Viewpoints on Slavery

Viewpoints of slavery

During the 1800s slavery became a major issue in American life and an integral part of its society. Throughout it many different views about it emerged mainly into two different sides, anti-abolitionist and pro-abolitionist. Coincidentally, the two sides were mostly separated geographically between South and North in which the South supported slavery and the North abolished it. The Northern states, known as the Union, abolished slavery for its cruelty and damage to human natural rights, while the Southern states known as the Confederacy, supported it for its benefits to wealth and greed. Substantially both sides used the same facts about religion, economy and society to support their causes, regarding that the North saw it as pernicious to the very structure that composes our society, while the South saw it as an institution set by God and a natural state of mankind.

In the eyes of northern citizens, slavery was an institution that had its roots in cruelty and disregard towards mankind. However many Anti-Abolitionist arguments against the statement and implied that slavery was not at all different from the labor force of factories, and if not, it was better. As Document A says, “In all respects the comforts of our slave are great superior to those of the English operatives, (.....) crowded together in those loathsome receptacles of starving humanity”. Southerners debated that even though slavery might keep humans in captivity, those individuals would in the end receive better treatment and care and much enjoyable life .Moreover in case sickness and age took place, they would receive assistance and aid from their masters, in contrast to the factory workers that lived in terrible conditions and once fired, were left to fend helplessly on their own.

On the other side, the abolitionist demanded slavery as a crime to the very nature of every moral value that the constitution so dearly holds and defends. They saw it as crime that must be stopped from spreading and once achieved, gradually systematically be abolished in every part of society, be it economic, or socially. Abolitionist arguments were mostly based on realistic and explicit horrors committed in slavery such as the ones depicted by the book shown by Document F, Uncle Tom's Cabin. They opposed to the idea that God approved slavery, the very idea of a loving God approving something so bloody and cruel as slavery made shivers in their stomachs. They believed that, as the Constitution stated, every man was created equal and possessed inalienable rights which shouldn´t be taken away and must be protected. They argued that slavery was as Document D says, “the one retrograde institution in America“ for its abuse to an individual rights and life.

Anti-Abolitionist stated that slavery was an institution set by God, a state of humanity that is natural to the whole cycle of life.They asserted that God was not opposed to slavery, due to the fact that it's mentioned in the Bible, yet not spoken against by anyone, thereby assuming