Thomas R. Dew Defends Slavery 1852

Thomas R. Dew Defends Slavery (1852)

In his 1852 argument, Thomas R. Dew outlined what he believed to be a logical justification for the continuation of the noxious institution of American Slavery that precipitated the Civil War a decade after its writing. In retrospect, it stands as a remarkable demonstration of myopic, self-centered, immoral rationalization that is breathtaking in the presumptuousness of its purported rationale.

Dew's first point is that however wrong the institution of slavery was to establish in the first place, the moral responsibility for that wrong does not rest in the hands of later generations who had nothing to do with that decision originally. He suggests that slavery "once introduced" is an entirely different matter than the decision to introduce it in the first place. According to Dew, neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament prohibits slavery; the former provides numerous examples of slavery while the latter impliedly sanctions it because Jesus apparently saw nothing wrong in it. Specifically, Dew cites the fact that Abraham and Isaac of the Old Testament both owned many slaves and that the Children of Israel enslaved the inhabitants of Canaan after conquering them in battle. In the New Testament, Jesus was born into a "Roman world" in which "the most galling slavery existed, a thousand times more cruel than the slavery in our own country" and that the fact that Jesus never opposed the practice indicates that it does not violate any of the moral teaching of Christ. Similarly, Dew quotes various apostles who commanded that servants must be faithful and obedient even to unkind masters. Toward the end of Dew's obnoxious diatribe, he again refers to Ancient Rome as a bastion of Liberty. He argues that if the ancient civilization that gave us the philosophy of Aristotle and of the other great minds and champions of liberty also embraced slavery, that it could not possibly conflict with the meaning of liberty in society.

Dew then returns to his original proposition: namely, that the immorality of establishing slavery in the first place by prior generations must not be charged against later generations of slave owners, especially since it is the Southern tradition for most slave owners to be good and just slave owners. In fact, Dew has the nerve to criticize the northern abolitionists as men of conscience who were too "unphilosophical" to appreciate the immoral implications of their desire to end the institution of slavery. Dew refers to their desire to "break all the ties of friendship and kindred" by which he apparently means that ending slavery would deprive slaves of the benefits of the close bonds they enjoyed with their masters. Dew continues by explaining that one of the dangers of ending slavery would be exposing the former slaves to white people who might be less kind to them than their Southern masters. He argues that most slave owners are upstanding moral individuals held in high regard by their communities and that it is "well-known" that Northern slave owners (such as those who marry Southern women and then take over their slaves) are cruel to slaves whereas Southern slave owners are generally kind to theirs. Moreover, according to Dew, even the cruel slave owners contribute to the maintenance of morality in society because their immoral conduct makes all those around them "shudder in horror."

Dew then moves on to describe the fact that slaves typically "rejoice" at the success of their masters and at reunions with their master's children upon reuniting after separation. He cites this as evidence that slaves do not resent their masters or their families in the least. He then continues with might be the most obnoxious and patronizing argument in his entire thesis:

"A merrier being does not exist on the face of the globe than the Negro slave of the United States. . . . Why, then, since the slave if happy, and happiness is the great object of all animated creation, should we endeavor to disturb his contentment by infusing into his mind a vain and indefinite desire for liberty -- a something which he cannot comprehend, and which must inevitably dry up the very sources of his happiness."