fieldston american reader volume i – fall 2007 - Ethical Culture ...

Necessary Evil to Positive GoodSource: Charles Ball, Fifty Years in Chains-, or, the Life of anAmerican Slave (New York, 1858).Thomas Jefferson Notes on the State of Virginia (1780)There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the mannersof our people produced by the existence of slavery among us.The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetualexercise of the most boisterous passion, the most unremittingdespotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on theother. Our child see this, and learn to imitate it; for man isan imitative animal The spirit of the master is abating, that ofthe slave rising’ from the dust, his condition mollifying, theway I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a totalemancipation, and that this is disposed in the order eventsto be with the consent of the masters, rather than by theirextirpation.Southern Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. VII.‐‐no. 13.(Jan., 1853) Excerpts from Louisa McCord’s response toHarriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabinmaster ‐‐ for the good of the world.Southern hearts and Southern souls can beat high, and lookheavenward, with noble and pure aspirations, blessing Godfor his mercies; blessing “the system” through which hiswisdom obviates, what to man’s little intellect might seeminsurmountable, evils, and blessing that beautiful order ofcreation, which ignorant bigotry, vainly, as yet has striven tocast back into chaos.Make your laws to interfere with the God‐established systemof slavery, which our Southern States are beautifully developingto perfection, daily improving the condition of the slave, dailymaking more and more the master to his high and responsibleposition; make your laws, we say, to pervert this God‐directedcourse, and the world has yet to see the horrors which mightensue.We do not say it is a necessary evil. We do not allow that itis a temporary make‐shift to choke the course of Providencefor man’s convenience. It is not “a sorrow and a wrong to belived down.” We proclaim it, on the contrary, a Godlikedispensation, a providential caring for the weak and a refugefor the portionless.Indeed, the existence of a system of slavery rather tends toincrease than diminish this feeling, as, leaving a larger portionof society in a state of tutelage, naturally and necessarily greaterattention is turned to the subject.If there is any community whose system of government worksbetter for all classes than our own we arewilling to abandon the defense of ours... no where [except theSouth] are the higher classes more elevated—no where are thelower classes more comfortable—no where do both and allwork together in their several positions with less bitterness ormore of the genial spirit of Christian love and charity ‐‐ thatno where is there less misery and less vice exhibited than underthe working of our system; if cases of wrong and oppression(which exist in every system, and must exist so long as manis not perfect) are, as in good governments they must beexceptional cases and not cases in rule....there really are a good many among our Southern inhabitants,men and women, who do what they think right, and are notliving with a constant lie on their lips and in their hearts; whoown slaves because they believe “the system” to be the bestpossible for black and white, for slave and master, and who can,on their knees, Gratefully worship the all gracious providenceof an Almighty God, who has seen fit, so beautifully, to suitevery being to the place to which its nature calls it... who ownslaves because they think it, not expedient only, but right, holyand just to do so, for the good of the slave – for the good of the289