Slavery: a Necessary Evil or a Positive Good - Essay Example

During the pre-Civil War period, slavery as a “necessary evil” was the southern white society’s assumptive moral premise for ratifying the institution in order to secure the supply of cheap slave labor for the South’s plantation-based economy. Yet partly, this proslavery premise was the southern white society’s racial fear and distrust for the black people. The southern white society feared that the emancipation of black slaves would create more harmful economic and social havoc than the evil of slavery. Therefore even though slavery is an evil, they believed that it is a necessary one. In 1820, Thomas Jefferson mentioned in a letter: “We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” But the reality was totally different. Since the slaves were constitutionally accredited citizens of the country, they were not sheltered by the legal system of the country. Therefore they frequently became subjects to torture and cruelty. Killing a slave for any kind of defiance was very common.

Therefore in the face of increasing opposition against slavery in the North, the Southerners had to take resort to Calhoun’s “positive good” theory. Indeed Calhoun’s “slavery as positive good” premise was a color-based defense for slavery. The southerner’ gradual failure to provide fresh blood to the “slavery as a necessary evil” theory compelled them to resort to white supremacy over black people with a view to sustaining their economic growth. In Southern America slaves were held primarily for economic purposes; but along the passage of time, slavery became a crucial part of the colonizer’s economy and became socio-economically into the early American society. “Blackness” itself as an ideology was critical for the exploitation of the labor of the African blacks in early America, and it “provided the very source of whiteness and the heart of racism”.

Indeed the “Compromise of 1850” and “the Fugitive Slave Act, 1850” were two major turning points in the debate over slavery. After the enforcement of “the Fugitive Slave Act, 1850” the South had no other legal barrier to continuing slavery. On the other hand, the north was legally bound to assist the slave-hunters. Indeed it was a disaster for both the slaves and the abolitionist north. It was a disaster for the north not only morally but also economically. A huge number of fugitive Negroes who were filling in the north’s free market, fled to Canada, making the economy unstable. The most disastrous effect of the Act was that even a free Negro, if claimed by a white, had been returned to the South as a slave. Since the Southerners were in advantage legally, the abolitionists had to take refuge in moral debate. Thus the legal debate over slavery turned into a moral one. Though the Southerners supported their proslavery stance from a moral viewpoint long before the Compromise of 1850, they had to depend on moral arguments for slavery intensively after enforcement of the 1850 Fugitive Act. In fact, the main source of moral support for slavery was biblical references that could sway the mind of the mass commoners in the South.