Slavery In 19c :: Slavery Essays

Slavery in 19th CenturyA reassert institution as the 19th century emerged the infamous institution of slavery grew rapidly and produced some surprising controversy and rash justification. Proslavery, Southern whites used social, political, and frugal justification in their arguments defining the institution as a source of positive good, a legal definition, and as an economic stabilizer. The proslavery supporters often used moralistic and biblical rationalization through a religious foundation in Christianity and supported philosophic ideals in Manifest Destiny to vindicated slavery as a profitable investment. They also examined the idea of popular sovereignty and the expansion of slavery in territorial plans worry the Kansas-Nebraska scheme to support their arguments. The proslavery advocates even went faraway enough to include the constitution as a fair legal justification for their practices. Clear-cut attempts to bend the rules on the legality of slavery in documents like th e Lecompton Constitution made some rationalizations look weak and rash in concept. With the Souths slavery dependent and fragile economy, Southerners were ready to fight for their survival of the fittest with whatever means were necessary. Proslavery whites launched a defensive against slavery, which explained the peculiar institution as a positive good, supported, in fact, by the sacred words of the Bible and the ism of the wise Aristotle. The moral and biblical justification surrounding their belief that the relations between slave and man, however admitting to deplore abused in it, was compatible with Christianity, and that the movement of Africans on American soil was an occasion of gratitude on the slaves behalf before God. Basically, the slaves should have been grateful for their bondage. Plantation owners even stressed religion by teaching the slaves the principles of Christianity and by brainwashing the slaves into thinking they were blessed by God to be given a master wh o cares for them and a Christian family to live with. In accordance with religion, proslavery Southerners used the idea of Manifest Destiny. The belief that God predestined the United States for a hemispheric career to defend their fragile position by explaining that slavery promoted territorial expansion, thus adhering to the expansionist principles of Manifest Destiny and promoting slavery as a positive good. Southerners used this argument timely right in the middle of an era of domestic expansion led by President Pierce and supported by people like Stephen Douglass. Douglass proposed the controversial Kansas-Nebraska act a plan to resolve a sectional imbalance in newly surveyed territory, which directly relied on the idea of popular sovereignty to be compromised.