Justification+of+Slavery

Justifications for slavery
Wealthy plantation owners wanted to keep slavery in the South. To do that they needed reasons. Here are some of the reasons they used to justify slavery.

The institution was legal
Slavery was protected constitutionally. Slavery had been an issue the founding fathers had thought long and hard about while writing the Constitution. They decided that they couldn't outlaw slavery at the time because of the economic impact slavery had. They never took to heart that slavery was morally wrong. The Constitution said that slavery was legal, since the Constitution is the supreme law of the land nothing could be done about it.

Slavery was a property issue
Slave owners viewed their slaves as property not as real people. The owners had bought the slaves and so they were his/her property. If the government tried to emancipate slaves, owners claimed that they couldn't because the Constitution says that property can not be taken away.

on slavery.
Some Southerners looked at history to explain why they thought slavery was right. All of the ancient empires and civilizations had been built on slavery. The Egyptian empire was built, literally, on slavery. Slaves built all the pyramids, temples and statues. The Roman empire also had slavery. Eventually these empires came to see how wrong slavery was and abolished it.

Mention of slavery in Bible
Slavery is mentioned in the Bible but never condemned. In the New Testament Moses leads slaves out of Egypt across the Red Sea. The Bible talks about slavery but never badly, so some Southerners thought that even God wanted slavery.

Slavery was beneficial to the economy
The South was mainly agricultural, harvesting crops such as cotton, tobacco, and rice. The South provided most of the Northern factories' raw materials. Slave labor was what kept plantations and farms going. Without slavery the South's economy would collapse and bring much of the North's with it. Cotton was also the number one U.S export. It was shipped to all of Europe but mainly Britain and France. If the South stopped producing cotton, the whole nation's economy would hit a slump. Foreign relations would also change. The South needed slave labor to help the nation function. Even people in the North who knew slavery was wrong didn't see a way of ending slavery and keeping the economy intact.

"lived better" than Northern workers
In the North there were factories instead of plantations. Slave owners said that slaves "lived better" than Northern workers. It was common to see begging in the North and not so much in the South. Slave owners also said that they gave slaves homes and food, while people in the North had to fend for themselves. The owners,however, were only trying to cover up the suffering they put slaves through.

Racism
Almost everyone at that time believed in the superiority of the white race. They thought that African Americans were inferior. This was wrong but it would take several decades for the world to realize that.