As John C. Calhoun: Proslavery Activist

 This is a speech I wrote based off research I found on John C. Calhoun. To give a little background, Calhoun was a prominent figure in Congress and a spokesman for the slave-plantation system during the years 1817 up unto his death in 1850. 

 

I, John Calhoun, born March 18, 1782, in South Carolina, believe that slavery is necessary for our economy. President Andrew Jackson passed a series of tariffs in 1828 and 1832 that sacrificed our agrarian interest in cotton and other cash crops that depended on slave work to benefit the North's industry. Although as Vice President, I wrote theSouth Carolina Exposition and Protest" for the states to have the right to nullify this unconstitutional government action. We have little representation defending us, the slaveholding South, and that goes against the concurrent majority. To govern by the numerical majority alone is to confuse a part of the people with the whole. This concept prevents the North from being a tyrant, trying to rule the nation with those dumb anti-slavery laws since they have most of the population. We are already moving towards tyranny with them trying to take our slave-based economy away. I will not compromise on this issue; this calls for a civil war. The "South cannot remain here in an endless struggle in defense of our character, our property, and institutions. " If the North doesn't stop this "we must become, finally, two people... Abolition and the Union cannot coexist."  

Our economy depends on slavery. To destroy slavery would be to destroy a powerful symbol of what motivated the Southern man to improve himself. Maybe you Northerners don't understand that cotton is labor-intensive, for the more money our white men make, the more fields, meaning more slaves needed. Our slave system is superior to the “wage slavery” you Northerners have. The master invests in his slaves making it economically unreasonable for them to mistreat them or ignore their working and living conditions. In the North, the free laborer was as much a slave to his employer as was the black man in the South, he lacks the protection the black slave enjoyed from a fatherly master. So, the ownership of slaves became a measure of status and upward mobility. 

 

Slavery is a positive good. It is a win-win situation. The master got his labor, and the slave received a standard of living far above what he could achieve on his own. The African race is inferior mentally, physically, and morally to us whites. They need to be Slaves. Look at the living conditions up North... the free blacks live in poverty, proving the blacks cannot even exercise their freedom positively. Never has the black race been so civilized and so improved. It came as a low, degraded savage, and we took it under our wing to care for it. It is unable to gain the quality of life we provide it. For it to be free and compete with us would be catastrophic. It wouldn't have the same quality of life that it did as a slave. Slave owners provide from slaves from birth to death. Even if slavery were to end, which would be wrong, Africans would become extinct in the time since they were inferior, at least as slaves gives it security and makes it useful.

 

Short Videos for Further Information:

5 Minute Biography: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0EhTQ6LAkY

Nullification Crisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfQf208o3eI

“Slavery a Positive Good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN3ntiErGU0&t=7s