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John C Calhoun Slavery Analysis

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John C Calhoun Slavery Analysis
John C. Calhoun supported slavery because he believed that it was beneficial to the states in order for them to become prosperous. Because of that belief, Calhoun stated that it is up to individual states to protect the existence of slavery in order to keep moving forward. Another idea he brings up is that slaves should never be equal to white American citizens. If there were to be two free races, both of equal size, one will always have to be subjective to the other. Basically, he believed that it would be virtually impossible for all races to ever be truly equal to each other. This really just enforces the idea that many people held in America that white people will always be superior to everyone.

Frederick Douglass drew upon his experience to back up his position on this controversial issue. He himself was a slave for twenty years of his life, and he uses his story to inform others through his speech about what life as a slave is really like. Douglass repeatedly states that slaves are indeed human beings as white people are, yet masters toss their names around with the other names of livestock. Masters are also well known for
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During his time in the south, he states that all slaves were well-fed and happy, and there were only two cases of flogging that he witnessed. He even goes so far as to say that the slaves who are abused by their masters are just exceptions to his findings. Debow uses the example that there are husbands out there who abuse their wife and children, so of course there will be cases of masters abusing slaves. He ends his piece by saying that there are two things that Southerners despise the most: masters who abuse their slaves, and abolitionists who use the few cases of ill-treated slaves to back up this whole idea that slavery is an evil. His view on slavery most definitely oblivious to the actual facts of slavery, yet many people believed his

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