John Locke and the Antebellum Defense of Slavery
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6350866 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert J Loewenberg (Arizona State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1985 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 266-291 |
| Publication date | 1985-05-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Political Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0090591785013002006 |
| OpenAlex | W2089141359 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 5 |
su HE STUDY of proslavery thought, long overshadowed by study of abolitionism, has in recent years become a subject of some interest to historical scholarship. The defense of slavery by southerners and by some northerners and Europeans in three decades prior to Civil War no longer is considered to have been merely rationalization or morally obtuse. Instead, proslavery writings now are believed to possess intrinsic interest suggestive of an alternative in American political thought. This revised view takes account of a longer and much less defensive or isolated tradition of proslavery sentiment in South than earlier scholars assumed. For example, 1830, year of debates on slavery in Virgina legislature about which T. R. Dew wrote an influential review in 1832, now is thought to mark less a changed commitment to slavery than a concern among its proponents to explain why. . . not whether. . . it was right.' The general sweep of proslavery position is well known. Southerners relied on biblical and ethnological arguments, employing them separately or, where it seemed possible, in tandem. Recent surveys of this literature have shown, not surprisingly perhaps, that the defenses of slavery ... were remarkably consistent with one another.2 It also is plain that some of better writers, such as Edmund Ruffin, T. R. Dew, Henry Hughes, and George Fitzhugh, defended slavery as a form of socialism. At same time, they attempted to show how abolitionism, as a procrustean utopianism, disclosed wrongheadedness of equality, particularly of declaration. But for all of attention to southern proslavery writing, there has yet to be a critique of proslavery argument as genuine thought. (There is ambiguous exception of Eugene Genovese about which something will be said subsequently.) In other words, historian's
Political science · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.04 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1972 - 2010 (39) |
| Highly cited | No |