<doc.id=1065.a5>
<title> "The argument has commenced... Slavery will every where be abolished, or every where be re-instituted": An account of the arguments used for and against slavery in the mid-nineteenth century. </title>
Slave trade was banned in America in 1808, which did not mean that an end was put to the institution of domestic slavery. In fact, slavery even increased in the Southern colonies in about 1800, as new machines made cotton plantations profitable. In the North, slavery was virtually abandoned by 1830, and about the same time the northerners launched an aggressive attack on the South, demanding them to emancipate their slaves as well. The question was settled through the Civil War 1861-1865, and slavery was eventually abolished in the United States. I will now give an account for some of the arguments used for and against slavery at the middle of the nineteenth century.
First, I would like to look more closely to the arguments used for slavery. The key argument of the debate was white supremacy; non-white races were simply considered inferior to the white one. Blacks were but grown up children, and needed a master like children need parents. In his Sociology for the South, G. Fitzhugh, states that "The negro is improvident... He would become an insufferable burden to society." (Pg. 9) In fact, domestic slavery was considered to be the one thing that guaranteed the continued existence of the black race. According to Fitzhugh, the money-making capacity of black people is so inferior to that of white ones, that the black race would gradually be extinct if it was to co-exist with whites in the world of free competition. Moreover, the black man's slavery in the South relieves him from a far more cruel slavery in Africa, and it christianizes and supports him. Fitzhugh also claims three-forth of society - women, children, soldiers, etc.- to be slaves; not in theory, but often in fact. He states that the kind of slavery is adapted to the people enslaved, and that negro slavery immediately would be changed to some form of serfdom if the blacks were only sufficiently intelligent. 
	Another important argument of the southerners was that their slaves were often better off than the free workers of the North or European hirelings were. Even their moral conduct was better, which Fitzhugh proves by stating that negros never kill their women. Among free laborers, on the other hand, wife-murder has become "a mere holiday pastime" (pg. 10). According to W.J. Grayson, European hirelings are "free but in name - the slaves of endless toil" (The Hireling and the Slave, pg. 14), whereas the American slaves are fed, clothed and protected. To free the blacks would according to Grayson be to gradually turn them into the barbarians they begun, since they would turn to begging and stealing. Enslaved, the blacks escape the perils of the poor, and they do not have to worry about putting food on the table. Grayson also stresses the fact that the slave society faces no strikes or riots, despite the light rule of the masters. 
	Edward A. Pollard concentrates on another argument for slavery in his "The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates", namely the fact that it is the leading cause of the distinctive civilization and superior refinements of manners of the South. Without slaves, cotton would never have dominated the world's commerce in a half-century with an annual value of two hundred million dollars. Since slavery relived a large class of whites from physical labor, the southerners could devote their time to social intercourse, culture, and education. This led to notions of chivalry and polished manners, whereas the culture of the North was coarse and materialistic. The northerners envied the superior civilization of the South, and therefore they revenged themselves on the cause - slavery.
	Turning to the arguments of the abolitionists, many of them involved the belief that there is not such thing as white supremacy. In his preface to The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, W. L. Garrison writes: "...cease to talk of the natural inferiority of those who require nothing but time and opportunity to attain the highest point of human excellence" (pg. 2). He states that slavery inevitably brutalizes every noble faculty of man, and that this is something applies to whites as well. For instance, an American sailor that was cast away on the shores of Africa and kept as a slave for three years, forgot his mother tongue and lost all his reasoning skills. Garrison admits that this must have been a case of extraordinary mental deterioration, but nevertheless it proves that not only blacks can sink on the scale of humanity. He emphasizes the cruelty and brutality of slavery and states that "a happy slave is an extinct man" (pg. 3-4). The enslavement of the blacks reduces them to a level with four-footed beasts, which according to Garrison not only is a crime, but a sin expressing the absence of all fear for God. 
	Fredrick Douglass himself brings up a prophecy of a southern statesman: the downfall of slavery by the inevitable laws of population. Multitudes of slaves are of mixed origin, most frequently fathered by their own masters. The American slaves are a very different-looking class of people compared to those first brought from Africa. Their increase, Douglass states, will do away the force of the argument that American slavery is justified by the fact that God cursed Ham. "If the lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved," Douglass writes, "it is certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural." (The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, pg. 8)
	Summing up, I would like to point out that there seem to have been more arguments in favor of slavery than against it. Nevertheless, the arguments of the abolitionists prevailed. However, the abolition of slavery did not mean that former slaves were considered equal to whites, or even that they enjoyed the same legal rights. Some abolitionists did hold the view that the blacks were equal to whites, but for the North in general, abolition was one thing and equality another.
</doc>