Slavery Debate and Civil War Perspectives: North vs. South

The Proponent of Slavery

As a Southerner, I believe I know and understand the peculiar institution better than any Northerner ever can. We live and breathe our way of life. The Yankee only presumes to know what is best for us — in a way some might call arrogant. While the Northerner looks down upon us from the ivory towers of New England, the Southerner works hard in the fields, training and managing slaves so that the price of cotton and tobacco remains at market rates. We Southerners have provided the bread and butter of the American economy for generations, and suddenly abolitionists — formed of groups of women — want to destroy our way of life, tell us what to do, and moralize? We pay good money to keep our slaves alive, and yet the Yankee wants to exploit us.

The Northerner would envision a world in which miscegenation sullied the racial soil of our nation. The world we envision is neat, orderly, godly, and just. We do not share your values or beliefs, and will not listen to your shameful cries. Slaves have been traded since time immemorial. Our own scripture speaks of slavery, but even God-fearing Christians in the North are now claiming that God is suddenly against the peculiar institution. God works in mysterious ways that we cannot hope to understand. The Northerner is so arrogant as to presume to know God's will. When the abolitionist in the North aids the escape of slaves, he or she is breaking the law while presuming to be above it.

God also created different races for a reason. Animals of different species do not mate with one another, and for the same reason whites do not mate with blacks. Our slave owners never consider violating our female slaves. The children that liars claim as evidence are proof only of the slaves' own primitive nature. Slavery is proof that whites are superior to blacks, and it prevents outright chaos and anarchy. As George Fitzhugh so eloquently put it, "The negro race is inferior to the white race, and living in their midst, they would be far outstripped or outwitted in the chaos of free competition." The United States is one of the only nations left strong enough to continue this practice. Let it be so. We stand strong. Our churches are strong, and God is on our side.

The Abolitionist

Emancipation must happen, because slavery is unnatural, immoral, and an embarrassment to our great nation. Thomas Jefferson himself — without whom our nation would not exist in its current form — argued passionately against slavery, in spite of having owned slaves himself. White slave owners, you too can be like Jefferson in rejecting the peculiar institution and embracing a higher social and moral order. Jefferson taught us that we cannot replace one tyranny with another, and that our nation will be deeply hypocritical if we allow slavery to perpetuate itself with each passing generation. Slavery is, according to Jefferson, "against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither." It is time now to emancipate the slaves in the great spirit of liberty and justice that permeates the world. Nation after nation has abolished slavery, including even the British, who once colonized our land.

The call for emancipation is not a new one. Jefferson fought to abolish slavery from American society, and so too did many others who hoped to witness a new nation truly conceived on the idea that all men are created equal. Yet too many clung to the economic expediency of slave labor, coupled with the erroneous belief in racial superiority. From where these beliefs arose, we do not fully know. There is no fair reason to imprison human beings based solely on the presumption of superiority. It is even more preposterous to enslave on the grounds of spiritual or moral superiority, when by the very act of torture that is slavery, one proves only the capacity for evil and sin.

Response to the Proponent of Slavery

While I do agree that all Americans have financially reaped the benefits of slave labor — prospering from crops like tobacco, cotton, and all the other bounties of the South — what has occurred in the past should cease to exist in the future. We must, as Americans, join together in creating an economic and social system based on liberty and justice, as our Founding Fathers wished it to be. The prices of these goods will rise, indeed. Their value on the open market will also rise, however, and buyers in Europe will pay that price because they need our raw materials to sustain their own economies. We can create a system that acknowledges the evil of slavery and structures a new Southern economy based on wage labor rather than slave labor.

You are also correct to say that slaves are generally provided with food, water, shelter, and the basic provisions of life. Yet you neglect to mention that they lack the most important asset of living in our nation: freedom. You suggest that Northern factory workers toil all day for meager wages that do not provide even these basic necessities. That may be true, but it is a deplorable condition — not something to be proud of or to emulate. Rather, all Americans should enjoy the fruits of their labor with dignity and liberty.

Anarchy is not a necessary consequence of emancipation, as you seem to suggest. Rule of law would ensue. Southern whites of the current generation may resent the loss of their power and their social hierarchies, but they will survive, and their sons and daughters will reap the benefits of a new nation. Finally, when you invoke the Dred Scott decision, you neglect to note that our nation's Constitution is amendable. It should be amended yet again to make way for the rights of all citizens — Black and white, male and female — to participate fully in public life.