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Heather Rolfe

History 1700-503

10/8/17

Who Benefitted from Slavery in America?

The abolitionists in the North were pressuring the South to completely do away with

slavery and free all the slaves the way the Constitution intended. The people in the South

however relied on slavery for their livelihood and economic growth, and claimed that slavery

was codependent because they relied on the slaves as much as the slaves relied on them. I would

argue that the slave owners were the sole beneficiaries in the relationship. These slave owners

claim to be taking care of those who they enslaved, all the while committing various atrocities

against them such as; separating children from their parents, beating their slaves, and even killing

them. With so much tension and turmoil between the North and the South when it came to

slavery a boiling point was imminent.

The people in the South had many reasons for why they thought slavery should not be

done away with. For instance, John C. Calhoun believed that it would disturb the harmony in the

South because the plantation owners took care of the communities that had formed on their

plantations (Calhoun, 1838). He also believed that the slaves had become more civilized than

they had ever been and that to free them would ruin what had been obtained, and that it would

result in a catastrophe (Calhoun, 1838). George Fitzhugh argued that slavery was a good thing

because it kept the slaves from being idle, and much like a child and parent relationship slavery

kept the slaves inline and kept them from getting into trouble (Fitzhugh, 1850). Fitzhugh also

pointed out that, women and children do not do jobs that required hard labor, and in good

weather; men and physically fit boys only work a mere nine hours per day, with holidays and the
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Sabbath off (Fitzhugh, 1850). Calhoun and Fitzhugh were just two of the many people in the

South who believed that enslaving black people was doing them a favor because they were a

lesser race who were uncivilized.

The life of a slave was not as glorious and easy going as some of the slave owners

portrayed it to have been. Families were torn apart for various reasons; being traded or sold, and

even death. Slaves were also not allowed to learn how to read or write, and in some areas slaves

were not allowed to marry. Frederick Douglass, a runaway slave, recalls only meeting his mother

a handful of times, and when he did see her he would have to travel to her at night in secret, and

he was only able to see her in the light of the moon (A Fatal Contradiction, 2003). Another

former slave, Josiah Henson recalls the story of his father; Josiahs father was whipped one-

hundred times and his ear was cut off because he hit a white man when going to aide of Josiahs

mother. Not long after that Josiahs father was sent to Alabama and Josiah never heard from him

again (Henson, 1858). Some plantation owners did take special measures for slaves who were

pregnant, nursing, or unwell, this can be seen in the Hammond Manual. The Hammond Manual

outlines that slaves who are nursing should not work more than a half a mile from the childrens

house, nursing mothers will do three-fifths the work of a regular worker, and it also states that

pregnant women should start abiding by the same rules as nursing mothers once they are in their

fifth month of pregnancy, and the infirmed should follow the same rules (Hammond Manual,

1857).

There were many attempts to resist slavery. One major attempt was Nat Turners

rebellion; Nat Turner was a slave who enlisted other slaves to kill their owners and their families,

up to sixty-five white people were killed, in turn fifty-six slaves were killed and Virginia

weighed the option of outlawing slavery, but did not end up doing so (American Civilization, A
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Brief History, p.151-152). Samuel Warner, a Northern abolitionist, used Nat Turners rebellion

as an example of how the South had pushed black people too far, and argued that black people

deserved all the rights that were promised in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (Warner,

1831). Another attempt to resist slavery was the Underground Railroad, which was a network of

people who sympathized with slaves and wanted to help them escape to freedom, these people

did so in secret and if they were caught they may be fined, imprisoned or worse, some of them

were white people and others were slaves who had previously escaped to freedom themselves

(American Civilization, A Brief History, p.179). Harriet Tubman, a runaway slave herself, was a

major player in helping hundreds of slaves escape via the Underground Railroad, so much so that

the people in the South placed a forty-thousand-dollar bounty on her head, but that did not stop

her from returning to the South countless times to help other people reach freedom (Underground

Railroad, 2010). The Underground Railroad was successful because, while there are no exact

numbers, it is estimated that it helped fifty to one hundred thousand slaves escape the South

(American Civilization, A Brief History, p.179).

In conclusion, the only reason that the Southerners wanted slavery was because it

benefitted them, the proposition that it somehow helped those who were enslaved is a fallacy

meant to provide moral justification to an abhorrent system. The slave owners claimed to take

care of the people in the communities that developed within their plantations, meanwhile they

were ripping children from their parents and mutilating people with whips and by other means,

all because they viewed them as a lesser race. The abolitionists were putting mounting pressure

on the slave owners in the South to change their ways and free the slaves. This was a pivotal time

in American history because it demonstrated the mounting tensions surrounding slavery in

American society, especially between the North and South.

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Works Cited

A Fatal Contradiction: Freedom, A History of the United States (2003)

American Civilizations, A Brief History (2014)

Calhoun, John C. - Sees "Slavery in its true light..." (1838)

Henson, Josiah - Father Henson's Story of His Own Life (1858)

Fitzhugh, George - "The Universal Law of Slavery" (1850)

Hammond Manual (1857)

Underground Railroad (2010)

Warner, Samuel - on Nat Turner's Insurrection (1831)