A Self-Evident Lie: Southern Slavery and the Threat to American Freedom

4. The Good of Society

70 a self-evident lie • 4 • The Good of Society The belief that individual liberty depended on universal liberty can be seen as a counterpoint to the southern argument that black slavery provided a safeguard for the freedom of white Americans. For many northerners, the rationales for African bondage were not strictly racial, and could therefore be applied to anyone, regardless of race. in addition to the south’s insistence on slaves’ inferiority and the celebration of slavery’s benefits, its societal defense of slavery could be applicable to whites as well as blacks. According to southerners’ own logic, individuals did not threaten social stability because they were a particular color—they threatened society because they were poor. First, it is important to understand the southern position. despite the “bleaching” effects of amalgamation, and the racially unspecific appeal to slavery’s benign paternalism, most southerners viewed white skin as an unimpeachable badge of personal liberty. rather than reject the declaration of independence entirely, they sought to defend the ideal of equality for whites alone. As eugene Genovese points out, most southerners still wanted to believe, despite the incongruity, that they could have locke, Jefferson, and slavery, too. They may not have rejected the paternalist argument (at least not for blacks), but it seems clear their ideal society was divided by race, not economic class. in this respect, the good of the slave took a backseat to the interests of society as a whole.1 d d d on the eve of the civil War, the fifteen slave states were home to about 385,000 slaveholders. out of a million and a half free families in the south, 70 The Good of Society 71 only one-fourth had slaves at their direct disposal. And of those 385,000 individuals, only a small fraction can be classified as large planters—those who owned twenty slaves or more. The vast majority owned fewer than ten slaves; 50 percent owned fewer than five. considering the relatively small number of large slaveholders and the sizeable majority of nonslaveholders , some may find it difficult to explain why the south was so obdurately wedded to its peculiar institution.2 For those who personally owned slaves, their bondsmen represented a $3 billion investment. For other white southerners, the economic benefits of slavery were less straightforward, but not insignificant. some resented slavery and the influence of their wealthier neighbors, but many lived in the orbit of the plantation system. small farmers depended on local plantations for access to cotton gins and for financial assistance in times of need. There were also extensive kinship networks. Wealthy planters were not aristocrats in the european mold, however much they may have attempted to style themselves as such. in most cases they were new money without a long family history of influence and privilege. consequently, the poorest resident of a county might easily be a cousin of the wealthiest planter. These economic and familial ties undoubtedly helped to mute class tensions. in addition to its economic importance, slavery was a powerful social institution. because the African presence in certain parts of the slave states was considerable—and nearly overwhelming in states like mississippi and south carolina—slavery became an important form of race control. southern whites considered the legal servitude of blacks to be absolutely necessary for the maintenance of white supremacy. despite their insistence that slavery was a blessing to those held in bondage, southerners could not deny their sense of unease, a feeling that was betrayed by the ubiquity of slave patrols and the hysterical reaction that followed nat turner’s insurrection and John brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry.3 There was far more to nonslaveholders’ support of slavery than simple fear, however. As George m. Fredrickson has explained, slavery created “a psychologically satisfying sense of racial superiority” for all southern whites. most southerners advocated what the sociologist Pierre l. van den berghe has called “herrenvolk democracy.” According to van den berghe’s explanation, these are regimes like south Africa and the United states, societies that are “democratic for the master race but tyrannical for the subordinate groups.” indeed, democracy in the old south was 72 a self-evident lie “no sham,” as Fredrickson points out. Universal white manhood suffrage existed in most states, which made nonslaveholders a significant political force. James oakes contends that southerners actually took the lead in the democratization of state constitutions in the...