1. © MARK BATIK JESUIT COLLEGE PREPARATORY SCHOOL OF DALLAS Antebellum Southern Society

2. Percentage of Slaveholding

3. Economics of Slaveholding Positives ~$250 per year per slave profit Rented for agriculture and manufacturing More efficient than northern farming Insured Poor conditions Facilitated Northern growth Negatives Discouraged other investments Increased gap between rich and poor Slaveholders controlled 93.1 percent of wealth Average wealth of slaveholders=14x nonslaveholders

5. Positive Good Calhoun 1837 Senate speech: “instead of an evil, a good—a positive good.” one portion of the community must live on the labor of another; learning, science, and the arts are built upon leisure; the African slave, kindly treated by his master and mistress and looked after in his old age, is better off than the free laborers of Europe; conflicts between capital and labor are avoided The advantages of slavery in this respect, he concluded, “will become more and more manifest, if left undisturbed by interference from without, as the country advances in wealth and numbers.”

6. Other Rationales Prevent socialism (Calhoun) Bible/religious defense (engravings from Bible Defense of Slavery, by Josiah Priest, 1853) Inferiority

7. Social Institution

8. Internal Slave Trade After the Sale: Slaves Going South from Richmond, by Eyre Crowe, 1853