The following essay was published in 1857. Written by George Fitzhugh, it is a classic defense of the South's peculiar institution of slavery. Fitzhugh argues that slavery is ethical and moral on the basis that slave-owners have such a vested interest in their "capital" that they would never mistreat or injure the slaves.
Missing, of course, is too much mention of the simple cruelty of enslavement.
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 or
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, no 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 som muh (sic)of license and abandon, 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 gretest of human enjoyments. "Blessed
be the man who invented sleep." 'Tis happiness in itself-and results from
contentment in the present, and confident assurance of the future. We
do not know whether free laborers ever sleep. They are fools to do so;
for, whilst they sleep, the wily and watchful capitalist is devising means
to ensnare and exploit them. The free laborer must work or starve. He is
more of a slave than the negro, because 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. . . .
Until the lands of America are appropriated by a few, population
becomes dense, competition among laborers active, employment
uncertain, and wages low, the personal liberty of all the whites will
continue to be a blessing. We have vast unsettled territories; population
may cease to increase slowly, as in most countries, and many centuries
may elapse before the question will be practically suggested, whether
slavery to capital be preferable to slavery to human masters. But the
negro has neither energy nor enterprise, and, even in our sparser
populations, finds with his improvident habits, that his liberty is a curse
to himself, and a greater curse to the society around him. These
considerations, and others equally obvious, have induced the South to
attempt to defend negro slavery as an exceptional institution, admitting,
nay asserting, that slavery, in the general or in the abstract, is morally
wrong, and against common right. With singular inconsistency, after
making this admission, which admits away the authority of the Bible, of
profane history, and of the almost universal practice of mankind-they turn
around and attempt to bolster up the cause of negro slavery by these
very exploded authorities. If we mean not to repudiate all divine, and
almost all human authority in favor of slavery, we must vindicate that
institution in the abstract.
To insist that a status of society, which has been almost universal, and
which is expressly and continually justified by Holy Writ, is its natural,
normal, and necessary status, under the ordinary circumstances, is on
its face a plausible and probable proposition. To insist on less, is to yield
our cause, and to give up our religion; for if white slavery be morally
wrong, be a violation of natural rights, the Bible cannot be true. Human
and divine authority do seem in the general to concur, in establishing the
expediency of having masters and slaves of different races. In very many
nations of antiquity, and in some of modern times, the law has permitted
the native citizens to become slaves to each other. But few take
advantage of such laws; and the infrequency of the practice establishes
the general truth that master and slave should be of different national
descent. In some respects the wider the difference the better, as the
slave will feel less mortified by his position. In other respects, it may be
that too wide a difference hardens the hearts and brutalizes the feeling of
both master and slave. The civilized man hates the savage, and the
savage returns the hatred with interest. Hence West India slavery of
newly caught negroes is not a very humane, affectionate, or civilizing
institution. Virginia negroes have become moral and intelligent. They love
their master and his family, and the attachment is reciprocated. Still, we
like the idle, but intelligent house-servants, better than the hard-used, but
stupid outhands; and we like the mulatto better than the negro; yet the
negro is generally more affectionate, contented, and faithful.
The world at large looks on negro slavery as much the worst form of
slavery; because it is only acquainted with West India slavery. But our
Southern slavery has become a benign and protective institution, and our
negroes are confessedly better off than any free laboring population in
the world. How can we contend that white slavery is wrong, whilst all the
great body of free laborers are starving; and slaves, white or black,
throughout the world, are enjoying comfort? . . .
The aversion to negroes, the antipathy of race, is much greater at the
North than at the South; and it is very probable that this antipathy to the
person of the negro, is confounded with or generates hatred of the
institution with which he is usually connected. Hatred to slavery is very
generally little more than hatred of negroes.
There is one strong argument in favor of negro slavery over all other
slavery; that he, being unfitted for the mechanic arts, for trade, and all
skillful pursuits, leaves those pursuits to be carried on by the whites; and
does not bring all industry into disrepute, as in Greece and Rome, where
the slaves were not only the artists and mechanics, but also the
merchants.
Whilst, as a general and abstract question, negro slavery has no other
claims over other forms of slavery, except that from inferiority, or rather
peculiarity, of race, almost all negroes require masters, whilst only the
children, the women, and the very weak, poor, and ignorant, &c., among
the whites, need some protective and governing relation of this kind; yet
as a subject of temporary, but worldwide importance, negro slavery has
become the most necessary of all human institutions.
The African slave trade to America commenced three centuries and a
half since. By the time of the American Revolution, the supply of slaves
had exceeded the demand for slave labor, and the slaveholders, to get rid
of a burden, and to prevent the increase of a nuisance, became violent
opponents of the slave trade, and many of them abolitionists. New
England, Bristol, and Liverpool, who reaped the profits of the trade,
without suffering from the nuisance, stood out for a long time against its
abolition. Finally, laws and treaties were made, and fleets fitted out to
abolish it; and after a while, the slaves of most of South America, of the
West Indies, and of Mexico were liberated. In the meantime, cotton, rice,
sugar, coffee, tobacco, and other products of slave labor, came into
universal use as necessaries of life. The population of Western Europe,
sustained and stimulated by those products, was trebled, and that of the
North increased tenfold. The products of slave labor became scarce and
dear, and famines frequent. Now, it is obvious, that to emancipate all the
negroes would be to starve Western Europe and our North. Not to extend
and increase negro slavery, pari passu, with the extension and
multiplication of free society, will produce much suffering. If all South
America, Mexico, the West Indies, and our Union south of Mason and
Dixon's line, of the Ohio and Missouri, were slaveholding, slave products
would be abundant and cheap in free society; and their market for their
merchandise, manufactures, commerce, &c., illimitable. Free white
laborers might live in comfort and luxury on light work, but for the
exacting and greedy landlords, bosses, and other capitalists.
We must confess, that overstock the world as you will with comforts and
with luxuries, we do not see how to make capital relax its monopoly-how
to do aught but tantalize the hireling. Capital, irresponsible capital,
begets, and ever will beget, the immedicabile vulnus of so-called Free
Society. It invades every recess of domestic life, infects its food, its
clothing, its drink, its very atmosphere, and pursues the hireling, from the
hovel to the poor-house, the prison and the grave. Do what he will, go
where he will, capital pursues and persecutes him. "Haeret lateri lethalis
arundo!"
Capital supports and protects the domestic slave; taxes, oppresses, and
persecutes the free laborer.