Pro-slavery (United States)

The pro-slavery ideology in the United States promoted the practice of slavery and defended against any interference with the system.^[1] By the 1830s, slavery was mainly in the Southern United States,^[2] where African American slaves were considered property. Slave owners justified them being property because slaves were black; in other words, they were not people. Slaves were used on large plantations and small farms as the primary form of labor.

Largely in response to the abolitionist arguments against slavery, pro-slavery advocates developed arguments to justify slavery as being good.^[3] While anti-slavery groups pushed for a gradual end to slavery, and Free-Soilers sought to stop its expansion, abolitionists demanded an immediate end to the practice.^[3] Pro-slavery became as much anti-abolitionist as defending of slavery.^[3]

It is sometimes hard to understand why Southerners who did not own slaves would defend the practice of slavery.^[4] In the South, slaves did more tthan work on plantations. There were over 4 million slaves in the South, who far outnumbered free people.^[5] In cities like Charleston, South Carolina, slaves worked at various jobs such as carpenters, blacksmiths, bricklayers and street sweepers^[4] and performed every kind of manual labor. They raised families' children, cooked, cleaned, and served their masters' food.^[4] A visitor to Charleston commented, “Charleston looks more like a Negro country than a country settled by white people.”^[4]

Southerners feared a slave rebellion like the one in Haiti only a few decades earlier.^[4] They also feared that without slaves, their economy would collapse completely. Slavery had become a subject of vital interest to everyone in the United States.^[4] In 1859, the raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, by the abolitionist John Brown shocked the south.^[4] Had Brown succeeded, he intended use the arms from the federal arsenal to arm the slaves in the South with weapons to revolt against their masters.

Before its admission to the Union, each new U.S. state became a battle over whether it would be a free state or a free slavery. Extremists from all sides flocked to territories to promote their own cause. Bleeding Kansas became a worst-case example, and competing views broke down into outright guerrilla warfare. Political compromises were attempted such as the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850.^[4]

Slaves were generally poorly fed and had minimal clothing and places to sleep.^[2] Household servants usually did better as they got the old clothes of their masters' family and had access to better food.^[2] Slaves suffered from poor health in the heat and humidity of the South. Because of their poor diet and unsanitary living conditions, they frequently suffered from diseases.^[2] The rice plantations were the most deadly for slaves. They stood in water for most of the day under the hot sun. Malaria was a common disease. The mortality rate was highest among the slave children and averaged about 66 % generally and was as high as 90 % on rice plantations.^[2]

Slave women were frequently used for sex by their masters.^[6] Any who refused could be physically beaten.^[6] Their mixed-race, or mulatto, children were considered slaves because their status followed that of their mother.^[6] All women in the South, black or white, were considered chattel, or property, and belonged to the master.^[7] In 1808, the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves took effect.^[7] Slave breeding by masters became a common way to produce slaves.^[7] There was also a demand for light-skinned good-looking young female slaves.^[8] The "fancy maids" of slave women were sold at auction as concubines or prostitutes and brought the highest prices.^[9]

The arguments for slavery by Southern spokesmen were that chattel slavery, slaves as property as practiced in the South, was betyter than the system of wage slavery that was practiced in the industrialized North.^[10] George Fitzhugh, in his book published in 1857, Cannibals All!, maintained that support of slavery held the moral high ground in the national debate over the issue.^[10] Fitzhugh maintained that because slaveholders owned their slaves, they took better care of them than the Northern capitalists, who only "rented" their workers.^[10] In his earlier Sociology for the South, he had proposed that many white people should also be slaves.

Some pointed out that slave owners provided food and clothes for their slaves unlike Northern employers did not do.^[11] Other arguments pointed out that in addition to the benefits that slaves enjoyed under slavery, their separation from the white race kept them from mixing with it.^[11] That was a fear of many Southerners, but the argument also played on the fears of Northerners.^[11] The basis was the commonly-held belief that blacks were inferior to whites.^[11]

Others pointed out that a sudden end to slavery would cause economic collapse in the south.^[12] There would be no cotton, tobacco, or rice industries. Also, if all of the slaves were freed, unemployment and chaos would happen all over the United States.^[12] Supporters of slavery claimed it would lead to uprisings much like the "Reign of Terror" during the French Revolution.^[12]

Those arguments and others were widely published in books, newspapers, and pamphlets^[13] that were designed to promote and defend slavery.^[13]

• George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All!, Google Books
• From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909