The Debate Over Slavery: Antislavery and Proslavery Liberalism in Antebellum America

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments ix Part I 1 The Liberal Consensus Thesis and Slavery 3 Hartz and His Critics 4 Two Issues of Interpretation 5 Slavery as a Test Case 8 Hartz Revisited 9 The Individual Cases 11 2 The Antislavery and Proslavery Arguments 14 Liberal and Nonliberal Arguments 14 Deontological, Consequentialist, and Contextualist Arguments 16 Deontological Arguments 18 Consequentialist Arguments 23 Contextualist Arguments 28 Conclusion 35 Part II 3 Child, Douglass, and Antislavery Liberalism 39 Lydia Maria Child 43 The Wrong of Slavery 44 The Harm of Slavery 45 The Impropriety of Slavery 50 Frederick Douglass 52 The First “Speech” 55 The Second “Speech” 55 Conclusion 60 vii 4 Wendell Phillips: Liberty and Disunion 62 “No Union with Slaveholders” 65 Measures of Progress 70 The Idolatry of Union 74 Southern Secession as Progress 79 A War to Save the Union 84 Conclusion 89 Part III 5 Dew, Fitzhugh, and Proslavery Liberalism 93 Thomas R. Dew 96 The Antiabolitionist Argument 96 Necessary Evil 96 Positive Good 100 George Fitzhugh 107 The Proslavery Argument 107 Who Is Really Free? 108 Racial Slavery 114 Conclusion 119 6 James H. Hammond: Slavery and Union 121 Asserting the “House Divided” Argument 123 Tempering the “House Divided” Argument 128 Reasserting the “House Divided” Argument 137 Denying the “House Divided” Argument 145 Conclusion 152 Part IV 7 The “House Divided” and Civil-War Causation 157 Notes 167 Index 235 About the Author 241 viii | Contents ...