ment. Liberty is the "highest reward bestowed on mental and moral development, combined with favorable circumstances."1 It is not a status into which men are born, but one for which they must struggle, and which can be reached only by those who are most highly endowed. Liberty is not given to man at the beginning of his career, but is the distant goal which he reaches at the end. The same idea was clearly stated by Bledsoe in his Essay on Liberty and Slavery, where he urged that there is no natural and inherent right to political power or privilege, privilege, except that arising from superior fitness or capacity. He denounced the "French idea" that liberty may be obtained through formal equality, and held that, on the contrary, liberty depends on equality of intelligence and virtue. "The most illiterate peasant," said he, "may at a glance grasp the idea of equality; the most profound statesman may not, without much care and thought, comprehend the nature of liberty.'

"2

Particular emphasis must be placed on this doctrine, for it was just at this point that the proslavery and the anti-slavery party sharply diverged. It was a part of the Abolitionist argument that freedom is inborn in all men, is an essential part of their nature, something of which they cannot justly be deprived. Calhoun and his followers maintained, on the contrary, that liberty is not born with man, not a natural and inherent right, but 2 Op. cit. 129.

1 Works, 511.

a privilege, a reward of which all are not equally worthy, for which individuals or races must demonstrate their fitness. This fundamental difference between the doctrine of the pro-slavery party and that of the Revolutionary Fathers and the Abolitionists, is deserving of careful attention, for it is the clew to the philosophic controversy between the opposing schools. It marks the scientific parting of the ways.

Assuming, then, that liberty is not a gift impartially bestowed by nature on all men, but only upon the few, the pro-slavery party declared that the negro race is unworthy of liberty and incapable of self-government. The contrast between the white man and the black man, in all those points that are characteristic of civilization, was a staple item of argument. It was asserted that the negro "stands at the lowest point in the scale of human beings." 1 If human beings at all, they are of the most degraded species.2 The negro is not merely "a lamp-blacked white man debased by slavery," but a being essentially and fundamentally inferior in mind and body. Contemporary authorities in the scientific world were invoked to show that the racial characteristics of the negro stamped him as an inferior order of man.3

It

1 "Nature and Destiny of the Negro," by J. C. Nott (1850), in De Bow, Industrial Resources, II, 308.

2 Ibid. II, 203.

8 Ibid. II, 308.

was even urged that the negro could not be a descendant of Adam, but must be derived from some other distinct and inferior species.1 More common was the assertion that the negro is descended from Ham, upon whose race both God and nature have set a curse, as shown by the concurring authority of the Scriptures and natural science.2

Not only was it asserted that the negroes were manifestly inferior, but the ground was also taken that they were incapable of ever becoming, even approximately, the equal of the white race. It was said of the negro races that "no moral or physical agencies can redeem them from their degradation;" to attempt to relieve them from their natural inferiority is idle in itself, and may be mischievous in its results. The negro must, therefore, be regarded as an essentially inferior race, and, moreover, as incapable of rising very far or very soon from this natural and divinely appointed status of degradation.3

It follows, then, that the black man cannot be considered as a fit subject for the exercise of civil

1 Ibid. 203, and III, 315-329. Article on Negroes, by Dr. Cartwright. Cf. Negro-mania, by John Campbell (1851). There was at this time considerable discussion as to the multiple origin of the human race.

2 Sawyer, Institutes of Slavery, 116.

8 "The negro cannot be schooled, nor argued, nor driven into a love of freedom. His intellect cannot be schooled, nor argued, nor driven into a love of freedom." De Bow, op. cit. II, 204.

or political rights. Governor McDuffie said that the negroes are "utterly unqualified, not only for rational freedom, but for self-government of any kind,” and this fairly expressed the sentiment of the slavery party. If the negro is unfit to govern himself, there can be no injustice in governing him without his consent. To do for him what he could not do for himself, and what must be done by some one, is not to commit an injustice, but to confer a benefit. Hence, the slave is not to be regarded as a hapless victim of oppression; he is under no despotic power; there are laws which protect him, in his place, as inflexible as those which his proprietor is required to obey in his place. "Providence," said Hammond, "has placed him in our hands for his good, and has paid us from his labor for our guardianship." 1

In brief, the contention was that if there are two races existing side by side, and the inferior race is incapable of self-guidance and self-government, this race must be taken in hand and governed by the superior. It had also to be shown that the institution of slavery did no more than what was necessary for the regulation of the lower race; in other words, that the relation between the races was that of guardian and ward, and not that of exploiter and victim.

1 Hammond, op. cit. 274. Cf. Bledsoe, op. cit. 115; Samuel Seabury, op. cit. 91. Others held slavery to be the result of sin; cf. Fletcher, op. cit.

Such reasoning, however, was only a defence of slavery, and the advocates of the cause were unwilling to rest their case at this point. They attempted to show, not only that slavery was not an evil, but that it was a positive good; that it was not only tolerable under certain unfortunate conditions, but essential to the highest type of society. Inspired by this motive, Calhoun declared in Congress that "there has never yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other."1 He maintained that the performance of menial duties is wholly inconsistent with the life of a freeman. "No Southern man," said he, "not even the poorest or the lowest, will, under any circumstances, submit to perform (either of) them. He has too much pride for that, and I rejoice that he has."2 Fortified by this belief, Calhoun was ready to say that the institution of slavery "forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free institutions"; and Governor McDuffie could declare that "domestic slavery, instead of being a political evil, is the corner-stone of our republican edifice." With the same idea in mind, Alexander H. Stephens, on the verge of the Civil War, proclaimed that slavery, rejected by the Revolutionary Fathers,

1 Works, II, 631 (1837).

2 Ibid. IV, 505.

• II, 632.