Slavery

In the nineteenth century, supporters of slavery in used legal, religious, and economic arguments to defend the institution of slavery. Southern plantation owners depended heavily on slavery. Cotton, their main export, required tedious slave labor. Thus, southern supporters of slavery employed whatever tactics they could in order to keep their slaves from emancipation, which worked and extended slavery for a few more decades. One of the ways Southerners defended slavery was through legal means. In 1831-1832, Virginia legislature debated and eventually defeated various emancipation proposals. This legislation was a turning point in the

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The slaves were becoming Chistian, which was far better than barbarians of the jungle. Slavemasters therefore encouraged religion in slaves, not only because it would keep them tame, but it would also suppress Northern abolitionist arguments. Free blacks, they said, would cause fierce competition in factory jobs, taking away many of immigrant jobs held by the Irish and German.

Also, without slavery, much of the revenue in the South would be eliminated, and the nation's supply of cotton would be cut off. The North, too, was heavily dependent on cotton, and the loss of cotton would hit the North almost as hard as it would hit the south. Thus, they were breaking the 1st amendment in the Bill of Rights which guaranteed

Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press. They reasoned that the country's standing was fairly decent the way it was, and that any sudden change or emancipation of slaves would cause chaos and destroy the nation.

The Southern slaveholders used these legal, religious, and economic arguments to defend the institution of slavery. They claimed that slavery was supported by the Bible and also by the widom of Aristotle. In 1835, the government ordered southern postmasters to destroy abolitionist material and told officials to arrest postmasters who did not destroy abolitionist writing.