American History assignment Homework

3/8/19, 2)05 PMGive Me Liberty (Brief), 5E

Page 1 of 3https://ncia.wwnorton.com/ebooks/epub/givemeliberty5osu/OEBPS/insert-chapter16.xhtml

W

✯

G E ORG E F I T Z H UG 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 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.

3/8/19, 2)05 PMGive Me Liberty (Brief), 5E

Page 2 of 3https://ncia.wwnorton.com/ebooks/epub/givemeliberty5osu/OEBPS/insert-chapter16.xhtml

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 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 he 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

3/8/19, 2)05 PMGive Me Liberty (Brief), 5E

Page 3 of 3https://ncia.wwnorton.com/ebooks/epub/givemeliberty5osu/OEBPS/insert-chapter16.xhtml

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 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?