Polemical Pain: Slavery, Cruelty, and the Rise of Humanitarianism

5 Suited for Slavery, 1840–1851

chapter five Suited for Slavery, 1840–1851 By 1839, when Theodore Dwight Weld published American Slavery as It Is, proslavery and antislavery activists had committed themselves to proving slavery’s humaneness or cruelty. Both sides also expected such proof to settle the debate. Humaneness gained moral power precisely because humaneness seemed so clear; it demanded an end to the deliberate infliction of unnecessary pain. Who could object to compassion, humaneness, and benevolence ? Charges of cruelty enticed writers with the promise that humaneness would cut through moral confusion and settle moral disputes. Yet instead of producing moral clarity, humanitarianism sparked disputes. Weld’s book aimed to dispel any myths of slavery’s humaneness by demonstrating, beyond a doubt, the cruelty of slavery. Although Americans continued to believe that humanitarianism had a clear, unequivocal meaning, the very need for such a book belied that seeming clarity. For humanitarianism to have a clear, unequivocal meaning for Americans, both parties would have needed to agree whether slavery entailed pain, and whether such pain was both intolerable and worse than the alternatives. They could not agree on either score. As 160 Polemical Pain polemicists marshaled humanitarianism to battle the forces of evil, humaneness proved both malleable and slippery. Instead of settling the debate, claims of cruelty and benevolence only escalated it and created a war of competing narratives aimed at establishing the true reality of slavery. Despite antislavery claims to have proved slavery’s cruelty beyond a doubt, proslavery writers did not surrender. Rather, they redoubled their e√orts, challenging the quality of antislavery proof and countering with evidence and narratives of their own to prove the benevolence of slavery. Americans did not fight only over abstract moral principles about enslavement or humanitarianism. Instead, Americans had to choose between two competing and incompatible visions of slavery’s reality, and they often had to do so with limited personal experience with slavery itself. Slavery’s critics and defenders had to convince Americans that they, not their opponents , described slavery most truthfully and accurately. Travelers to the South thus took care to note and report on the conditions of slavery, but relatively few Northerners could travel to settle the question for themselves. The conditions of slavery were thus often an abstraction in the debate. Increasingly, the debate—and the proof o√ered by both sides—took on a life of its own, creating a cycle of charge and countercharge that made humanitarianism both more important and more contested. The debate over cruelty only escalated. Neither side could settle the debate over cruelty, nor would they abandon it. Each side grew dependent on this moral language, and the growing moral importance of pain pushed each to make its points ever more stridently. Far from settling the debate, appeals to humaneness spawned mutual incomprehension and hostility. In theory, sharing a moral language of humaneness might have eased communication. In practice, however, both sides insisted that the meaning of humaneness was clear but rejected their opponents ’ definitions. The sharing of terms thus only convinced both sides that their opponents lacked good faith. As Americans fought over the humaneness or cruelty of slavery, the debate mushroomed into a broader conflict over the nature of humanitarianism, sympathy, and benevolence. By the mid-1840s the gory rhetoric of the previous decade had sent tremors through American institutions and had destabilized moral assumptions. As Americans divided over humaneness—and fought for exclusive right to the label—the battle over humaneness drew more and more casualties. By the 1840s the debate over slavery increasingly Suited for Slavery, 1840–1851 161 fed political divisions, especially as politicians began to grapple seriously with the issue of slavery and westward expansion. As the stakes of humaneness grew, American moral thought and culture became increasingly polarized. ‘‘The Most Humane Act’’ On October 19, 1843, the father of John Gorham Palfrey, a Massachusetts scholar and politician, died on his Louisiana plantation. He left his property, valued at approximately $45,000, to his three sons, Gorham (as John Gorham was called), William, and Henry.∞ This inheritance included fifty-one slaves, which posed moral and political problems for Gorham, who, unlike his Louisiana brothers, had been educated in Massachusetts and was building a career as an antislavery politician.≤ Gorham’s brothers, knowing his views, o√ered to give him his share in nonhuman property, but he refused, viewing it as the moral equivalent of selling slaves. Not...