so they fight back. also newspapers editors, ministers, they know that this is a threat. and these are the kinds of arguments that they make. they say first of all, slavery is protected by the bible. they love that part of the bible that says servants obey thy masters. they quote that hundreds of times. servants obey thy master. they hardly ever quote in christ there is no male or female. they don't like that. they quote the parts of the bible that they say are pro slavery. they say the constitution is pro slavery. you know, that's also a kind of tricky argument to make. you can say the fugitive slave

clause is pro slavery, the three fifth clause is ambiguous but somewhat pro slavery. then there the clause that ended the international slave trade, so that would seem to have an anti-slavery tendency. but they say the founders were pro slavery. they also start to say in the 1830s, this was the first time this argument is really made in any sustained way, they say that slavery is good for black people. that they are benefiting from the institution of slavery. they say that they are learning about the work ethic. well, yes. if you are forced to labor in the fields all day, six days a week, you know, you're doing tremendous amounts of back breaking work all of your life yes, you will learn about the work ethic. they say it's good for slaves to come to america and be exposed to christianity. they say that since black people are inferior to whites it's just good for inferior people to be around their superiors. this is an openly elitist argument. they say that white people especially masters are helping slaves.

they say that the master has a role that is similar to the father in a family. that he's helping the slaves. this argument is called paternalism. paternalism. this is the first time this argument has been made. you didn't hear this in the 1790s or the dawn of the century. and one thing that they don't say, really, in a very straight forward fashion, is that we have made so much money off of slavery. they don't talk about that. they don't talk about the fact that the institution has enriched so many slave owners. and slavery was very profitable. it made a lot of money. and historians used to debate this, how profitable was slavery. that debate, it's been settled. slavery was very profitable. one historian has estimated a plantation would make a return

on investment of 8 to 10% a year. that's a lot of money. that's an investment that is paying off very well. so, these are wealthy people, these are people who have acquired considerable riches and are trying to defend the institution that has made them rich. and of course all the slave owning states are wealthy. and the federal census counts slaves as wealth, as property. to give you some examples of just how wealthy the slave owning south had become, the poorest of all of the slave owning states was north carolina. and it was richer than new york. because slaves are counted as property. and the wealthiest state of all, in the whole country, was what? take a guess. no. south carolina, no, that's not

it. somebody said it. not virginia. that's a good guess. mississippi. very good. mississippi. mississippi which today i think is the poorest state, or you know, maybe arkansas is the poorest and mississippi is the second poorest. well, you know, in this period mississippi is the wealthiest state. it's a state that's full of farms and plantations and slaves. and of course, the crop that most of these slaves are raising and the slave owners are profiting from, is what? cotton. right. this is the cotton era. cotton is being raised all over the region and it is in fact the largest export for the whole united states. it's one of the cheap engines of the whole economy. and that cotton goes to principally to one country, that country is -- great britain, right. the textile mill owners in england want american cotton. it has a reputation for being very fine cotton, high quality

cotton. so, there's a lot of money at stake here. there is a lot of wealth at stake. and even though the 19th century is called the century of emancipation because that's when so many societies finally turn away from slavery, we must always remember there's a strong counter attack from slave owners who are trying to hold onto it. and when we look at the pro slavery argument i think we should bear in mind that an english man once said that when we study history, we often study behavior by earlier generations, this seems to us to be disgraceful. seems to us to be reprehensible. i think all thinking adults today would agree about that point about the pro slavery argument. i mean, slavery has almost no defenders today. in world opinion has changed dramatically since the 19th

century. in the 1830s and 40s and 50s, this is a hot debate. this is an ongoing vigorous debate between slave owners and people who are criticizing slavery and trying to do away with it. some of these pro slavery writers get down to very basic concepts about people and about with human nature. they talk about the particulars, the parts of the bible they like and so on. but some of these pro slavery writers say that the ideas that have started to percolate in the 18th century and early 19th century that all people are equal, that idea is wrong, that idea is mistaken. it's just dead wrong. that's what they say. they say the world is a hierarchy. they say some people are superior and some people are inferior. that's the way the world is. that's the way people are. and they say that's the way society has always been and a way it always should be. some people are just put on this earth to work for other people because of their inferiority. some people have power because

of their superiority. they are very blunt and they are getting down to brass tacks, getting down to very basic debates about the nature of human beings. and that's the argument that they make. and in the 1850s, they start borrowing from european writers and they say that science proves that whites are superior to everybody else. so the rise of scientific racism is actually a 19th century phenomenon, not something that develops in the 20th century. it goes way back. it's coming principally out of

france, out of french writers who are just making it up. they're just making this stuff up, folks. this is not real science. this is not based on any scientific research as we understand it today. the scientific method is something they are not observing. they are making it up, asserting. sometimes there is some shabby experiments they did, you know, saying that if you have a bigger head that proves you're smarter, so white men have bigger heads, that means they are smarter than everybody else. why know today -- does the physical size of your head have anything to do with how smart you are? no. no, it doesn't. so that's what's passing for science or scientific research. and one of the most influential, unfortunately, of these various french writers is a man named arthur gobineau. he casts a long shadow over world history. and gobineau was born into a family that lost its title and fortune in the french revolution and they were deeply nostalgic about the world before 1789. and he had a title, kind of honorary title, the count de

gobineau. the family has not too much money left. and they feel that they have been robbed of their position and their fortune. that's the atmosphere that they grows up in. deeply nostalgic for the past, and people who assume automatically that the world is a hierarchy and some people should exercise power, and that hierarchy must be maintained. so gobineau goes into the diplomatic corps. he has a long career. he also publishes many books. he was a prolific writer, he published novels, travel books, and unfortunately i hate to admit this but he is a very good writer. so he's -- he can write good prose. in his books he attacks

democracy, he says that it doesn't work. and he also believes deeply in hierarchy. in his publications he starts to say this and makes this argument with great energy that the world is a hierarchy and all whites everywhere are superior to all people of color. he published an essay called essay on the inequality of the races. and the title says it all. he believes in racial hierarchy, and he says that all people of color everywhere are inferior, he also says that jews are inferior tour christians, within europe he says that people from southern europe like italy, are inferior to people from northern europe like germany and france. so he's got very specific ideas about hierarchy. and one of his biographers has said that gobineau hated all humanity.

he hates almost everybody. and he's just full of this vitriol and makes the case over and over in his many publications. unfortunately his books are translated into many languages, he reaches a big audience in his lifetime. he gets translated into english in the 1850s, his essay on the inequality of the races and people who are pro slavery in america quote gobineau as an authority and say you know, the french also agree with us. whites are superior to blacks. of course you know, they leave out a lot of the other things that gobineau says. he had a strange obsession with eye color. he said that people who had blue eyes were superior to everybody else. and the photographs and portraits suggest he had brown eyes. this man has got lots of

pathologies going on. pro slavery figures in america zero in on parts of his argument, and they use it in the u.s. and they say well, you know, the french have seen the light here and mr. gobineau has proven what we've already been saying. of course there is no proof. this is just a bitter angry man who is full of all of this prejudice, just writing books that confirm what he already thinks. he reaches a big audience of gobineau societies were founded in parts of europe. and unfortunately, he reaches a big audience in germany and one of the people he has an impact on was none other than right, adolf hitler. hitler himself read gobineau's publications and agreed with them. he has a big impact on the debate in the u.s. before the

american civil war. now, not all white southerners are pro slavery. we must always bear that in mind. there are always some dissenters within. there are people who become abolitionists like cassius clay who stays in the south until the civil war breaks out. there are people who leave the south like the greinke sisters. there are dissenting voices in the 1830s on the issue of slavery. not too many. because it takes courage to speak out on this issue. but a few people. for example, a newspaper editor in a small town in south carolina in the 1830s said in his paper, his paper was called "the southern wig." obviously he is a supporter of the wig party. he said in his paper let's have a debate here in the south within the white population about slavery. no outsiders, just us. let's have an honest, open debate. his name was maynard richardson.

he says this in his paper, he invites people to write articles and essays expressing their true opinion about the issue of slavery. he gets interesting articles which he publishes. one writer said that whites tried to debase black people. that was the word. and then would blame them for being inferior. interesting echo of the greinke sisters there. and another writer says that slavery allowed white people to indulge too often the enjoyment of power. the exercise of power gave people pleasure and slavery allowed white people to indulge the love of power. but this candid debate doesn't last long in 1832, another

newspaper editor called upon richardson to stop this dangerous debate, and insulted him and called him names and said he was hurting the south and so on. and richardson refused to shut down his debate so he was physically assaulted and badly beaten up. then he gave in. so the debate stops. it lasts less than a year in a small town newspaper in south carolina. in 1833, another young slave holder in columbia, south carolina, the state capitol, he said he wanted to found a sunday school to teach slaves to read so they could read the bible. and he persuaded some local slave owners to send their slaves to him. and he taught it for several months. kind of under the radar. not advertising it like, say, maynard richardson was doing in his newspaper.

but then local whites found out and they forced him to shut it down. so that was the end of that experiment. then there are white southerners who because of the very unusual circumstances of their own lives become anti-slavery. we see this in the life of a georgian, a man named david snelling. and david snelling was born into the slave owning class. but his parents died when he was young. and he was adopted by one of his uncles, his mother's brother. and he found out right away that his uncle hated his dead father. and to get revenge on the dead father, young david was forced to work in the cotton fields along side slaves. he's a white boy. and his uncle made him work in the fields along side slaves. and he doesn't go to college,

which his cousins did, he doesn't have any of the privileges that he was born into. he's a farm hand. and he comes to know slaves as human beings, comes to sympathize with them, he becomes a very strong critic of slavery and when the civil war broke out he ran away from home and he served in the union army. so he could fight against slavery. now that's very unusual. that didn't happen too often. what happened to david snelling. one thing that puzzled me. what time about the neighbors. didn't the neighbors in that community in georgia think that was objectionable? that a white boy was working next to slaves. you would think that the neighbors would have objected, but apparently they didn't.

now, there also are interesting comments here and there by white women on the subject of slavery from inside the south. some surprising outbursts you see occasionally in correspondence and in diaries. for example, a white woman who saw slaves being sold at auction and she said they were being treated like they were cattle. she said this is wrong. it's wrong. she says this in a letter. a white woman who was married to a slave owner said in a letter, a private communication, she said that this is unchristian, she said slavery is unchristian and said it was obvious to her that the slaves were all miserable. that was the word she used. they are miserable. but these are private communications. these are not people saying it in a newspaper, on a speech on the floor of the u.s. congress. these are occasional sporadic private comments. we see interesting comments in a diary kept by a wealthy woman from south carolina named mary chestnut. mary chestnut was the daughter of a governor, she marries a

wealthy man, james chestnut and she lives in great comfort on the plantation in south carolina. but she's not a very happy person. in her diary she pours out her feelings and her diary was published long after her death and we finally got a full complete edition in 1981. but the things she says in her diary are kind of interesting. she says that slavery was a monstrous system. that's the word she used. and she asked god to forgive the south for slavery. she also complained bitterly about the fact that her own father-in-law, her husband's father, had numerous illegitimate offspring on the plantation of mixed race. that people walking around, her father-in-law's plantation who looked a lot like the master, light skinned slaves and nobody said anything.

he got away with it. he's married, he has a wife and children, he has respectability. but he clearly had a second set of children and mary chestnut thinks that this is wrong. she thinks it's horrible. and she said that her father-in-law was a tyrant like the czar of russia. he could do anything and get away with it and the hypocrisy of it bothers mary chestnut. again, these are private communications. they say a diary is often a substitute for a human relationship and she probably couldn't communicate how she really felt to other people in her life so she pours out her feelings in her diary. we must also remember that there are some conservative white

women who are part of the pro slavery argument. a tiny number, even though women are not supposed to participate in public debates on slavery or anything else, they are supposed to focus on the family and on private life. but nonetheless there are a few people who publish supporting the pro slavery argument. another south carolinian, actually an acquaintance of mary chestnut, her name was louisa mccord. and louisa mccord lived a life of great privilege, the daughter of a very wealthy man, she married a very wealthy man. and he died and she owned five plantations and she ran them herself. all by herself. she never remarried. and she publishes essays that are strongly pro slavery. and what she says is what so many other pro slavery figures say. she says the world is a hierarchy, that's the way things are and she says whites are superior to blacks, and she says, men are superior to women. and she said we just have to

accept that. that's just the way things are, and that's the way the world works. of course, if you could go back in a time machine we might say to louisa mccord if you think that women are inferior to men why are you -- why are you writing these essays? if women are inferior to men why are you writing these forceful essays. you can see in the essays that louisa mccord is a smart person and a good writer. she can make a coherent argument in print. so her own life disputes or undermine what is she says. and we might go back in a time machine and say well, if the you think that men are superior to women then you should get remarried right away so you know, a man can run your properties. you shouldn't be running five

plantations by yourself. but we don't have time machines. too bad we can't go back and tell her that. but louisa mccord is praised by politicians in south carolina. the greinke sisters are run out of the state, basically, and end up in philadelphia. and mary chestnut pours her heart out in a private diary that remains obscure and unknown until the late 20th century. so, are there any questions or comments about the pro slavery argument before we change topics? okay. well, let's talk about slavery, shall we. let's talk about the subject of slavery. there is a large scholarship on this topic. many, many, many books have been written about the subject of slavery.

how many of you took history 151? okay. and did you discuss slavery in that course? 151? okay. good. occasionally i have students who say they took history 151 and then slavery got skipped over. i'm glad that hasn't happened. okay. let's paint in broad strokes a picture of the institution. this institution that is being attacked by abolitionists and defended by pro slavery figures. slavery is very old. it goes back to the ancient greek and romans, ancient egyptians, it's older than the united states and slavery existed long before jamestown was founded in 1607. slavery had already spread through central and south america, that part of the new world had been colonized by the spanish and the portuguese and the development of slavery in north america and the british empire is a late comer, slavery was already an up and running

concern generating huge profits in central and south america, before the very first slaves arrive in virginia and the virginia colony in 1619. and most of the slaves who come to the new world go to central and south america. we estimate maybe 5% of the millions of slaves who are brought from africa to the americas end up in what is now the united states. now, the cotton gin in the 1790s as we mentioned, the cotton gin gives slavery a new lease on life. it's a new way to make money from a slavery. and the typical slave in the period from 1830 to 1860 works on a cotton plantation. although not all of them. some slaves work in industry, slaves helped build railroads in the south. they work in mining. believe it or not, they had that gold strike in georgia in 1828.

some slave owners mined gold with slave labor. but most of the slaves work in agriculture, most of them work in crops, plantations that raise crops like sugar and tobacco and so on. mostly of them work on cotton. well, the bell has just sounded. so let's finish up for today. i'll see everybody on wednesday for the discussion of the richard john monogram. thank you for coming. >> with congress on break we are featuring some of american history tv's weekend programs on cspan 3 this week. u.s. civil war battle sites. we'll start with the union's first major victory at fort

donelson along the cumberland river. and a look back at battle of shiloh. at that point it was the bloodiest battle in u.s. history. american history tv in primetime all week, starting at 8:00 eastern, here on cspan 3. spend the weekend in oklahoma city with book tv and american history tv. saturday at noon eastern check in on literary life with book tv on cpan 2 including the governor's must-read political books. oklahoma university president and former senator, on his letter to america. also rare books from the history of science collection at o.u. and oklahoma history on american history tv on cspan 3. tour the oklahoma city bombing memorial. plus, a look into african-american life in 1920s oklahoma and native american t