Southern Strategies to Maintain Slavery

Key Insight

Since Southerners are unwilling to fuse with Negroes, they choose not to set them free, believing they must preserve slavery 'in order to live.' As enlightenment spread, Southerners recognized slavery's harm to masters but also its perceived impossibility to destroy. This led to a striking contrast: slavery became 'more and more firmly established in law as its utility has been more and more contested,' with increasingly harsh consequences drawn from its principle in the South.

Southern legislation regarding slaves exhibits 'unprecedented atrocity,' reflecting a 'profound perturbation in the laws of humanity.' While not necessarily increasing the physical harshness of servitude, Southerners have 'spiritualized despotism and violence.' Instead of merely preventing slaves from breaking chains, they seek to 'sap his desire to do so,' focusing on controlling the mind rather than just the body.

This strategy includes imposing 'harsh penalties for teaching them to read and write,' aiming to keep Negroes 'as close as possible to the level of a brute.' The prospect of freedom, previously used to alleviate slavery, is now seen as dangerous if freed slaves cannot assimilate. The presence of freed Negroes 'vaguely disquieted the souls of the unfree,' arousing 'first glimmerings of an idea of their rights,' leading most Southern states to strip masters of the prerogative to easily free their slaves.