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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Politics - 20. Underlying Factors - 4. The Southern Defense Ideology
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442 An American Dilemma
characteristic of conservative thinking.^^ But the pro-slavery philosophy
of the Old South, incorporating all ideas dear to conservatism in all
countries and in all ages, went the full length and laid down a logical
static system just as tight as the competing philosophies to the left.
According to this political philosophy, slavery was not, as earlier
Southern writers had been disposed to admit, an inevitable evil. It was
instead a positive good, and a good to all parties concerned, including the
Negro slaves. Indeed, slavery was only part of a greater social order which
established an ideal division of labor and of responsibility in society be-
tween the sexes, the age groups, the social classes and the two races. This
division should not be left to be worked out by haphazard and ruinous
competition. In the South It was intentionally and wisely organized by the
state in accordance with the needs, the abilities, and the worth of the
individuals in the various groups concerned.
The principle of rational cooperation was, therefore, realized; some
authors even talked about ^^socialism” in a purified and dignified meaning
of the term.^® ^‘By making the labor itself capital, the conflict of interest,
so evident in other labor systems, lost Its foundation.^’^® Radicalism, or
rather the reason for radical opposition, was extinguished in this perfect
social order. A system of social estates, with the plantation owners as a
paternalistic nobility at the top and the toiling Negro slaves at the bottom,
was envisaged. ‘‘Equality begets universal envy, meanness and unchari-
tableness—slavery elevates and purifies the sentiments of master and
slave.”^^ The static nature of this system was accentuated and even exalted
by the persistent assertion that the South had actually realized the most
happy political, social, and economic conditions ever seen on earth and
which were, particularly, much superior to the deplorable conditions in
the North. “We are better husbands, better fathers, better friends, and
better neighbors than our Northern brethren.”^® The expounders of the
pro-slavery doctrine had to go back to Athenian democracy to find a true
parallel to the happy South and, indeed, the parallel they used was a highly
idealized Athens.
In this static social system all whites, independent of their rank in
society, were significantly superior to the slaves. Politically they were all
equals, since they were free citizens. Free competition and personal free-
dom were assured them. The Southern statesmen and writers hammered
on this thesis, that slavery, and slavery alone, produced the most perfect
equality and the most substantial liberty for the free citizens In society.
By relegating—in theory—all menial and domestic labor to the slaves, all
the whites became gentlemen. “One of the reconciling features of the ex-
istence [of Negro slavery],” argued Jefferson Davis just before the out-
break of the great conflict, “is the fact that it raises white men to the
same general level, that it dignifies and exalts every white man by the
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