Arguments for slavery?

Question

In my histroy class we are having a debate and we were assigned sides to be on, either pro slavery, or anit slavery, so does anyone know arguments that were used to support slavery before the civil war? Any resources?

Answer 1

Many people argued that freeing all of the slaves at once would ruin the state of the economy because, allegedly, African-slaves would have know idea how to integrate into a "civilized" society.

As well as, there were a number of slave owners who freed their slaves, but the slaves refused to leave because they were actually treated well (more like employees). It might behoove you to read Harriet Beecher Stowe's, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to find a genuine perspective on the issue.

Answer 2

#1, it would have plunged the US into a great depression had slavery ended if it had not been for the Civil War and depression in population.

#2 It was an extremely harsh world for the slaves when they were released. Even when the war created more jobs, many slaves were stuck in poverty.

#3 Slavery wasn't really that bad of an institution to begin with. While it is true that a lot of slaves were abused, many were at least content in their current condition. Actually, when some slaves were freed, they continued their lives as they had been, as though nothing had happened.

#4 Slaves never had to worry about lean times, bad harvests, or anything that free men did, as they would always be taken care of.

These are the main arguments toward it. There are a few more minor ones out there, but that's pretty much it. It would also be good to note that slavery would have died out by itself in time. There was only so much land to farm, and eventually, all of the slaves would be freed one by one. If this had been allowed to happen, a lot of these above problems would not have been problems.

Answer 3

Despite the notion we have today of slavery, it is almost certain that slaves were not physically mistreated as some sources make us believe. The logic of that is simple.

If there is a market for slaves, and the market is accessed by many buyers, the market price will be set around the expected productivity of a slave. Now imagine what is better for you, pay for a slave, mistreat and kill him, forcing you to get another slave, or treating a slave fairly and get as much productivity as you can from him for as long as his natural life as possible.

On the other side, in the same era, a free worker in a factory was paid what was called then a "survival wage". Since you did not own the expected future productivity of the worker and did not pay for it, you paid a wage as low as possible that allow a person to barel live and when the workeer was wated by efforts, you just fire him and get another.

Nothwistanding the inherent evil of forcing another person to be treated like a property (the real horror of slavery), who do you think had a better life expectancy? who exploited physically his workers less? The slaver!!!!

Answer 4

It was argued (they lost) that the profits to farmers would be greatly diminished if they had to pay the workers. The plantation owners didn't want to try and compete with the far more industrialized north of that time. I'm not sure there is a good argument (not that this was) in today's world at all. It might be best if in preparing your argument on behalf of a pro-slavery movement you present it in such a way that is less offensive by using an imaginary group of beings, (say martians have immigrated from outer-space). It would be a lot easier to then imagine enslaving entities that do not actually exist to make your argument.

Answer 5

They used the idea of the "white man's burden", which was the idea that we were bringing religion, culture, and a better life to the slaves. (Kinda bunk considering it was illegal to teach them to read and that they would be a permanent underclass until the 1960's.) Also, slavery had been practiced at many times before in world history--so why shouldn't we? I have heard (but haven't seen from a real source) that many slaves were sold by their own people.

Another way to look at is is economics--it was a different time. The slaves provided needed labor. Labor was provided in northern states by white people who lived in worse conditions than slaves--look up the history of a coal mining town. (Of course, the economic entrapment that was done by coal companies is very similar to slavery, but without the label.)

It's a tough one to justify--just make an effort and I think you'll pass the assignment. If slavery were really justifyable, you wouldn't see the worldwide effort to eradicate it today.

Answer 6

Slavery was an economic issue as well as a moral issue. For the plantation owners who bought the slaves to run and work their plantations, huge investments of money were made in purchasing those slaves. To set them free would mean they would have to hire people to work the fields, an impossible thing for them to do financially. So, they argued that the slaves were their "property." Others argued that they were an inferior race, and buying them and putting them to work as well as caring for their survival needs were actually "saving" the race.

Chow!!

Answer 7

The South wanted to keep the slaves because it was free labor! Why would you want to pay for what you were getting for free? This is how they saw it. They felt that by freeing the slaves it would ruin the world as they knew it. They would no longer be able to maintain the lifestyles to which they were accustomed. After all, think of all the wages they didn't have to pay when they were the 'owners' of the help.
These are a few of the arguments they used and believed in.

Answer 8

The history of slavery in the United States began soon after Europeans first settled in what became the United States. All slaves were freed by 1865 during the American Civil War, many by Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation but finally and completely by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

From about the 1640s until 1865, people of African descent were legally enslaved within the boundaries of the present United States by whites, American Indians and free blacks. Holding Indians as slaves was practiced in the 17th century and as late as 1867 in the case of the Tlingit tribe in Alaska which owned Indian slaves. The economy of the country was enhanced by the labor afforded by slavery.

While estimates of the number of slaves brought to North America vary from a few hundred thousand to a few million, and thus cannot be stated for certain, it is known that the slave population in the United States had grown to 4 million by the 1860 Census. In other countries, the slave population barely reproduced itself. From the later eighteenth century, and possibly before that even, and until the Civil War, the rate of natural growth of North American slaves was much greater than for the population of any nation in Europe, and was nearly twice as rapid as that of England.

Answer 9

your class should be debating states rights and who is better to decide how things should be run within a state, that state's government or a federal government. that is what the civil war was about....Not slavery. If your history teacher is teaching you that slavery was the issue that brought on the civil war, then his/her teaching license should be revoked.

http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/causes.html

http://ngeorgia.com/history/why.html

http://www.ket.org/civilwar/causes.html

Answer 10

Try this link..it has several articles which may help you for your school project in particular the ones which have the thoughts of people who actually lived in those dark days...

http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/slavery/Slavery.htm