Teaching American History
Erie College Sessions
July 9, 2007
Cotton, Slaves, and Arrogance:
David Walker
and
George Fitzhugh
Get Some Questions
Out of the Way
I have no idea why
flammable and
inflammable are
synonyms
 No, it is NOT a perm.
 Yes, I have proof.

Paradoxes: Racist Abolitionism
Antebellum America faced three interrelated
problems in dealing with slavery.
First, although many Americans believed slavery was
terrible, they also feared that freeing the slaves
would be disastrous.
Second, although the nation was (at least
rhetorically) founded on notions of the
sovereignty of the body politic, debates regarding
the status of slaves frequently revolved around
“strict constructionist,” contractarian claims of the
intentions and thoughts of the founders. Textual
interpretation was central. Legalistic, not
democratic. “But you said....” “But you
promised.....” But the Constitution guarantees….”
Paradoxes: Racist Abolitionism
Third, although slavery was a central topic of discussion,
people focused not on slaves and slavery per se but
rather a metaphor for larger issues, including the
supposed encroachment of “the slave power” over free
white Northerners, the tension between political liberty
and economic inequality, the unprecedented geographic
expansion, and the crumbling of hierarchy as America
faced the industrial revolution.
Each of these three problems evoked white fear regarding
the potential catastrophes of emancipation. Each also
illustrated profound, unsettling levels of commitment to
white supremacy. Something happened briefly, 18631878, to change that, but it snapped back, and supported
segregation and Jim Crow for nearly another century.
(adapted from S. J. Hartnett, Democratic Dissent and the
Cultural Fictions of Antebellum America, U of Illinois
Press.)
Why Emphasize “Racist” Abolition?
Not clear that political elites in the North
had pure motives. Redirect political
forces, win on tariffs, credit, trade policy.
 Simply not true that there was a large
difference of opinion about the nature or
humanity of blacks. Impossible to
understand Reconstruction, and Jim Crow
era, without this recognition.
 Mr. Lincoln?

Lincoln: Separation
"What I would most desire would be the
separation of the white and black
races." (Abraham Lincoln, spoken at
Springfield, Illinois on July 17th, 1858;
from Abraham Lincoln: Complete
Works, 1894, Vol. 1, page 273).
Lincoln: Debates in IL, 1858

"I will say, then, that I am not nor have ever been in favor of
bringing about in any way the social and political equality
of the black and white races---that I am not, nor ever have
been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of
qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White
people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a
physical difference between the White and black races
which will ever forbid the two races living together on
terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they
cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must
be the position of superior and inferior,and I, as much as
any other man, am in favor of having the superior position
assigned to the White race." (4th Lincoln-Douglas debate,
September 18th, 1858; Collected Works Vol. 3, pp. 145-146).
Lincoln: White House, 1862
"See our present condition---the country engaged in war! Our
White men cutting one another's throats! And then
consider what we know to be the truth. But for your race
among us there could not be war, although many men
engaged on either side do not care for you one way or
another.
"Why should the people of your race be colonized, & where?
Why should they leave this country? … You & we are
different races. We have between us a broader difference
than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it
is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical
difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think
your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living
among us, while ours suffer from your presence… If this be
admitted, it affords a reason at least why …it is better for
both to be separated." (Spoken at White House to black
community leaders, August 14th, 1862, from Collected
Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol 5, page 371).
You Already Know….
A lot about slavery.
 More than I know about slavery.
 Enough about slavery that a broad overview will
be a waste of your time.

So, I decided to focus on two vivid personalities.
Get some insights into the background, thought,
and larger context of slavery.
Two Racial Revolutionaries
David
Walker
(1785-1830)
George
Fitzhugh
(1806-1881)
Short Bio: David Walker
“If I remain in this bloody land, I will not live long. As true as
God reigns, I will be avenged for the sorrow which my
people have suffered.” (On leaving NC, in 1815)
David Walker was born on September 28, 1785, in
Wilmington, North Carolina. His father was an enslaved
African who died a few months before his son’s birth, and
his mother was a free woman of African ancestry. Walker
grew up to despise the system of slavery the American
government allowed in America.
In 1826 Walker settled in Boston, Mass., where he became the
agent for Freedom's Journal, the black abolitionist
newspaper, and a leader in the Colored Association. For a
living he ran a secondhand clothing store.
Short Bio: David Walker
Walker’s revulsion toward slavery led him to do
something dangerous: He published his Appeal
to the Colored Citizens of the World in September
1829. The Appeal was smuggled into the southern
states, and was considered subversive, seditious,
and incendiary by most white men in both
northern and southern states. It was, without a
doubt, one of the most controversial documents
published in the antebellum period.
Appeal: a bitter denunciation of slavery, those who
profited by it, and those who willingly accepted it.
Walker called for vengeance against white men,
but he also expressed the hope that their cruel
behavior toward blacks would change, making
vengeance unnecessary.
Short Bio: David Walker
Walker was concerned about many social issues affecting
free and enslaved Africans in America during the time.
Precursor for variety of what would later be black
nationalist platform: unified struggle for resistance of
oppression, reparations (land, for Walker), selfgovernment for people of African descent in America,
racial pride, and a critique of American capitalism.
Southern elites hated Walker, but were also frightened by
him. Several states, and some individuals, put a price
on his head. In 1829, 50 unsolicited copies of Walker's
Appeal were delivered to a black minister in Savannah,
Ga. The frightened minister, understandably concerned
for his welfare, informed the police.
Short Bio: David Walker
The police, in turn, informed the governor of
Georgia. As a result, the state legislature met in
secret session and passed a bill making the
circulation of materials that might incite slaves
to riot a capital offense. The legislature also
offered a reward for Walker's capture, $10,000
alive and $1,000 dead.
Still, David Walker employed clever and inventive
ways to circulate his Appeal. His network of free
black seamen who served as "authorized
agents" helped to develop circulation far
beyond Massachusetts and into the South
Short Bio: David Walker
Other Southern states took similar measures.
Louisiana enacted a bill ordering expulsion of all
freed slaves who had settled in the state after 1825.
The slaveholding South was frightened by men like
Walker, and their harsh reactions to the threat they
saw in Walker's Appeal seemed justified when black
slave Nat Turner led his bloody rebellion in 1831.
But Frederick Douglass and Henry Garnett (for
example) were not convinced. They saw the
problem as being too little black outrage, not too
much.
Walker was mysteriously found dead in the doorway of
his Boston home in June 28,1830, at age 45, some
people believed he was poisoned. More plausible
was that he died of tuberculosis.
Outline of the Appeal
Article I: Collective Action—Rise!
 Article II: History of Misery—Self-defense,
not murder, will be death of slave lords. No
hope the Whites will help (Jefferson!)
 Article III: God is just, but Christianity a tool
of Whites to subjugate Blacks
 Article IV: (Re)colonization is a Trick, to
separate Free Blacks from Slaves, and Keep
Slaves Docile. This land is more Ours than it
is the Whites’ who “own” it. (Locke?)

His Goal: Overcome the
Collective Action Problem
The primary object of this institution, is, to unite
the colored population, so far, through the
United States of America, as may be practicable
and expedient; forming societies, opening,
extending, and keeping up correspondences,
and not witholding anything which may have the
least tendency to meliorate *our* miserable
condition.
David Walker’s statement on forming the
Massachussetts General Colored
Association (MGCA) in 1828

Walker’s Goal: Overcome the
Collective Action Problem
His goal: That “the world may see that we, the Blacks or Coloured People,
are treated more cruel by the white Christians of America, than devils
themselves ever treated a set of men, women and children on this earth.
It is expected that all coloured men, women and children**, of every nation,
language and tongue under heaven, will try to procure a copy of this
Appeal and read it, or get some one to read it to them, for it is designed
more particularly for them. Let them remember, that though our cruel
oppressors and murderers, may (if possible) treat us more cruel, as
Pharoah did the children of Israel, yet the God of the Etheopeans, has
been pleased to hear our moans in consequence of oppression; and the
day of our redemption from abject wretchedness draweth near, when we
shall be enabled, in the most extended sense of the word, to stretch forth
our hands to the LORD our GOD, but there must be a willingness on our
part, for GOD to do these things for us, for we may be assured that he will
not take us by the hairs of our head against our will and desire, and drag
us from our very, mean, low and abject condition.”
** Who are not too deceitful, abject, and servile to resist the cruelties and
murders inflicted upon us by the white slave holders, our enemies by
nature. (Emphasis added)
From the “Appeal”
...to my no ordinary astonishment, [a] Reverend gentleman got up
and told us (coloured people) that slaves must be obedient to
their masters -- must do their duty to their masters or be
whipped -- the whip was made for the backs of fools, &c. Here I
pause for a moment, to give the world time to consider what was
my surprise, to hear such preaching from a minister of my
Master, whose very gospel is that of peace and not of blood and
whips, as this pretended preacher tried to make us believe.
What the American preachers can think of us, I aver this day
before my God, I have never been able to define. They have
newspapers and monthly periodicals, which they receive in
continual succession, but on the pages of which, you will
scarcely ever find a paragraph respecting slavery, which is ten
thousand times more injurious to this country than all the other
evils put together; and which will be the final overthrow of its
government, unless something is very speedily done; for their
cup is nearly full.-Perhaps they will laugh at or make light of
this; but I tell you Americans! that unless you speedily alter your
course, you and your Country are gone! ! ! ! !
From the “Appeal”
The Americans say, that we are ungrateful-but I ask them for
heaven's sake, what should we be grateful to them for -- for
murdering our fathers and mothers ? -- Or do they wish us to
return thanks to them for chaining and handcuffing us,
branding us, cramming fire down our throats, or for keeping
us in slavery, and beating us nearly or quite to death to make
us work in ignorance and miseries, to support them and
their families. They certainly think that we are a gang of
fools. … But do slave-holders think that we thank them for
keeping us in miseries, and taking our lives by the inches?
Let no man of us budge one step, & let slave-holders come to
beat us from our country. America is more our country, than
it is the whites-we have enriched it with our blood & tears.
The greatest riches in all America have arisen from our
blood & tears: -- & will they drive us from our property &
homes, which we have earned with our blood? They must
look sharp or this very thing will bring swift destruction
upon them. The Americans have got so fat on our blood &
groans, that they have almost forgotten the God of armies.
From the “Appeal”
Do the colonizationists think to send us off without first being
reconciled to us? Do they think to bundle us up like brutes
and send us off, as they did our brethren of the State of
Ohio? Have they not to be reconciled to us, or reconcile us
to them, for the cruelties with which they have afflicted our
fathers and us? Methinks colonizationists think they have
a set of brutes to deal with, sure enough. Do they think to
drive us from our country and homes, after having
enriched it with our blood and tears, and keep back
millions of our dear brethren, sunk in the most barbarous
wretchedness, to dig up gold and silver for them and their
children? Surely, the Americans must think that we are
brutes, as some of them have represented us to be. They
think that we do not feel for our brethren, whom they are
murdering by the inches, but they are dreadfully deceived.
His Goal: Overcome the
Collective Action Problem
Vivid Personality II:
George Fitzhugh
Short Bio: George Fitzhugh
George Fitzhugh was born November 4, 1806 in Prince
William County, Virginia to an established southern
family in financial decline. His physician father, also
named George Fitzhugh, and his mother, Lucy Stuart,
would later struggle as small-scale planters when the
family moved to a plantation near Alexandria, Virginia.
Young George was then six years old.
Though he attended a local field school, Fitzhugh was
largely self-educated. In 1829 he married Mary Metcalf
Brockenbrough and moved near Port Royal, Virginia,
where he had obtained a small plantation through
marriage and practiced law. Fitzhugh subsequently
worked as a law clerk in Washington, D.C. (1857-1858)
at the office of Attorney General Jeremiah Sullivan
Black in the land claim department.
Short Bio: George Fitzhugh
Relocating to Richmond in 1862, he also clerked for
the Confederacy's Treasury Department. Following
the Civil War, Fitzhugh was appointed a judge in the
Freedman's Court (part of the Freedman's Bureau)
but left in 1866. Despite later publications in De
Bow's Review (in 1867) and Lippincott's Magazine
(in 1869 and 1870), George Fitzhugh's postbellum
life, like the lives of other proslavery apologist
writers, was characterized by relative obscurity.
Shortly after his wife's death in 1877, Fitzhugh
retired to Frankfort, Kentucky to live with his son.
Two years later in 1880, he moved near his
daughter's residence in Huntsville, Texas, where he
died July 30, 1881.
Short Bio: George Fitzhugh
Major Writings:
 Slavery Justified (1849)

Sociology for the South; or, The Failure of
Free Society (1854)

Cannibals All! Or, Slaves Without Masters
(1857)
Short Bio: George Fitzhugh
In Sociology for the South, Fitzhugh sets out to demonstrate
what he perceives as the overwhelming failure of free
society. Opening with a critique of Adam Smith's Wealth of
Nations, he also rejects Locke's theory of the social contract.
Fitzhugh details the essential flaw of free trade, which, in
privileging the wealthy and further subjecting the poor, puts
society at war. Divinely instituted and universally practiced,
slavery, he argues, promotes community, morality, and
protection for the disadvantaged. Laissez-faire, on the other
hand, manufactures human degradation, oppression, and
selfishness. The pursuit of capital gain through free trade,
Fitzhugh suggests, results in an overall moral decline. In
triumphing individual self-interest and sacrificing the
communal good, free competition yields only hostility.
Short Bio: George Fitzhugh
Citing the turbulence in England and France as examples,
Fitzhugh bemoans the suffering of free laborers who, toiling
under the myth of liberty, equality, and fraternity, actually
become society's slaves. By comparison, slaves in the South
enjoy the paternalistic favor and care of their masters, making
their condition far superior to the lives of their free laboring
counterparts. According to Fitzhugh, while the white race
remains innately superior in morality and intellect, slavery
does function as a civilizing force that elevates the enslaved.
Ardently defending life in the South, Fitzhugh itemizes those
problems prevalent in free society, which he argues range
from the moral decline reflected in changing marital practices
to the insidious psychological effects of mounting worker
anxieties. Without such antagonisms, southern life under
slavery connects human beings to one another and appears
characterized by stability, peace, and brotherhood.
Cannibals All!
“We are, all, North and South, engaged in the White Slave
Trade, and he who succeeds best, is esteemed most
respectable. It is far more cruel than the Black Slave Trade,
because it exacts more of its slaves, and neither protects nor
governs them. We boast, that it exacts more, when we say,
"that the profits made from employing free labor are greater
than those from slave labor." The profits, made from free
labor, are the amount of the products of such labor, which the
employer, by means of the command which capital or skill
gives him, takes away, exacts or "exploitates" from the free
laborer.
The profits of slave labor are that portion of the products of such
labor which the power of the master enables him to
appropriate. These profits are less, because the master
allows the slave to retain a larger share of the results of his
own labor, than do the employers of free labor.”
Cannibals All!
But we not only boast that the White Slave Trade is more exacting and
fraudulent (in fact, though not in intention,) than Black Slavery; but we also
boast, that it is more cruel, in leaving the laborer to take care of himself
and family out of the pittance which skill or capital have allowed him to
retain. When the day's labor is ended, he is free, but is overburdened with
the cares of family and household, which make his freedom an empty and
delusive mockery.
But his employer is really free, and may enjoy the profits made by others'
labor, without a care, or a trouble, as to their well-being. The negro slave is
free, too, when the labors of the day are over, and free in mind as well as
body; for the master provides food, raiment, house, fuel, and everything
else necessary to the physical well-being of himself and family. The
master's labors commence just when the slave's end. No wonder men
should prefer white slavery to capital, to negro slavery, since it is more
profitable, and is free from all the cares and labors of black slave-holding.
(Wal-Mart, anyone? Claim is that capital will always abuse labor, if it can.
Only slavery aligns incentives of capital with welfare of labor.)
Cannibals All!
“Probably, you are a lawyer, or a merchant, or a doctor, who have made by your
business fifty thousand dollars, and retired to live on your capital. But, mark!
not to spend your capital. That would be vulgar, disreputable, criminal. That
would be, to live by your own labor; for your capital is your amassed labor.
That would be, to do as common working men do; for they take the pittance
which their employers leave them, to live on. They live by labor; for they
exchange the results of their own labor for the products of other people's
labor. It is, no doubt, an honest, vulgar way of living; but not at all a
respectable way. The respectable way of living is, to make other people work
for you, and to pay them nothing for so doing - and to have no concern
about them after their work is done. Hence, white slave-holding is much
more respectable than negro slavery - for the master works nearly as hard
for the negro, as he for the master. But you, my virtuous, respectable reader,
exact three thousand dollars per annum from white labor, (for your income is
the product of white labor,) and make not one cent of return in any form. You
retain your capital, and never labor, and yet live in luxury on the labor of
others. Capital commands labor, as the master does the slave. Neither pays
for labor; but the master permits the slave to retain a larger allowance from
the proceeds of his own labor, and hence "free labor is cheaper than slave
labor." “
(Summary: Free labor is cheaper than slaves. More profits for owners IMPLIES
worse treatment, more exploitation of labor. Slavery is better for workers, for
anyone whose nature makes them a slave, as Aristotle intended the “slave
by nature.”)
Cannibals All!
“You, with the command over labor which your capital gives you,
are a slave owner - a master, without the obligations of a master.
They who work for you, who create your income, are slaves,
without the rights of slaves. Slaves without a master! Whilst you
were engaged in amassing your capital, in seeking to become
independent, you were in the White Slave Trade. To become
independent, is to be able to make other people support you,
without being obliged to labor for them. Now, what man in
society is not seeking to attain this situation? He who attains it, is
a slave owner, in the worst sense. He who is in pursuit of it, is
engaged in the slave trade. You, reader, belong to the one or
other class. The men without property, in free society, are
theoretically in a worse condition than slaves. Practically, their
condition corresponds with this theory, as history and statistics
every where demonstrate. The capitalists, in free society, live in
ten times the luxury and show that Southern masters do,
because the slaves to capital work harder and cost less, than
negro slaves.” (Emphasis added)
Cannibals All!
“The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some
sense, the freest people in the world. The children and the
aged and infirm work not at all, and yet have all the comforts
and necessaries of life provided for them. They enjoy liberty,
because they are oppressed neither by care nor labor. The
women do little hard work, and are protected from the
despotism of their husbands by their masters. The negro men
and stout boys work, on the average, in good weather, not
more than nine hours a day. The balance of their time is spent
in perfect abandon. Besides, they have their Sabbaths and
holidays.”
Cannibals All!
“White men, with so much of license and liberty, would die of ennui; but
negroes luxuriate in corporeal and mental repose. With their faces
upturned to the sun, they can sleep at any hour; and quiet sleep is
the greatest of human enjoyments. "Blessed be the man who
invented sleep." 'Tis happiness in itself - and results from
contentment with the present, and confident assurance of the future.
We do not know whether free laborers ever sleep. They are fools to
do so; for, whilst they sleep, the wily and watchful capitalist is
devising means to ensnare and exploitate them. The free laborer
must work or starve. He is more of a slave than the negro, because
he works longer and harder for less allowance than the slave, and
has no holiday, because the cares of life with him begin when its
labors end. He has no liberty, and not a single right. We know, 'tis
often said, air and water, are common property, which all have equal
right to participate and enjoy; but this is utterly false. The
appropriation of the lands carries with it the appropriation of all on or
above the lands, usque ad coelumm aut ad inferos. A man cannot
breathe the air, without a place to breathe it from, and all places are
appropriated. All water is private property "to the middle of the
stream," except the ocean, and that is not fit to drink.” (Emphasis
added)
Cannibals All!
These socialists, having discovered that skill and capital, by means of free
competition, exercise an undue mastery over labor, propose to do away
with skill, capital, and free competition, altogether. They would heal the
diseases of society by destroying its most vital functions. Having laid
down the broad proposition, that equal amounts of labor, or their results,
should be exchanged for each other, they get at the conclusion that as
the profits of capital are not the results of labor, the capitalist shall be
denied all interest or rents, or other profits on his capital, and be
compelled in all cases to exchange a part of the capital itself, for labor,
or its results. This would prevent accumulation, or at least limit it to the
procurement of the coarsest necessaries of life. They say, "the lawyer
and the artist do not work so hard and continuously as the ploughman,
and should receive less wages than he - a bushel of wheat represents as
much labor as a speech or portrait, and should be exchanged for the one
or the other." Such a system of trade and exchange would equalize
conditions, but would banish civilization. Yet do these men show, that,
by means of the taxation and oppression, which capital and skill
exercise over labor, the rich, the professional, the trading and skillful
part of society, have become the masters of the laboring masses: whose
condition, already intolerable, is daily becoming worse. They point out
distinctly the character of the disease under which the patient is
laboring, but see no way of curing the disease except by killing the
patient.
Cannibals All!
In the preceding chapter, we illustrated their theory of capital by a single
example. We might give hundreds of illustrations, and yet the subject is so
difficult that few readers will take the trouble to understand it. Let us take
two well known historical instances: England became possessed of two fine
islands, Ireland and Jamaica. Englishmen took away, or defrauded, from the
Irish, their lands; but professed to leave the people free. The people,
however, must have the use of land, or starve. The English charged them, in
rent, so much, that their allowance, after deducting that rent, was not half
that of Jamaica slaves. They were compelled to labor for their landlords, by
the fear of hunger and death - forces stronger than the overseer's lash. They
worked more, and did not get half so much pay or allowance as the Jamaica
negroes…. The Irish became the subject of capital - slaves, with no masters
obliged by law, self-interest or domestic affections, to provide for them. The
freest people in the world, in the loose and common sense of words, their
condition, moral, physical and religious, was far worse than that of civilized
slaves ever has been or ever can be - for at length, after centuries of slow
starvation, three hundred thousand perished in a single season, for want of
food. Englishmen took the lands of Jamaica also, but introduced negro
slaves, whom they were compelled to support at all seasons, and at any
cost. The negroes were comfortable, until philanthropy taxed the poor of
England and Ireland a hundred millions to free them. Now, they enjoy Irish
liberty, whilst the English hold all the good lands. They are destitute and
savage, and in all respects worse off than when in slavery. (Emphasis added)
Cannibals All!
“It seems to us that the vain attempts to define liberty in
theory, or to secure its enjoyment in practice, proceed
from the fact that man is naturally a social and gregarious
animal, subject, not by contract or agreement, as Locke
and his followers assume, but by birth and nature, to
those restrictions of liberty which are expedient or
necessary to secure the good of the human hive, to
which he may belong. There is no such thing as natural
human liberty, because it is unnatural for man to live
alone and without the pale and government of society.
Birds, and beasts of prey, who are not gregarious, are
naturally free. Bees and herds are naturally subjects or
slaves of society. Such is the theory of Aristotle,
promulged more than two thousand years ago, generally
considered true for two thousand years, and destined, we
hope, soon again to be accepted as the only true theory
of government and society.” (Emphasis added)
Proslavery
From photographs by T. B. Bishop, these images of "the escaped slave" and
"the escaped slave in the Union Army" appeared in Harper's Weekly during
the Civil War. Antislavery literature continually emphasized slaves' virtue and
agency: their willingness to run away from slavery and to fight for their
freedom. If slaves could make good soldiers, as these images in the
northern press suggested, they must be worthy of freedom. Reprinted from
Harper's Weekly, July 2, 1864. In the original, "the escaped slave" appears
above "the escaped slave in the Union Army."
Themes: Anti-Capitalist Views
Walker:
1.
2.
The idea of “property” needs more
content. Pre-exisiting distribution of
wealth and power are crucial for claims
that trade or exchange in anything are
“just”.
A Lockean theory of property: slaves
worked the land, improved it, they should
own it.
Anti-Capitalist Views
Marx, Chapter 26, Capital:
...[C]apitalistic production presupposes the preexistence of considerable masses of capital and
of labour-power in the hands of producers of
commodities. The whole movement, therefore,
seems to turn in a vicious circle, out of which we
can only get by supposing a primitive
accumulation (previous accumulation of Adam
Smith) preceding capitalistic accumulation; an
accumulation not the result of the capitalistic
mode of production, but its starting point.
Anti-Capitalist Views
Marx, Chapter 26, Capital:
This primitive accumulation plays in Political Economy about the same
part as original sin in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin
fell on the human race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it
is told as an anecdote of the past. In times long gone-by there were
two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal
elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in
riotous living.... Thus it came to pass that the former sort
accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell
except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of
the great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to
sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly
although they have long ceased to work....
[A]s soon as the question of property crops up, it becomes a sacred
duty to proclaim the intellectual food of the infant as the one thing fit
for all ages and for all stages of development. In actual history it is
notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, briefly force,
play the great part. In the tender annals of Political Economy, the
idyllic reigns from time immemorial. Right and “labour” were from all
time the sole means of enrichment, the present year of course always
excepted....
Anti-Capitalist Views
Fitzhugh:
1.
2.
3.
All labor is enslaved. Better to be enslaved
to a master, who owns your value.
Competition is destructive, and competition
for property is corrosive to society and social
capital. Better to be settled, and have
community.
Subsistence wage in capitalist system may
not guarantee survival. No schooling, no
social mobility. So “freedom” is a cruel
illusion.
Anti-Capitalist Views
Fitzhugh:
4.
5.
6.
Predicts collapse of laissez-faire capitalism
Decries “social Darwinism.” Competition and
social “nature, red in tooth and claw” actually
destroy fabric of culture, make happiness
impossible. For him, slaves were the freest
of all, because they had no responsibilities.
Very similar to passages in Marx, describing
the proletariat after the revolution.
Worries about atomistic individualism.
Values communities, even among slaves
Commonalities
1. Human nature is fixed, and
immutable.
Fitzhugh: Aristotelian hierarchy, with many only
fit to serve others. Cannot rise
Walker: Whites are completely socialized to
keep blacks repressed. With only a very few
exceptions, all whites are inherently and
irredeemably racist. Only African power, and
white blood, will give freedom to blacks.
Commonalities
2. Rejection of Locke, or at least claim
Locke is irrelevant.
Walker: Pre-existing rights don’t. Or else they reify
illegitimate power relations. The way to get rights is
to seize power. Rules are made to protect the
powerful
Fitzhugh: Even more complete rejection of Locke.
Robert Filmer, Thomas Carlyle were his icons.
“Free” trade benefits only the wealthy, those with
access to the market. Hierarchy is not only natural,
but necessary, natural. Slaves are the freest, and
free labor is slavery to capital.
Commonalities
3. Rejection of Jefferson.
Walker: “Has Mr. Jefferson declared to the world, that we are inferior
to the whites, both in the endowments of our bodies & of minds? It
is indeed surprising, that a man of such great learning… should
speak so of a set of men in chains. I do not know what to compare
it to, unless, like putting one wild deer in an iron cage, where it will
be secured, & hold another by the side of the same, then let it go, &
expect the one in the cage to run as fast as the one at liberty…
Mr. Jefferson's very severe remarks on us have been so extensively
argued upon by men whose attainments in literature, I shall never
be able to reach, that I would not have meddled with it, were it not
to solicit each of my brethren, who has the spirit of a man, to buy a
copy of Mr. Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia," & put it in the hand of
his son. For let no one of us suppose that the refutations which
have been written by our white friends are enough—they are
whites—we are blacks. We, & the world wish to see the charges of
Mr. Jefferson refuted by the blacks themselves, according to their
chance: for we must remember that what the whites have written
respecting this subject, is other men's labors and did not emanate
from the blacks.
Commonalities
3. Rejection of Jefferson (cont): He Had NOTHING
to Do With ’76, EVERYTHING to do with ‘61.
Fitzhugh: "All the bombastic absurdity in the Declaration of
Independence about the inalienable rights of man, had about
as much to do with the occasion as would a sermon or oration
on the teething of a child or the kittening of a cat . . . Our
institutions, State and Federal, imported from England where
they had grown up naturally and imperceptibly . . . would have
lasted for many ages, had not thoughtless, half-informed,
speculative men, like Jefferson, succeeded in basing them on
such inflammable materials. . . . The Revolution of 76 was, in
its action, an exceedingly natural and conservative affair; it
was only the false and unnecessary theories invoked to justify
it that were radical, agrarian and anarchical." (Fitzhugh,
“Revolutions of ’76 and ’61 Contrasted,” 1863).
My own work: Larger Project….
Cases Involving Negro Slavery: Catterall
(1927)
 Legislative voting and ideal point
estimation

Did Southerners Favor Slavery?





Not asking if they thought it was a necessary evil. “Wolf
by the Ear” (Jefferson)
Disturbing realization for me, second time.
First was on reading about the Milgrom experiments.
Second was on reading the letters, papers, and writings
of southern slave-owners.
In both cases, I was brought up short by a realization:
(1) I would have administered the shocks.
(2) I would have defended, and favored, slavery.
Did Southerners Favor Slavery?
I am not proud of either of these facts. We
tend to think of prison camp guards, and
slave-owners, as simply being innately
evil, incomprehensible monsters. They
are not. They are us, in a different time
and place.
Southerners favored slavery, by and large.
They were raised in a culture that gave
them the intellectual infrastructure that
their minds could use to explain slavery.
And they valued belonging to that culture.
Did Southerners Favor Slavery?
“But let me not be understood as admitting, even by
implication, that the existing relations between the
races in the slaveholding states is an evil—far
otherwise; I hold it to be a good, as it has thus far
been proved itself to be to both, and will continue to
prove so if not disturbed by the fell spirit of
abolition.
We now believe it has been a great blessing to both
of the races—the European and African, which, by
a mysterious Providence, have been brought
together in the Southern section of this Union. The
one has greatly improved, and the other has not
deteriorated; while in our political point of view, it
has been the great stay of the Union and our free
institutions, and one of the mains sources of the
unbounded prosperity of the whole.” (John C.
Calhoun, speech before Congress, 1837).
Did Southerners Favor Slavery?
Robert Walsh (1819) argued in terms of material
benefits:
“The physical condition of the American negro is, on
the whole, not comparatively alone, but positively
good, and he is exempt from those racking
anxieties-the exacerbations of despair, to which the
English manufacturer and peasant are subject to in
their pursuit of their pittance.... Where the institution
of slavery does not exist, there are other institutions
generating an hundred fold more vice, misery, and
debasement, than we have ever witnessed in the
same compass in America” (emphasis in original;
quoted in Tise 1987, pp. 98).
Did Southerners Favor Slavery?
Ultimately, Southerners made a virtue of necessity,
chose to believe it, and condemned American blacks
to more than a century of oppression. And,
interestingly, the white south itself paid a huge cost in
foregone development, just so it could ensure
control….
“In the free black, the principle of idleness and
dissipation triumphs over that of accumulation and the
desire to better our condition; the animal part of the
man gains the victory over the moral, and he,
consequently, prefers sinking down into the listless,
inglorious response of the brute creation, to rising to
that energetic activity which can only be generated
amid the multiplied, refined, and artificial wants of
civilized society.” (Dew, 1832, p. 30, after Virginia
abolition debates in legislature.)
1856
1851
1846
1841
1836
1831
1826
1821
1816
1811
1806
YEAR
Price of Slaves. Dollars per Field Hand
1600
1400
25
1000
20
800
15
600
10
400
200
5
0
0
Price of Cotton. Cents per Pound
Prices of Cotton and Slaves, 1802-1860
35
Slave Price
Cotton Price
30
1200
Number of Slave Revolts, 1800-1860
18
Number of Slave Revolts
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
00 02 04 06 08 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60
18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18
Likelihood of a Regime Shift in Slave Pricing, 1815-1850
0.91
0.9
0.89
0.88
R2
0.87
0.86
0.85
0.84
0.83
0.82
1815
1820
1825
1830
1835
1840
1845
1850