Course material

1. Primary Source Activity
history writing question and need an explanation and answer to help me learn.
The first file is an excerpt from the writings of George Fitzhugh, a famous antebellum
southern intellectual, in which he responds to the abolitionist attacks on slavery. In a couple
of paragraphs, sum up and analyze his logic and argument. What does it tell us about how
deluded white southerners had become about slavery? Also, do you notice him make a point
that actually undermines his argument without him seeming to realize it?
Once slave owners began to respond like this to abolitionists, the abolitionist ramped up
their publications to prove their points, the most effective of which were more and more
memoirs from runaway slaves. The second linked file is an excerpt from one of them, in
which Josiah Henson describes the biggest memory from his childhood. In a couple of
paragraphs, sum up the events he explains, focusing on how it helps illustrate some of the
points from our class lecture on Antebellum slavery.
Lastly, having read this two different perspectives on slavery, I would like to hear your
thoughts and reflections on these two documents. You can go in any direction with this that
you'd like, but focus on your personal thoughts.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM EACH SOURCE TO ANSWER THE QUESTIONS.
Requirements: complete | .doc file
Father Henson's Story of His Own Life (1858) This excerpt is from the classic
autobiography of former slave Josiah Henson, which was published in 1858 with a forward
by the abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe. Henson described the cruel treatment of his
father at the hands of the overseer and his master. Like other slave autobiographies, this
narrative contributed to a growing revulsion to slavery in the North. As you read this
opening chapter, consider what an account like this revealed about the system of slavery
and the culture that developed around slaves and whites involved the institution. I was
born June 15th, 1789, in Charles County, Maryland, on a farm belonging to Mr. Francis
Newman, about a mile from Port Tobacco. My mother was a slave of Dr. Josiah McPherson,
but hired to the Mr. Newman to whom my father belonged. The only incident I can
remember which occurred while my mother continued on Mr. Newman's farm, was the
appearance one day of my father with his head bloody and his back lacerated. He was
beside himself with mingled rage and suffering. The explanation I picked up from the
conversation of others only partially explained the matter to my mind; but as I grew older I
understood it all. It seemed the overseer had sent my mother away from the other field

2. hands to a retired place, and after trying persuasion in vain, had resorted to force to
accomplish a brutal purpose. Her screams aroused my father at his distant work, and
running up, he found his wife struggling with the man. Furious at the sight, he sprung upon
him like a tiger. In a moment the overseer was down, and, mastered by rage, my father
would have killed him but for the entreaties of my mother, and the overseer's own promise
that nothing should ever be said of the matter. The promise was kept - like most promises of
the cowardly and debased - as long as the danger lasted. The laws of slave states provide
means and opportunities for revenge so ample, that miscreants like him never fail to
improve them. "A nigger has struck a white man;" that is enough to set a whole county on
fire; no question is asked about the provocation. The authorities were soon in pursuit of my
father. The fact of the sacrilegious act of lifting a hand against the sacred temple of a white
man's body - a profanity as blasphemous in the eye of a slave-state tribunal as was among
the Jews the entrance of a Gentile dog into the Holy of Holies - this was all it was necessary
to establish. And the penalty followed: one hundred lashes on the bare back, and to have the
right ear nailed to the whipping-post, and then severed from the body. For a time my father
kept out of the way, hiding in the woods, and at night venturing into some cabin in search of
food. But at length the strict watch set baffled all his efforts. His supplies cut off, he was
fairly starved out, and compelled by hunger to come back and give himself up. The day for
the execution of the penalty was appointed. The negroes from the neighboring plantations
were summoned, for their moral improvement, to witness the scene. A powerful blacksmith
named Hewes laid on the stripes. Fifty were given, during which the cries of my father
might be heard a mile, and then a pause ensued. True, he had struck a white man, but as
valuable property he must not be damaged. Judicious men
felt his pulse. Oh! he could stand the whole. Again and again the thong fell on his lacerated
back. His cries grew fainter and fainter, till a feeble groan was the only response to the final
blows. His head was then thrust against the post, and his right ear fastened to it with a tack;
a swift pass of a knife, and the bleeding member was left sticking to the place. Then came a
hurra from the degraded crowd, and the exclamation, "That's what he's got for striking a
white man." A few said, "it's a damned shame;" but the majority regarded it as but a proper
tribute to their offended majesty. It may be difficult for you, reader, to comprehend such
brutality, and in the name of humanity you may protest against the truth of these
statements. To you, such cruelty inflicted on a man seems fiendish. Ay, on a man; there
hinges the whole. In the estimation of the illiterate, besotted poor whites who constituted
the witnesses of such scenes in Charles County, Maryland, the man who did not feel rage
enough at hearing of "a nigger" striking a white to be ready to burn him alive, was only fit to
be lynched out of the neighborhood. A blow at one white man is a blow at all; is the
muttering and upheaving of volcanic fires, which underlie and threaten to burst forth and
utterly consume the whole social fabric. Terror is the fiercest nurse of cruelty. And when, in
this our day, you find tender English women and Christian English divines fiercely urging
that India should be made one pool of Sepoy blood, pause a moment before you lightly
refuse to believe in the existence of such ferocious passions in the breasts of tyrannical and
cowardly slave-drivers. Previous to this affair my father, from all I can learn, had been a
good-humored and light-hearted man, the ringleader in all fun at corn-huskings and

3. Christmas buffoonery. His banjo was the life of the farm, and all night long at a merry-
making would he play on it while the other negroes danced. But from this hour he became
utterly changed. Sullen, morose, and dogged, nothing could be done with him. The milk of
human kindness in his heart was turned to gall. He brooded over his wrongs. No fear or
threats of being sold to the far south - the greatest of all terrors to the Maryland slave-would
render him tractable. So off he was sent to Alabama. What was his after fate neither my
mother nor I have ever learned; the great day will reveal all. This was the first chapter in my
history.
George Fitzhugh, "The Universal Law of Slavery" (1850) He the Negro is but a grown up
child, and must be governed as a child, not as a lunatic or criminal. The master occupies
toward him the place of parent or guardian. We shall not dwell on this view, for no one will
differ with us who thinks as we do of the negro's capacity, and we might argue till dooms-
day in vain, with those who have a high opinion of the negro's moral and intellectual
capacity. Secondly. The negro is improvident; will not lay up in summer for the wants of
winter; will not accumulate in youth for the exigencies of age. He would become an
insufferable burden to society. Society has the right to prevent this, and can only do so by
subjecting him to domestic slavery. In the last place, the negro race is inferior to the white
race, and living in their midst, they would be far outstripped or outwitted in the chaos of
free competition. Gradual but certain extermination would be their fate. We presume the
maddest abolitionist does not think the negro's providence of habits and money-making
capacity at all to compare to those of the whites. This defect of character would alone justify
enslaving him, if he is to remain here. In Africa or the West Indies, he would become
idolatrous, savage and cannibal, or be devoured by savages and cannibals. At the North he
would freeze or starve. We would remind those who deprecate and sympathize with negro
slavery, that his slavery here relieves him from a far more cruel slavery in Africa, or from
idolatry and cannibalism, and every brutal vice and crime that can disgrace humanity; and
that it christianizes, protects, supports and civilizes him; that it governs him far better than
free laborers at the North are governed. There, wife-murder has become a mere holiday
pastime; and where so many wives are murdered, almost all must be brutally treated. Nay,
more; men who kill their wives or treat them brutally, must be ready for all kinds of crime,
and the calendar of crime at the North proves the inference to be correct. Negroes never kill
their wives. If it be objected that legally they have no wives, then we reply, that in an
experience of more than forty years, we never yet heard of a negro man killing a negro
woman. Our negroes are not only better off as to physical comfort than free laborers, but
their moral condition is better. 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 husbands 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. Besides' they have their Sabbaths and
holidays. White men, with so much of license and liberty, would die of ennui; but negroes
luxuriate in corporeal and mental repose. With their faces upturned to the sun, they can

4. sleep at any hour; and quiet sleep is the greatest of human enjoyments. "Blessed be the man
who invented sleep." 'Tis happiness in itself--and results from contentment with the
present, and confident assurance of the future.
A common charge preferred against slavery is, that it induces idleness with the masters. The
trouble, care and labor, of providing for wife, children and slaves, and of properly governing
and administering the whole affairs of the farm, is usually borne on small estates by the
master. On larger ones, he is aided by an overseer or manager. If they do their duty, their
time is fully occupied. If they do not, the estate goes to ruin. The mistress, on Southern
farms, is usually more busily, usefully and benevolently occupied than any one on the farm.
She unites in her person, the offices of wife, mother, mistress, housekeeper, and sister of
charity. And she fulfills all these offices admirably well. The rich men, in free society, may, if
they please, lounge about town, visit clubs, attend the theatre, and have no other trouble
than that of collecting rents, interest and dividends of stock. In a well constituted slave
society, there should be no idlers. But we cannot divine how the capitalists in free society
are to put to work. The master labors for the slave, they exchange industrial value. But the
capitalist, living on his income, gives nothing to his subjects. He lives by mere exploitations.