The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities
Franklin Repository, "Equal Rights in the Territories," July 18, 1860

Summary

Republican editors scorned the Democratic (Douglas) view that slavery can only work and thrive in southern climes and that it will remain only where it is profitable--not in the "temperate mainly grain growing region." To the opponents of slavery these supposed limitations seemed dubious. Slavery's movement into Missouri and Kansas flew in the face of this logic, and the editors argued here not that it was morally wrong to own slaves, but that slavery deprived working people of the fruits of labor and rewarded those who did nothing but own slaves. In this sense, they argued, slavery perverted the natural process of reward for work and of the rights to the pursuits of happiness.

EXCERPT:

"The Douglas Democratic idea is that of the Equal Right of Slavery with Free Labor in any and every Territory. This idea denies that Slavery is a natural or moral wrong--denies that Man has a natural moral right to the direction of his own energies, the products of his own industry, and maintains that the ownership of his own limbs and faculties by the laborer or by a master is question of political economy and social expediency to be determined by considerations of climate, soil, products &c."

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Points of Analysis to this Data:

"In the first half of 1860 Republican editors in Franklin's Repository and Transcript attacked slavery as a violation of nature that stole from the workingman the fruits of his labor; they focused mainly on slavery's potential to undermine free labor."


Citation: Key = E086
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