Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South
A Brief History with DocumentsSecond Edition ©2020
This new edition of Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South introduces the vast number of ways in which educated Southern thinkers and theorists defended the institution of slavery. This book collects and explores the elaborately detailed pro-slavery arguments rooted in reli...
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This new edition of Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South introduces the vast number of ways in which educated Southern thinkers and theorists defended the institution of slavery. This book collects and explores the elaborately detailed pro-slavery arguments rooted in religion, law, politics, science, and economics. In his introduction, now updated to include the relationship between early Christianity and slavery, Paul Finkelman discusses how early world societies legitimized slavery, the distinction between Northern and Southern ideas about slavery, and how the ideology of the American Revolution prompted the need for a defense of slavery. The rich collection of documents allows for a thorough examination of these ideas through poems, images, speeches, correspondences, and essays. This edition features two new documents that highlight women’s voices and the role of women in the movement to defend slavery plus a visual document that demonstrates how the notion of black inferiority and separateness was defended through the science of the time. Document headnotes and a chronology, plus updated questions for consideration and selected bibliography help students engage with the documents to understand the minds of those who defended slavery. Available in print and e-book formats.
"This collection will make an excellent addition to the Bedford series. . . . The documents are well selected. Readers will get a good sampling of many ‘classic’ statements of the proslavery ideology. Moreover, a wide variety of arguments are represented. . . . The introduction is especially noteworthy; I am unaware of any concise introduction to proslavery thought that is better suited to the classroom."
— W. Fitzhugh Brundage, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
"The book works well; the introductory essay usefully lays out the central context of the documents, and the documents are well selected to make the author’s points. . . . The documents include the key writings that historians of this subject deal with. . . . This is a nice volume and should find a good undergraduate market."
— Stanley Engerman, University of Rochester
Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface
PART ONE: Introduction: Defending Slavery
Northerners, Southerners, and Slavery
The Legitimacy of Slavery in Earlier Times
The Emergence of Slavery in Early America
The American Revolution Threatens Slavery
The Emergence of Proslavery Thought
The Outlines of Antebellum Proslavery Thought
Racial Theory and Ideology: The Key to Proslavery Thought
PART TWO: The Documents
Politics, Economics, and Proslavery Thought
1. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1787
2. Lucy Kenney, A Refutation of the Principles of Abolition, 1836 3. John C. Calhoun, Speech in the U.S. Senate, 1837
4. Edmund Ruffin, The Political Economy of Slavery, 1853 5. Thomas R. R. Cobb, Effects of Abolition in the United States, 1858
6. James Henry Hammond, The Mudsill, or Cotton is King Speech, 1858
7. Marie Jefferson Carr Mason, Letter of Mrs. Mason, 1860
8. Alexander Stephens, The Cornerstone Speech, 1861
Religion and Slavery
9. Reverend A. T. Holmes, The Duties of Christian Masters, 1851
10. De Bow’s Review, Slavery and the Bible, 1850
11. Protestant Episcopal Convention of South Carolina, Duty of Clergymen in Relation to the Marriage of Slaves, 1859
12. Thornton Stringfellow, The Bible Argument: Or, Slavery in the Light of Divine Revelation, 1860
The Law in Defense of Slavery
13. North Carolina Supreme Court, State v. Mann (Opinion of Justice Thomas Ruffin), 1829
14. U.S. Supreme Court, Dred Scott v. Sandford (Opinion of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney), 1857
15. Thomas R. R. Cobb, What Is Slavery, and Its Foundation in the Natural Law, 1858
Racial Theory, Science, and Slavery
16. Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, Report on the Diseases of and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race, 1851
17. Dr. Josiah C. Nott, Types of Mankind, 1854
18. William J. Grayson, The Hireling and the Slave, 1854
19. George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, 1854, and Cannibals All! 1857
20. Dr. Josiah C. Nott, Instincts of Races, 1866
Appendixes
A Slavery Chronology (1619-1870)
Questions for Consideration
Selected Bibliography
Authors
Paul Finkelman
Paul Finkelman (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is the President of Gratz College in Greater Philadelphia. His many books include Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court; Civil War Congress and the Creation of Modern America; Lincoln, Congress, and Emancipation; Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson; Millard Fillmore; A March of Liberty: A Constitutional History of the United States, which he coauthored; and An Imperfect Union. For the Bedford Series in History and Culture he authored Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History with Documents and Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South: A Brief History with Documents.
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