| | | It's historical revisionism to claim Republicans were liberals in 1860.
George Fitzhugh, John C. Calhoun, and James Henry Hammond defended chattel slavery as superior to the wage slavery of the north.
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While defending black chattel slavery, Hammond condemns the north for "enslaving" white workers in factories for petty wages:
"Your whole hireling class of manual laborers and 'operatives,' as you call them, are essentially slaves. The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street in any of your large towns."
The moral superiority of chattel slavery over the northern system of labor was obvious through Hammond's eyes. Whereas northerners enslaved members of their own race, southerners enslaved an inferior race, and while northern wage slaves were starved and deprived of employment, southern slaves were well fed and cared for.
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“The Negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. The children and the aged and infirm work not at all, and yet have all the comforts and necessaries of life provided for them. They enjoy liberty, because they are oppressed neither by care nor labor. The women do little hard work, and are protected from the despotism of their husband by their masters. The Negro men and stout boys work, on the average, in good weather, not more than nine hours a day. The balance of their time is spent in perfect abandon. The free laborer must work or starve. He is more a slave than the Negro because he works longer and harder for less allowance than the slave, and has no holiday, because the cares of his life with him begin when its labors end. He has no liberty, and not a single right.”
Fitzhugh, George. “Free Trade, Ch. 1.” Sociology for the South; or, The failure of free society . New York: B. Franklin, 1965. 27-28. Print.docsouth.unc.edu
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