In the middle of the 19th century, Harriet Beecher Stowe has created a well-known novel about slavery in the United States. The scandalous book was very popular, and its provocative glory is even considered one of the factors that have caused aggravation of the relationship between the northern and the southern states of America, which led to an escalation of the conflict between the two sides and soon resulted as a Civil War.
Analyzing the opinions of representatives of both sides – a slave owner’s point of view, and the stories of poor immigrants struggling to survive – we can notice how different the views were. Looking at the situation from the point of view of a slave, and of an immigrant worker, we can see that neither of them had what we call “freedom”, in a traditional sense.
Talking about the lives of slaves and comparing them to the theoretically free lives of immigrants, we are comparing the inevitable to the unknown: hopeless life of a slave and helpless life of a worker, who had no rights.
Of course, the appearance of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” caused a reaction from the slave owners. A dangerous pattern started to emerge, slaves were about to realize that they have rights, and have power to fight for their rights. Wealthy and satisfied with their lifestyles southerners, living happy full lives were not please to feel the smell of revolution in the air. This is why a completely logical reaction followed – slave owners started to respond to Beecher Stowe’s novel with their own articles designed to show better sides of slavery, justify it, and portray it in a good light, as an act of generosity.
Slave owners saw slavery as a great responsibility they were willing to take, in order to be good Christians and take care of the souls of their slaves, they imagined that they did not only own the bodies and lives of their slaves, but also the souls. Slave owners began to work out a series of arguments to prove that slaves were not used to freedom and that they required constant control, without it slaves would become unhappy lost people with no chances to survive, as they had no education, profession, social skills.
Southern plantation owners were trying hard to create a stereotype of a happy slave, a slave, satisfied with his place in the society, living fulfilled, organized life, grateful to the master for taking good care of him. Slave owners tried to deflect accusations for owning people, redirecting the social attention to the situation in the North of the country, where the labor market was overcrowded with people in need, begging for jobs and having very little chance to find one.
Clearly, slave owners had a point. Hiring was much more convenient for a northern employer than for a southern plantation owner. From the stories of the immigrant workers we understand how poor were the conditions they had to live in and how low their payments were. Those people truly were “wage slaves”. Rich southerners had to provide clothes, food, medical care and a home for their slaves. Capitalists of the North did not have to be bothered by all that. “Free laborers” were supposed to survive on their own. Besides, in case a slave owner loses a slave, a new slave had to be bought.
Only the wealthiest families could afford to buy slaves, the price for a slave was very high, while the lives of “free laborers” did not cost much, if one fails to do the job, falls sick or dies – the next minute crowds of new immigrants will appear to replace the unlucky person.
The deep gap between rich and poor caused the mistreatment of socially weaker people. While slaves were treated, at best, as pets or domesticated animals, immigrant workers were left to die in poverty. Egos of capitalists in the middle of the nineteenth century grew together with their income, and let them think they were the masters of the world and owners of the poor in both northern and southern parts of the United States.
Reference
- “They Must Work Harder Than Ever”: “A Working Man” Remembers Life in New York City, 1830s. Web.
- “I Was a Cabinet-maker By Trade”: A Working Man’s Recollections of America, 1825–35. Web.
- “The Happiest Laboring Class in the World”: Two Virginia Slaveholders Debate Methods of Slave Management, 1837. Web.