argumentative essay against slavery

Arguments FOR and AGAINST Slavery

Arguments against slavery/Anti-Slavery Arguments Humanitarian

1. Slavery was inhumane and cruel, unjust and the punishment meted out to the slaves was harsh for example the uses of the treadmill. 2. Slaves were not properly provided for, since food, clothing, housing and medical care were inadequate and so the slaves often fell prey to diseases. 3. Slaves were regarded as part of the estate stock and not as humans and so were constantly humiliated and dehumanized. 4. The colonial laws for the control of slaves were repressive and did not provide for their protection. 5. The judicial system was against them since some judges and magistrates were slave-owners, and slaves were not allowed to give evidence in court against a white person. 6. Slaves possessed no legal right to own property or to have a family since family members could be sold for payment of debt or families could be separated. 7. Slaves were people and if they were not freed, they would free themselves and destroy the planters’ property. 8. The Slave Trade led to inter-tribal warfare in Africa and destroyed family and political structures in African societies.

Economic 1. Slavery was uneconomic as provisions had to be made for control of the slaves. 2. These provisions were more expensive than employment of free labour. 3. Investments in slaves were wasted when they died in large numbers from measles, epidemics, or when struck with yaws, scurvy, worms, ulcers, and fevers. 4. There was evidence which indicated that a higher percentage of British sailors than slaves died in the Middle Passage. 5. There was also evidence that the British Government earned more money from custom duties from export of manufactured goods than from the slave trade. 6. British industrial development would be stimulated by free trade. 7. Abolition of slavery would increase the number of customers/consumers in the British Caribbean market thus increasing British exports. 8. Slavery led to monoculture which was dangerous to the economy. 9. The profits of plantation owners were not reinvested in the local economy but just spent abroad. 10. Slavery made the whites lazy and ignorant, William Byrd II, a wealthy Virginian planter, said that ‘’slavery blew up the pride and ruin the industry of the white people who seeing a rank of poor creatures below them, detest work, for fear it would make them look like slaves.’’

Religious 1. Slavery was contrary to the will of God. 2. The system of slavery encouraged hatred rather than love whereas Christianity urges its followers to ‘’love’’ thy neighbour as thyself. 3. Christianity teaches that all men are equal in the sight of God but slaves were subjugated to the will of their master. 4. Missionaries were discouraged from working among slaves, they were persecuted and at the same time the religious education of the slaves was neglected. Social 1. Some whites had ‘’guilt conscience’’ about slavery and preferred to live in a free society. 2. Life in a slave society was unpleasant and uncomfortable for whites surrounded by cruelty and suffering. Downloaded by Freedel Logie ([email protected]) lOMoARcPSD|4890574 3. Slavery brought fear and insecurity. There was danger of slave revolt and massacre ever present. 4. A slave society was inevitably socially restrictive. Arguments for slavery/Pro-Slavery Arguments

Humanitarian 1. Slavery existed in Africa and it was felt that the slaves were treated better in the Caribbean than in Africa. 2. There was a paternalistic relationship between the slaves and their masters, and the slaves’ basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, and their medical needs were taken care of by their masters. 3. Slaves were private property as stated by the English laws. 4. Slaves were being ‘’civilized’’ and they would revert to barbarism without the positive effects of European civilization 5. Times were harsh yet slaves were relatively well-off. They would not put up with harsh treatment and would run away, revolt, or work less.

Economic 1. Blacks were best suited for estate labour in a tropical climate. 2. Slave labour was vital to the survival of the sugar economy as alternative sources of labour like the Amerindians or white indentured servants were not available. 3. Substantial capital was already invested in the sugar industry and slavery. Thus, the value of that investment would be lost without slavery. 4. Loss of investments in sugar estates might injure the British economy. 5. Slave labour was more economically viable than free labour. 6. Slavery promoted the development of a strong navy and merchant marine. 7. Slavery stimulated British industrial development and provided jobs for the British public, and Britain with essential tropical products. 8. The plantation system could lead to diversification in agriculture. Slaves were capable of producing food crops as plantation crops. They were also capable of handling cattle. 9. The plantation system supported British shipping. 10. Those dependent on West Indian sugar would lose commerce, reputation and power

Religious 1. Slavery provided an opportunity for slaves to be converted to Christianity, thus giving them a chance of saving their souls, a privilege not afforded in Africa. 2. Slavery was supported by the Scriptures and was compatible with Christianity. 3. Slaves in the Caribbean could learn from whites how to live a Christian life. Social 1. If slaves were freed, the whites would become a minority. 2. Successful planters could make huge profits and become the leaders of society economically, politically, socially and culturally. 3. Slavery was the means by which small planters could rise in the world and emulate the big planters. 4. Poor whites were committed to slavery and racial superiority theories in order to preserve the little status they had. The threat of free blacks to white privilege made the poor whites hate the blacks more than anyone else. 5. Slavery provided the basis for a superior culture. There had to be a class of slaves to perform the menial duties so that the whites, leisured class could confine itself to government and culture.

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271 Slavery Topics and Essay Examples

✨ tips for an essay, research paper or speech about slavery, 🏆 best slavery titles for essay, 🥇 most interesting slave trade essay topics, ⭐ good titles for slavery essays, 💡 slavery writing prompts, 🔎 simple & easy slavery titles, ✍️ slavery essay topics for college, ❓ research questions about slavery.

Writing an essay on slavery may be challenging as the topic brings up negative emotions to many people.

This issue is related to differences between social positions and their negative effects. In addition, slavery reveals racial disparities in society and damages race relations in many cultures.

Good slavery essays discuss the aspects and problems that are important and relevant today. Choose slavery essay topics that raise significant problems that remain acute in modern society. Slavery essay titles and topics may include:

• The problem of human trafficking in today’s world
• Why is it hard to stop child trafficking in today’s world?
• The aspects of plantation life for slaves
• The development of American slavery
• Was slavery inevitable?
• Differences and similarities between slavery in the US and serfdom in Russia
• The ineffectiveness of peaceful means against slavery
• Destructive aspects of slavery
• The link between slavery and racism
• The differences between the impact of slavery on women and men of color

Once you select the issue you want to discuss, you can start working on your paper. Here are some tips and secrets for creating a powerful essay:

• Remember that appropriate essay titles are important to get the readers’ interest. Do not make the title too long but state the main point of your essay.
• Start with developing a structure for your essay. Remember that your paper should be organized clearly. You may want to make separate paragraphs or sections for the most important topics.
• Include an introductory paragraph, in which you can briefly discuss the problem and outline what information the paper will present.
• Remember to include a concluding paragraph too, in which you will state the main points of your work. Add recommendations, if necessary.
• Do preliminary research even if you feel that you know much about the topic already. You can find useful information in historical books, peer-reviewed journals, and trusted online sources. Note: Ask your professor about the types of sources you are allowed to use.
• Do not rely on outside sources solely. Your essay should incorporate your knowledge and reflections on slavery and existing evidence. Try to add comments to the citations you use.
• Remember that a truly powerful essay should be engaging and easy-to-understand. You can tell your readers about different examples of slavery to make sure that they understand what the issue is about. Keep the readers interested by asking them questions and allowing them to reflect on the problem.
• Your slavery essay prompts should be clearly stated in the paper. Do not make the audience guess what the main point of the essay is.
• Although the content is important, you should also make sure that you use correct grammar and sentence structures. Grammatical mistakes may make your paper look unprofessional or unreliable.
• If you are writing an argumentative essay, do not forget to include refutation and discuss opposing views on the issue.
• Check out slavery essay examples online to see how you can structure your paper and organize the information. In addition, this step can help you to avoid possible mistakes and analyze the relevance of the issue you want to discuss.

Do not forget to check our free samples and get the best ideas for your essay!

• Slavery in To Kill a Mockingbird Novel The introduction of Tom by the author is a plot device to represent the plight of the slaves in the state.
• Sethe’s Slavery in “Beloved” by Toni Morrison In spite of the fact that the events depicted in Beloved take place after the end of the American Civil War, Sethe, as the main character of the novel and a former slave, continues to […]
• Slavery in the Roman Empire The elite were the rich people, and majority of the population that comprised of the common farmers, artisans, and merchants known as the plebeians occupied the low status.
• Analysis of Themes of Slavery in Literature The paper will be concentrated on the analysis of the works ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano’ by Olaudah Equiano, ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass’ by Frederick Douglass, and ‘Incidents […]
• Freedom in Antebellum America: Civil War and Abolishment of Slavery The American Civil War, which led to the abolishment of slavery, was one of the most important events in the history of the United States.
• Metaphoric Theme of Slavery in “Indiana” by George Sand In her novel about love and marriage, Sand raises a variety of central themes of that time society, including the line of slavery both from the protagonist’s perspective and the French colonial slavery.
• How “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” Addresses Slavery The insensitivity in this mistreatment and dehumanization of Black people is pervasive to the extent that Jim considers himself “property” and was proud to be worth a fortune if anyone was to sell him. To […]
• “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and Slavery It is said that “the book is a very inadequate representation of slavery; and it is so, necessarily, for this reason, – that slavery, in some of its workings, is too dreadful for the purposes […]
• John Brown and His Beliefs About Slavery John Brown was a martyr, his last effort to end slavery when he raided Harper’s Ferry helped to shape the nation and change the history of slavery in America.
• “American Slavery, 1619-1817” by Peter Kolchin The concluding chapter details of the demise of slavery on the onset of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The period of American Revolution was a “watershed “in transforming the vision that portrayed slavery was justifiable […]
• Did Morality or Economics Dominate the Debates Over Slavery in the 1850s? Labour and economy remained intertwined in that; the former was a factor that determined the state of the latter. Scholars single out economical differences between the two states as the cause of the slavery in […]
• “Slavery Isn’t the Issue” by Juan Williams Review The author claims that the reparation argument is flawed as affirmative action has ensured that a record number of black Americans move up the economic and social ladder.
• Social Psychology of Modern Slavery The social psychology of modern slavery holds the opinion that slavery still exists today, contrary to the belief of many people that slavery does not exist in the modern world.
• Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox Jefferson believed that the landless laborers posed a threat to the nation because they were not independent. He believed that if Englishmen ruled over the world, they would be able to extend the effects of […]
• Impact of Revolution on Slavery and Women Freed slaves and other opponents of the slave trade in the north agitated for release and freedom of slaves in the south.
• Masters and Slaves: ”Up From Slavery” by Washington Booker Instead of criticizing the opposition between the black and the white, Booker emphasizes the interpersonal relationships between the masters and their slaves, emphasizing the devotion of the latter to the white population.
• Chapters 4-6 of ”From Slavery to Freedom” by Franklin & Higginbotham At the same time, the portion of American-born slaves was on the increase and contributed to the multiracial nature of the population.
• Protest Against Slavery in ”Pudd’nhead Wilson” by Mark Twain Pudd’nhead Wilson is the ironic tale of a man who is born a slave but brought up as the heir to wealthy estate, thanks to a switch made while the babies were still in the […]
• Economic Impact of Slavery Growth in Southern Colonies 1 The need to occupy southern colonies came as a result of the successes that were recorded in the north, especially after the establishment of cash crop farming. The setting up of the plantations in […]
• The Evolution of American Slavery Overall, it is possible for us to advance a thesis that the origins of black slavery should be sought in the economic development of American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and especially the […]
• Concept of Slavery Rousseau’s Analysis Rights and slavery are presented by the thinker as two contrary notions; Rousseau strived to provide the analysis of rights in their moral, spiritual sense; the involvement into dependence from the rulers means the involvement […]
• “Slavery and the Making of America” Documentary According to the film Slavery and the Making of America, slavery had a profound effect on the historical development of American colonies into one country.
• Slavery and Identity: “The Known World” by Edward Jones Moses is used to this kind of life and described by one of the other characters as “world-stupid,” meaning he does not know how to live in the outside world. He has a strong connection […]
• The “Slavery by Another Name” Documentary The documentary highlights how the laws and policies of that time enabled the exploitation of Black people and how the legacy of slavery continued to shape the racial dynamics of the country.
• Human Trafficking: Slavery Issues These are the words to describe the experiences of victims of human trafficking. One of the best places to intercept human trafficking into the US is at the border.
• The Slavery Experience: Erra Adams Erra Adams indicates that he was the oldest of the children and his task was to plow the land. The formerly enslaved person noted that the death of the master was a real grief for […]
• Abraham Lincoln: The End of Slavery Lincoln actively challenged the expansion of slavery because he believed the United States would stay true to the Declaration of Independence. It is worth considering the fact that Lincoln was not the only advocate for […]
• Recreation of Slavery in “Sweat” Book by Hurston Perhaps the best-portrayed theme and the most controversial one is the recreation of slavery on the part of Afro-Americans who have just been freed of it.
• California’s Issues With Slavery However, the report and the book indicate this point and emphasize that the concept of free land was made in favor of white people but not in the interests of African Americans.
• Sexual Slavery and Human Smuggling They were the only people in the house, and it appeared that her parents were not home. The social worker’s job in Tiffani’s life is to look into her past, from her childhood through her […]
• Were the Black Codes Another Form of Slavery? Slavery in the United States has been a part of the nation’s history for hundreds of years, and yet it did not end abruptly.
• How Slavery Makes Sense From Various Perspectives Given that there is a historical precedent for the “peculiar institution,” it would be erroneous to dismiss slavery as something that is new. Thus, the institution of slavery is found even in the Bible, and […]
• Slavery in The Fires of Jubilee by Stephen Oates Apart from the story being arranged in chapters, the layout and approach suggest that the author has described the area of events narrated and then given the narration.
• Modern Slavery in Global Value Chains: Case Study The main reason for accusations of forced labor is that most of the factories Nike owns are in Vietnam, and they provide the lowest possible wages.
• Differences of Slavery: Oklahoma Writers’ Project vs. The Textbook Today, many sources discuss the characteristics of slavery, its causes, and the outcomes and describe the conditions under which the Civil War began. In the accounts and the textbook, different opportunities for slaves are given […]
• Autobiography & Slavery Life of Frederick Douglass This essay discusses the slavery life of Frederick Douglass as written in his autobiography, and it highlights how he resisted slavery, the nature of his rebellion, and the view he together with Brinkley had about […]
• The American Civil War: Pro- & Anti-Slavery Forces The pro-slavery forces argued that slavery was the right thing to do, promoting abolitionists and the anti-slavery forces as terrible villains because they wanted to abolish slavery.
• Slavery: Historical Background and Modern Perspective Despite the seemingly short period of contract slavery, people did not have the right to marry without the owner’s permission while the contract term was in effect.
• Irish Immigrants and Abolition of Slavery in the US The selected historical events are Irish immigration to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s and the movement for slavery abolition, which existed in the country at the same time.
• Irish Immigration to America and the Slavery Despite the fact that the Irish encountered a great number of obstacles, the immigration of Irish people to the United States was advantageous not only to the immigrants but also to the United States.
• Irish Immigrants and the Abolition of Slavery Irish people, though not as deprived of rights as the enslaved Africans, also endured much suffering and fought slavery to the best of their ability.
• North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States: 1790 – 1860 The book North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States: 1790 1860 by Leon Litwack is an illustration of how African Americans were treated in the northern states just before the start of The […]
• Modern Slavery and Its Emergence The author turns to the examples of three European countries and, through the analysis, reveals the piece of the effects of the slave trade and the modernization of its forms.
• Moral Aspect of Slavery from a Northern and Southern Perspective Pro-slavery, non-expansionist, and abolitionist perspectives on the moral foundations of slavery identify both differences between the North and south of the US and the gradual evolution of the nation’s view of African people.
• Thomas Jefferson on Slavery and Declaration of Independence Additionally, with the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson set the foundation for the abolition of slavery in the future. Thus, the claim that Jefferson’s participation in slavery invalidates his writing of the Declaration of Independence is […]
• Slavery and Indentured Servitude Slavery practices were perceived to extend in Boston, which is believed to be the first place where someone tried to force enslaved people to have children to earn money. To summarize, the practice of slavery […]
• Indentured Servitude and Slavery The slave population in the North progressively fell throughout the 1760s and 1770s with slaves in Philadelphia reducing to approximately 700 in 1775.
• Critical Response: The Origin of Negro Slavery Considering that individuals of all races were involved in slavery in the New World, racism emerged as a consequence of forced labor and was not originally connected to the targeted discrimination of African Americans.
• Chesapeake Colonies and Development of Slavery The given trend was similar to the Middle and Chesapeake colonies, proving specific attitudes to slavery peculiar to people of that period.
• Analysis of Slavery in United States The main points highlighted in the lecture are focused on the socio-economic differences between the two systems, the actual life of slaves, and methods of blacks’ rebellion.
• Review of Slavery Topic in “Never Caught” Thus, the former’s relationship to this institution was guided by humanity towards the slaves and the development of legal methods of improving their lives that did not exist in the latter case.
• Prohibiting Slavery in the United States In other words, the original ideas incorporated the considerations of sexual immorality due to the abuse of the affected persons and the practice of breeding people for sale. The contributions to the discussion were also […]
• Slavery Experience by Abdul Rahman ibn Ibrahim Sori Abdul Rahman continued talking about his family and status, but his royal priorities were not enough to confirm his identity and return to his family.
• Discussion of Slavery in Focus For this reason, the audience that reads about cases of slavery in some of the third-world countries has the feeling of encountering the past something that, in readers’ understanding, is already a history.
• New Slavery in “Disposable People” by Kevin Bales The immense increase of the population after World War II and the influence of development and globalization of the world’s economy on traditional families in developing countries have led to the increment in the gap […]
• Analysis of Documents on Greek Slavery The passages will be examined and evaluated better understand the social and cultural history of the period and learn more about the social order in Ancient Greece. It can be asserted that the issue of […]
• Discussion of Justification of Slavery As a result, such perceptions gave rise to the argument that the latter people are inferior to Europeans and, thus, should be in a position of servitude.
• The Industrial Revolution, Slavery, and Free Labor The purpose of this paper is to describe the Industrial Revolution and the new forms of economic activity it created, including mass production and mass consumption, as well as discuss its connection to slavery.
• Expansion of Freedom and Slavery in British America The settlement in the city of New Plymouth was founded by the second, and it laid the foundation for the colonies of New England.
• Should the U.S. Government Pay Reparations for Slavery Coates tries to get the attention of his audience by explaining to them the importance of understanding the benefits of the impact the slaves faced during the regime of white supremacy.
• Antebellum Slavery’s Role in Shaping the History and Legacy of American Society The novel tells the story of two different times, the 1970s and 1815s, and shows other conditions of the heroes’ existence due to gender and racial characteristics.
• Alexander Stephens on Slavery and Confederate Constitution The speaker remarks that the persistent lack of consensus over the subordination and slavery of the “Negro” between the South and North was the immediate reason why the Confederates decided to secede and establish their […]
• Origins of Modern Racism and Ancient Slavery The diversity of African kingdoms and the empires were engaged in the slave trade for hundreds of years prior to the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade. The working and living condition of slaves were […]
• Isaac Burt: Modern-Day Slavery in the US Therefore, the author begins with the critical review of data on the notion of human trafficking, including sex and labor trafficking forms, which often use immigrants and women as vulnerable populations.
• How Violent Was the Slavery? Ask African American Women The book significantly impacted American literature due to the writer’s roots and the problems of slavery addressed in a detailed manner.
• The Role of Slavery for the American Society: Lesson Plan Understand how the development of slavery could influence the social and economic life of the Southern states and the role of the plantation system in the process.
• Colonialism and the End of Internal Slavery The Atlantic slave trade was considered among the main pillars of the economy in the western region between the 16th and 19th centuries.
• The History of American Revolution and Slavery At the same time, the elites became wary of indentured servants’ claim to the land. The American colonies were dissatisfied with the Royal Proclamation of 1763 it limited their ability to invade new territories and […]
• The Expansion of Slavery: Review Their purpose was to track and catch runaway slaves and return them to their masters. The work of slaves was primarily agricultural.
• Abolitionist Movement: Attitudes to Slavery Reflected in the Media One of the reasons confirming the inadmissibility of slavery and the unfairness of the attitude towards this phenomenon is the unjustification of torture and violence.
• Slavery and Social Death by Orlando Patterson As a result, relatively same practices of social death were applied to indigenous American people, which proves Patterson’s point of view that this attitude was characteristic not only for the African slave trade.
• Antebellum Culture and Slavery: A Period of History in the South of the United States The antebellum era, also known as the antebellum south, is a period of history in the south of the United States before the American Civil War in the late 18th century.
• Slavery and Society Destruction Seduced by the possibility of quick enrichment, the users of slave labor of both the past and the present, betrayed their humanity due to power and money.
• Trans-Atlantic Chattel Slavery and the Rise of the Modern Capitalist World System The reading provides an extensive background of the historical rise and fall of the African nations. The reading gives a detailed account of the Civil War and the color line within its context.
• Modern Slavery: Definition and Types Modern slavery is a predatory practice that is being utilized by businesses and organizations, some seemingly legitimate, worldwide through the exploitative and forced labour of victims and needs to be addressed at the policy and […]
• Human Trafficking as a Global Crime Industry: Labor, Slavery, Sexual Slavery, Prostitution, and Organ Harvesting As members of the society, every individual has to be aware of this glaring issue, and do their part in preventing human trafficking. This project will present an in-depth analysis of various aspects and perspectives […]
• Slavery in “Disposable People” Book by Kevin Bales The key point of his book is that the phenomenon of slavery is impossible to be eradicated. He has studied the current economic and political situations of the countries presented in his book that help […]
• Late Slavery and Emancipation in the Greater Caribbean The epoch of slavery defined the darkest history in the evolution of the civilization of humanity; the results of slavery continue permeating the psychology of very “far” descendants of the slaves themselves.
• Transatlantic Slave Trade and Colonial Chesapeake Slavery Most of the West African slaves worked across the Chesapeake plantation. This paper will explore the various conditions and adaptations that the African slaves acquired while working in the Chesapeake plantation.
• Slavery and Secession in Georgia The representatives of the State of Georgia were worried because of the constant assaults concerning the institution of slavery, which have created the risk of danger to the State.
• Slavery of African in America: Reasons and Purposes Since the beginning of the sixteenth century, the African slaves were shipped to Europe and Eastern Atlantics, but later the colonies started demanding workers and the trade shifted to the Americas.
• Slavery in Charleston, South Carolina Prior to the Year 1865 Charleston is a city in South Carolina and one of the largest cities in the United States. It speaks about the life and origin of the slaves and also highlights some of their experiences; their […]
• Verisimilitude of Equiano’s Narrative and Understanding of Slavery The main argument in the answer to Lovejoy was that the records could clarify the author’s true age, which is the key to the dismissal of the idea that Equiano is a native African.
• The Case for Reparations: Slavery and Segregation Consequences in the US Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his essay The Case for Reparations, examines the consequences of slavery and segregation in the United States and argues the importance of reparations for black Americans, both in a financial and moral […]
• Critique of Colin Thies’ “Commercial Slavery” The goal of the article was to evaluate the economic and political situation of the African slave trade and avoid other aspects according to which people were considered as oppressed and enslaved.
• Fredrick Douglas Characters. Impact of Slavery The institution of slavery drove and shaped the enslaved people to respond and behave in different ways in that Fredrick Bailey was forced to flee away from slavery and later changed his name to Fredrick […]
• Litwack’s Arguments on the Aftermath of Slavery This paper seeks to delve into a technical theme addressed by Leon on what kind of freedom was adopted by the ex-slaves prior to the passage of the 13th U.S.constitutional amendment of 1865 that saw […]
• Slavery, Civil War, and Abolitionist Movement in 1850-1865 They knew they were free only they had to show the colonists that they were aware of that.[1] The slaves were determined and in the unfreed state they still were in rebellion and protested all […]
• Slavery History in North America in the Middle 1830s I was born in a small village in Georgia, in the middle 1830s, a time when the United States was going through a lot of slave trade activities, and to many, the trade was accommodated […]
• The Major Developments in Slavery During 1800-1877 Several states in the South, in 1877 beginning with Georgia, took gain of this by issuing a succession of laws and a tax was put on voting.
• Slavery in America: Causes and Effects Slavery in America was a period in which people were caught and taken to do manual work in America from various parts of the world as a result of colonization.
• Slavery as an Institution in America This paper will look at the factors that enhanced the expansion of slavery as an institution in America during this period and further highlight the views held by the southern on slavery about its social […]
• The Literature From Slavery to Freedom Its main theme is slavery but it also exhibits other themes like the fight by Afro-Americans for freedom, the search for the identity of black Americans and the appreciation of the uniqueness of African American […]
• Slavery in New Orleans and Charleston This paper is going to establish this claim by making a comparison of the lives of the slaves who lived in the urban areas such as the New Orleans and Charleston with those slaves that […]
• How Slavery Has Affected the Lives and Families of the African Americans? This paper will focus on how slavery in the earlier years has affected the lives and families of the African Americans in the year 2009.
• Du Bois’ “The Soul of Black Folk” and T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery” Du Bois in the work “The Soul of Black Folk” asks the question, why black people are considered to be different, why they are treated differently as they are the same members of the society, […]
• Slavery as One of the Biggest Mistakes And the last important thing which caused forming the institution of slavery for such a long period in the judgment of Winthrop D.
• Colonial Economy of America: Poverty, Slavery and Rich Plantations This topic deals with life in the colonial economy of America and the approach of white people towards black people. Mainly through natural production, the people became wealthy and they led a typical way of […]
• African Slavery and European Plantation Systems: 1525-1700 However, with the discovery of sugar production at the end of the 15th Century to the Atlantic Islands and the opening up of the New World in the European conquests, the Portuguese discovered new ways […]
• The Theme of Slavery in Aristotle’s “Politics” He notes that the fundamental part of an association is the household that is comprised of three different kinds of relationships: master to slave, husband to wife, and parents to their children.
• “Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades” by Patrick Manning The author’s approach of examining the slavery issue from the lens of economic history and the involvement of normal Africans living in Africa is then examined.
• Slavery and Democracy in 19th Century America In the 19th century when white folks are busy building a nation and taking part in the more significant aspects of creating a new future for their children, Negro slaves were still doing a backbreaking […]
• Abraham Lincoln`s Role in the Abolishment of Slavery in America In this speech, Lincoln emphasized the need for the law governing slavery to prevail and pointed out the importance of the independence of individual states in administering laws that governed slavery without the interference of […]
• Cotton, Slavery, and Old South The early nineteenth century was a time that was as significant for the south as it was for the north. If the south was to be divided into the upper south and the lower south, […]
• Slavery in Latin America and North America In the French and British Caribbean colonies, slaves were also imported in great numbers and majority of the inhabitants were slaves.
• Betty Wood: The Origins of American Slavery Economic analyses and participation of the slave labor force in economic development are used to analyze the impact and role of slave labor in the development of the American economy.
• “American Slavery an American Freedom” by Edmund S. Morgan The book witnesses the close alliance between the establishment of freedom rights in Virginia and the rise of slavery movement which is considered to be the greatest contradiction in American history.
• Lincoln and African Americans’ Role in the Abolition of Slavery This paper seeks to compare and contrast the role of Abraham Lincoln and the African Americans in bringing slavery to an end in the US.
• Western Expansion and Its Influence on Social Reforms and Slavery The western expansion refers to the process whereby the Americans moved away from their original 13 colonies in the 1800s, towards the west which was encouraged by explorers like Lewis and Clarke.
• How Important Was Slave Resistance as a Cause of Abolition of Slavery? This was particularly evident throughout the history of slaves in the Americas, and across the historical geography of slavery, from the time the slaves were seized from Africa through to the life they were subjected […]
• “Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington Each morning it was the duty of the overseer to assign the daily work for the slaves and, when the task was completed, to inspect the fields to see that the work had been done […]
• U.S. in the Fight Against a Modern Form of Slavery Since the United States of America is the most powerful nation in the world it must spearhead the drive to eradicate this new form of slavery within the U.S.and even outside its borders.
• The Profitability of Slavery for the Slave Master What is missing from this story is the fact that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, North American colonies had to buy African slaves on a world market at prices which reflected the high profitability […]
• Slavery in the United States There was a sharp increase in the number of slaves during the 18th century, and by the mid of the century, 200,000 of them were working in the American colonies.
• Sociology, Race & Law. Cuban Form of Slavery Today Castro was benefiting alone from the sweat of many Cubans who worked abroad and in Cuba thinking that they could better their livelihood.
• African American Women’s Gender Relations and Experience Under Slavery When the New England Confederation was formed in 1643 to promote matters of common concern for the New England Colonies, one provision of the compact was for the rendition of bondservants.
• How African Men and Women Experienced Slavery? The book Ar’ not I a Woman, the author portrays that life of a woman in plantation was more difficult that life of a man because of different duties and responsibilities assigned to a woman-slave.
• Abraham Lincoln and Free Slavery Moreover, he made reference to the fact that the union was older than the constitution and referred to the spirit of the Articles of the Constitution 1774 and Articles of Confederation of 1788.
• Origins, Operations, and Effects of Black Slavery in US However, the impact that the enslavement of the vast numbers of Africans brought to America was phenomenal. This was a major effect of the slave trade.
• Gender Politics: Military Sexual Slavery In this essay, it will be shown that military power and sexual slavery are interconnected, how the human rights of women are violated by the military, and how gender is related to a war crime.
• African Americans Struggle Against Slavery The following paragraphs will explain in detail the two articles on slavery and the African American’s struggle to break away from the heavy and long bonds of slavery. The website tells me that Dredd Scott […]
• Slavery in the World The first independent state in the western hemisphere, the United States of America, was formed as a result of the revolutionary war of North American colonies of England for Independence in 1775-1783.
• Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Rome The revolt of slaves under the direction of Spartacus 73-71 BC is considered the most significant event of the period of crisis of the Roman republican regime in the first century DC and is estimated […]
• Issue of Slavery in “The Known World” by E. P. Jones The slaves were remained in the custody of the white masters received the same treatment as that of bondage slaves. The book is a beautiful representation of pre-war life in Virginia and how the widespread […]
• Olaudah Equiano as a Fighter Against Slavery Equiano’s Narrative demonstrates a conscious effort to ascribe spiritual enlightenment to the political arena and hence ascertain the importance of the relationship between spiritual intervention, the amysterious ways of Providence’ and parliamentary decisions concerning the […]
• Lincoln as a Fighter Against Slavery It is while a leader of the party he made her first moves to fight slavery in the Illinois house where he argued that slavery was a social evil and ought to be dealt away […]
• Slavery in Early America Review However, the local population was dwindling with the influx of disease and abuse and this, combined with Spain abolishing the enslavement of natives in the Americas in the mid-1500s, necessitated a need to acquire Africans […]
• Slavery Without the Civil War: Hypothesis The demand for slaves and the positive effect of this in the slaveholders’ profitability as well as the fact that both slaveholders and the slaves need one another to survive saw to it that the […]
• Slavery: Central Paradox of American History Since the rise of United States as a nation, historians have long thought of the emergence of slavery and freedom in our society as a great contradiction. As the central paradox, slavery needed to emerge […]
• Brief History of Slavery in the United States In his article regarding the true sentiments of the slaves, Genovese suggests the reasons why the slaves were perceived as lazy was as the result of their more natural, rural lifestyle.”The setting remained rural, and […]
• Virginia After the Boom: Slavery and “The Losers” New labor force that came to Virginia “threatened the independence of the small freeman and worsened the lot of the servant”.
• Antebellum Slavery in Mark Twain’s World Twain’s depiction of Jim and his relationship with Huck was somewhat flawed in order to obey the needs of the story, and also by Twains’ interest in slave autobiographies and also in blackface minstrelsy.
• Slavery in New York City: Impact and Significance Blacks’ significance in the development of the city’s most critical systems, such as labor, race, and class divisions, makes it possible to conclude that the influence of slavery in New York was substantial. The effect […]
• Slavery In The United Stated Society In the above discussion, there is a short story of slavery in the USA. By abolishing slavery in the USA is the sign of democracy and human dignity.
• Black American Authors on Slavery Analysis The work is centered on the same theme that the Narrative the author tells the reader of her experiences as a slave and the way she managed to escape from it.
• Slavery Still Exists in American Prisons An examination of the history of the penal system as it existed in the State of Texas proves to be the best illustration of the comparisons between the penal system and the system of slavery.
• Ghana: The Consequences of Colonial Rule and Slavery One of the reasons for this dependency is that the country had been the foothold for the slave trade for about four centuries.
• Harriet Jacobs’s Account of Slavery Atrocities She wrote that she wanted the women living in the North to understand the conditions in which slaves lived in the Souths, and the sufferings that enslaved women had to undergo.
• Anti Slavery and Abolitionism Both gradual emancipation and conditional emancipation were not allowed, but free blacks from the North and evangelicals revealed their opposition in the form of the movement that required the development of social reform.
• Sexual Slavery in “The Apology” Film by Hsiung The documentary being discussed focuses on the experiences of three women, the survivors of military sexual slavery in China, South Korea, and the Republic of the Philippines.
• Slavery Resistance from Historical Perspective The lack of rights and power to struggle resulted in the emergence of particular forms of resistance that preconditioned the radical shifts in peoples mentalities and the creation of the tolerant society we can observe […]
• Slavery Abolition and Newfound Freedom in the US One of the biggest achievements of Reconstruction was the acquisition of the right to vote by Black People. Still, Black Americans were no longer forced to tolerate inhumane living conditions, the lack of self-autonomy, and […]
• Slavery Elements in Mississippi Black Code These are the limitation of the freedom of marriage, the limitation of the freedom of work, and the limitation of the freedom of weapon.
• History: Slavery in Southern States The strategy of pacification was especially prevalent during that time because wealthy slaveowners wanted to keep possible protests under control and prevent the rest of the white population from supporting the abolition of slavery in […]
• Slavery in “Abolition Speech” by William Wilberforce The following article is devoted to the description of the problem of slavery and the slave trade in Africa. The author also underlines the incompetency of the committee, which is in charge of the question […]
• Slavery History: Letters Analysis The letters analyzed in this paper give a piece of the picture that was observed during the 1600s and the 1700s when slaves from different parts of the world had to serve their masters under […]
• Slavery: History and Influence The slaves were meant to provide labor for the masters and generate wealth. During the day, they would sneak to breastfeed the newborns.
• Reformer and Slavery: William Lloyd Garrison The newspaper was published until the end of the civil war and the abolition of slavery by the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment.
• Slavery Role in the American Literature Stowe has claimed that the anti slavery groups questioned the morality of the white Christians who were at the fore front in the oppression of the Black people.
• Slavery as a Cause of the American Civil War On the other hand, one is to keep in mind that many historians are of the opinion that the reasons for the war are not so easy to explain.
• Thomas Jefferson on Civil Rights, Slavery, Racism When I authored the declaration of independence of the United States of America, I was having a democratic perspective of the American people on my mind.
• Slavery, American Civil War, and Reconstruction Indian removal from the Southeast in the late 19th century was as a result of the rapid expansion of the United States into the south.
• Slavery in the Ancient World and the US Appearance age and attitude of the slaves acted as the determinants to the wage that they were to be paid for their services.
• Slavery in “Flight to Canada” Novel by Ishmael Reed In his novel Flight to Canada, Ishmael Reed blurs the boundaries between the prose and poetry as well as the past and the present to express his satirical criticism of the legacy of slavery even […]
• Slavery and the Southern Society’s Development The fact that quite a huge number of white people moved to the “Deep South” where cotton planting was among the most lucrative forms of income-generating activities, just goes to show that the whites relied […]
• Paternalistic Ethos During American Slavery Era The slave owner gains directly from the welfare of the slaves and the slaves gained directly from offering their services to the slave owner.
• The Book About Slavery by Hinton Rowan Helper He claimed further that those who supported abolitionism and freedom were the friends of the south while slaveholders and slave-breeders were the real enemies of the south.
• Slavery in the USA and Its Impact on Americans The following paper will present a discussion of slavery in the USA and an explanation of the tremendous impact it made on the lives of all Americans.
• Voices From the Epoch of Slavery In this regard, one may claim that the era of enslavement was also represented by such activities as singing, dancing, and churchgoing, all of which were organized by masters for their Negroes and show a […]
• “Slavery by Another Name” Documentary To assure the existence of the social and historical support, the movie is presented in the form of the documentary and can be viewed by an extended audience to spread awareness about the drawbacks of […]
• Cultural Consequences of the US Slavery: 1620-1870
• The American Anti-Slavery Society
• Modern Slavery in Thailand and Mauritania
• Frederick Douglass as an Anti-Slavery Activist
• George Whitfield’s Views on Slavery in the US
• Internal Colonization and Slavery in British Empire
• Globalization and Slavery: Multidisciplinary View
• Slavery in “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
• Slavery in “A Brief History of the Caribbean”
• Slavery in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
• Slavery Phenomenon and Its Causes in the USA
• Women Trafficking and Slavery: Trends and Solutions
• Human Trafficking and Modern-day Slavery
• Slavery Arguments and American Civil War
• Ethical Problems With Non-Human Slavery and Abuse
• Racism in USA: Virginia Laws on Slavery
• Sojourner Truth: Slavery Abolitionist and Women’s Suffrage
• Slavery in Islamic Civilisation
• Religious Studies of the Slavery Problem
• Slavery and the Abolition of Slave Trade
• Slavery and the Civil War Relationship
• Abraham Lincoln Against Slavery
• Blacks Role in Abolishing Slavery
• The Poetry on the Topic of Slavery
• John Brown and Thomas Cobb Role in Ending Slavery
• Impacts of Slavery and Slave Trade in Africa
• Slavery in the Southern Colonies
• Christianity, Slavery and Colonialism Paradox
• Slavery and the Civil War
• Literary Works’ Views on Slavery in the United States
• Analysis of Slavery in American History in “Beloved“ by Tony Morrison
• History of Abolishing Slavery
• The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
• Sex Slavery in India
• The Period of Slavery in the “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs
• Slavery in America: “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
• Abolition of Slavery in Brazil
• Slavery Effects on Enslaved People and Slave Owners
• The Problem of Slavery in Africa
• Racial Slavery in America
• “Not For Sale: End Human Trafficking and Slavery”: Campaign Critique
• Colonial Portuguese Brazil: Sugar and Slavery
• Aristotle on Human Nature, State, and Slavery
• Reform-Women’s Rights and Slavery
• Human Trafficking in the United States: A Modern Day Slavery
• Oronooko by Aphra Behn and the Why there is no Justification for Slavery
• Rise and Fall of Slavery
• History of Slavery Constitution in US
• Propaganda in Pro-slavery Arguments and Douglass’s Narrative
• Testament Against Slavery: ”Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
• Comparing and Contrasting three Versions of Slavery
• How Did the French Revolution Impacted the Issue of Slavery and the History of Santo Domingo?
• Why slavery is wrong
• Slavery and Racism: Black Brazilians v. Black Americans
• History of the African-Americans Religion During the Time of Slavery
• The Emergence of a Law of Slavery in Mississippi
• The Effects of Slavery on the American Society
• The Ideas of Freedom and Slavery in Relation to the American Revolution
• Up from Slavery, Down to the Ground: Sailing Amistad. A
• Slavery in the British Colonies: Chesapeake and New England
• Slavery and the Old South
• African American Culture: A History of Slavery
• Slavery and the Underground Railroad
• Slavery Illuminates Societal Moral Decay
• The Southern Argument for Slavery
• No Reparations for Blacks for the Injustice of Slavery
• Slavery: The Stronghold of the Brazil Economy
• Slavery, Racism, and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
• Slavery, the Civil War & Reconstruction
• Slavery in American History
• The Slavery in America
• Beloved by Toni Morrison: History of Slavery and Racial Segregation in America
• “Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America” by Morgan Kenneth
• African Americans: The Legacy of Slavery in the U.S.
• Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During WWII and US Occupation in Japan
• A New Dawn: The Abolishment of Slavery in the USA
• How Slavery Applies to Africans Within the Islamic World?
• Where Did Slavery Start First in the World?
• How Did Slaves Respond to Slavery?
• How the Germans Influenced Modern Day Slavery?
• How Did Slavery Change From the Arrival of the First Enslaved People in the 1600s to the Abolition of Slavery in the 1860s?
• How Did Slavery Encourage Both Economic Backwardness and Westward Expansion?
• Why Did Colonial Virginians Replace Servitude With Slavery?
• Did Slavery Create More Benefits or Problems for the Nation?
• What Was Slavery Like and How Is It Today?
• When and How Did Slavery Begin?
• What Were the Positive and Negative Effects of Slavery on the Americas?
• Is There a Difference Between Human Trafficking and Slavery?
• How Did Slavery Shape Modern Society and the Colonial Nations?
• How Did Economic, Geographic, and Social Factors Encourage the Growth of Slavery?
• How Did Colonization Along the Atlantic Contribute to Slavery?
• What Degree Did Slavery Play in the Civil War?
• Modern Day Slavery: What Drives Human Trafficking?
• How Did Slavery Start in Africa?
• How Did Slavery Affect the Spirit of the Enslaved and the Enslavers?
• What Did the Haitian Revolution Do to End Racial Slavery?
• How Were African Americans Treated During the Slavery Period?
• What Created Slavery?
• How Important Was Slavery Before 1850? Was It a Marginal Institution, Peripheral to the Development of American Society?
• How Did African American Slavery Help Shape America?
• When Did Slavery Start in America?
• How Can the World Allow Slavery to Continue Today?
• What Were the Differences Between Indentured Servitude and Slavery?
• In What Industries Is Slavery Most Prevalent?
• How Was Slavery Abolished?
• Did the Atlantic Plantation Complex Create Slavery?
• African American History Essay Ideas
• Frederick Douglass Essay Ideas
• Colonialism Essay Ideas
• Fascism Questions
• Human Rights Essay Ideas
• Freedom Topics
• Global Issues Essay Topics
• US History Topics
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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27f. The Southern Argument for Slavery

Those who defended slavery rose to the challenge set forth by the Abolitionists. The defenders of slavery included economics, history, religion, legality, social good, and even humanitarianism, to further their arguments.

Defenders of slavery argued that the sudden end to the slave economy would have had a profound and killing economic impact in the South where reliance on slave labor was the foundation of their economy. The cotton economy would collapse. The tobacco crop would dry in the fields. Rice would cease being profitable.

Defenders of slavery argued that if all the slaves were freed, there would be widespread unemployment and chaos. This would lead to uprisings, bloodshed, and anarchy. They pointed to the mob's "rule of terror" during the French Revolution and argued for the continuation of the status quo, which was providing for affluence and stability for the slaveholding class and for all free people who enjoyed the bounty of the slave society.

Defenders of slavery argued that slavery had existed throughout history and was the natural state of mankind. The Greeks had slaves, the Romans had slaves, and the English had slavery until very recently.

Defenders of slavery noted that in the Bible, Abraham had slaves. They point to the Ten Commandments, noting that "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, ... nor his manservant, nor his maidservant." In the New Testament, Paul returned a runaway slave, Philemon, to his master, and, although slavery was widespread throughout the Roman world, Jesus never spoke out against it.

Defenders of slavery turned to the courts, who had ruled, with the Dred Scott Decision , that all blacks — not just slaves — had no legal standing as persons in our courts — they were property, and the Constitution protected slave-holders' rights to their property.

Defenders of slavery argued that the institution was divine, and that it brought Christianity to the heathen from across the ocean. Slavery was, according to this argument, a good thing for the enslaved. John C. Calhoun said, "Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually."

Defenders of slavery argued that by comparison with the poor of Europe and the workers in the Northern states, that slaves were better cared for. They said that their owners would protect and assist them when they were sick and aged, unlike those who, once fired from their work, were left to fend helplessly for themselves.

James Thornwell , a minister, wrote in 1860, "The parties in this conflict are not merely Abolitionists and slaveholders, they are Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red Republicans, Jacobins on the one side and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other."

When a society forms around any institution, as the South did around slavery, it will formulate a set of arguments to support it. The Southerners held ever firmer to their arguments as the political tensions in the country drew us ever closer to the Civil War.

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Introductory Essay: Slavery and the Struggle for Abolition from the Colonial Period to the Civil War

How did the principles of the Declaration of Independence contribute to the quest to end slavery from colonial times to the outbreak of the Civil War?

• I can explain how slavery became codifed over time in the United States.
• I can explain how Founding principles in the Declaration of Independence strengthened anti-slavery thought and action.
• I can explain how territorial expansion intensified the national debate over slavery.
• I can explain various ways in which African Americans secured their own liberty from the colonial era to the Civil War.
• I can explain how African American leaders worked for the cause of abolition and equality.

Essential Vocabulary

Slavery and the struggle for abolition from the colonial period to the civil war.

The English established their first permanent settler colony in a place they called Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Early seventeenth-century Virginia was abundant in land and scarce in laborers. Initially, the labor need was met mostly by propertyless English men and women who came to the new world as indentured servants hoping to become landowners themselves after their term of service ended. Such servitude was generally the status, too, of Africans in early British America, the first of whom were brought to Virginia by a Dutch vessel in 1619. But within a few decades, indentured servitude in the colonies gave way to lifelong, hereditary slavery, imposed exclusively on black Africans.

Because forced labor (whether indentured servitude or slavery) was a longstanding and common condition, the injustice of slavery troubled relatively few settlers during the colonial period. Southern colonies in particular codified slavery into law. Slavery became hereditary, with men, women, and children bought and sold as property, a condition known as chattel slavery . Opposition to slavery was mainly concentrated among Quakers , who believed in the equality of all men and women and therefore opposed slavery on moral grounds. Quaker opposition to slavery was seen as early as 1688, when a group of Quakers submitted a formal protest against the institution for discussion at a local meeting.

Anti-slavery sentiment strengthened during the era of the Revolution and Founding. Founding principles, based on natural law proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and in several state constitutions, added philosophical force to biblically grounded ideas of human equality and dignity. Those principles informed free and enslaved blacks, including Prince Hall, Elizabeth Freeman, Quock Walker, and Belinda Sutton, who sent anti slavery petitions to state legislatures. Their powerful appeal to natural rights moved legislators and judges to implement the first wave of emancipation in the United States. Immediate emancipation in Massachusetts, gradual emancipation in other northern states, and private manumission in the upper South dealt blows against slavery and freed tens of thousands of people.

Slavery remained deeply entrenched and thousands remained enslaved, however, in states in both the upper and lower South , even as northern leaders believed the practice was on its way to extinction. The result was the set of compromises the Framers inscribed into the U.S. Constitution—lending slavery important protections but also preparing for its eventual abolition. The Constitution did not use the word “slave” or “slavery,” instead referring to those enslaved as “persons.” James Madison, the “father” of the Constitution, thus thought the document implicitly denied the legitimacy of a claim of property in another human being. The Constitution also restricted slavery’s growth by allowing Congress to ban the slave trade after 20 years. Out of those compromises grew extended controversies, however, the most heated and dangerous of which concerned the treatment of fugitive slaves and the status of slavery in federal territories.

The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 renewed and enhanced slavery’s profitability and expansion, which intensified both attachment and opposition to it. The first major flare-up occurred in 1819, when a dispute over whether Missouri would be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free state generated threats of civil war among members of Congress. The adoption of the Missouri Compromise in 1820 quelled the anger for a time. But the dispute was reignited in the 1830s and continued to inflame the country’s political life through the Civil War.

A cotton gin on display at the Eli Whitney Museum by Tom Murphy VII, 2007.

“U.S. Cotton Production 1790–1834” by Bill of Rights Institute/Flickr, CC BY 4.0

Separating the sticky seeds from cotton fiber was slow, painstaking work. Eli Whitney’s cotton gin (gin being southern slang for engine) made the task much simpler, and cotton production in the lower South exploded. Cotton planters and their slaves moved to Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama to start new cotton plantations. Many planters in the Chesapeake region sold their slaves to cotton planters in the lower South. This created a massive interstate slave trade that transferred enslaved persons through auctions and forced marches in chains and that also broke up many slave families.

In 1831, in Virginia, a large-scale slave rebellion led by Nat Turner resulted in the deaths of approximately 60 whites and more than 100 blacks and generated alarm throughout the South. That same decade saw the emergence of a radicalized (and to a degree racially integrated) abolitionist movement, led by Massachusetts activist William Lloyd Garrison, and an equally radicalized pro slavery faction, led by U.S. Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.

The polarization sharpened in subsequent decades. The Mexican-American War (1846–1848) brought large new western territories under U.S. control and renewed the contention in Congress over the status of slavery in federal territories. The complex 1850 Compromise, which included a new fugitive slave law heavily weighted in favor of slaveholders’ interests, did little to restore calm.

A few years later, Congress reopened the Kansas and Nebraska territories to slavery, thereby undoing the 1820 Missouri Compromise and rendering any further compromises unlikely. The U.S. Supreme Court tried vainly to settle the controversy by issuing, in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the most pro-slavery ruling in its history. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, a rising figure in the newly born Republican Party, declared the United States a “house divided” between slavery and freedom. In late 1859, militant abolitionist John Brown alarmed the South when he attempted to liberate slaves by taking over a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He was promptly captured, tried, and executed and thereupon became a martyr for many northern abolitionists.

Watch this BRI Homework Help video: Dred Scott v. Sandford for more information on the pivotal Dred Scott decision.

Leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Tubman, and James Forten all worked for the cause of abolition and equality.

As the debate over slavery continued on the national stage, formerly enslaved and free black men and women spoke out against the evils of slavery. Slave narratives such as those by Frederick Douglass, Solomon Northrup, and Harriet Jacobs humanized the experience of slavery. Their vivid, heartbreaking accounts of their own enslavement strengthened the moral cause of abolition. At the same time, enslaved men and women made the brave and dangerous decision to run away. Some ran on their own, and others used the Underground Railroad, a network of secret “conductors” and “stations” that helped enslaved people escape to the North and, after 1850, to Canada. The most famous of these conductors was Harriet Tubman, who traveled to the South about 12 times to lead approximately 70 men and women to freedom. Free blacks faced their own challenges. Leaders such as Benjamin Banneker, James Forten, David Walker, and Maria Stewart spoke out against racist attitudes and laws that sought to limit their political and civil rights.

This map shows the concentration of slaves in the southern United States as derived from the 1860 U.S. Census. The so-called “Border states”—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and after 1863, West Virginia—allowed slavery but remained loyal to the Union. Credit: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

By 1860, the atmosphere in the United States was combustible. With the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in November of that year, the conflict over slavery came to a head. Since Lincoln and Republicans opposed the expansion of slavery and called it a moral evil, seven slaveholding states declared their secession from the United States. And in April 1861, the war came. The next five years of conflict and bloodshed determined the fate of enslaved men, women, and children, and of the Union itself.

Reading Comprehension Questions

• What actions were taken to oppose slavery in the colonial period and Founding era?
• Why did the Constitution not use the words “slave” or “slavery”?
• The invention of the cotton gin
• The Mexican-American War
• Dred Scott v. Sandford
• The election of Abraham Lincoln as president
• How did formerly enslaved and free black men and women fight to end slavery?

• The Columbian Exchange
• De Las Casas and the Conquistadors
• Early Visual Representations of the New World
• Failed European Colonies in the New World
• Successful European Colonies in the New World
• A Model of Christian Charity
• Benjamin Franklin’s Satire of Witch Hunting
• The American Revolution as Civil War
• Patrick Henry and “Give Me Liberty!”
• Lexington & Concord: Tipping Point of the Revolution
• Abigail Adams and “Remember the Ladies”
• Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” 1776
• Citizen Leadership in the Young Republic
• After Shays’ Rebellion
• James Madison Debates a Bill of Rights
• America, the Creeks, and Other Southeastern Tribes
• America and the Six Nations: Native Americans After the Revolution
• The Revolution of 1800
• Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase
• The Expansion of Democracy During the Jacksonian Era
• The Religious Roots of Abolition
• Individualism in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”
• Aylmer’s Motivation in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”
• Thoreau’s Critique of Democracy in “Civil Disobedience”
• Hester’s A: The Red Badge of Wisdom
• “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”
• The Cult of Domesticity
• The Family Life of the Enslaved

A Pro-Slavery Argument, 1857

• The Underground Railroad
• The Enslaved and the Civil War
• Women, Temperance, and Domesticity
• “The Chinese Question from a Chinese Standpoint,” 1873
• “To Build a Fire”: An Environmentalist Interpretation
• Progressivism in the Factory
• Progressivism in the Home
• The “Aeroplane” as a Symbol of Modernism
• The “Phenomenon of Lindbergh”
• The Radio as New Technology: Blessing or Curse? A 1929 Debate
• The Marshall Plan Speech: Rhetoric and Diplomacy
• NSC 68: America’s Cold War Blueprint
• The Moral Vision of Atticus Finch

Advisor: Peter A. Coclanis , Albert Ray Newsome Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Global Research Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; National Humanities Center Fellow ©2012–2015 National Humanities Center

Lesson Contents

Teacher’s note.

• Text Analysis & Close Reading Questions

Follow-Up Assignment

• Student Version PDF

How did proponents of slavery in antebellum America defend it as a positive good?

Understanding.

With an argument that was as much a critique of industrialism as it was a defense of slavery, Southern spokesmen contended that chattel slavery, as it was practiced in the American South, was more humane than the system of “wage slavery” that prevailed in the industrial North and Great Britain.

George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters , 1857, excerpts.

Informational text with moderately complex purpose and very complex text structure, language features, and knowledge demands. Tier 2 vocabulary words are defined in pop-ups (full list at bottom of page). Tier 3 words are explained in brackets.

Text Complexity

Grades 11-CCR complexity band. For more information on text complexity see these resources from achievethecore.org .

Click here for standards and skills for this lesson.

Common Core State Standards

• ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.4 (Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text…)

Advanced Placement US History

• Key Concept 5.2 (IC) (Defenders of slavery…)

While under the Common Core Standards Cannibals All! qualifies as an informational text, it is first and foremost a passionately argued piece of persuasive writing. Published in Richmond, Virginia, in 1857, and aimed at both Northern and Southern readers, it sought to claim for the South the moral high ground in the increasingly fierce national debate over slavery. Fitzhugh maintained that both free labor, as practiced among industrial workers in the North and Great Britain, and slavery, as practiced in the American South, exploited workers. However, because slave masters owned their workers, they took better care of them than capitalists who merely rented theirs.

To help students grasp Fitzhugh’s argument, you might ask two questions: How many would wash a rental car? How many wash their own or pay to have it done?

To prepare students to judge Fitzhugh’s argument, assign three essays in Freedom’s Story from the National Humanities Center’s TeacherServe®: “The Varieties of Slave Labor” , “How Slavery Affected African American Families” , and “Slave Resistance” . (These essays are designed for teachers, but they are useful to students. You might divide the class into three groups and assign each an essay, then have each group respond to Fitzhugh in the light of their reading.) From these essays a series of questions emerges. How different in their response to the demand to make a profit were Southern plantations from Northern factories? How free were people whose family lives could be disrupted at the whim of a master? If the slave system was so good for slaves, why did they spend considerable time and energy trying to undermine and escape it?

Encourage students to challenge Fitzhugh’s definition of freedom. Have them come at it inductively. Why, according to Fitzhugh, are capitalists and slaves free? Why are slaveowners and laborers not free? Fitzhugh sees humans solely as economic entities. His definition of freedom is based entirely on the exchange of labor for reward. While it does include a sense of one person’s responsibility to another, that responsibility is based on the extent of one’s financial investment in the other person. Essentially, he thinks a person is free to the extent that he or she is not responsible for the economic well-being of others and to the extent that one’s economic needs are addressed by the efforts of others. Is that an adequate basis for a moral order? Does Fitzhugh’s idea of freedom have room for such concepts as equality, personal choice, or mobility?

A note about the interactive exercises. The first allows students to explore vocabulary in context. The second prepares them to write an essay, an argument from authority , refuting Fitzhugh’s case. It links to a PDF you can print and distribute. The PDF includes excerpts from the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl from which students can mine evidence to deploy against Fitzhugh. Selecting passages to serve as evidence and providing rationales for those choices offer an excellent opportunity for small group work. The PDF also features a model essay and an analysis of it that students can use to guide the writing of their own essays.

This lesson is divided into two parts, both accessible below. The teacher’s guide includes a background note, the text analysis with responses to the close reading questions, access to the interactive exercises, and an optional follow-up assignment. The student’s version, an interactive PDF, contains all of the above except the responses to the close reading questions and the follow-up assignment.

Teacher’s Guide

Contextualizing questions.

• What kind of text are we dealing with?
• When was it written?
• Who wrote it?
• For what audience was it intended?
• For what purpose was it written?

As they fired back at their critics, defenders of slavery in antebellum America often maintained that slavery, as practiced in the South, was more humane than the system of “wage slavery” under which, they claimed, Northern and British industrial workers suffered. One of the most vehement proponents of this argument was George Fitzhugh (1806–1881), a Virginia lawyer, writer, and slaveowner. He believed that civilization depended upon the exploitation of labor. This led him to ask which system — slavery or free labor — exploited workers less. He concluded that slavery did, and made his case in Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters .

In the book Fitzhugh unapologetically acknowledges that the South is a slave society, but he claims that the North is, too. In both, capitalists seek to live off the muscle of others as much as any “Fiji chieftain” seeks to dine “on human flesh.” Hence, all capitalists — Northern and Southern — are cannibals. The central question is what form of society most effectively curbs their appetites.

Fitzhugh draws the distinction between the North and the South on the principle of capital’s obligation to labor. The problem, as he sees it, is that in the “free” Northern economy — he uses the words “free” and “respectable” with sneering irony — capital and labor are separate. Thus capitalists in the North endeavor to make “respectable” livings by squeezing the greatest amount of work out of laborers for the least amount of pay, only to abandon them when they cease to be useful. In the Southern slave economy, on the other hand, “labor is capital.” Slaves, of course, do the work of the plantation, but they also represent a substantial capital investment. Owners pay dearly for them and thus it is in their best interest to “protect… not oppress them.” “When slaves are worth near a thousand dollars a head,” Fitzhugh writes, “they will be carefully and well provided for,” even when their working days are over. Unlike the Northern “slaves to capital,” “the negro slaves of the South are,” in his view, “the happiest and, in some sense, the freest people in the world.”

Text Analysis

Close reading questions.

1. Fitzhugh uses the word “boast” twice in this paragraph. How might that word affect his pro-slavery readers? his anti-slavery readers? Test its impact by substituting other verbs: “maintain,” “contend,” “claim.” How do those verbs change the tone of the paragraph? The word “boast” would probably go a long way in winning over Fitzhugh’s pro-slavery readers. Here, they might think, is one of us — unapologetic, unashamed, confident. The word would probably repel his anti-slavery readers and dampen their willingness to entertain his argument. Substituting any of the suggested alternative verbs tones down the paragraph, makes Fitzhugh seem more reasonable, less truculent. It also makes us realize just how much of an in-your-face word “boast” is as Fitzhugh uses it. And, realizing that, we can legitimately ask why Fitzhugh is writing: to persuade Northern readers or bolster to Southern ones.

6. How does he portray capitalists? Cite specific words from the text to support your answer. Capitalists are predatory and oppressive. They are ever “wily and watchful,” always “devising means to ensnare and exploit” workers and deprive them of their liberty and rights.

7. Compare Fitzhugh’s portrayal of slaves with that of free laborers. As noted in the answer to question 9, Fitzhugh portrays slaves as happy, content, secure, and at ease with life. Free laborers, on the other hand, lead precarious lives, threatened by exploitation and starvation, oppressed and denied their rights, burdened by the cares of life during their productive years and faced with penury in their old age.

The following passage comes from The Cotton Kingdom , an 1861 volume in which journalist Frederick Law Olmsted compiled the dispatches he sent back to New York newspapers as he travelled through the South in the 1850s.

Have your students read the passage and write a brief essay in response to this question: Would Olmsted agree or disagree with the argument Fitzhugh makes in Cannibals All! ? Have them support their arguments with specific evidence from the text.

As a general rule, the larger the body of negroes on a plantation or estate, the more completely are they treated as mere property, and in accordance with a policy calculated to insure the largest pecuniary returns [profits]…. It may be true, that among the wealthier slave-owners there is oftener a humane disposition, a better judgment, and a greater ability to deal with their dependents indulgently and bountifully, but the effects of this disposition are chiefly felt, even on those plantations where the proprietor resides permanently, among the slaves employed about the house and stables, and perhaps a few old favourites in the quarters. It is more than balanced by the difficulty of acquiring a personal interest in the units of a large body of slaves, and an acquaintance with the individual characteristics of each. The treatment of the mass must be reduced to a system, the ruling idea of which will be, to enable one man to force into the same channel of labour the muscles of a large number of men of various and often conflicting wills.

Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller’s Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States, 1853–1861 (New York: Mason Brothers, 1861), p. 192.

Vocabulary Pop-ups

• pittance : small, inadequate amount of money
• capital : In these excerpts, capital is used to mean (1) money as profit, accumulated wealth; (2) money invested to make money in business and finance; (3) the northern workingman’s employer, i.e., the northern capitalist-industrialist.
• delusive : deceptive, illusionary
• raiment : clothing
• infirm : enfeebled, disabled
• despotism : unjust and cruel authority; tyranny
• ennui : boredom; listlessness resulting from lack of interest
• corporeal : bodily
• cumbered : burdened
• inculcated : instilled, taught

Image: “Oh Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny,” tobacco package label, lithograph by Robertson, Seibert & Shearman, New York, 1859 (detail). Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-08346. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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The Case Against Reparations for Slavery

For true racial justice, let's promote the rule of law, deregulate the labor market, and embrace the charter school movement.

In the most recent issue of  The Atlantic ,  Ta-Nehisi Coates  has created a minor sensation with his impassioned article “ The Case for Reparations .” Coates pulls no punches. Notwithstanding his earlier doubts on the topic, his current position is crystal clear: “Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.” From the point of view of a libertarian who has  written against black reparations  in the past, I shall assess the strengths and weaknesses of his position before turning to his proposed system of reparations.

The Sins of the Past

Coates writes with an urgency that carries his reader. He is at his best when he describes the various outrages of the American past in ways that are immediately accessible to all readers, regardless of race, sex, age, class, or national origin. Ironically, much of his narrative assumes a libertarian premise, even though Coates’s politics are anything but. The central libertarian principle is that every individual has rights against the rest of the world, to whom he or she owes correlative duties. Most vividly, the fundamental obligations are these: refrain from the use or threat of force; refrain from the use of false words to achieve private advantage; and keep your promises to others, just as you expect them to keep their promises to you.

The first and most powerful corollary to these bedrock assumptions is that no individual should ever be made into the slave of another. That position was well understood in ancient Rome, which developed extensive rules governing the institution of slavery. These rules were all creatures of the positive law, i.e. rules handed down by the sovereign. But at the same time, the Romans well understood that this body of positive law was in hopeless conflict with the natural law by which all men and women were free persons with the full capacity to make the decisions to govern their own lives. Thus Justinian’s Institutes  states categorically: “Slavery is an institution of the law of nations, by which one man is made the property of another, contrary to natural right.” No one should ever sugarcoat slavery in America by arguing that it was justified by the moral code of its time. The truth is that slavery always rested on an assertion of naked sovereign power against those persons who, upon capture, were not capable of resisting its demands.

Coates spends an enormous amount of time detailing the brutality of slavery. He then covers the inhumane conditions under Jim Crow that followed the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Sometimes he goes too far. It was not “Mississippi” that killed Emmett Till in 1955; it was a small band of unidentified hooligans whose despicable actions show why the control of violence is always the first task of any decent state. Nor was it just the illicit use of force that defined Jim Crow; it was the systematic disregard of elementary contractual rights that reinforced this vicious form of racial subjugation.

Coates recounts the plight of one Ruth Wells, who had worked to pay off her contract to purchase a home “only to suddenly see an insurance bill materialize out of thin air—a requirement the seller had added without Wells’s knowledge.” That deliberate breach of contract is in flat violation of libertarian norms. Coates’s ability to pile instance upon instance leaves the shell-shocked reader gasping for breath, because it is a vivid reminder of just how bad things were. One does not have to believe in reparations to recall with horror the sins of the past.

The Folly of Reparations

Considering the evidence Coates presence,a simple question arises: What should be done in response to the many wrongs of the distant and not so distant past? It is here that Coates falters. He is right that slave owners before the Civil War and the champions of Jim Crow afterwards exploited the black persons who lived under these regimes. Coates observes: “In 1860, slaves as an asset were worth more than all of America’s manufacturing, all of the railroads, all the productive capacity of the United States put together.” The tempting conclusion is that African Americans today should recoup the wealth that has, Coates argues, worked its way down to the current generation of Americans.

Sadly, however, Coates fails to note that those resources were largely consumed by the miscreants who extracted them from the backs of slaves. At most a small sliver of wealth was passed down by inheritance for a generation or two. But none of it was shared gratuitously with the rest of the nation. Both slavery and Jim Crow  hurt  the rest of the population by preventing them from doing business with black workers who held productive jobs. As a general matter, virtually all the wealth that exists in the United States today has been created by the ingenuity of a dizzying array of inventors, entrepreneurs, immigrants, and countless others. No fund of wealth survives the demise of slavery and Jim Crow.

Coates also suffers from acute tunnel vision.  He ignores the contributions of people of all races who fought fiercely against the evils of slavery and Jim Crow. The civil rights movement of the middle of the last century could not have prevailed if white citizens had not supported it. Indeed, many people of all races gave civil rights their passionate all, much like the abolitionists of the century before. Nor does he pay much attention to the extensive affirmative action programs, both public and private, that have gained traction in the post–Civil Rights period.

What Is the Remedy?

Coates is most evasive when discussing a proposed system of reparations. He notes quite properly that “broach the topic of reparations today and a barrage of questions inevitably follows: Who will be paid? How much will they be paid? Who will pay?” These are indeed fair questions, and yet at no point does he attempt to answer them. He endorses John Conyers proposal to form a Congressional committee to seek out “appropriate remedies” for the lingering effects of slavery and segregation, but offers few clues about its mission.

Nor are there easy analogies at hand. One possibility is to try to design some system based on the model of reparations for the  internment program  of 110,000 Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. But there, the payments were made to specific persons who were direct victims of wrong by the government. No program that seeks to remedy the wrongs of the past 350 years could hope to duplicate that level of precision.

Nor is the analysis of black reparations informed, as Coates suggests, by comparison to the decision of the German government to pay reparations to Israel in 1952 for the unspeakable sins of the Holocaust. Those payments of course could do nothing for the millions of individuals who lost their lives, but they did help the newly-founded Israel to gain strength in the first decade of its life. But the differences between these two cases overwhelm the similarities. Death by lynching in the South deserves emphatic condemnation. But let’s keep the numbers in perspective. We know that “nearly 3,500 African Americans and 1,300 whites were  lynched in the United States  between 1882 and 1968, mostly from 1882 to 1920.” The Holocaust took nearly  1,700 times  as many lives in a four-year period. For that wrong, the payment to a new state was a sensible if incomplete remedy. But to whom should the payments be made here?

Rather than speaking of reparations, we should consider the many constructive steps that could, and should, be taken right now as part of our ongoing social commitments to black Americans. It is striking that Coates makes no mention of the charter school movement, which is working overtime to give less fortunate children of all races opportunities that would be otherwise denied to them. Nor does he ask how to remove the barriers to entry that progressive legislation has placed in the path of minority workers, including such statutes as the antidiscrimination laws and minimum wage laws that Coates presumably supports. These laws make it more difficult for African Americans to get jobs in today’s labor market. Deregulation, by contrast, knocks down barriers to entry instead of erecting them in the name of greater racial or economic justice. Coates should embrace the libertarian principles that explain the injustices of racism to forge a new set of forward-looking policies.

Instead of considering these prescriptions, Coates  doubles-down on policies with a track-record of failure: What we need, he says, is “a program of job training and public works that takes racial justice as its mission but includes the poor of all races.” This misguided solution, which resonates with the Obama administration, ignores the economic decline of African Americans and other disadvantaged persons since the president took office. That situation can only be reversed if writers like Coates grasp the intimate connection between the wrongs that they skillfully expose and the remedies that they inartfully promote.

Killings, beatings, rapes, and double-dealing are all wrongs within a libertarian framework. Enforcing the rule of law, voluntary help, and the removal of barriers to entry to the marketplace are libertarian remedies for such wrongs. Once our policymakers and public intellectuals realize this fact, we will come one step closer to undoing the sins of the American past. Confessions of collective guilt and national apologies just won’t cut it. 

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83 Frederick Douglass’s Narrative, arguments over slavery, and Black Christianity

On August 1st, 1844, Ralph Waldo Emerson gave a speech, “ Address on the Anniversary of Emancipation in the British West Indies ,” in which he expressed hope that history was moving in the direction of freedom. “There is progress in human society,” he claims at the end, a “blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right,” and increasingly that right is seen as the voice of “Freedom.”

H.D. Thoreau was sitting in attendance. So was an emerging Black voice in the anti-slavery movement, going by the name of Frederick Douglass. Douglass would publish his Narrative a year later through the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Emerson had published his famous “Self-Reliance” essay in 1841 as part of his first essay collection. In both the “Address” and in “Self-Reliance,” he uses a Transcendentalist framework to argue that the basic unit of freedom and expression in any community is at the level of the individual—who, he qualifies in the “Oversoul,” is intimately united with the divine. Anyone and anything is potentially an oracle.

In the “Address,” he uses the language of power as much as freedom. Some of this language comes from his admiration of the Haitan revolution (1791-1804) and other slave uprisings. Whereas many white citizens expressed anxiety and even dread about these forms of rebellion, Emerson embraced them as signs of positive power:

[Nature] will only save what is worth saving; and it saves not by compassion, but by power. It appoints no police to guard the lion, but his teeth and claws; no fort or city for the bird, but his wings; no rescue for flies and mites, but their spawning numbers, which no ravages can overcome. It deals with men after the same manner. If they are rude and foolish, down they must go. When at last in a race, a new principle appears, an idea,–that conserves it; ideas only save races. If the black man is feeble, and not important to the existing races, not on a parity with the best race, the black man must serve, and be exterminated. But if the black man carries in his bosom an indispensable element of a new and coming civilization, for the sake of that element, no wrong, nor strength, nor circumstance, can hurt him: he will survive and play his part. So now, the arrival in the world of such men as Toussaint, and the Haytian heroes, or of the leaders of their race in Barbadoes and Jamaica, outweighs in good omen all the English and American humanity. The anti-slavery of the whole world, is dust in the balance before this,–is a poor squeamishness and nervousness: the might and the right are here: here is the anti-slave: here is man: and if you have man, black or white is an insignificance.

I say to you, you must save yourself, black or white, man or woman; other help is none. I esteem the occasion of this jubilee to be the proud discovery, that the black race can contend with the white … .

This passage and the address more generally can feel puzzling for some modern readers because its argument against slavery is not explicitly about equality. In fact he doesn’t mention the idea of equality at all in the “Address.” Instead, he clearly emphasizes that other component of the Declaration of Independence —freedom. Not only that, but freedom in this “Address” and “Self-Reliance” is expressed positively rather than negatively. Rather than a “freedom from tyranny,” it’s about a freedom to contend with others and even fight them: “[Nature] appoints no police to guard the lion, but his teeth and claws … .” Freedom as power to fight and struggle.

This framing of freedom as power is helpful for thinking about the kind of development we find in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative . The slave narrative, or autobiography, is often presented as a “literacy narrative” (meaning: it’s about an individual’s path to becoming fluent in a language), but it’s also much more than that. Parts of Douglass’s story are indeed about mastering language and the importance of literacy to his eventual freedom—an emphasis on literacy that Benjamin Franklin advocated for so much in his own Autobiography . But alongside these moments Douglass intersperses violence and struggle. The Narrative demonstrates just how different a “rags to riches” story will look for a former slave.

Before discussing more about the  Narrative  and Douglass’s background it will help to get a general overview of his life and career.

Here are some important points mentioned by the video:

• He was born Frederick Bailey in 1817/18
• His mother was an enslaved woman, his father white. She lived on a different plantation and died when he was young.
• One of his slaver’s wives taught him to read and write.
• Douglass later held secret meetings to help others read.
• One of the most famous episodes in  Narrative  involves Douglass’s interactions with Covey.
• Douglass married a free black woman, Anna Murray, in 1838. She supported their family before he could contribute.
• He escaped to New York City.
• They settled in MA where he became a famous orator who radicalized others against slavery.
• Douglass worked with Garrison at  The Liberator .
• His  Narrative was published in 1845.
• He partnered with Delaney in 1847.
• The Compromise of 1850 made it easier for Southern slave owners to track down escapees. Douglass protested the act.
• Douglass consistently appealed to his faith and beliefs.
• He lobbied Lincoln during the 1860s, ultimately leading to the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.

Douglass’s Narrative, Slave Narratives, and Antebellum Anti-Slavery pamphlets

The introduction to the 1999 Yale Press edition of the Narrative , written by John W. Blassingame, offers excellent background to the book’s publication history.

One of the most obvious precedents for Douglass’s Narrative is the broader captivity narrative genre, tracing back to the early Spanish and British colonial texts by authors such as Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and Mary Rowlandson. One of the first texts published by a Black author and slave was the captivity narrative by Briton Hammon from 1760. British colonial captivity narratives used a framework of providence and adopted typological thinking to portray being captured by natives as a form of exile and returning home (or, in the case of Hammon, to his master) as deliverance.

In the 19th-century this captivity narrative genre was transformed former Black slaves to become the slave narrative . James Olney’s article on slave narratives from 1984 famously points to a standard structure for this genre, based largely on Douglass:

A. An engraved portrait, signed by the narrator.

B. A title page that includes the claim, as an integral part of the title, “Written by Himself” (or some close variant: “Written from a statement of Facts Made by Himself”; or “Written by a Friend, as Related to Him by Brother Jones”; etc.)

C. A handful of testimonials and/or one or more prefaces or introductions written either by a white abolitionist friend of the narrator (William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips) or by a white amanuensis/editor/author actually responsible for the text (John Greenleaf Whittier, David Wilson, Louis Alexis Chamerovzow), in the course of which preface the reader is told that the narrative is a “plain, unvarnished tale” and that naught “has been set down in malice, nothing exaggerated, nothing drawn from the imagination”—indeed, the tale, it is claimed, understates the horrors of slavery.

D. A poetic epigraph, by preference from William Cowper.

E. The actual narrative:

• a first sentence beginning, “I was born … ,” then specifying a place but not a date of birth;
• a sketchy account of parentage, often involving a white father;
• description of a cruel master, mistress, or overseer, details of first observed whipping and numerous subsequent whippings, with women very frequently the victims;
• an account of one extraordinarily strong, hardworking slave often “pure African”-who, because there is no reason for it, refuses to be whipped;
• record of the barriers raised against slave literacy and the overwhelming difficulties encountered in learning to read and write;
• description of a “Christian” slaveholder (often of one such dying in terror) and the accompanying claim that “Christian” slaveholders are invariably worse than those professing no religion;
• description of the amounts and kinds of food and clothing given to slaves, the work required of them, the pattern of a day, a week, a year;
• account of a slave auction, of families being separated and destroyed, of distraught mothers clinging to their children as they are torn from them, of slave coffles being driven South;
• description of patrols, of failed attempt(s) to escape, of pursuit by men and dogs;
• description of successful attempt(s) to escape, lying by during the day, travelling by night guided by the North Star, reception in a free state by Quakers who offer a lavish breakfast and much genial thee/thou conversation;
• taking of a new last name (frequently one suggested by a white abolitionist) to accord with new social identity as a free man, but retention of first name as a mark of continuity of individual identity;
• reflections on slavery.

F. An appendix or appendices composed of documentary material bills of sale, details of purchase from slavery, newspaper items-, further reflections on slavery, sermons, anti-slavery speeches, poems, appeals to the reader for funds and moral support in the battle against slavery.

As a proviso, however, Olney clarifies that Douglass’s own  Narrative  both crystallizes this structure while also transcending it: “he goes beyond the single intention of describing slavery, but he also describes it more exactly and more convincingly than anyone else.” [1] The  Narrative  is indeed about the institution of slavery, but it’s also about the moral and spiritual development of the author. It can be read as a slave narrative, an autobiography, or a literacy narrative.

Douglass was familiar with Franklin’s Autobiography , Blassingame points out, probably as far back as the 1830s, in Caleb Bingham’s Columbian Orator . [2]

But the primary inspiration was mostly like the abolitionist polemics and narratives published in the decades leading up to Douglass’s freedom. “Between 1838 and 1844 Douglass avidly read such antislavery publications,” especially The Liberator and Theodore Dwight Weld’s American Slavery as It Is , a “repository of human horrors” that included personal narratives. [3] American Slavery as It Is was published by the American Anti-Slavery Society, the publishing house that Douglass ultimately chose for his own Narrative.

Douglass’s Narrative and pro-slavery arguments

When moving from early American captivity narratives to the slave narratives of the antebellum 19th-century, it’s highly relevant that these types of stories were published by abolitionist institutions. They were intended as polemics. The stories were arguments and proofs.

One pro-slavery strain that the personal narratives contended with was economic and political, best represented by George Fitzhugh’s Sociology of the South, or, The Failure of Society (1854). Fitzhugh famously argued that the North’s more laissez-faire approach to society, a kind of free market capitalism, produced more slavishness and inequality than the patriarchal system in the South. He was one of the earliest writers to argue that the North induced wage slavery. The patriarchal institution of Southern slavery actually benefits the slaves, Fitzhugh argues, since they can rely on their morally and intellectually superior white masters.

The latter argument about the spiritual and moral benefit was emphasized by many, including certain Protestants. These more religious interpretations proposed that slavery was beneficial to African Americans because it allowed the white masters to steer slaves towards the gospel. It was providential, they argued, that slaves were transported from Africa to the New World, because otherwise they would be lost.

Yet another religious strain was inspired by certain evangelical-fundamentalist strains within the Second Great Awakening and its urge to return to more biblical foundations. One of the clearest articulations of the biblical argument for slavery can be found in William P.N. Fitzgerald’s sermon-treatise, A Scriptural View of Abolition and Slavery . His tract is probably the most detailed account of why, according to some antebellum Protestants in the South, the Bible is consistently pro-slavery. The treatise runs through the Old and New Testaments pointing out how the Bible consistently justifies the institution of slavery. It’s a pro-slavery treatise crammed with Bible verses.

It’s against these pro-slavery arguments (economic, moral, and biblical) that Douglass’s Narrative contends. We can read his autobiography as a polemic against them, dismantling each one in the front matter, throughout the story itself, and in the Appendix.

For the spiritual argument, look for how Douglass navigates the complexity of whether white influence can ultimately have a beneficial impact on a slave’s spiritual life. For the biblical argument, look for how Douglass distinguishes between the religion of white slavers and his own take on Christianity.

The Black Church and Douglass’s Narrative 

Anti-slavery arguments existed well before the Second Great Awakening. Some of the most strident opposition came from Pennsylvanian Quakers—Ben Franklin’s religious background.

But just as the Second Great Awakening revised the Puritan legacy and laid the foundation for more fundamentalist expressions of Christianity, it also inspired the evolution of the Black Church, particularly its Methodist Episcopalian expressions.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. published The Black Church in 2021 and then joined forces with PBS to produce a three-part series on the evolution of the Black Church. Episode 1 (requires membership) covers the early American and antebellum periods, including the era of Frederick Douglass (I highly recommend the book and/or PBS series if you’re intrigued by this topic.). There’s too much to summarize here, but there are a few threads worth emphasizing.

Ring shout : First, Gates points out that Black Christianity preserved part of its African heritage in the “ring shout.” This first appeared during the First Great Awakening (the movement that Phyllis Wheatley was partly inspired by).

Revising typology : Second, it’s commonly known that the Black Church adapted the exodus narrative that was also such a crucial part of Puritan typology. We can see this in songs such as “Go Down, Moses,” which supposedly gained currency during the underground railroad (Harriet Tubman was referred to as Moses).

When Israel was in Egypt’s land Let my people go Oppress’d so hard they could not stand Let my people go

Refrain: Go down, Moses Way down in Egypt’s land Tell old Pharaoh Let my people go

What’s remarkable about this adaptation of the exodus narrative is that it transforms the Puritan emphasis on escaping from the Roman Church, embarking across the Atlantic, and building a city in the wilderness, into an escape from white masters in the South who were themselves mostly Protestant Christians. In Black Christianity, Luther’s Roman Church (the anti-Christ and his minions) became the white Christian slavers, the Atlantic crossing (exile) became the deep South, and the New World became Northern cities (Zion/New Jerusalem).

In Douglass’s writings, we can see this Black Church spin on typology in his essay, “What to a Slave Is the Fourth of July?”

Progressive Christianity : Finally, one way to read Douglass’s revision of Christianity is in how it combines aspects of typology with the emphasis on freedom in the Declaration of Independence . We can see in Douglass’s Narrative and other anti-slavery writings a proposal to view Christianity from a rights-based perspective (what’s now called “progressive Christianity” within the Church). The litmus test for true religion, he seems to argue, is how consistently it advocates for the freedoms and justice of those within a community, not just whether it adheres to orthodoxy. Progressive strains of Christianity tend to argue that true religion includes socio-economic equality and freedom, not just invisible kingdom-building and spiritual betterment. Since the antebellum period, the Black Church has stressed the link between spirituality and political activism.

This “justice” strain is not entirely new. The Hebrew prophets, especially Jeremiah, emphasized the importance of caring for the poor, the outcasts, and victims of war; and 18th-century Quakers launched faith-based abolitionist campaigns. But Black Christianity in the 19th-century interwove threads from the Declaration of Independence with the jeremiads of the later Hebrew prophets to declare a unique form of American religion.

Douglass and the AME Zion Church

After escaping to the North, Douglass became a licensed reverend in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in New Bedford, Mass. The AME Zion church had officially formed in 1821 and Douglass was instrumental in its growth. In 1840, for example, a new AME Zion church was founded in Elmira , New York, after Douglass delivered an anti-slavery sermon/lecture there.

The AME Zion Church is also where Martin Luther King, Jr. launched his civil rights career. Today it remains a source of leadership for Black spirituality and civil rights, commenting on contemporary movements such as Black Lives Matter (in 2020 the Proud Boys infamously destroyed a BLM sign on property that belonged to the AME Church in Washington, D.C.).

The website is titled: “The AME Zion Church: The Freedom Church.”

• James Olney, "'I Was Born': Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature," Callaloo , No. 20 (Winter, 19841), p. 51. ↵
• "Introduction," from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself , ed. John R. McKivigan, et al, p. xvi. ↵
• Ibid, xvii. ↵

Anthology of Earlier American Literature: College of Western Idaho Copyright © by Joel Gladd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Home — Essay Samples — History — Frederick Douglass — Frederick Douglass’ Arguments Against Slavery

Frederick Douglass’ Arguments Against Slavery

• Categories: Frederick Douglass Slavery in The World

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Words: 986 |

Published: Mar 18, 2021

Words: 986 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Works Cited

• Douglass, F. (1845). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Penguin Classics.
• Foner, E. (2018). The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass: Early Years. Oxford University Press.
• Guelzo, A. C. (2018). Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Simon and Schuster.
• Levine, R. S. (1997). Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity. Univ of North Carolina Press.
• McFeely, W. S. (1995). Frederick Douglass. W. W. Norton & Company.
• O'Meally, R. G. (Ed.). (1995). Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays. Cambridge University Press.
• Quarles, B. (1968). Frederick Douglass. Oxford University Press.
• Quarles, B. (1975). The Negro in the Making of America. Addison-Wesley.
• Sterling, D. R. (Ed.). (2003). Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader. Blackwell Publishing.
• West, D. (Ed.). (2010). The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass. Cambridge University Press.

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Slavery Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on slavery.

Slavery is a term that signifies the injustice that is being carried out against humans since the 1600s. Whenever this word comes up, usually people picture rich white people ruling over black people. However, that is not the only case to exist. After a profound study, historians found evidence that suggested the presence of slavery in almost every culture. It was not essentially in the form of people working in the fields, but other forms. Slavery generally happens due to the division of levels amongst humans in a society. It still exists in various parts of the world. It may not necessarily be that hard-core, nonetheless, it happens.

Impact of Slavery

Slavery is one of the main causes behind racism in most of the cultures. It did severe damage to the race relations of America where a rift was formed between the whites and blacks.

The impact of Slavery has caused irreparable damage which can be seen to date. Even after the abolishment of slavery in the 1800s in America, racial tensions remained amongst the citizens.

In other words, this made them drift apart from each other instead of coming close. Slavery also gave birth to White supremacy which made people think they are inherently superior just because of their skin color and descendant.

Talking about the other forms of slavery, human trafficking did tremendous damage. It is a social evil which operates even today, ruining hundreds and thousands of innocent lives. Slavery is the sole cause which gave birth to all this.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

The Aftermath

Even though slavery was abolished over 150 years ago, the scars still remain. The enslaved still haven’t forgotten the struggles of their ancestors. It lives on in their hearts which has made them defensive more than usual. They resent the people whose ancestors brought it down on their lineage.

Even today many people of color are a victim of racism in the 21st century. For instance, black people face far more severe punishments than a white man. They are ridiculed for their skin color even today. There is a desperate need to overcome slavery and all its manifestations for the condition and security of all citizens irrespective of race, religion , social, and economic position .

In short, slavery never did any good to any human being, of the majority nor minority. It further divided us as humans and put tags on one another. Times are changing and so are people’s mindsets.

One needs to be socially aware of these evils lurking in our society in different forms. We must come together as one to fight it off. Every citizen has the duty to make the world a safer place for every human being to live in.

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Argumentative Essay Examples to Inspire You (+ Free Formula)

Table of contents

Meredith Sell

Have you ever been asked to explain your opinion on a controversial issue? 

• Maybe your family got into a discussion about chemical pesticides
• Someone at work argues against investing resources into your project
• Your partner thinks intermittent fasting is the best way to lose weight and you disagree

Proving your point in an argumentative essay can be challenging, unless you are using a proven formula.

Argumentative essay formula & example

In the image below, you can see a recommended structure for argumentative essays. It starts with the topic sentence, which establishes the main idea of the essay. Next, this hypothesis is developed in the development stage. Then, the rebuttal, or the refutal of the main counter argument or arguments. Then, again, development of the rebuttal. This is followed by an example, and ends with a summary. This is a very basic structure, but it gives you a bird-eye-view of how a proper argumentative essay can be built.

Writing an argumentative essay (for a class, a news outlet, or just for fun) can help you improve your understanding of an issue and sharpen your thinking on the matter. Using researched facts and data, you can explain why you or others think the way you do, even while other reasonable people disagree.

Free AI argumentative essay generator > Free AI argumentative essay generator >

What Is an Argumentative Essay?

An argumentative essay is an explanatory essay that takes a side.

Instead of appealing to emotion and personal experience to change the reader’s mind, an argumentative essay uses logic and well-researched factual information to explain why the thesis in question is the most reasonable opinion on the matter.  

Over several paragraphs or pages, the author systematically walks through:

• The opposition (and supporting evidence)
• The chosen thesis (and its supporting evidence)

At the end, the author leaves the decision up to the reader, trusting that the case they’ve made will do the work of changing the reader’s mind. Even if the reader’s opinion doesn’t change, they come away from the essay with a greater understanding of the perspective presented — and perhaps a better understanding of their original opinion.

All of that might make it seem like writing an argumentative essay is way harder than an emotionally-driven persuasive essay — but if you’re like me and much more comfortable spouting facts and figures than making impassioned pleas, you may find that an argumentative essay is easier to write. 

Plus, the process of researching an argumentative essay means you can check your assumptions and develop an opinion that’s more based in reality than what you originally thought. I know for sure that my opinions need to be fact checked — don’t yours?

So how exactly do we write the argumentative essay?

How do you start an argumentative essay

First, gain a clear understanding of what exactly an argumentative essay is. To formulate a proper topic sentence, you have to be clear on your topic, and to explore it through research.

Students have difficulty starting an essay because the whole task seems intimidating, and they are afraid of spending too much time on the topic sentence. Experienced writers, however, know that there is no set time to spend on figuring out your topic. It's a real exploration that is based to a large extent on intuition.

6 Steps to Write an Argumentative Essay (Persuasion Formula)

Use this checklist to tackle your essay one step at a time:

1. Research an issue with an arguable question

To start, you need to identify an issue that well-informed people have varying opinions on. Here, it’s helpful to think of one core topic and how it intersects with another (or several other) issues. That intersection is where hot takes and reasonable (or unreasonable) opinions abound. 

I find it helpful to stage the issue as a question.

For example: 

Is it better to legislate the minimum size of chicken enclosures or to outlaw the sale of eggs from chickens who don’t have enough space?

Should snow removal policies focus more on effectively keeping roads clear for traffic or the environmental impacts of snow removal methods?

Once you have your arguable question ready, start researching the basic facts and specific opinions and arguments on the issue. Do your best to stay focused on gathering information that is directly relevant to your topic. Depending on what your essay is for, you may reference academic studies, government reports, or newspaper articles.

‍ Research your opposition and the facts that support their viewpoint as much as you research your own position . You’ll need to address your opposition in your essay, so you’ll want to know their argument from the inside out.

2. Choose a side based on your research

You likely started with an inclination toward one side or the other, but your research should ultimately shape your perspective. So once you’ve completed the research, nail down your opinion and start articulating the what and why of your take. 

What: I think it’s better to outlaw selling eggs from chickens whose enclosures are too small.

Why: Because if you regulate the enclosure size directly, egg producers outside of the government’s jurisdiction could ship eggs into your territory and put nearby egg producers out of business by offering better prices because they don’t have the added cost of larger enclosures.

This is an early form of your thesis and the basic logic of your argument. You’ll want to iterate on this a few times and develop a one-sentence statement that sums up the thesis of your essay.

Thesis: Outlawing the sale of eggs from chickens with cramped living spaces is better for business than regulating the size of chicken enclosures.

Now that you’ve articulated your thesis , spell out the counterargument(s) as well. Putting your opposition’s take into words will help you throughout the rest of the essay-writing process. (You can start by choosing the counter argument option with Wordtune Spices .)

Counterargument: Outlawing the sale of eggs from chickens with too small enclosures will immediately drive up egg prices for consumers, making the low-cost protein source harder to afford — especially for low-income consumers.

There may be one main counterargument to articulate, or several. Write them all out and start thinking about how you’ll use evidence to address each of them or show why your argument is still the best option.

3. Organize the evidence — for your side and the opposition

You did all of that research for a reason. Now’s the time to use it. 

Hopefully, you kept detailed notes in a document, complete with links and titles of all your source material. Go through your research document and copy the evidence for your argument and your opposition’s into another document.

List the main points of your argument. Then, below each point, paste the evidence that backs them up.

If you’re writing about chicken enclosures, maybe you found evidence that shows the spread of disease among birds kept in close quarters is worse than among birds who have more space. Or maybe you found information that says eggs from free-range chickens are more flavorful or nutritious. Put that information next to the appropriate part of your argument. 

Repeat the process with your opposition’s argument: What information did you find that supports your opposition? Paste it beside your opposition’s argument.

You could also put information here that refutes your opposition, but organize it in a way that clearly tells you — at a glance — that the information disproves their point.

Counterargument: Outlawing the sale of eggs from chickens with too small enclosures will immediately drive up egg prices for consumers.

BUT: Sicknesses like avian flu spread more easily through small enclosures and could cause a shortage that would drive up egg prices naturally, so ensuring larger enclosures is still a better policy for consumers over the long term.

As you organize your research and see the evidence all together, start thinking through the best way to order your points.  

Will it be better to present your argument all at once or to break it up with opposition claims you can quickly refute? Would some points set up other points well? Does a more complicated point require that the reader understands a simpler point first?

Play around and rearrange your notes to see how your essay might flow one way or another.

4. Freewrite or outline to think through your argument

Is your brain buzzing yet? At this point in the process, it can be helpful to take out a notebook or open a fresh document and dump whatever you’re thinking on the page.

Where should your essay start? What ground-level information do you need to provide your readers before you can dive into the issue?

Use your organized evidence document from step 3 to think through your argument from beginning to end, and determine the structure of your essay.

There are three typical structures for argumentative essays:

• Make your argument and tackle opposition claims one by one, as they come up in relation to the points of your argument - In this approach, the whole essay — from beginning to end — focuses on your argument, but as you make each point, you address the relevant opposition claims individually. This approach works well if your opposition’s views can be quickly explained and refuted and if they directly relate to specific points in your argument.
• Make the bulk of your argument, and then address the opposition all at once in a paragraph (or a few) - This approach puts the opposition in its own section, separate from your main argument. After you’ve made your case, with ample evidence to convince your readers, you write about the opposition, explaining their viewpoint and supporting evidence — and showing readers why the opposition’s argument is unconvincing. Once you’ve addressed the opposition, you write a conclusion that sums up why your argument is the better one.
• Open your essay by talking about the opposition and where it falls short. Build your entire argument to show how it is superior to that opposition - With this structure, you’re showing your readers “a better way” to address the issue. After opening your piece by showing how your opposition’s approaches fail, you launch into your argument, providing readers with ample evidence that backs you up.

As you think through your argument and examine your evidence document, consider which structure will serve your argument best. Sketch out an outline to give yourself a map to follow in the writing process. You could also rearrange your evidence document again to match your outline, so it will be easy to find what you need when you start writing.

5. Write your first draft

You have an outline and an organized document with all your points and evidence lined up and ready. Now you just have to write your essay.

In your first draft, focus on getting your ideas on the page. Your wording may not be perfect (whose is?), but you know what you’re trying to say — so even if you’re overly wordy and taking too much space to say what you need to say, put those words on the page.

Follow your outline, and draw from that evidence document to flesh out each point of your argument. Explain what the evidence means for your argument and your opposition. Connect the dots for your readers so they can follow you, point by point, and understand what you’re trying to say.

As you write, be sure to include:

1. Any background information your reader needs in order to understand the issue in question.

2. Evidence for both your argument and the counterargument(s). This shows that you’ve done your homework and builds trust with your reader, while also setting you up to make a more convincing argument. (If you find gaps in your research while you’re writing, Wordtune Spices can source statistics or historical facts on the fly!)

Get Wordtune for free > Get Wordtune for free >

3. A conclusion that sums up your overall argument and evidence — and leaves the reader with an understanding of the issue and its significance. This sort of conclusion brings your essay to a strong ending that doesn’t waste readers’ time, but actually adds value to your case.

6. Revise (with Wordtune)

The hard work is done: you have a first draft. Now, let’s fine tune your writing.

I like to step away from what I’ve written for a day (or at least a night of sleep) before attempting to revise. It helps me approach clunky phrases and rough transitions with fresh eyes. If you don’t have that luxury, just get away from your computer for a few minutes — use the bathroom, do some jumping jacks, eat an apple — and then come back and read through your piece.

As you revise, make sure you …

• Get the facts right. An argument with false evidence falls apart pretty quickly, so check your facts to make yours rock solid.
• Don’t misrepresent the opposition or their evidence. If someone who holds the opposing view reads your essay, they should affirm how you explain their side — even if they disagree with your rebuttal.
• Present a case that builds over the course of your essay, makes sense, and ends on a strong note. One point should naturally lead to the next. Your readers shouldn’t feel like you’re constantly changing subjects. You’re making a variety of points, but your argument should feel like a cohesive whole.
• Paraphrase sources and cite them appropriately. Did you skip citations when writing your first draft? No worries — you can add them now. And check that you don’t overly rely on quotations. (Need help paraphrasing? Wordtune can help. Simply highlight the sentence or phrase you want to adjust and sort through Wordtune’s suggestions.)
• Tighten up overly wordy explanations and sharpen any convoluted ideas. Wordtune makes a great sidekick for this too 😉

Words to start an argumentative essay

The best way to introduce a convincing argument is to provide a strong thesis statement . These are the words I usually use to start an argumentative essay:

• It is indisputable that the world today is facing a multitude of issues
• With the rise of ____, the potential to make a positive difference has never been more accessible
• It is essential that we take action now and tackle these issues head-on
• it is critical to understand the underlying causes of the problems standing before us
• Opponents of this idea claim
• Those who are against these ideas may say
• Some people may disagree with this idea
• Some people may say that ____, however

When refuting an opposing concept, use:

• These researchers have a point in thinking
• To a certain extent they are right
• After seeing this evidence, there is no way one can agree with this idea
• This argument is irrelevant to the topic

Are you convinced by your own argument yet? Ready to brave the next get-together where everyone’s talking like they know something about intermittent fasting , chicken enclosures , or snow removal policies? 

Now if someone asks you to explain your evidence-based but controversial opinion, you can hand them your essay and ask them to report back after they’ve read it.

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