Module 6: Pro-slave arguments

After reading George Fitzhugh and James Henry Hammond’s essays on slavery I can’t help but feel a little angry. The way they both so lightly talk about slavery as if black slaves are no more then homeless puppies that are better off in a life of torture and speechless dependence on their masters. But many pro-slavery spokesmen would agree with George Fitzhugh’s statement that "... 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." (H. Fishel, Jr. and Quarles) I do agree with Fitzhugh’s argument that slave labor was giving slaves the opportunity to learn skills and become craftsmen at their trade. Both Hammond and Fitzhugh make arguments that slaves were given the best conditions and were treated well. In fact both cite that they found that slaves were happy and merry. Hammond writes, “They are happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations.” (Hammond), and Fitzhugh writes on the same note that “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.” (Fitzhugh) However, I would beg to differ as a slave accounts for his own feelings and how can two men who live in wealth and aren’t in the field with the slaves account for their true feelings. “John Little, a former slave, wrote: (Zinn page 130)

They say slaves are happy, because they laugh, and are merry. I myself and three or four others, have received two hundred lashes in the day, and had our feet in fetter, yet, at night, we would sing and dance, and make others laugh at the rattling of our chains. Happy men we must have been! We did it to keep down trouble, and keep our hearts from being completely broken: that is as true as the gospel! Just look at it, -must not we have been very happy? Yet I have done it myself---I have cut capers in chains.

Despite the attitude that slaves presented to their master’s, it can’t make up for the mistreatment. Slaves were treated like property that could be traded and bartered with. Families were displaced and torn apart by their master’s. In 1858 a slave named Abream Scriven writes, “Give my love to my father and mother and tell them good Bye for me, and if we Shall not meet in this world I hope to meet in heaven.” (Zinn page 130) Just like a litter of puppies slaves were sold and separated from their mothers, fathers, and siblings.

Although both men write in words that at the time they believed were true and just, I can’t help but think that they were brought up in a society in which these thoughts and ideals were standard, and their fathers and mothers only bred ignorance, and ignorance breed’s ignorance!

Works Cited

The Black American: A Documentary History, Third Edition, by Leslie H. Fishel, Jr. and Benjamin Quarles, Scott, Foresman and Company, Illinois, 1976,1970.

"The 'Mudsill' Theory," by James Henry Hammond. Speech to the U.S. Senate, March 4, 1858.

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. Abridged Teaching Edition. New York, NY: The New Press, 2003. Print.