor will the

government of mere law suffice for the individual negro. He is

but a grown up child, and must be governed as a child, not as a

lunatic or criminal. The master occupies towards 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 chase 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

moneymaking 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 hero 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.

* * *

Would the abolitionists approve of a system of society that

set white children free, and remitted them at the age of

fourteen, males and females, to all the rights, both as to person

and property, which belong to adults? Would it be criminal or

praiseworthy to do so? Criminal, of course. Now, are the average

of negroes equal in information, in native intelligence, in

prudence or providence, to well-informed white children of

fourteen? We who have lived with them for forty years think

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fourteen? We who have lived with them for forty years, think

not. The competition of the world would be too much for the

children. They would be cheated out of their property and

debased in their morals. Yet they would meet every where with

sympathizing friends of their own color, ready to aid, advise and

assist them. The negro would be exposed to the same

competition and greater temptations, with no greater ability to

contend with them, with these additional difficulties. He would

be welcome nowhere; meet with thousands of enemies and no

friends. If he went North, the white laborers would kick him and

cuff him, and drive him out of employment. If he went to Africa,

the savages would cook him and eat him. If he went to the West

Indies, they would not let him in, or if they did, they would soon

make of him a savage and idolater.

* * *

But far the worst feature of modern civilization, which is the

civilization of free society, remains to be exposed. Whilst labor-

saving processes have probably lessened by one half, in the last

century, the amount of work needed for comfortable support,

the free laborer is compelled by capital and competition to work

more than he ever did before, and is less comfortable. The

organization of society cheats him of his earnings, and those

earnings go to swell the vulgar pomp and pageantry of the

ignorant millionaires, who are the only great of the present day.

These reflections might seem, at first view, to have little

connexion with negro slavery; but it is well for us of the South

not to be deceived by the tinsel glare and glitter of free society,

and to employ ourselves in doing our duty at home, and

studying the past, rather than in insidious rivalry of the

expensive pleasures and pursuits of men whose sentiments and

whose aims are low, sensual and grovelling.

* * *

We deem this peculiar question of negro slavery of very little

importance. The issue is made throughout the world on the

general subject of slavery in the abstract. The argument has

commenced. One set of ideas will govern and control after

awhile the civilized world. Slavery will every where be abolished,

or every where be re-instituted. We think the opponents of

practical, existing slavery, are estopped by their own admission;

nay, that unconsciously, as socialists, they are the defenders and

propagandists of slavery, and have furnished the only sound

arguments on which its defence and justification can be rested.

We have introduced the subject of negro slavery to afford us a

better opportunity to disclaim the purpose of reducing the

white man any where to the condition of negro slaves here. It

would be very unwise and unscientific to govern white men as

you would negroes. Every shade and variety of slavery has

existed in the world. In some cases there has been much of legal

regulation, much restraint of the master’s authority; in others,

none at all. The character of slavery necessary to protect the

whites in Europe should be much milder than negro slavery, for

slavery is only needed to protect the white man, whilst it is

more necessary for the government of the negro even than for

his protection. But even negro slavery should not be outlawed.

We might and should have laws in Virginia, as in Louisiana, to

make the master subject to presentment by the grand jury and

to punishment, for any inhuman or improper treatment or

2021/ 10/ 11 A Defense of Slavery (1854) GEORGE FITZHUGH

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neglect of his slave.

We abhor the doctrine of the “Types of Mankind;”1 first,

because it is at war with scripture, which teaches us that the

whole human race is descended from a common parentage; and,

secondly, because it encourages and incites brutal masters to

treat negroes, not as weak, ignorant and dependent brethren,

but as wicked beasts, without the pale of humanity.2 The

Southerner is the negro’s friend, his only friend. Let no

intermeddling abolitionist, no refined philosophy, dissolve this

friendship.

Study Questions

1. According to Fitzhugh, what are the chief benefits of slavery

to the slaves? In what fundamental ways did George Fitzhugh

hold racist views toward blacks?

2. What did Fitzhugh see as the major problems confronting

free northern laborers in the 1850s? Is his analysis valid? To

what extent did Fitzhugh criticize capitalism itself?

3. Fitzhugh claims that “slavery will everywhere be abolished, or

everywhere be reinstituted.” How would readers outside of

the South likely have responded to this statement? How does

Fitzhugh anticipate or even help provoke the Civil War?

4. Fitzhugh says in closing, “The Southerner is the negro’s

friend, his only friend.” Fully evaluate this statement. To what

degree did Fitzhugh hold sympathetic views toward African

Americans? To what extent would African Americans

welcome his sympathy?