The Universal Law of Slavery
Student
Professor
US History
8 April 2014
Take a Stand on Slavery
Racism in the United States didn’t start with slavery in the 1800s but it has been an existing problem in our nation from the beginning. From Andrew Jackson’s decision to move the Native Americans westward to Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on the State of Virginia,” the white people of this nation have always thought of themselves as superior. Looking back at the history of the United States, none of these acts of racism compare to the pre-civil war era in the early 1800s. George Fitzhugh advocates slavery in his work “The Universal Law of Slavery.” In this piece, Fitzhugh claims that the African American race is improvident and a burden to society therefore society has the right to protect themselves by subjecting all African Americans to domestic slavery. One of the main reasons the African American race was viewed as inferior was because they were not educated. Fitzhugh justifies his beliefs by claiming that slaves of the South are some of the happiest and freest people in the world, for in Africa they would be treated much crueler. The law expresses that slaves do not lack care or labor propelling them to heights of liberty that Africans do not have. Some would even claim that African Americans were treated better as slaves in America than free people in Africa. While this argument may have been compelling in the 1800s, I believe that this reasoning is quite preposterous. The United States of America was a country built for fairness of all. While slavery might be a foreign concept to modern civilization, it has been around since the beginning and still exists today. The first slaves were brought into America in 1619 and it snowballed from there. Slavery among the South was said to sustain the economy, in which it did. In the early 1800s, when slavery was at its peak, cotton production grew over 900%. Slavery advocates fought that the black man was inferior justifying the idea of
Professor
US History
8 April 2014
Take a Stand on Slavery
Racism in the United States didn’t start with slavery in the 1800s but it has been an existing problem in our nation from the beginning. From Andrew Jackson’s decision to move the Native Americans westward to Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on the State of Virginia,” the white people of this nation have always thought of themselves as superior. Looking back at the history of the United States, none of these acts of racism compare to the pre-civil war era in the early 1800s. George Fitzhugh advocates slavery in his work “The Universal Law of Slavery.” In this piece, Fitzhugh claims that the African American race is improvident and a burden to society therefore society has the right to protect themselves by subjecting all African Americans to domestic slavery. One of the main reasons the African American race was viewed as inferior was because they were not educated. Fitzhugh justifies his beliefs by claiming that slaves of the South are some of the happiest and freest people in the world, for in Africa they would be treated much crueler. The law expresses that slaves do not lack care or labor propelling them to heights of liberty that Africans do not have. Some would even claim that African Americans were treated better as slaves in America than free people in Africa. While this argument may have been compelling in the 1800s, I believe that this reasoning is quite preposterous. The United States of America was a country built for fairness of all. While slavery might be a foreign concept to modern civilization, it has been around since the beginning and still exists today. The first slaves were brought into America in 1619 and it snowballed from there. Slavery among the South was said to sustain the economy, in which it did. In the early 1800s, when slavery was at its peak, cotton production grew over 900%. Slavery advocates fought that the black man was inferior justifying the idea of