Fitzhugh's Views Of Slavery As A Prisoner

Today slavery is commonly viewed with a mixture of outrage and disgust. Some have declared slavery as the Original Sin of the United States. While many would love to erase the stain of slavery from the history of the United States, there were men and women who defended slavery. One of these slave supporters was Fitzhugh. Some of his arguments are on target; however, Fitzhugh seems blinded by his devotion. He contends that slavery is needed and as beneficial to the slave as the master.

Fitzhugh stands on the idea of the benevolent master as a father. Subservience alone may allow mutual affection between two people. He likens the familial bonds of a father to the relationship between master and slave. He states that all society has a substratum people, in the south these people are slaves, and the substratum of the north are factory workers and immigrants. In the south under the protection of slavery the weak and the poor are provided for, not unlike children. Conversely, in the north the poor and the weak are crushed beneath the grind of the free market. Fitzhugh’s comments on the slave master relationship, saying that the needs of the master require the preservation of the slave. The slave he continues is

Slavery was abolished. There was resistance to the idea of the happy slave in the north, but the greatest opposition would have come from men like Fredrick Douglass. Douglass had lived as a slave and a freeman, he had suffered as a slave and become a freeman. Men and women who had suffered the burden of slavery and tasted freedom would have spoken out against Fitzhugh’s belief that slaves were happy. Some people may have believed Fitzhugh’s words and consider the black slaves of the south cared for. However, the truth of the south was that the economy of the south needed slaves to survive. It had relied on slaves for so long the loss of slaves as labor broke the southern