Slavery in the South (1800-1860)

U ntil the 1830s slavery was usually justified as a “necessary evil,“ but the aggressive campaigning by abolitionists led slavery’s defenders to recast slavery as a “positive good.“ Senator James Hammond of South Carolina was one of the leading champions of the institution of slavery. Hammond argued that in all social systems there must be a class that performs the ’drudgeries of life’ to free others to pursue more noble interests. Biblical, historical, and constitutional arguments were also used to justify enslavement. Slavery’s apologists cited Bible passages where servants were directed to obey their masters and accept their lot. They also noted that enslavement had existed through history and that the greatest civilizations had all been built in party from enslaved labor.

Although the United States Constitution makes no mention of slavery by name in the document, it sets representation based on the number of free persons plus three-fifths of all other persons (i.e., slaves) Article I Section 2, prohibits any change in the importation of persons (slaves) before 1808 in Article I, Section 9, and specifically calls for the return of fugitives (i.e. runaway slaves) in Article IV Section 3. The difficulty with these rationalizations of slavery was that they ran contrary to the main ideological tenets of nineteenth -century America: inalienable rights acquired at birth, individual liberty, economic opportunity, and democratic political participation. The defenders of slavery also had to consider the 75 percent of the southern white population who had no slaves and who did not share in the economic benefits of the system.

Therefore, the principal justification of slavery came to hinge on racism, maintaining that all whites were superior to all blacks but equal to one another. The idea of democratic equality among whites was thus made consistent with slavery. But the real motive, though rarely admitted, was that slavery was profitable.