The Slavery theorist and the anti-slavery politician

 

So how did the Southern Democrats of Andrew Jackson’s day get the idea that slavery was good?  Senator Calhoun of S. Carolina defended slavery not as a necessary evil but as good for all.  He and his Dixie brethren rejected the thinking of the founders, that slavery was opposed to “All men are created equal,” and that it should be scheduled for abolition.  Calhoun made it racist.  He saw the Declaration as, “an utterly false view of the subordinate relation of the black and white races.” But where did Calhoun get this idea?

George Fitzhugh was an author of the era who penned books and wrote regularly in pro-slavery publications. Southern cotton planters were growing fabulously rich, half the exports of the USA were cotton by the 1840s, all made possible by Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793.  A large political lobby surrounded this wealth and it went on a public relations campaign to change, among others, many Southern churches who were adamantly anti-slavery. And they used Fitzhugh’s advocacy of slavery to change opinions.  Fitzhugh was a socialist who thought of all labor as either free labor or slave labor.  Superficially, free laborers seem to have it better, but their bosses have no regard for their well-being.  They are wage-slaves.  Capitalist manufacturers are evil. Entrepreneurs are basically slave masters who have no obligation to the workers. These notions fit with populist, anti-business Democrats of the North.  On the other hand, Fitzhugh argued, slave labor is something more like family; the slave is kept from cradle to grave in security. The plantation is like a commune, “in which the master furnishes the capital and skill, and the slaves the labor, and divide the profits, not according to each one’s input, but according to each one’s wants and necessities.”  This might sound like Marx.  But Fitzhugh thought little of European socialists because they were trying to create a system based on idealized behavior, and you can’t change human nature.  Slavery was tried and true and could provide a model for all workers, white as well. Fitzhugh’s concepts would live on after the Civil War in the Democrat party.  So would the racism that rationalized slavery.

            Racism becomes justified in the minds of superiors when one race rules another for a long period of time. The squalor that slaves live in, the lack of education, the seeming lack of smarts, becomes tied to race.  The racist concept is that they live that way, not because of their treatment, but because it is natural for them, and thus the treatment is justified.  In practice, masters lived a life of leisure, sired offspring from slaves, used the whip, browbeat the slaves into thinking themselves worthless, and bought and sold them at will. 

            What opposed this exploitation?  Christianity says that all are saved, not by their own doing but by grace—undeserved favor of God.  “There are neither Jew nor Greek, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian nor Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.” (Colossians 3:11) It seems like a clear case but in practical politics, the abolitionists of the church were not successful. Other contrarians interpreted scripture in their own view. Then came Abraham Lincoln.  This lawyer who had grown up as a pioneer kid reasoned with farmers and shop owners who made up most of America.  If the Negro grows corn, he should be able to eat that corn, said Lincoln. (the contrapositive of “If a man does not work, neither shall he eat” from Thessalonians) If you think it is about skin color, then won’t you meet someone of lighter skin color somewhere?  Does he then have a right to enslave you? If you think it is intelligence, you’ll surely meet someone smarter than you.  Does he have a right to enslave you? (“If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” Galatians 6) And concerning the slave ownership of the founders, Lincoln counted each founder who later voted in Congress not to expand slavery—92% of them wanted it stopped.  Lincoln quoted scriptures so often that if he were to speak in today’s political world, many would label him a religious kook. Lincoln got his scripture training simply.  His step-mother Sarah home-schooled him with the only two books she possessed, the Bible and a biography of George Washington. And as a bright student, he reasoned every spiritual principle until he had logical arguments about life. Those arguments turned the views of USA around in one election in 1860.  If ever there were a lesson in the need for Christians to involve themselves politically—however they see fitting-- look to Abraham Lincoln who translated his faith into practical arguments.