Defending Slavery: Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old South by Paul Finkleman REVIEW PART TWO
[continued from the previous]
The Law in Defense of Slavery:
In this section of Finkleman’s anthology of sources on Southern slavery, we look at legal arguments supporting the “peculiar institution.”
North Carolina Supreme Court, State v. Mann (Opinion of Thomas Ruffin), 1829
In State v. Mann, a white man had been convicted of shooting a female slave that he had leased from the slave’s owner. The lower court had determined that so injuring the “property” of another owner was a crime. In this decision, the North Carolina Supreme court reversed that decision, insisting that as difficult as the case was, the courts had to protect the fundamental right of masters to discipline slaves (the slave in this case had been shot while running away to escape a beating.) Justice Ruffin dislikes the conclusion he must draw but he sees no alternative:
“But in the actual condition of things, it must be so. There is no remedy. This discipline belongs to the state of slavery. They cannot be disunited, without abrogating at once the rights of the master, and absolving the slave from his subjection. It constitutes the curse of slavery to both the bond and free portions of our population. But it is inherent in the relation of master and slave.
… That there may be particular instances of cruelty and deliberate barbarity, where, in conscience the law might properly interfere, is most probable. The difficulty is to determine, where a Court may properly begin. Merely in the abstract it may well be asked, which power of the master accords with right. The answer will probably sweep away all of them. But we cannot look at the matter in that light. The truth is, that we are forbidden to enter upon a train of general reasoning on the subject. We cannot allow the right of the master to be brought into discussion in the Courts of Justice. The slave, to remain a slave, must be made sensible, that there is no appeal from his master; that his power is in no instance, usurped; but is conferred by the laws of man at least, if not by the law of God. The danger would be great indeed, if the tribunals of justice should be called on to graduate the punishment appropriate to every temper, and every dereliction of menial duty.
. . . I repeat, that I would gladly have avoided this ungrateful question. But being brought to it, the Court is compelled to declare, that while slavery exists amongst us in its present state, or until it shall seem fit to the Legislature to interpose express enactments to the contrary, it will be the imperative duty of the Judges to recognize the full dominion of the owner over the slave, except where the exercise of it is forbidden by statute. And this we do upon the ground, that this dominion is essential to the value of slaves as property, to the security of the master, and the public tranquility, greatly dependent upon their subordination; and in fine, as most effectually securing the general protection and comfort of the slaves themselves.”
For the benefit of the master, the society, and the slave, slaves must know that their masters can shoot them for running away from a flogging. That was the bottom line in North Carolina.
U.S. Supreme Court, Dred Scott v. Sandford (Opinion of Roger B. Taney), 1857
Most students of American history will be exposed to the Dred Scott case and its ramification for the onset of the Civil War. Dred Scott was a slave who had been brought to a free State and sued to retain his freedom. In an attempt to end the conflict over slavery, Justice Tanney made it clear in his decision that no black man in America, whether slave or free, had standing as a citizen. Technically, they had no constitutionally guaranteed rights that a “white man was bound to respect.”
" . . . We think they [people of African ancestry] are . . . not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. . . ."
Tanney’s argument is that the framers of the Constitution of the United States did not include slaves in their definition of “people” (certainly, Jefferson had not and he wrote the Declaration). His is an essentially conservative argument. Because black people had not been regarded as citizens, they need not be and perhaps should not be so regarded. Not until the constitution was change to explicitly include them anyway.
Thomas R. R. Cobb, What Is Slavery, and Its Foundation in the Natural Law, 1858
Thomas Cobb, I might note, died at the battle of Fredericksburg defending his ideas. His argument is, what Finkleman calls, “the highpoint of the defense of slavery.” In this piece, he does not simply argue that slavery is an unfortunate consequence of black “inferiority.” He goes on to argue that it is a positive good for them.
“The German student, immersed for years amid the ponderous tomes of some university library, finds nothing in his voluntary imprisonment uncongenial to his nature. But the American Indian submitting to the same fate, would do violence to the law of his nature, because his pursuit tends nothing to the great end of his existence, the greatest happiness of which he is susceptible. And hence slavery may be utterly inconsistent with the law of nature when applied to one race of men, and yet be perfectly consistent with the nature of others.
"Again. We must be careful to distinguish between the state of nature and the law of nature. Many things are contrary to the state of nature, which are not contrary to the law of nature. A celebrated Scotch commentator applies this distinction clearly and philosophically to the subject of slavery: "It is indeed contrary to the state of nature, by which all men were equal and free; but it is not repugnant to the law of nature, which does not command men to remain in their native freedom, nor forbid the preserving persons at the expense of their liberty,"
"In this view, is Negro Slavery consistent with the Law of Nature? We confine the inquiry to negro slavery, because, upon the principles already established, it is undoubtedly true, that the enslavement by one man or one race, of another man or another race, physically, intellectually, and morally, their equals, is contrary to the law of nature, because it promotes not their happiness, and tends not to their perfection. Much of the confusion upon this subject has arisen from a failure to notice this very palpable distinction."
". . . But we recognize in the negro a man, endowed with reason, will, and accountability, and in order to justify his subjection we must inquire of his intellectual and moral nature, and must be satisfied that its development is thereby promoted. If this be true, if the physical, intellectual, and moral development of the African race are promoted by a state of slavery, and their happiness secured to a greater extent than if left at liberty, then their enslavement is consistent with the law of nature, and violative of none of its provisions. Is the negro's own happiness thereby best promoted? Is he therein most useful to his fellow man ? Is he thereby more surely led to the discharge of his duty to God? These, as we have seen, are the great objects of the law of nature, "God, our neighbor, and ourselves."
". . . Carlyle places this question in an eccentric but plain view, addressing himself to the emancipated negroes of the West Indies: " You are not slaves now ! nor do I wish, if it can be avoided, to see you slaves again ; but decidedly you will have to be servants to those who are born wiser than you, that are born lords of you ; servants to the whites if they are (as what mortal man can doubt they are ?) born wiser than you. That, you may depend on it, my obscure black friends, is and was always the law of the world for you and for all men to be servants, the more foolish of us to the more wise Heaven's laws are not repealable by earth, however earth may try?"
Racial Theory and Slavery
The last portion of Finkleman’s anthology is probably the most painful because it is the realm of argument that has been most pervasive – extending in influence long after slaves were emancipated and slavery abolished. These documents are going to carry over well into Reconstruction and beyond in their effects.
Samuel Cartwright, Report on the Diseases of and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race, 1851
I can hardly bring myself to use up bandwidth on this guy’s pseudo-scientific ideas. I have no doubt that many a Cletus, Beuford, or Jedidiah Jackson headed off to the battlefields of the Civil War with this baloney in his saddlebag.
“They always prefer the same kind of government, which we call slavery but which is actually an improvement on the government of their forfathers . . . The reason for this is found in unalterable physiological laws. . . . there is both wisdom, mercy and justice in the decree dooming him to be servant of servants, as the decree is in conformity to his nature. Anatomy and physiology have been interrogated, and the response is, that the Ethiopian, or Canaanite, is unfitted, from his organization and the physiological laws predicated on that organization, for the responsible duties of a free man, but, like the child, is only fitted for a state of dependence and subordination. . . . A knowledge of the great primary truth, that the negro is a slave by nature, and can never be happy, industrious, moral or religious, in any other condition than the one he was intended to fill, is of great importance to the theologian, the statesman, and to all those who are at heart seeking to promote his temporal and future welfare.”
You get the idea. Cartwright goes on to claim that the desire of slaves to run away is actually a disease of the mind (he calls it Drapetomania – or, runaway crazy). Obviously if a person’s greatest happiness is to be found in enslavement, the desire to run away from it must be a pathology. The disease, says Cartwright, is generally caused by white people who try to convince black people that they are equal. Freedom, says Dr. Cartwright, is actually poison to a slave’s happiness.
William J. Grayson, The Hireling and the Slave, 1854
The Hireling and the Slave is a long poem that disses all the more influential abolitionists (particularly Harriet Beecher Stowe) and eulogizes the “good fortune” that has resulted from the Afrian slave trade. IT reminds me somewhat of Rudyard Kippling’s White Man’s Burden.
George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, 1854, and Cannibals All! 1857
By the mid to late 1850’s, the defenses of slavery are getting more and more overtly racist in their nature. Adult slaves are like children IT would be the epitome of heartless to abandon them to the scary world of free life. “We need never have white slaves in the South because we have black ones,” he says.
“If ever the abolitionists succeed in thoroughly imbuing the world with their doctrines and opinions, all religion, all government, all order will be slowly but surely subverted and destroyed.
He joins the refrain of those who have argued above that “the slaves’ liberty is a curse to himself and a greater curse to the society around him.”
Josiah C. Nott, Instincts of Races, 1866
In this last document, Josiah Nott argues, after the war is over, that the South’s position with respect to its African American populations was the correct one (thus demonstrating just how much the Civil War accomplished)
“Is it not a law of nature, that every permanent animal form carries a moral of its own, which cannot be obliterated, changed, or transferred to another, so long as the physique stands? Can any reflecting man doubt that the instincts of the bulldog, greyhound, pointer, or hound, are inseparable from its anatomical structure; or believe that one can be educated to perform the duties of another? … It being conceded then that the physique of the races of men is permanent through the ages past and to come, the next question to be examined is the permanence of the moral which has accompanied each type in by-gone ages.”
For Nott, “no human power can change the fiat of the Almighty.”
“He brought the races of men and of animals into existence. He gave them moral and physical laws, and all the powers of the Freedman’s Bureau or gates of hell cannot prevail against them.”
You can see why Ophrah Winfrey says that “excellence is the best deterrence to racism.” Dennis Leary says that racism is not born so much as taught. His evidence? His one year old son only hates one thing; naps.
Question for Comment: According to Richard Lapchick, the NBA in 2011 was composed of 83 percent non-white players, including 78 percent black, four percent Latino, and one percent Asian; 17 percent of the players were white. Something like 65% of NFL players are African American. 8.5% of major league baseball players are black (down from 17% in 1990). 27% of MLB players now are Hispanic. There are six African American CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. (less than 1%). Forbes says that there are six black billionaires. According to Wikipedia, in 2008 the breakdown for adults under correctional control was as follows: one out of 18 men, one in 89 women, one in 11 African-Americans (9.2 percent), one in 27 Latinos (3.7 percent), and one in 45 Caucasians (2.2 percent).
Men are five times more likely to go to jail than women. Black people are four times more likely to be incarcerated than white people. Can these statistics be used to prove or disprove racial stereotypes of the pre-Civil War era? Can anything be proven about the relationship between race and ability other than that it has been used to keep people from being allowed to acheive their potential?
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