Rogue 9
The Anti-Confederate
- Apr 15, 2008
- 176
- 67
- 66
- Thread starter
- #121
Yes, it was, but that's not what I pointed out. It wasn't just slavery itself that was opposed to classical liberalism; so were the enforcement measures demanded by the South. They weren't principled classical liberals by that point; they were pro-slavery partisans who were all too willing to use the bludgeon of federal power to preserve their institution. The going theory by then wasn't that all men had the basic rights; it was that without black slavery whites would no longer all be privileged to be in the upper class. Calhoun and Hammond said this in so many words on more than one occasion, and it was trumpeted in editorials across the South. An 1856 editorial of the Richmond Enquirer made this assertion:Jesus Christ. Those provisions of the platform flatly contradict each other. Seriously, read the words; first they say that the federal government has no right to interfere with the domestic affairs of the states, and then they advocate the strict enforcement and sustaining of the Fugitive Slave Act, which was to date the biggest such act of interference the United States had ever seen. I mean, really?The Democratic Party, descended from Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, was the party of classical liberalism, as opposed to the Federalist, Whig, and Republican Parties, all of which were big government parties. The platform of the Democratic Party of 1856 has this to say:
The Democratic Platform (1856)
And there's plenty more there, as well. Now while you're right that I can't prove that every classical liberal at the very least supported slavery, I can say that the political party of classical liberalism did support slavery.
That's kind of the point. Slavery was opposed to the ideas of classical liberalism.
Why would they think this? Well, because the underclass would either consist of black slaves or white laborers, and on the whole they much preferred that it not be the master race doing the drudge work. Senator Hammond's famous King Cotton speech said it in so many words:In this country alone does perfect equality of civil and social privilege exist among the white population, and it exists solely because we have black slaves. Freedom is not possible without slavery.
This idea finds its basis in Thomas Jefferson's assertion that a wage-laborer, not being independent, is unable to effectively function in governing a republic, since he is dependent upon his employer and therefore easily suborned. That is why ownership of real property was a voting requirement in the early United States; Jefferson and his party believed that only those who owned their own means of production, that is an independent farmer, artisan, business owner, planter, and so forth, were sufficiently independent to effectively use the vote.[T]he man who lives by daily labor, and scarcely lives at that, and who has to put out his labor in the market, and take the best he can get for it; in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and "operatives," as you call them, are essentially slaves. The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street of your large towns.
This idea, while abhorrent today, at least did not include a mandate to exclude blacks or artificially make all whites non-wage workers as formulated by Jefferson. Jefferson feared that the growing working class would subvert the republic, saying:
The rise of European immigration from the 1820s on made this an untenable position, and the vote was expanded to include wage-earning white males in the North. This triggered the Southern reaction that I've cited here, as the new Northern voting blocs proceeded to vote in ways not favorable to Southern interests, particularly slave and territorial interests. Working conditions of industrial laborers in the 19th century were of course deplorable, and Southern agriculturalists were horrified to think that this would be their fate if not for the slave underclass taking that role for them. To go back to Calhoun for a moment:Let our workshops remain in Europe. The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the human body. ... I consider the class of artificers [workmen] as the panders of vice, and the instruments by which the liberties of a country are generally overturned.
That should be sufficient, I think. If anyone wishes more, I can readily go on.With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals, if honest and industrious; and hence have a position and pride of character of which neither poverty nor misfortune can deprive them.
Incidentally, I recommend this essay for further discussion of the Deep South's rejection of classical liberalism, particularly their walkout at the Democratic National Convention in 1860 when the party refused to adopt a platform plank calling for a federal guarantee of the right of slavery in all territories.