The Southern Perception of Slavery

As most sane people would agree slavery is an abhorrent institution and the practice and use of it in the United States is a black eye the country will never truly get over. Many of the Framers of the constitution also saw slavery as an evil institution. Daniel Farber, author of “Lincoln’s Constitution,” states that the Founding Fathers saw slavery as “a necessary evil that would die out in time.” One of the reasons the Founding Fathers saw slavery as a repugnant, but necessary institution was because of the economic power and manpower slavery brought to America. One of the chief reasons the Founding Fathers allowed for the continuation of slavery was because it would have been impossible to get representatives from southern states to go along with the constitution if slavery or the slave trade was abolished. The best they could do was to ban the Atlantic Slave Trade, effective in 1808. 

This 20 year time period gave southerners the opportunity to horde slaves before the ban was in place. The views on slavery changed so much in between the ratification of the constitution and the Civil War that many southerners saw slavery not as a “necessary evil,” but instead as a “positive good.” 

A "positive good"?

This shift in opinion can be attributed to a variety of reasons. One reason is that the southern states depended on slaves for their economic prosperity. Another reason was that white slave owners saw it as their duty to take care of what they perceived to be ignorant child like slaves, forming a type of perverse paternal bond. 

Pro-slavery Propaganda

One of the chief reasons, in my opinion, was that with increased attacks from abolitionists the south tried to fight the moral wrongness of slavery by trying to turn a negative into a positive. By the 1850s many southerners viewed slavery not as evil, but as a good for society as a whole. For more insight into the issue of slavery as a “positive good” read this article.