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252 Notes to Pages 156–165 21. The Alabama memorial regarding the abolitionists passed by the General Assembly on January 9, 1836, says,“We were born in a land of domestic slavery;—like our liberties it descended from our fathers: we were innocent of its introduction.” Chapter 6 1. Mason comments that slavery came up in regard to almost every issue on a national level as well. He interprets its omnipresence as a sign of its rhetorical utility rather than political relevance, but utility and relevance aren’t mutually exclusive. It may be that slave politicians genuinely perceived slavery as constantly at stake, and it may be that it was rhetorically useful because it was involved in every issue. When I began this project, I had the naïve idea that I would compare 1835 congressional deliberation over a slavery-related issue to deliberation over an issue not related to slavery; after reading through the 1835–36 Globe, I gave up because I couldn’t find an example of the latter. 2. William Wiethoff, in Crafting the Overseer’s Image, describes in some detail the legal ambivalence and ambiguity concerning slave literacy, access to weapons and liquor , and assembly (see especially 38–50). 3. Another striking instance of this move was the condemnation of abolitionists like Garrison and Thompson for not having traveled to the South (see, for instance, Sullivan 11–12) coupled with statements that they would be killed if they did so. Proslavery rhetors thereby set up a condition of disproof that cannot be met—the claim is that such abolitionists would change their minds if they saw what slavery was really like, coupled with threats that prevent them from doing so. 4.The 1836 Kentucky resolutions threaten to resist “any attempt on the part of the federal government to interfere with [slavery in Kentucky] in any manner” (Communication from the Governor, Transmitting Resolutions from the Legislature of Kentucky on the Subject of Abolition Societies 5, the same point made in the fifth resolution of the 1835 South Carolina legislative resolutions). This is the implication of the first of the Virginia resolutions (that there was a move afoot to get federally imposed emancipation). This set of resolutions twice asserts that Congress has no right to ban slavery from the territories, showing that position had some adherents as early as 1836. 5. Morris’s point is that southerners were willing to permit considerable tampering with “property” rights by the state, despite their accusing abolitionists of interfering with private property (see also Wiethoff, The Insolent Slave, especially 37). I would suggest that accusation be seen as defensive projection—they made the accusation because they themselves did not respect property rights. Of course, the laws were not consistently enforced, but the inconsistent enforcement permitted terroristic control (Wiethoff has some interesting examples of this, especially regarding literacy and insubordination , in Constructing the Image of the Overseer and The Insolent Slave). 6. It is interesting that while the first part is a concept shared by positive and natural law, the second is not—that there might be limits to one’s rights does not necessarily mean that they are connected to duties. This point complicates David Eric- Notes to Pages 168–172 253 son’s argument that proslavery and antislavery rhetors both appealed to liberal ideas. He defines liberal ideas as “a general set of ideas that appeal to personal freedom, equal worth, government by consent, and private ownership of property as core human values” (14). In addition to arguing that these ideas were not particularly important in proslavery rhetoric, I take issue with the basic definition. Ericson has left out three crucial pieces in most definitions of liberal philosophy: equality before the law, universal human rights, and rational public discourse (see Roberts-Miller, Deliberate Conflict 18–24). On the contrary, I am saying that proslavery rhetors did not see these as core human values, but as privileges which white men possessed to a greater degree than others. Thus, while Ericson is correct that proslavery rhetors often argued from consequences, the negative consequences which they predicted almost exclusively involved the breaking down of social hierarchy. That breakdown necessarily constituted a breakdown of social order only because it threatened to displace their position in the hierarchy. 7. David March attributes the 1837 law to that perception, and the abolition scare in St. Louis (822); the same explanation given by Benjamin Merkel (246). I think this explanation is more plausible than...

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