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Dbq Slavery In America

Decent Essays

The issue of slavery in the U.S. was controversial during the 19th century. There was division within the states on the decision of how to deal with the slavery issue - keep it? Or abolish it? On the pro-slavery side, advocates used legal, religious, and economic arguments to defend the institution of slavery. Many of the reasons given by the supporters of the “peculiar institution” were challenging to fight against, which is why slavery was a prolonged issue. Slavery supporters fought for what kept their economy running, what they believed was rightfully their property, and what they believed was good for the slaves - simply because the Bible told them so. The South in the 1800s, which generally consisted of pro-slave states, relied greatly …show more content…

In the 1850s and 1860s, while only about one-fourth of white southerners owned slaves, they were respected much more than the nonslaveholding whites, who were labeled, even by slaves, as being “poor white trash”. Owning slaves not only had its economic advantages, but it also had social advantages. Slave masters needed their slaves to make a living and to keep their social standings, and to many, if not all, slave-owning southerners, slaves were seen as their property; they paid for their slaves, therefore, the slaves rightfully belong to them. When their rights to their “property” were threatened, slaveowners had every right to take defensive actions. Threats became most serious when new states began joining the Union, becoming free-states, and balance in the Senate, involving the equal representation of pro-slave states and free-states had been upset, giving free-states the upper-hand. The South already knew their peculiar institution was threatened by just the mere existence of anti-slavery abolitionists and others who were unsupportive of the practice of slavery, so when their political disadvantage launched forward with the disbalance of their representation in the Senate, it was clear that the threats were becoming more and more real. With the possibility of slavery coming to an end being more …show more content…

They claimed that slavery was “supported by the authority of the Bible and the wisdom of Aristotle” (p 353). Setting aside the cruelty and the doubts of the morality of slavery, the southern Christians believed they had blessed the Africans, “who were lifted from the barbarism of the jungle and clothed with the blessings of the Christian civilization” (p 353). Evidently, Christian slaveholders believed they were “saviors” in a sense, because they had given these people “luxuries” that they would not have received in Africa. Looking at this standpoint today, one can argue that these slave owners were not entirely incorrect: Do African Americans have more today than many people who live in Africa? Yes. But was what the slaveholders provided for their slaves better than what they could have had back in Africa? Most likely not. Regardless of the morality of the situation, in their eyes, some slaveowners were truly convinced that God wanted them to “do this” for the African people, and their “graciousness” was given to the African people by God’s will. With this set mentality of slavery being what God would want and the slaveholders being providers for their slaves, if slavery were to be taken away, it would be like going against God. Taking away slavery would take away the “support” given by the slaves’

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