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A Southern Stewardship: the Intellectual and the Proslavery Argument

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A Southern Stewardship: the Intellectual and the Proslavery Argument A Southern Stewardship: The Intellectual and the Proslavery Argument The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Faust, Drew Gilpin. 1979. “A Southern Stewardship: The Intellectual and the Proslavery Argument.” American Quarterly 31 (1): 63. Published Version doi:10.2307/2712487 Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:12013312 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA A SOUTHERN STEWARDSHIP: THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE PROSLAVERY ARGUMENT DREW GILPIN FA UST Universityof Pennsylvania THE SOUTH S SYSTEMATIC DEFENSE OF SLAVERY IN THE THREE decades beforethe Civil War has longpuzzled historians. Yet the very distastefulnessofthe proslavery argument has intriguedmodern scholars, who have soughtto understandhow writers and thinkers-individualsin manyways like themselves-couldturn their talents to such abhorrent purpose.But we havetoo longregarded the proslavery argument either as an objectof moral outrage or as a contributingcause ofthe Civil War. For thosewho elaborated its details, it had a differentmeaning. To understand how slavery'sapologists came to embraceconclusions we findunthinka- ble, we mustlook beyondthe polemics of theslavery controversy. Many of the bewilderingaspects of the defenseof slaveryare best understoodas expressionsof thespecial needs of an alienatedSouthern intellectualclass concernedwith questions more far-reaching, yet in some waysmore immediately personally relevant, than the rights and wrongs of humanbondage. The Southernman of minddid not doubtthat slavery was a social good thatcould be supportedby rationalargument. But in takingup thepublic defense of the peculiar institution, he soughtas well to advance his particularvalues and to definefor himself a respected social rolewithin a cultureknown for its inhospitalityto letters. AntebellumSoutherners themselves recognized that the proslavery ar- gumentwould achieve little in the ideologicalwarfare between the sec- tions. "We thinkit is hardlyto be expected,"one proslaverytheorist concededin 1843,"that anything which can be said at thislate date . .. willat all diminishthe wrongheaded fanaticism and perverseintolerance of the NorthernAbolitionists." This essayist'savowed aim was to do This content downloaded from 128.103.151.234 on Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:56:35 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 64 American Quarterly "good servicewithin our borders";other defenders of slaverysimilarly hopedto "fix" thepeculiar institution "infinitely more firmly in thepub- lic opinion"of their own section.The importanceof the proslavery argu- ment,these Southerners suggest, lay withinSouthern civilization itself.' The proslaveryargument thus raises issues that make it morethan just anotherof the peculiarities of the perennially enigmatic South; it must not be seen merelyas evidenceof how differentthe Old Southhad become fromthe rest of thenation. In theirattempt to createa rationaljustifica- tionfor the peculiar institutions of theirsection, slavery's defenders re- vealednot only the world view of the South's intellectual class, butdem- onstratedthe existenceof widespreadsimilarities in outlook among thinkerson bothsides of the Mason-Dixon line. The proslaveryargument restedon intellectualvalues and moral-philosophicalassumptions shared throughoutmid-nineteenth-century America. A numberof twentieth-centuryhistorians have soughtto locate the significanceof the defenseof slaveryin the interactionamong different groupswithin the antebellumSouth. In 1936,William B. Hesseltineex- plainedthe movement as partof an effortby the upper-class planter to win thenonslaveholder to his side. Morerecent scholars such as CharlesG. Sellers,Jr. and RalphE. Morrowhave characterizedthe argument as an attemptby slaveholdersto establishpeace notwith other groups but with themselves,by alleviatingfeelings of guiltcreated by naggingcontradic- tionsbetween slavery and America'sdemocratic creed. Althoughboth these explanationsseem plausible,there is littleevidence to support either.Overt expression of class resentmentor antagonismwas rarein the Old South; planters'personal papers express few pangsof conscience aboutthe Southern system.2 1 [George Frederick Holmes], "On Slavery and Christianity,"Southern QuarterlyRe- view, 3 (Jan. 1843), 252; James Henry Hammond to Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, Feb. 23, 1849,Tucker-Coleman Collection, Earl GreggSwem Library,College of Williamand Mary, Williamsburg,Va. WilliamGilmore Simms expressed his concern withusing the proslavery argumentto counteractthe indifferenceof "our people of the South" in regardto slavery's defense. Simms to Hammond, Apr. 10, 1845, Mary C. S. Oliphant et al., eds., Letters of William Gilmore Simms, 5 vols. (Columbia, S. C.: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1952- 1956), 2: 50-51. On the South's general inhospitalityto letters see Clement Eaton, The Freedom-of-ThoughtStruggle in the Old South (New York: Harper and Row, 1964). 2 Hesseltine, "Some New Aspects of the Pro-Slavery Argument,"Journal of Negro History,21 (Jan. 1936), 1-14; Morrow, "The ProslaveryArgument Revisited," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 48 (June 1961), 79-94; Sellers, "The Travail of Slavery," in Sellers, ed., The Southerneras American (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1960), 40-71. For otherproponents of this view see WilliamW. Freehling,Prelude to Civil War: The NullificationControversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836 (New York: Harper and Row, 1966); and James M. McPherson, "Slavery and Race," Perspectives in American History,3 (1969), 460-73. This content downloaded from 128.103.151.234 on Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:56:35 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A SouthernStewardship 65 While Sellers,Hesseltine, and Morrowaccurately characterized the defenseof the peculiarinstitution as a manifestationof stresswithin Southernsociety, they did notseek to relatethese tensions to thesocial locationsof theapologists themselves. In 1970,however, David Donald beganto explorethe social originsof some of slavery'smost prominent defenders."All," he found,"were unhappy men" compensating for "se- verepersonal problems relating to theirplace in Southernsociety." Their proslaverytracts, he concluded,displayed a longingto escape thiscrisis ofsocial identity by returning to a "by-gonepastoral Arcadia," to a world theyhad lost.Slavery's defenders, Donald contended, shared a pervasive "sense of alienation."3 These feelingsof distancefrom the contemporaryworld are evident throughoutproslavery writings. But theydid not representa defensive andhopeless nostalgia. Many proslavery advocates were highly critical of theregion whose peculiar institution they had setforth to justify, and they werefar from consistently backward-looking intheir views. James Henry Hammondand WilliamGilmore Simms, two of Donald's prominent examples,directly opposed the controlthat South Carolina's tradition- boundaristocracy exerted within the state. And instead of seeking a "pas- toralArcadia," a numberof theseSouthern apologists followed the lead of JamesD. B. De Bow in urgingthe developmentof industrialand commercialenterprise to reducedependence on theNorth.4 The dissatisfactionDonald identifiedas characteristicof slavery'sde- fendersarose less froma desireto escape thepresent than from what he identifiedas anxieties"relating to theirplace in Southernsociety." But Donald's essay does notmake the source of thesetensions clear, for, as 3 Donald, "The ProslaveryArgument Reconsidered," 12, 16. Donald's interpretationof slavery's defenders seems to fit within the genre of "status-anxiety" interpretations- explanationsof ideologies and social movementsas the resultof concern about changing, usually diminishingsocial status. Althoughhe does not explicitlyrefer to "status-anxiety" in the essay on proslavery,this framework seems implicit,as, forexample, in his references to Edmund Ruffinas "frustrated,"to J. D. B. De Bow as "compensating" for his lack of social position and to W. G. Simms as worryingabout his location "on the fringesof society." Ibid., 10-11. For a similar treatmentof antislavery,see Donald, "Toward a Reconsiderationof Abolitionists," in Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered: Essays on the Civil War Era (New York: Knopf, 1956), 19-36. 4 Donald, "The ProslaveryArgument Reconsidered," 17n. For a discussion of the views of Simms, Hammond,George FrederickHolmes, Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, and Edmund Ruffinon these issues see Drew Gilpin Faust, A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellec- tual in the Old South, 1840-1860 (Baltimore: JohnsHopkins Univ. Press, 1977). Fitzhugh also encouragedeconomic diversification.See, forexample, "Make Home Attractive,"De Bow's Review, 28 (June 1860), 624. On De Bow as an advocate of industrysee Ottis C. Skipper,J. D. B. De Bow, Magazinistof the Old South (Athens:Univ. of GeorgiaPress, 1958); and the James Dunwoody Brownson De Bow Letters and Papers, ManuscriptDivision, WilliamPerkins Library, Duke Univ. This content downloaded from 128.103.151.234 on Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:56:35 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 66 American Quarterly hisarticle indicates, proslavery advocates came from widely varied social positions.Hammond, for example, was descendedfrom New England stockof no particulardistinction and recognizedthat
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