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In an attempt to disarm the abolitionists' moral outrage over slavery as "man-stealing" and ignoring the anti-slavery tradition of the Founders, Calhoun, like many proslavery Southerners, pointed to the ancient world to help them defend the institution of slavery, especially Aristotle's theory of natural slavery. [21]
Arguments in favor of slavery include deference to the Bible and thus to God, some people being natural slaves in need of supervision, slaves often being better off than the poorest non-slaves, practical social benefit for the society as a whole, and slavery being a time-proven practice by multiple great civilizations.
While some Southerners used it to defend the institution of slavery, others saw Kingsley's support of a free class of blacks as a prelude to the abolition of it. [6]: 148–149 Abolitionists considered Kingsley's arguments for slavery weak and wrote that logically, the planter should conclude that slavery must be eradicated.
This view of the war progressively changed, one step at a time, as public sentiment evolved, until by 1865 the war was seen in the North as primarily concerned with ending slavery. The first federal act taken against slavery during the war occurred on 16 April 1862, when Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act ...
This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. [2] [3] Later in the speech, Stephens used biblical imagery (Psalm 118, v.22) in arguing that divine laws consigned black Americans to slavery as the "substratum of our society":
The Moral Map of the U.S., from the AASS publication The Legion of Liberty! and Force of Truth. Many founding members used a practical approach to slavery, saying economically it did not make sense. Wright used the rhetoric of religion to elicit empathy toward African Americans, and presented slavery as a moral sin.
Throughout U.S. history there have been disputes about whether the Constitution was proslavery or antislavery. James Oakes writes that the Constitution's Fugitive Slave Clause and Three-Fifths Clause "might well be considered the bricks and mortar of the proslavery Constitution". [6] "
Douglass used the allegory of the "man from another country" during the speech, [7] arguing that abolitionists should take a moment to examine the plainly written text of the Constitution instead of secret meanings, saying, "It is not whether slavery existed ... at the time of the adoption of the Constitution" nor that "those slaveholders, in their hearts, intended to secure certain advantages ...