They're Savage, So You Can Justify Treating Them Savagely
"The Universal Law of Slavery," by George FitzhughHe the Negro is simply a grown upwardly child, and must be governed equally a kid, not equally a lunatic or criminal. The chief occupies toward him the identify of parent or guardian. We shall not dwell on this view, for no one will differ with us who thinks every bit we practise of the negro's capacity, and we might argue till dooms-day in vain, with those who have a high stance of the negro's moral and intellectual capacity.
Secondly. The negro is improvident; will non lay up in summer for the wants of winter; will not accrue in youth for the exigencies of age. He would become an insufferable burden to club. Society has the correct to prevent this, and tin only practice so by subjecting him to domestic slavery. In the terminal place, the negro race is inferior to the white race, and living in their midst, they would be far outstripped or outwitted in the chaos of gratuitous competition. Gradual just certain extermination would be their fate. Nosotros presume the maddest abolitionist does not call up the negro's providence of habits and money-making chapters at all to compare to those of the whites. This defect of character would alone justify enslaving him, if he is to remain hither. In Africa or the West Indies, he would become idolatrous, fell and carnivorous, or be devoured by savages and cannibals. At the North he would freeze or starve.
We would remind those who deprecate and sympathize with negro slavery, that his slavery here relieves him from a far more savage slavery in Africa, or from idolatry and cannibalism, and every brutal vice and crime that tin can disgrace humanity; and that it christianizes, protects, supports and civilizes him; that information technology governs him far ameliorate than free laborers at the Northward are governed. There, wife-murder has go a mere vacation pastime; and where so many wives are murdered, almost all must exist brutally treated. Nay, more; men who kill their wives or care for them brutally, must exist set for all kinds of crime, and the calendar of crime at the North proves the inference to be correct. Negroes never kill their wives. If it be objected that legally they accept no wives, then we reply, that in an experience of more forty years, nosotros never yet heard of a negro human killing a negro adult female. Our negroes are not just better off as to physical comfort than free laborers, merely their moral condition is better.
The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. The children and the aged and infirm work not at all, and yet take all the comforts and necessaries of life provided for them. They enjoy liberty, because they are oppressed neither by care nor labor. The women practise footling hard work, and are protected from the despotism of their husbands past their masters. The negro men and stout boys work, on the average, in practiced atmospheric condition, not more than ix hours a day. The residual of their time is spent in perfect abandon. Besides' they have their Sabbaths and holidays. White men, with then much of license and liberty, would die of ennui; but negroes luxuriate in corporeal and mental placidity. With their faces upturned to the sun, they can sleep at whatsoever 60 minutes; and tranquility sleep is the greatest of homo enjoyments. "Blessed exist the man who invented sleep." 'Tis happiness in itself--and results from contentment with the present, and confident assurance of the future.
A common charge preferred against slavery is, that it induces idleness with the masters. The trouble, care and labor, of providing for married woman, children and slaves, and of properly governing and administering the whole affairs of the subcontract, is usually borne on small estates by the chief. On larger ones, he is aided by an overseer or manager. If they practice their duty, their time is fully occupied. If they exercise not, the estate goes to ruin. The mistress, on Southern farms, is usually more busily, usefully and benevolently occupied than whatever one on the farm. She unites in her person, the offices of married woman, female parent, mistress, housekeeper, and sister of charity. And she fulfills all these offices admirably well. The rich men, in free society, may, if they please, lounge near town, visit clubs, nourish the theatre, and take no other trouble than that of collecting rents, interest and dividends of stock. In a well constituted slave society, there should be no idlers. Simply we cannot divine how the capitalists in gratis society are to put to piece of work. The principal labors for the slave, they substitution industrial value. Only the backer, living on his income, gives nothing to his subjects. He lives past mere exploitations.
The Blackness American
A Documentary History, 3rd Edition, past Leslie H. Fishel, Jr. and Benjamin Quarles, Scott, Foresman and Visitor, Illinois, 1976,1970
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Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3141t.html
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