In this text, Fitzhugh is giving all the reason why slavery is beneficial to both slave and master economically and physically. He had also made arguments further defending his point by saying that the “free laborers” are worse off than the slaves. In the beginning of the chapter, Fitzhugh explains that slaves are more valuable, therefore the masters would care for them out of their own self-interest in hopes of gaining more profit from them. As opposed to the “free” laborers who are worse off year round because no one cares for their employment for the simple fact that they are not obligated.An example of this was when the English had taken over Jamaica and Ireland. In Jamaica, the Negro slaves had been living “comfortably” and supposedly …show more content…
The free laborer is dependent on employment and without it he will starve, but the slave is protected and cared for where he works or not. The example goes further by stating that when they were emancipated, they had the same treatments as the Irish did and now with no one to care for them, with no master, they are worse off without slavery, they are “destitute and savage”. Fitzhugh also states that the white-family enforces morality and assimilation upon their slaves. The constant interaction and supervision between slaves and masters created well-ordered families. He then also points out that nothing in the Bible or Christianity that is strictly against slavery, implying that using religion to attempt to abolish slavery is technically not true and by doing so “reduces the Bible to a mere allegory, to be interpreted to suit every vicious taste and wicked …show more content…
While slaves were protected and fed and sheltered because they were so valuable, there is still nothing excusing the enslaving a race because they are weaker than you. Slavery is nothing short of exploitation and when you have a whole economy based on slavery, eventually it will fall apart once the enslaved begin to rebel which not only causes problems locally, but also nationally if the whole country becomes dependent on it. If humans were so selfless as Fitzhugh states, they would not forcibly exploit and enslave an entire race of people and then claim it’s for their own
One of the ways that life was not completely equal between black and white is when runaway slaves/servants are involved. An example of this that Breen and Innes talked about dealing with the degree of equality between white men and Negros was when seven men, six white indentured servants and one black slave, tried to escape the servitude of a ‘Mr. Reginolds’. All six of the white men received a branding, whipping, shackling, and added time to their servitude. Emanuel the Negro received 30 stripes, which was a great amount even in early Virginia, a branding, and shackling. Unlike his fellow white runaways, Emanuel the Negro was not given extra servitude time.
Douglass continues to describe the severity of the manipulation of Christianity. Slave owners use generations of slavery and mental control to convert slaves to the belief God sanctions and supports slavery. They teach that, “ man may properly be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained by God” (Douglass 13). In order to justify their own wrongdoings, slaveowners convert the slaves themselves to Christianity, either by force or gentle coercion over generations. The slaves are therefore under the impression that slavery is a necessary evil. With no other source of information other than their slave owners, and no other supernatural explanation for the horrors they face other than the ones provided by Christianity, generations of slaves cannot escape from under the canopy of Christianity. Christianity molded so deeply to the ideals of slavery that it becomes a postmark of America and a shield of steel for American slave owners. Douglass exposes the blatant misuse of the religion. By using Christianity as a vessel of exploitation, they forever modify the connotations of Christianity to that of tyrannical rule and
For Example, the mulatto and slave William Wells Brown comment “During the time that Mr. Cook was overseer, I was a house servant - a situation preferable to that of a field hand, as I was better fed, better clothed, and not obliged to rise at the ringing of the bell, but about half an hour after. I have often laid and heard the crack of the whip, and the screams of the slave”. Brown was the son of the plantation owner where he lived on and even though he was a slave he did not have the same obligations as the other slaves. He was simply a part of the family, but his father did not take his mother into consideration. She was still working in the field and getting whipped by the plantation’s overseer. In contrast to Brown being light skin and the son of the plantation owner, the mulatto Moses Roper had a total different experience. Roper’s father was also the plantation owner, but he was not considered a part of the family, he was simply another slave. Mr. Roper’s wife knew about Moses birth and she attempted to kill him after knowing that Moses was white. As Moses narrates, “she returned back as soon as she could, and told her mistress that I was white, and resembled Mr. Roper very much. Mr. Roper 's wife being not pleased with this report, she got a large club stick and knife, and hastened to the place in which my mother was confined”. Moses’s mother and him were not welcomed anymore in the
He says that slaves are dependent of the master and that the master cares for a slave like he would for a child. Fitzhugh writes, “the slave-holder is better than others...His whole life is spent in providing for the minutest wants of others, in taking care of them in sickness and in health” (3). Fitzhugh argument is weaken because he presented a fallacious argument. Hiding information/half truth is the fallacy Fitzhugh used because he claimed the masters provided for his slaves but that wasn't always true for all masters. Douglass in the beginning of his autobiography explains the way in which slaves were given their monthly allowance of food and yearly clothing. At the beginning of chapter two Douglass writes, “The children unable to work in the field have neither shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trouser...There were no beds given to the slaves” (26-27). Although slaveowners might have provided minimal food to the slaves didn’t make them better or good people. Giving a miserable portion of food that wasn’t enough for slaves to live a healthy live didn’t mean the masters cared about the slaves.
Although he differentiates the practices of economic policy between the North and the South accurately, Fitzhugh fails to interpret what is best for the working future for the American negro due to his lack of insight on slave life. He proposes that there needs to be a protective and governing body over slaves that is not provided in the corrupted North. Fitzhugh considers the freedom and capitalistic influences in the North are responsible for preventing negroes from having the shielded and guaranteed quality of life that the South already allows. George Fitzhugh asserts his reasoning, declaring, “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” (Fitzhugh, 21.4). His rationale for the best course of action for negroes fails to incorporate education, health care and civil rights that the North promotes in their society. Fitzhugh is absolutely wrong with his anti-abolition opinion; however, he does include a pro-black position intended to financially satisfy the black population. Including an incentive to blacks in this piece reflects the unorthodox approach of Southerners who tend to usually not consider the livelihood of negro slaves. Indeed his appeal is somewhat effective, it
After the black Americans were freed from their slave masters they did not have ‘a cent in their pockets’ and ‘without a hut to shelter them’ . This obvious lack a home, and the monetary funds needed to support them [the freed slaves] and their families, together with the lack of widespread Government support meant that many slaves continued to live in poverty, and in many ways, they could have been better off (economically), had they been left in bondage . For this reason, many Southern slaves ‘had little choice but to remain as paid labourers or to become sharecroppers working on the land as before’ . Sharecropping, which generally involved the ex-slaves renting land, tools, and a house from a white landlord, working the land that is given to them, and then providing the landlord with one-half to two-thirds of the produce . ‘This system kept the black cotton producers in an inferior position’ , which means that while they were ‘officially free’; they were still stuck in the previous cycle of working for their previous masters, without hope of escape for a better life. While this is what most ex-slaves did, some, like Jourdan Anderson, who left the farm on which he, was prior to being freed, with his family, ‘would rather stay here and starve - and die’ than to have his girls ‘brought to shame by...
Within the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave” Douglass discusses the deplorable conditions in which he and his fellow slaves suffered from. While on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, slaves were given a “monthly allowance of eight pounds of pork and one bushel of corn” (Douglass 224). Their annual clothing rations weren’t any better; considering the type of field work they did, what little clothing they were given quickly deteriorated. The lack of food and clothing matched the terrible living conditions. After working on the field all day, with very little rest the night before, they must sleep on the hard uncomfortably cramped floor with only a single blanket as protection from the cold. Coupled with the overseer’s irresponsible and abusive use of power, it is astonishing how three to four hundred slaves did not rebel. Slave-owners recognized that in able to restrict and control slaves more than physical violence was needed. Therefore in able to mold slaves into the submissive and subservient property they desired, slave-owners manipulated them by twisting religion, instilling fear, breaking familial ties, making them dependent, providing them with an incorrect view of freedom, as well as refusing them education.
“The right to have a slave implies the right in some one to make a slave; that right must be equal and mutual, and this would resolve society into a state of perpetual war.” Senator William Steward, an anti-slavery supporter, issued this claim in his “There is a Higher Law than the Constitution” speech. Steward, like all abolitionist, viewed all of man as equals. This equality came from the “higher law” that is the Bible. Since all men were created by God then all men were equals in God’s eyes. Abolitionist believed that whites had no more right to make a slave out of a African American than the African American had to make a slave out of a white man.
This conversation also implies that a person is not a slave when he was born. He should have the right to obtain freedom, but he is not controlled by others. Slavery does not happen naturally and is not caused by the environment. On the other hand, it is forced by human being. In his book A
In order to justify keeping an entire race of people enslaved, slaveholders claimed that blacks were inferior to whites, placing them on the same level as livestock and other animals. “There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination” (73). The fact is, whites are not naturally superior over blacks. Therefore, slaveholders used a variety of contrived strategies to make their case that blacks were inherently inferior to whites. To...
“Labor republicanism inherited the idea that designing men perpetually sought to undermine liberty and to “enslave” the people. Chattel slavery stood as the ultimate expression of the denial of liberty” (Pg 341). What the book is trying to say is that people have always wanted to take away liberty and enslave people, but slavery of the blacks took it to an extreme level. Compared to the slaves the wage laborers had ample freedom.
Slave owners not only broke slave families up, but they also tried to keep all the slaves illiterate. In the book slave owners thought, "A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master-to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. If you teach a slave how to read, they would become unmangeable and have no value to his master." Masters thought that if a slave became literate then they would rebel and get other slaves to follow them. Also masters lied to slaves saying learning would do them no good, only harm them. They tried using that reverse psychology to make it seem like what they were doing was right.
In 1854, George Fitzhugh wrote Sociology for the South, or the Failure of Free Society. He based his writing off of the idea that “All workers, white and black, North and South, would fare better having individual owners, rather than living as slaves for the economic marketplace”. The main arguments he made in defending a proslavery ...
“We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” If the confusion has not yet set in, then give it a moment. This nation, the United States of America, prides itself on being far superior to all other nations because here in America we are free men. We set ourselves on a pedestal above Great Britain because the Declaration of Independence clearly states that everyone inside the parameters of our country will be treated as equal as the same individuals neighbor. Yet for nearly three centuries, our nation was full of individuals, including our forefathers, who “owned” people that were regarded as less than themselves simply due to the fact that the pigments in their skin did not allow them to fall within the Caucasian race. The very legal document that had the word “Independence” written within it’s name and blatantly stated that it is obvious that no human is greater than any other because we were all made by the same god for the same reason, is the foundation of a nation that used innocent lives as fuel for slavery. It wasn’t until some educated individuals finally stood up and realized how incredibly wrong these two concepts are when put together. It is said that when the former slave Frederick Douglass
In the Adventure of Huckleberry Finn, written by Samuel Clemens, a young boy by the name of Huck gets into various situations while trying to discover himself and just have fun. To keep the novel unified the author uses the recurrent motifs of slavery, violence, and caring.