Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South - A Brief History with Documents

by Finkelman, Paul

• ISBN13: 9780312133276
• ISBN10: 0312133278
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-03-05
• Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's

Summary

Within decades of the American Revolution, the Northern states had either ended slavery or provided for its gradual abolition. Slavery, however, was entrenched in the South and remained integral to American politics and culture. Nationally, it was protected by the U.S. Constitution, federal laws, and Supreme Court decisions, and slaveowners dominated all three branches of the federal government. From the time of the Revolution until the Civil War (and beyond), Southern thinkers offered a variety of proslavery arguments. This body of thoughtbased on religion, politics and law, economics, history, philosophy, expediency, and scienceoffers invaluable insights into how slavery shaped American history and continues to affect American society. In this volume, Paul Finkelman presents a representative selection of proslavery thought and includes an introduction that explores the history of slavery and the debate over it. His headnotes supply a rich context for each reading. The volume also includes a chronology, a selected bibliography, and illustrations.

Author Biography

Paul Finkelman is the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy and Senior Fellow in the Government Law Center at Albany Law School. His many books include Slavery in the Courtroom (1985), which received the Joseph L. Andrews Award from the American Association of Law Libraries; His Soul Goes Marching On; Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid (1995), which was a History Book Club selection; and Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (second edition, 2002); and he is the co-author of A March of Liberty: A Constitutional History of the United States (2002). He edited Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford/St. Martin's, 1997), another volume in the Bedford Series in History and Culture. Finkelman has also published numerous scholarly articles on American legal history and race relations, and he lectures frequently on these subjects. In 1995, he was designated Virginia Historian of the Year by the Virginia Social Science Association.

Table of Contents

Foreword	v
Preface	vii
PART ONE Introduction: Defending Slavery	1	(44)
Northerners, Southerners, and Slavery	3	(3)
The Legitimacy of Slavery in Earlier Times	6	(6)
The Emergence of Slavery in Early America	12	(3)
The American Revolution Threatens Slavery	15	(4)
The Emergence of Proslavery Thought	19	(6)
The Outlines of Antebellum Proslavery Thought	25	(14)
Racial Theory and Ideology: The Key to Proslavery Thought	39	(6)
PART TWO The Documents	45	(176)
Politics, Economics, and Proslavery Thought	47	(49)
Notes on the State of Virginia, 1787	47	(7)
Thomas Jefferson
Speech in the U.S. Senate, 1837	54	(7)
John C. Calhoun
The Political Economy of Slavery, 1853	61	(15)
Edmund Ruffin
Effects of Abolition in the United States, 1858	76	(4)
Thomas R.R. Cobb
The Mudsill Speech, 1858	80	(9)
James Henry Hammond
The Cornerstone Speech, 1861	89	(7)
Alexander Stephens
Religion and Slavery	96	(33)
The Duties of Christian Masters, 1851	96	(12)
Reverend A.T. Holmes
De Bow's Review, Slavery and the Bible, 1850	108	(6)
Protestant Episcopal Convention of South Carolina, Duty of Clergymen in Relation to the Marriage of Slaves, 1859	114	(7)
The Bible Argument: Or, Slavery in the Light of Divine Revelation, 1860	121	(8)
Thornton Stringfellow
The Law in Defense of Slavery	129	(28)
North Carolina Supreme Court, State v. Mann (Opinion of Thomas Ruffin), 1829	129	(4)
U.S. Supreme Court, Dred Scott v. Sandford (Opinion of Roger B. Taney), 1857	133	(10)
What Is Slavery, and Its Foundation in the Natural Law, 1858	143	(14)
Thomas R.R. Cobb
Racial Theory and Slavery	157	(64)
Report on the Diseases of and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race, 1851	157	(16)
Samuel A. Cartwright
The Hireling and the Slave, 1854	173	(14)
William J. Grayson
Sociology for the South, 1854, and Cannibals All! 1857	187	(14)
George Fitzhugh
Instincts of Races, 1866	201	(11)
Josiah C. Nott
APPENDIXES
A Slavery Chronology (1619--1870)	212	(4)
Questions for Consideration	216	(2)
Selected Bibliography	218	(3)
Index	221