A SELF-EVIDENT LIE: SOUTHERN SLAVERY AND THE EROSION OF AMERICAN FREEDOM By JEREMY J. TEWELL Bachelor of Arts in History Pittsburg State University Pittsburg, Kansas 2003 Master of Arts in History Pittsburg State University Pittsburg, Kansas 2004 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May, 2010 A SELF-EVIDENT LIE: SOUTHERN SLAVERY AND THE EROSION OF AMERICAN FREEDOM Dissertation Approved: Dr. James L. Huston Dissertation Adviser Dr. James F. Cooper Dr. David M. D’Andrea Dr. Kristen M. Burkholder Dr. Robert Darcy Dr. A. Gordon Emslie Dean of the Graduate College ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Over ten years have passed since the subject of this dissertation first took root in my mind. In that time many gracious and thoughtful individuals have helped to develop the ideas contained in these pages. The encouragement I received as an undergraduate and master’s student from my advisors at Pittsburg State University was more than a fledgling historian could hope for. More recently, the outstanding doctoral program at Oklahoma State provided me with the skills (not to mention the funding) necessary to complete this project. I would like to thank my advisory committee—Dr. James L. Huston, Dr. James F. Cooper, Dr. David D’Andrea, Dr. Kristen M. Burkholder, and Dr. Robert Darcy—for reading and editing my dissertation, and for offering their invaluable insights. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to my primary advisor, Dr. Huston, for his inestimable assistance in the evolution and clarification of my central thesis. His model of academic excellence will be a key component in whatever success I may achieve in the profession. Special thanks are also due to my parents, who never failed to humor my love of history. It appears our countless trips to coin shows and Civil War battlefields have finally paid off. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page INTRODUCTION: THE BADGE OF FREEDOM?……………………………...………1 Arbitrary Rationales………………………………………………………………….3 Taken for a Mulatto………………………………………………………...………11 Abolitionists and Republicans………………………………………...……………14 I. THE MYTH OF THE FREE-STATE DEMOCRAT….………………………………25 A Hell of a Storm……………………………………………….…………………..27 The White Man’s Charter of Freedom………………………………………..…….32 Freedom by Default?………………….…………………………………………….40 The Same Old Serpent…………………………………...…………………………45 II. INFERIORITY……………………………….……………………………………….55 Inferior Races………………………………………………………………...……..56 Devils and Democrats………………..……………………………………………..61 The Inferiority of Labor…………………………………………………………….64 III. THE GOOD OF THE SLAVE……………………………............…………………71 The Principle of Slavery is Itself Right……….…………………………………….74 George Fitzhugh…………………………………………………………………….79 Aftershocks……………………………………………………………...………….92 IV. THE GOOD OF SOCIETY………………………………………….……………..100 Racial Egalitarianism……………………………………...………………………101 The Republican Paradox………………………………..…………………………107 Indentured Servitude and Debt Peonage……………………….………………….113 V. THE TRIUMPH OF BRUTE FORCE…………………...………………………….120 The Accident of Birth and the Vagaries of Circumstance…..…………………….121 An Appeal to History…………………………….………………………………..124 iv Chapter Page VI. SOUTHERNERS AND THE PRINCIPLE OF UNIVERSAL LIBERTY………...135 Our Progress in Degeneracy…………………..…………………………………..138 Freedom’s Face Value………………………………………….…………………145 The Declaration and Dred Scott…………………...………………………………152 VII. THE SLAVEOCRACY..…………………………………………………………..167 The Slave Power and the Federal Government……………………………………170 The Psychology of Aristocracy……………………………………………………174 VIII. REPUBLICANS, NORTHERN DEMOCRATS, AND THE PRINCIPLE OF UNIVERSAL LIBERTY…………………………………………………………186 Getting Right with the Founders….……………………………………………….189 American Scripture?……………………………………………………………....196 Excluding Africans………………………………………………………………..199 The Anti-Jefferson…………………………………………………………….…..202 A People’s Contest………………………………………………………………...204 AFTERWORD…………………………………………………………………….……215 LIST OF SOURCES……………………………………………………………………222 v INTRODUCTION THE BADGE OF FREEDOM? Three months before his death, Benjamin Franklin stepped into the public spotlight for the final time. Although he had once published ads for runaway slaves, and had even owned a slave couple himself, beginning in the 1750s Franklin had gradually turned against the institution. As president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Franklin presented a formal petition to Congress in February 1790, denouncing both the slave trade and slavery itself. “Mankind are all formed by the same Almighty Being,” it declared, “alike objects of his care, and equally designed for the enjoyment of happiness.” Therefore, Congress had a solemn duty to grant liberty “to those unhappy men who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage.” 1 Only fourteen years had passed since Americans had announced to the world that “all men are created equal.” Franklin’s reputation as an architect of that revolution was second only to George Washington’s. Nevertheless, southern congressmen displayed unveiled contempt for Franklin and his petition. Senator Pierce Butler of South Carolina castigated the society’s plan as a willful violation of the Constitution. In the House, James Jackson of Georgia and William Loughton Smith of South Carolina suggested that the eighty-four-year-old Franklin was no longer in his right mind. Jackson was 1 particularly vehement in his defense of slavery, insisting on the floor of the House that the institution was divinely sanctioned and economically vital to the southern economy. 2 As he had done in the past, Franklin decided to take his case to the public in the form of an anonymous parody. On March 23, 1790, a public letter appeared in the Federal Gazette under the signature “Historicus.” In a disinterested tone, Franklin observed that Jackson’s speech in Congress bore a striking resemblance to a speech delivered a hundred years earlier by Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim, a member of the Divan of Algiers, in response to a petition condemning the enslavement of European Christians. Assuming that Jackson had never read this speech, Franklin could not help but note “that men’s interests and intellects operate and are operated on with surprising similarity in all countries and climates, whenever they are under similar circumstances.” 3 Indeed, “the African’s” rationales for white slavery clearly presaged those invoked by Jackson and other southerners in favor of black slavery: “If we forbear to make slaves of their people, who in this hot climate are to cultivate our lands? And is there not more compassion and favor due to us as Mussulmen than to these Christian dogs?” Who is to indemnify the masters for their loss? . And if we set our slaves free, what is to be done with them? . Must we maintain them as beggars in our streets, or suffer our properties to be the prey of their pillage? For men accustomed to slavery will not work for a livelihood when not compelled. And what is there so pitiable in their present condition? Were they not slaves in their own countries? They have only exchanged one slavery for another and I may say a better; for here they are brought into a land where the sun of Islamism gives forth its light, and shines in full splendor, and they have an opportunity of making themselves acquainted with the true doctrine, and thereby saving their immortal souls. [They are] too ignorant to establish a good government. While serving us, we take care to provide them with everything, and they are treated with humanity. The laborers in their own country are, as I am well informed, worse fed, lodged, and clothed. Here their lives are in safety. 2 As for those “religious mad bigots” with their “silly petitions,” it was pure foolishness to argue that slavery was “disallowed by the Alcoran!” Were not the two precepts “Masters, treat your slaves with kindness; Slaves, serve your masters with cheerfulness and fidelity” ample evidence to the contrary? It was well known, explained the African, that God had given the world “to his faithful Mussulmen, who are to enjoy it of right as fast as they conquer it.” 4 The stability and happiness of the nation could not be sacrificed simply to appease the demands of a few fanatics. Such was the determination of the Divan of Algiers, which, according to Franklin, rejected the antislavery memorial. Following suit, Congress announced that it lacked the authority to act on Franklin’s petition. 5 Franklin did not live to see the cotton boom and the consequent entrenchment of slavery in southern life. Little did he know that Congressman Jackson’s proslavery apology would become commonplace in the South during the first half of the nineteenth- century. Nevertheless, Franklin’s last public letter anticipated an important, and underappreciated, facet of the antislavery argument. Arbitrary Rationales The thesis of this dissertation is that northerners feared slavery, in part, because the rationales for black slavery were inherently subjective and therefore posed a threat to the liberty of all Americans, irrespective of color. Southerners invoked five interrelated rationales in their defense of African servitude: race, moral and mental inferiority, the good of the slave, the good of society, and the lessons of history. Yet many of these 3 rationales had been used in the past (as Franklin illustrated), and could be used in the future, to oppress people of any race. Northerners often expressed concern that proslavery arguments were subject