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HIST 120 Dr. Schaffer

Excerpt from Sociology for the South, by George FitzHugh (1854)

Here Fitzhugh, a white Southerner, advances a defense of slavery that

incorporates many of the myths that Southerners used to justify their

enslavement of African Americans. 1

TO THE PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH. We dedicate this little work to

you, because it is a zealous and honest effort to promote your peculiar

interests. Society has been so quiet and contented in the South – it has suffered

so little from crime or extreme poverty, that its attention has not been awakened

to the revolutionary tumults, uproar … and crime of free society. Few are aware

of the blessings they enjoy, or of the evils from which they are exempt.

…[W]e have shewn that the world is divided between two philosophies.

The one the philosophy of free trade and universal liberty—the philosophy

adapted to promote the interests of the strong, the wealthy and the wise. The

other, that of socialism, intended to protect the weak, the poor and the ignorant. 2

The latter is almost universal in free society; the former prevails in the

slaveholding States of the South. Thus we see each section cherishing theories at

war with existing institutions. The people of the North and of Europe are pro-

slavery men in the abstract; those of the South are theoretical abolitionists. This

state of opinions is readily accounted for. The people in free society feel the evils

of universal liberty and free competition, and desire to get rid of those evils.

They propose a remedy, which is in fact slavery; but they are wholly

unconscious of what they are doing, because never having lived in the midst of

1 Adapted from http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/fitzhughsoc/fitzhugh.html

(University of Virginia). See also pp. 21718 of Out of Many. 2 Socialism is a belief in the need for cooperation and an emphasis on community,

commonly manifested in a call for collective or government ownership of the means

of production (that is, industry) and distribution of goods. There was a lot of interest

in socialism in Europe beginning in the early 1800s.

slavery, they know not what slavery is. The citizens of the South, who have seen

none of the evils of liberty and competition, but just enough of those agencies to

operate as healthful stimulants to energy, enterprise and industry, believe free

competition to be an unmixed good.

… A highly moral and intellectual people, like the free citizens of

ancient Athens, are best governed by a democracy. For a less moral and

intellectual one, a limited and constitutional monarchy will answer. For a people

either very ignorant or very wicked, nothing short of military despotism will

suffice. So among individuals, the most moral and well-informed members of

society require no other government than law. They are capable of reading and

understanding the law, and have sufficient self-control and virtuous disposition

to obey it. Children cannot be governed by mere law; first, because they do not

understand it, and secondly, because they are so much under the influence of

impulse, passion and appetite, that they want sufficient self-control to be

deterred or governed by the distant and doubtful penalties of the law. They must

be constantly controlled by parents or guardians, whose will and orders shall

stand in the place of law for them… Now, it is clear the Athenian democracy

would not suit a negro nation, nor will the government of mere law suffice for

the individual negro. He is but a grown up child, and must be governed as a

child, not as a lunatic or criminal. The master occupies towards him the place of

parent or guardian. We shall not dwell on this view, for no one will differ with us

who thinks as we do of the negro’s capacity, and we might argue till dooms-day,

in vain, with those who have a high opinion of the negro’s moral and intellectual

capacity.

…The negro is improvident; will not lay up in summer for the wants of

winter; will not accumulate in youth for the exigencies of age. He would become

an insufferable burden to society. Society has the right to prevent this, and can

only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery.

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HIST 120 Dr. Schaffer

…In the last place, the negro race is inferior to the white race, and living

in their midst, they would be far outstripped or outwitted in the chase of free

competition. Gradual but certain extermination would be their fate. We presume

the maddest abolitionist does not think the negro’s providence of habits and

money-making capacity at all to compare to those of the whites. This defect of

character would alone justify enslaving him, if he is to remain here. In Africa or

the West Indies, he would become idolatrous, savage and cannibal, or be

devoured by savages and cannibals. At the North he would freeze or starve.

. . . [A]bolish negro slavery, and how much of slavery still remains.

Soldiers and sailors in Europe enlist for life; here, for five years. Are they not

slaves who have not only sold their liberties, but their lives also? And they are

worse treated than domestic slaves. No domestic affection and self-interest

extend their aegis over them. No kind mistress, like a guardian angel, provides

for them in health, tends them in sickness, and soothes their dying pillow.

Wellington at Waterloo was a slave. 3 He was bound to obey, or would, like

admiral Bying, have been shot for gross misconduct, and might not, like a

common laborer, quit his work at any moment. He had sold his liberty, and

might not resign without the consent of his master, the king. The common

laborer may quit his work at any moment, whatever his contract; declare that

liberty is an inalienable right, and leave his employer to redress by a useless suit

for damages. The highest and most honorable position on earth was that of the

slave Wellington; the lowest, that of the free man who cleaned his boots and fed

his hounds. The African cannibal, caught, christianized and enslaved, is as much

elevated by slavery as was Wellington. The kind of slavery is adapted to the men

enslaved. Wives and apprentices are slaves; not in theory only, but often in fact.

Children are slaves to their parents, guardians and teachers. Imprisoned culprits

are slaves. Lunatics and idiots are slaves also. Three-fourths of free society are

slaves, no better treated, when their wants and capacities are estimated, than

negro slaves. The masters in free society, or slave society, if they perform

properly their duties, have more cares and less liberty than the slaves themselves.

“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou earn thy bread!” made all men slaves, and

such all good men continue to be….

3 At the battle of Waterloo in 1815, the English (under Lord Wellington) defeated

Napoleon and the French.

…The advocates of universal liberty concede that the laboring class

enjoy more material comfort, are better fed, clothed and housed, as slaves, than

as freemen. The statistics of crime demonstrate that the moral superiority of the

slave over the free laborer is still greater than his superiority in animal well-

being. There never can be among slaves a class so degraded as is found about the

wharves and suburbs of cities. The master requires and enforces ordinary

morality and industry. . . .

The free laborer rarely has a house and home of his own; he is insecure

of employment, sickness may overtake him at any time and deprive him of the

means of support; old age is certain to overtake him, if he lives, and generally

finds him without the means of subsistence. . . .

In free society the sentiments, principles, feelings and affections of high

and low, rich and poor, are equally blunted and debased by the continual war of

competition. It begets rivalries, jealousies and hatreds on all hands. The poor can

neither love nor respect the rich, who, instead of aiding and protecting them, are

endeavoring to cheapen their labor and take away their means of subsistence.

The rich can hardly respect themselves, when they reflect that wealth is the result

of avarice, caution, circumspection and hard dealing. . . .

Now listen to the conclusion and see whether the practical remedy

proposed be not Slavery. We believe there is not an intelligent reformist in the

world who does not see the necessity of slavery—who does not advocate its

reinstitution in all save the name. Every one of them concurs in deprecating free

competition, and in the wish and purpose to destroy it. To destroy it is to destroy

Liberty, and where liberty is destroyed, slavery is established….

At the slaveholding South all is peace, quiet, plenty and contentment. We

have no mobs, no trades unions, no strikes for higher wages, no armed resistance

to the law, but little jealousy of the rich by the poor. We have but few in our

jails, and fewer in our poor houses. We produce enough of the comforts and

necessaries of life for a population three or four times as numerous as ours. We

are wholly exempt from the torrent of pauperism, crime, agrarianism, and

infidelity which Europe is pouring from her jails and alms houses on the already

crowded North. Population increases slowly, wealth rapidly. In the tide water

region of Eastern Virginia, as far as our experience extends, the crops have

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HIST 120 Dr. Schaffer

doubled in fifteen years, whilst the population has been almost stationary. In the

same period the lands, owing to improvements of the soil and the many fine

houses erected in the country, have nearly doubled in value. This ratio of

improvement has been approximated or exceeded wherever in the South slaves

are numerous. We have enough for the present, and no Malthusian spectres

frightening us for the future. 4 Wealth is more equally distributed than at the

North, where a few millionaires own most of the property of the country. (These

millionaires are men of cold hearts and weak minds; they know how to make

money, but not how to use it, either for the benefit of themselves or of others.)

High intellectual and moral attainments, refinement of head and heart, give

standing to a man in the South, however poor he may be. Money is, with few

exceptions, the only thing that ennobles at the North. We have poor among us,

but none who are over-worked and under-fed. We do not crowd cities because

lands are abundant and their owners kind, merciful and hospitable. The poor are

as hospitable as the rich, the negro as the white man. Nobody dreams of turning

a friend, a relative, or a stranger from his door. The very negro who deems it no

crime to steal, would scorn to sell his hospitality. We have no loafers, because

the poor relative or friend who borrows our horse, or spends a week under our

roof, is a welcome guest. …Actual liberty and equality with our white population

has been approached much nearer than in the free States. Few of our whites ever

work as day laborers, none as cooks, scullions, ostlers, body servants, or in other

menial capacities. One free citizen does not lord it over another; hence that

feeling of independence and equality that distinguishes us; hence that pride of

character, that self-respect, that gives us ascendancy when we come in contact

with Northerners. It is a distinction to be a Southerner, as it was once to be a

Roman citizen….

4 Thomas Malthus was an English demographer who argued that the population will

tend to increase faster than the food supply.