Of these three defenses of Southern society, the readings for today exemplify two: states rights in Calhoun, and the merits of the slaveowner republic in Fitzhugh (though the putative virtues of this type of republic could hardly be appreciated unless one believed in the right of the “master race” (Fitzhugh, 293) to rule). In addition, Calhoun’s discussion of liberty and security also bears upon the subject of Southern republican ideas.
In today’s lecture, it is the theory of the slaveowner republic that I will focus on, in particular the following aspects of it:
I will not discuss Calhoun’s theory of “concurrent majority”, but will post on the home page a condensation of his argument.
Capitalist economic relations in the North are brutal, creating a growing class of desperate people dependent on the vagaries of the labor market for bare survival. What he derisively calls the “White Slave Trade” is “far more cruel than the Black Slave Trade, because it exacts more of its slaves, and neither protects nor governs them.” And he further mocks Northern moral pretensions with the remark that the “respectable way of living is to make other people work for you, and to pay them nothing for so doing -- and to have no concern for them after their work is done. . . . They who work for you, who create your income, are slaves, without the rights of slaves. Slaves without a master!” (286). Slave “rights,” for Fitzhugh, derive from the master’s obligation to provide for the physical needs of his human property. Slaves are better off than workers in his mind because the latter lack the slaves material security, since Southern masters are not as heartlessly egocentric as Northern capitalists.
Northern politics is moving toward anarchy--the breakdown of all those forms of authority Fitzhugh cherishes. As he puts it,
Northern development is rapidly destroying all the forms of authority which Fitzhugh cherishes (and which he believes are necessary to social stability and harmony). While this seems overdrawn, perhaps deliberately -- he reads the North’s future from the manifestos of its radicals and utopians in order to skewer Northern sensibilities while cultivating fear of the Northern bogey among his Southern kin -- it does contain a half-truth. Fitzhugh believes that radical and utopian groups are making headway because the mass of discontented, isolated and often impoverished individuals grows larger in the North. “Mobs, secret associations, insurance companies, and social and communistic experiments are striking features and characteristics of our day, outside of slave society. They are all attempting to supply the defects of regular government” (289). By “regular government” Fitzhugh means elite paternalism. Unlike Southern slavemasters, Northern capitalists do not provide for or protect those whom they exploit. He foresees much the same ultimate result as did Marx, though with an opposite valuation of it: “It is not necessary to the security of property, that a majority of voters should own property; but where the pauper majority becomes so large as to disconnect the mass of them in feeling and interest from the property holding class, revolution and agrarianism are inevitable” (290).
Second, everyone belongs to one or another segment of society (this is their social place, usually a permanent one). The responsibility of the individual is to master the role or roles associated with their place in the social world. Third, each segment has a particular function or functions to perform (as do organs in the body), and each likewise is embedded in a constellation of usually hierarchic relations with other segments (slaves produce for masters who provide for slaves; genteel women inculcate social norms through childrearing and submit to the husband’s authority while husbands provide for their families; etc.). Fourth, by analogy with the brain, only of an elite can properly rule; all the rest must be content with fulfilling their duties.
The specific features of a slaveowner republic are spelled-out by Fitzhugh in Cannibals All! and in parts of Calhoun’s A Disquisition on Government. The following are among the more prominent of these:
It is inclusive: As Fitzhugh puts it, “Free society asserts the right of a few to the earth -- slavery maintains that it belongs, in different degrees, to all.” Everyone is to be provided for, everyone has a place.
Masters protect and provide for slaves: “The negro slave is free . . . when the labors of the day are over, and free in mind as well as body; for the master provides food, raiment, house, fuel, and everything else necessary to the physical well-being of himself and family” (286). Fitzhugh congratulates the slavemaster for being more considerate than his Northern capitalist counterpart. But he also makes the attitude and motivation behind this clear: “Why should they [slavemasters] not be obliged to take care of man, their property, as they do of their horses and their hounds, their cattle and their sheep” (288)? Slaves, in other words, are beasts of burden, and wise masters practice good husbandry.
Citizenship is a privilege belonging to a governing class: “The ancient republics were governed by a small class of adult male citizens who assumed and exercised the government without the consent of the governed. The South is governed just as those ancient republics were” (292). Fitzhugh’s rejection of the liberal dictum that governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed” and his insistence that all governments, on the contrary, “must originate in force,” is justified on two grounds. First, he plainly believes in the natural superiority of whites over blacks, who are lazy and often depraved. “Masters dare not take the vote of slaves as to their government. If they did, constant holiday, dissipation, and extravagance would be the result” (292). For that matter, “Fathers do not derive their authority . . . from the consent of wife and children” (292); rather they are naturally fit to rule the household. Thus political and social authority only mirror natural hierarchies. Second, the preservation of society depends upon obedience to established authority. This can be extrapolated from the example he makes of military hierarchy: “Not even in the most democratic countries are soldiers governed by their consent. . .” (292).
The slaveowner governing class “represent fairly” the interests of the slaves: However bizarre this formulation seems, it is consistent with the preceding logic. Slaveowners, in Fitzhugh’s mind, have the intelligence and inner discipline lacking in the slaves. Moreover they are, as masters, acquainted with the slaves conditions of life. And since Fitzhugh has already equated slaves with domestic animals, representing their interests can mean little more than a technical ability, like saying that a pig farmer represents the “interests” of his pigs by knowing how to keep them well-fed and healthy until the slaughter.
Liberty is also a privilege and must be subordinated to the need for security: “Liberty,” says Calhoun, “though among the greatest of blessings, is not so great as that of protection, inasmuch as the end of the former is the progress and improvement of the race, while that of the latter is its preservation and perpetuation. And hence, when the two come into conflict, liberty must, and ever ought, to yield to protection, as the existence of the race is of greater moment than its improvement” (Calhoun, 281). This sentiment conformed with escalating Southern fears of slave revolts and escapes and the impact on public opinion and legislation of abolitionist denunciations of the institution of slavery.
Calhoun also sees in liberty the dangers of licentiousness and poor judgment. Of all factors, he argues, it is “moral qualifications” which most determine how must liberty is appropriate to (and possible for) a community. Excessive liberty only leads to anarchy, “the greatest of all curses,” and thence probably to something approaching tyranny. “No people, indeed, can long enjoy more liberty than that to which their situation and advanced intelligence and morals fairly entitle them” (281). Hence liberty “is a reward to be earned, not a blessing to be gratuitously lavished on all alike -- a reward reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving . . .” (281).
No mention is made of the value of public debate founded on free expression, nor of the perverseness of a theory of representation based on denying the represented the right to voice their desires and grievances, nor of the value of having in society the example of many different kinds of lives to learn from, nor of the value to individuals of having the latitude to frame their lives without continual social oversight or civil coercion. Calhoun thus preserves the name, “liberty,” while transforming its substance into little more than a display of total fidelity to the moral-political order. His argument also, of course, justifies the denial of liberty to the slave who is unfit for it. More than this, once liberty is cast as a reward, it becomes possible to speak of granting a slave specific “liberties” though they remain just as much a slave.
Moreover, the institution of slavery is suffocating freedom even in the North. “It has become interwoven with all American institutions, and has anchored itself in the very soil of the American Constitution. It has thrown its paralysing arm over freedom of speech, and the liberty of the press; and has created for itself morals and manners favorable to its own continuance” (224).
In addition to the monstrous cruelty that stems from the master’s absolute power over the slave, slavery is the imposition of a profound silence. Literacy, education of any kind, are denied nearly all slaves: “in every state of the American Union, where slavery exists, except the State of Kentucky, there are laws, absolutely prohibitory of education among the slaves. . . . The great mass of slaveholders look upon education among the slaves as utterly subversive of the slave system. . . . there is the greatest unanimity of opinion among the white population of the South, in favor of the policy of keeping the slave in ignorance” (225-226).
The Irishman oppressed in his homeland by the British (this lecture was delivered during a period of massive Irish immigration) is still , Douglass points out, “the master of his own body,” and he has as well “freedom of movement” and freedom to “write, speak, assemble, and “cooperate for the attainment of his rights and the redress of his wrongs,” in short, he possesses civil rights and liberties. “But ask the slave--what is his condition?---what his state of mind?---what he thinks of his enslavement? and you had as well address your inquiries to the silent dead. There comes no voice from the enslaved . . .” (228).
Thus although Douglass is not specifically addressing himself to Fitzhugh and Calhoun’s model of a slaveowner republic, his retort to them is clear enough. It is only through a total denial of the slaves’ liberty and because of the ignorance and degradation of their bondage that the ideas of slavemasters can achieve any legitimacy. Slaves cannot refute the lies of the masters.