Transcript Two Racial Revolutionaries: David Walker and George Fitzhugh

Two Racial Revolutionaries:
David Walker
and
George Fitzhugh
Paradoxes: Racist Abolitionism
“Antebellum America thus faced three interrelated paradoxes regarding slavery.
First, although many Americans believed slavery was a heinous crime, they simultaneously
feared that freeing the slaves would be even more damaging to the republic.
Second, although the young nation was in large part founded on empowering notions
regarding the transparency and veracity of the popular will, and hence on a radically
new, immediatist concept of the body politic, debates regarding the status of slavery
frequently revolved around mediated and nonverifiable rhetorical issues of textual
interpretation.
Third, although slavery was an incredibly popular subject of discussion, much of this
discourse addressed not slaves and slavery per se but rather slavery as a metaphor for
a host of historical issues, including the supposed encroachment of Southern politicoeconomic power over free white Northerners, the increasing tension between political
liberty (democracy) and economic inequality (capitalism), the fate of democracy amid
unprecedented geographic expansion, and the crumbling of traditional social hierarchies
as America marched into modernity. Each of these three paradoxes was saturated with
white fear regarding the potential catastrophes of emancipation, and furthermore, each
of them—even when approached via the statements of leading antislavery activists—
illustrated profound, unsettling levels of commitment to white supremacy.
Given the remarkable intelligence, humanitarian passion, and rhetorical genius of the
previously mentioned antislavery figures—almost literally a pantheon of great
Americans: Paine, Franklin, Adams, Douglass, Lincoln, Rantoul—it is more than a little
disconcerting to notice that their antislavery pronouncements (excluding those made by
Douglass) contained explicit appeals to fear-based, racist sentiments...” S. J. Hartnett,
Democratic Dissent and the Cultural Fictions of Antebellum America, U of Illinois Press.
Short Bio: David Walker
“If I remain in this bloody land, I will not live long. As true as God reigns, I will be avenged
for the sorrow which my people have suffered.” (On leaving NC, in 1815)
David Walker was born on September 28, 1785, in Wilmington, North Carolina. His father
was an enslaved African who died a few months before his son’s birth, and his
mother was a free woman of African ancestry. Walker grew up to despise the system
of slavery that the American government allowed in America.
In 1826 Walker settled in Boston, Mass., where he became the agent for Freedom's
Journal, the black abolitionist newspaper, and a leader in the Colored Association.
For a living he ran a secondhand clothing store.
Walker’s revulsion toward slavery led him to do something dangerous: published his
Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World in September 1829. The Appeal was
smuggled into the southern states, and was considered subversive, seditious, and
incendiary by most white men in both northern and southern states. It was, without a
doubt, one of the most controversial documents published in the antebellum period.
Appeal: a bitter denunciation of slavery, those who profited by it, and those who willingly
accepted it. Walker called for vengeance against white men, but he also expressed
the hope that their cruel behavior toward blacks would change, making vengeance
unnecessary.
Short Bio: David Walker
Walker was concerned about many social issues affecting free and enslaved
Africans in America during the time. Precursor for variety of what would
later be black nationalist platform: unified struggle for resistance of
oppression, reparations (land, for Walker), self-government for people of
African descent in America, racial pride, and a critique of American
capitalism.
Southern elites hated Walker, but were also frightened by him. Several states,
and some individuals, put a price on his head. In 1829, 50 unsolicited
copies of Walker's Appeal were delivered to a black minister in Savannah,
Ga. The frightened minister, understandably concerned for his welfare,
informed the police.
The police, in turn, informed the governor of Georgia. As a result, the state
legislature met in secret session and passed a bill making the circulation
of materials that might incite slaves to riot a capital offense. The
legislature also offered a reward for Walker's capture, $10,000 alive and
$1,000 dead.
Still, David Walker employed clever and inventive ways to circulate his
Appeal. His network of free black seamen who served as "authorized
agents" helped to develop circulation far beyond Massachusetts and into
the South
Short Bio: David Walker
Other Southern states took similar measures. Louisiana
enacted a bill ordering expulsion of all freed slaves who
had settled in the state after 1825. The slaveholding South
was frightened by men like Walker, and their harsh
reactions to the threat they saw in Walker's Appeal
seemed justified when black slave Nat Turner led his
bloody rebellion in 1831. But Frederick Douglass and
Henry Garnett (for example) were not convinced. They
saw the problem as being too little black outrage, not too
much.
Walker was mysteriously found dead in the doorway of his
Boston home in June 28,1830, at age 45, some people
believed he was poisoned. More plausible was that he
died of tuberculosis.
Outline of the Appeal
Article I: Collective Action—Rise!
 Article II: History of Misery—Self-defense,
not murder, will be death of slave lords. No
hope the Whites will help (Jefferson)
 Article III: God is just, but Christianity a tool
of Whites to subjugate Blacks
 Article IV: (Re)colonization is a Trick, to
separate Free Blacks from Slaves, and Keep
Slaves Docile. This land is more Ours than it
is the Whites’ who “own” it.

His Goal: Overcome the
Collective Action Problem
The primary object of this institution, is, to unite
the colored population, so far, through the
United States of America, as may be practicable
and expedient; forming societies, opening,
extending, and keeping up correspondences,
and not witholding anything which may have the
least tendency to meliorate *our* miserable
condition.
David Walker’s statement on forming the
Massachussetts General Colored
Association (MGCA) in 1828

His Goal: Overcome the
Collective Action Problem
His goal: That “the world may see that we, the Blacks or Coloured People, are
treated more cruel by the white Christians of America, than devils
themselves ever treated a set of men, women and children on this earth.
It is expected that all coloured men, women and children**, of every nation,
language and tongue under heaven, will try to procure a copy of this
Appeal and read it, or get some one to read it to them, for it is designed
more particularly for them. Let them remember, that though our cruel
oppressors and murderers, may (if possible) treat us more cruel, as
Pharoah did the children of Israel, yet the God of the Etheopeans, has been
pleased to hear our moans in consequence of oppression; and the day of
our redemption from abject wretchedness draweth near, when we shall be
enabled, in the most extended sense of the word, to stretch forth our hands
to the LORD our GOD, but there must be a willingness on our part, for GOD
to do these things for us, for we may be assured that he will not take us by
the hairs of our head against our will and desire, and drag us from our very,
mean, low and abject condition.”
** Who are not too deceitful, abject, and servile to resist the cruelties and
murders inflicted upon us by the white slave holders, our enemies by
nature.
(Emphasis added)
His Goal: Overcome the
Collective Action Problem—
On “Passing,” or Collaboration
In all probability, Moses would have become Prince Regent to the throne, and no
doubt, in process of time but he would have been seated on the throne of Egypt.
But he had rather suffer shame, with the people of God, than to enjoy pleasures
with that wicked people for a season. O! that the colored people were long since
of Moses' excellent disposition, instead of courting favor with, and telling news
and lies to our natural enemies, against each other—aiding them to keep their
hellish chains of slavery upon us. Would we not long before this time, have been
respectable men, instead of such wretched victims of oppression as we are?
Would they be able to drag our mothers, our fathers, our wives, our children and
ourselves, around the world in chains and hand-cuffs as they do, to dig up gold
and silver for them and theirs? This question, my brethren, I leave for you to
digest; and may God Almighty force it home to your hearts. Remember that unless
you are united, keeping your tongues within your teeth, you will be afraid to trust
your secrets to each other, and thus perpetuate our miseries under the
christians!!!!! ?
From the “Appeal”
...to my no ordinary astonishment, [a] Reverend gentleman got up and
told us (coloured people) that slaves must be obedient to their masters
-- must do their duty to their masters or be whipped -- the whip was
made for the backs of fools, &c. Here I pause for a moment, to give the
world time to consider what was my surprise, to hear such preaching
from a minister of my Master, whose very gospel is that of peace and
not of blood and whips, as this pretended preacher tried to make us
believe. What the American preachers can think of us, I aver this day
before my God, I have never been able to define. They have
newspapers and monthly periodicals, which they receive in continual
succession, but on the pages of which, you will scarcely ever find a
paragraph respecting slavery, which is ten thousand times more
injurious to this country than all the other evils put together; and which
will be the final overthrow of its government, unless something is very
speedily done; for their cup is nearly full.-Perhaps they will laugh at or
make light of this; but I tell you Americans! that unless you speedily
alter your course, you and your Country are gone! ! ! ! !
From the “Appeal”
The Americans say, that we are ungrateful-but I ask them for heaven's sake,
what should we be grateful to them for -- for murdering our fathers and
mothers ? -- Or do they wish us to return thanks to them for chaining and
handcuffing us, branding us, cramming fire down our throats, or for
keeping us in slavery, and beating us nearly or quite to death to make us
work in ignorance and miseries, to support them and their families. They
certainly think that we are a gang of fools. Those among them, who have
volunteered their services for our redemption, though we are unable to
compensate them for their labours, we nevertheless thank them from the
bottom of our hearts, and have our eyes steadfastly fixed upon them, and
their labours of love for God and man. -- But do slave-holders think that
we thank them for keeping us in miseries, and taking our lives by the
inches?
Let no man of us budge one step, and let slave-holders come to beat us
from our country. America is more our country, than it is the whites-we
have enriched it with our blood and tears. The greatest riches in all
America have arisen from our blood and tears: -- and will they drive us
from our property and homes, which we have earned with our blood?
They must look sharp or this very thing will bring swift destruction upon
them. The Americans have got so fat on our blood and groans, that they
have almost forgotten the God of armies. But let the go on.
From the “Appeal”
Do the colonizationists think to send us off without first being
reconciled to us? Do they think to bundle us up like brutes
and send us off, as they did our brethren of the State of
Ohio? Have they not to be reconciled to us, or reconcile us
to them, for the cruelties with which they have afflicted our
fathers and us? Methinks colonizationists think they have
a set of brutes to deal with, sure enough. Do they think to
drive us from our country and homes, after having
enriched it with our blood and tears, and keep back
millions of our dear brethren, sunk in the most barbarous
wretchedness, to dig up gold and silver for them and their
children? Surely, the Americans must think that we are
brutes, as some of them have represented us to be. They
think that we do not feel for our brethren, whom they are
murdering by the inches, but they are dreadfully deceived.
His Goal: Overcome the
Collective Action Problem
Short Bio: George Fitzhugh
George Fitzhugh was born November 4, 1806 in Prince William County,
Virginia to an established southern family in financial decline. His
physician father, also named George Fitzhugh, and his mother, Lucy
Stuart, would later struggle as small-scale planters when the family
moved to a plantation near Alexandria, Virginia. Young George was
then six years old.
Though he attended a local field school, Fitzhugh was largely selfeducated. In 1829 he married Mary Metcalf Brockenbrough and moved
near Port Royal, Virginia, where he had obtained a small plantation
through marriage and practiced law. Fitzhugh subsequently worked as
a law clerk in Washington, D.C. (1857-1858) at the office of Attorney
General Jeremiah Sullivan Black in the land claim department.
Relocating to Richmond in 1862, he also clerked for the Confederacy's
Treasury Department. Following the Civil War, Fitzhugh was appointed
a judge in the Freedman's Court (part of the Freedman's Bureau) but
left in 1866. Despite later publications in De Bow's Review (in 1867) and
Lippincott's Magazine (in 1869 and 1870), George Fitzhugh's
postbellum life, like the lives of other proslavery apologist writers, was
characterized by relative obscurity. Shortly after his wife's death in
1877, Fitzhugh retired to Frankfort, Kentucky to live with his son. Two
years later in 1880, he moved near his daughter's residence in
Huntsville, Texas, where he died July 30, 1881.
Short Bio: George Fitzhugh
Major Writings:
 Slavery Justified (1849)

Sociology for the South; or, The Failure of
Free Society (1854)

Cannibals All! Or, Slaves Without Masters
(1857)
Short Bio: George Fitzhugh
In Sociology for the South, Fitzhugh sets out to demonstrate what he perceives as the
overwhelming failure of free society. Opening with a critique of Adam Smith's Wealth of
Nations, he also rejects Locke's theory of the social contract. Fitzhugh details the essential
flaw of free trade, which, in privileging the wealthy and further subjecting the poor, puts
society at war. Divinely instituted and universally practiced, slavery, he argues, promotes
community, morality, and protection for the disadvantaged. Laissez-faire, on the other hand,
manufactures human degradation, oppression, and selfishness. The pursuit of capital gain
through free trade, Fitzhugh suggests, results in an overall moral decline. In triumphing
individual self-interest and sacrificing the communal good, free competition yields only
hostility.
Citing the turbulence in England and France as examples, Fitzhugh bemoans the suffering of
free laborers who, toiling under the myth of liberty, equality, and fraternity, actually become
society's slaves. By comparison, slaves in the South enjoy the paternalistic favor and care
of their masters, making their condition far superior to the lives of their free laboring
counterparts. According to Fitzhugh, while the white race remains innately superior in
morality and intellect, slavery does function as a civilizing force that elevates the enslaved.
Ardently defending life in the South, Fitzhugh itemizes those problems prevalent in free society,
which he argues range from the moral decline reflected in changing marital practices to the
insidious psychological effects of mounting worker anxieties. Without such antagonisms,
southern life under slavery connects human beings to one another and appears
characterized by stability, peace, and brotherhood.
Cannibals All!
We are, all, North and South, engaged in the White Slave Trade, and he who succeeds best, is
esteemed most respectable. It is far more cruel than the Black Slave Trade, because it
exacts more of its slaves, and neither protects nor governs them. We boast, that it exacts
more, when we say, "that the profits made from employing free labor are greater than those
from slave labor." The profits, made from free labor, are the amount of the products of such
labor, which the employer, by means of the command which capital or skill gives him, takes
away, exacts or "exploitates" from the free laborer.
The profits of slave labor are that portion of the products of such labor which the power of the
master enables him to appropriate. These profits are less, because the master allows the
slave to retain a larger share of the results of his own labor, than do the employers of free
labor.
But we not only boast that the White Slave Trade is more exacting and fraudulent (in fact, though
not in intention,) than Black Slavery; but we also boast, that it is more cruel, in leaving the
laborer to take care of himself and family out of the pittance which skill or capital have
allowed him to retain. When the day's labor is ended, he is free, but is overburdened with the
cares of family and household, which make his freedom an empty and delusive mockery.
But his employer is really free, and may enjoy the profits made by others' labor, without a care, or
a trouble, as to their well-being. The negro slave is free, too, when the labors of the day are
over, and free in mind as well as body; for the master provides food, raiment, house, fuel,
and everything else necessary to the physical well-being of himself and family. The master's
labors commence just when the slave's end. No wonder men should prefer white slavery to
capital, to negro slavery, since it is more profitable, and is free from all the cares and labors
of black slave-holding.
Cannibals All!
Probably, you are a lawyer, or a merchant, or a doctor, who have made by your business fifty thousand
dollars, and retired to live on your capital. But, mark! not to spend your capital. That would be
vulgar, disreputable, criminal. That would be, to live by your own labor; for your capital is your
amassed labor. That would be, to do as common working men do; for they take the pittance which
their employers leave them, to live on. They live by labor; for they exchange the results of their own
labor for the products of other people's labor. It is, no doubt, an honest, vulgar way of living; but not
at all a respectable way. The respectable way of living is, to make other people work for you, and to
pay them nothing for so doing - and to have no concern about them after their work is done. Hence,
white slave-holding is much more respectable than negro slavery - for the master works nearly as
hard for the negro, as he for the master. But you, my virtuous, respectable reader, exact three
thousand dollars per annum from white labor, (for your income is the product of white labor,) and
make not one cent of return in any form. You retain your capital, and never labor, and yet live in
luxury on the labor of others. Capital commands labor, as the master does the slave. Neither pays
for labor; but the master permits the slave to retain a larger allowance from the proceeds of his own
labor, and hence "free labor is cheaper than slave labor."
You, with the command over labor which your capital gives you, are a slave owner - a master, without
the obligations of a master. They who work for you, who create your income, are slaves, without the
rights of slaves. Slaves without a master! Whilst you were engaged in amassing your capital, in
seeking to become independent, you were in the White Slave Trade. To become independent, is to
be able to make other people support you, without being obliged to labor for them. Now, what man
in society is not seeking to attain this situation? He who attains it, is a slave owner, in the worst
sense. He who is in pursuit of it, is engaged in the slave trade. You, reader, belong to the one or
other class. The men without property, in free society, are theoretically in a worse condition than
slaves. Practically, their condition corresponds with this theory, as history and statistics every where
demonstrate. The capitalists, in free society, live in ten times the luxury and show that Southern
masters do, because the slaves to capital work harder and cost less, than negro slaves.
(Emphasis added)
Cannibals All!
The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the
world. The children and the aged and infirm work not at all, and yet have all the comforts and
necessaries of life provided for them. They enjoy liberty, because they are oppressed neither
by care nor labor. The women do little hard work, and are protected from the despotism of
their husbands by their masters. The negro men and stout boys work, on the average, in
good weather, not more than nine hours a day. The balance of their time is spent in perfect
abandon. Besides, they have their Sabbaths and holidays.
White men, with so much of license and liberty, would die of ennui; but negroes luxuriate in
corporeal and mental repose. With their faces upturned to the sun, they can sleep at any
hour; and quiet sleep is the greatest of human enjoyments. "Blessed be the man who
invented sleep." 'Tis happiness in itself - and results from contentment with the present, and
confident assurance of the future. We do not know whether free laborers ever sleep. They
are fools to do so; for, whilst they sleep, the wily and watchful capitalist is devising means to
ensnare and exploitate them. The free laborer must work or starve. He is more of a slave
than the negro, because he works longer and harder for less allowance than the slave, and
has no holiday, because the cares of life with him begin when its labors end. He has no
liberty, and not a single right. We know, 'tis often said, air and water, are common property,
which all have equal right to participate and enjoy; but this is utterly false. The appropriation
of the lands carries with it the appropriation of all on or above the lands, usque ad coelumm
aut ad inferos. A man cannot breathe the air, without a place to breathe it from, and all places
are appropriated. All water is private property "to the middle of the stream," except the ocean,
and that is not fit to drink.
(Emphasis added)
Cannibals All!
These socialists, having discovered that skill and capital, by means of free
competition, exercise an undue mastery over labor, propose to do away with skill,
capital, and free competition, altogether. They would heal the diseases of society
by destroying its most vital functions. Having laid down the broad proposition, that
equal amounts of labor, or their results, should be exchanged for each other, they
get at the conclusion that as the profits of capital are not the results of labor, the
capitalist shall be denied all interest or rents, or other profits on his capital, and be
compelled in all cases to exchange a part of the capital itself, for labor, or its
results. This would prevent accumulation, or at least limit it to the procurement of
the coarsest necessaries of life. They say, "the lawyer and the artist do not work so
hard and continuously as the ploughman, and should receive less wages than he a bushel of wheat represents as much labor as a speech or portrait, and should be
exchanged for the one or the other." Such a system of trade and exchange would
equalize conditions, but would banish civilization. Yet do these men show, that, by
means of the taxation and oppression, which capital and skill exercise over labor,
the rich, the professional, the trading and skillful part of society, have become the
masters of the laboring masses: whose condition, already intolerable, is daily
becoming worse. They point out distinctly the character of the disease under which
the patient is laboring, but see no way of curing the disease except by killing the
patient.
Cannibals All!
In the preceding chapter, we illustrated their theory of capital by a single example.
We might give hundreds of illustrations, and yet the subject is so difficult that
few readers will take the trouble to understand it. Let us take two well known
historical instances: England became possessed of two fine islands, Ireland and
Jamaica. Englishmen took away, or defrauded, from the Irish, their lands; but
professed to leave the people free. The people, however, must have the use of
land, or starve. The English charged them, in rent, so much, that their allowance,
after deducting that rent, was not half that of Jamaica slaves. They were
compelled to labor for their landlords, by the fear of hunger and death - forces
stronger than the overseer's lash. They worked more, and did not get half so
much pay or allowance as the Jamaica negroes. All the reports to the French and
British Parliaments show that the physical wants of the West India slaves were
well supplied. The Irish became the subject of capital - slaves, with no masters
obliged by law, self-interest or domestic affections, to provide for them. The
freest people in the world, in the loose and common sense of words, their
condition, moral, physical and religious, was far worse than that of civilized
slaves ever has been or ever can be - for at length, after centuries of slow
starvation, three hundred thousand perished in a single season, for want of food.
Englishmen took the lands of Jamaica also, but introduced negro slaves, whom
they were compelled to support at all seasons, and at any cost. The negroes
were comfortable, until philanthropy taxed the poor of England and Ireland a
hundred millions to free them. Now, they enjoy Irish liberty, whilst the English
hold all the good lands. They are destitute and savage, and in all respects worse
off than when in slavery.
(Emphasis added)
Cannibals All!
It seems to us that the vain attempts to define liberty in
theory, or to secure its enjoyment in practice, proceed
from the fact that man is naturally a social and gregarious
animal, subject, not by contract or agreement, as Locke
and his followers assume, but by birth and nature, to
those restrictions of liberty which are expedient or
necessary to secure the good of the human hive, to
which he may belong. There is no such thing as natural
human liberty, because it is unnatural for man to live
alone and without the pale and government of society.
Birds, and beasts of prey, who are not gregarious, are
naturally free. Bees and herds are naturally subjects or
slaves of society. Such is the theory of Aristotle,
promulged more than two thousand years ago, generally
considered true for two thousand years, and destined, we
hope, soon again to be accepted as the only true theory
of government and society.
(Emphasis added)
From photographs by T. B. Bishop, these images of "the escaped slave" and
"the escaped slave in the Union Army" appeared in Harper's Weekly during
the Civil War. Antislavery literature continually emphasized slaves' virtue and
agency: their willingness to run away from slavery and to fight for their
freedom. If slaves could make good soldiers, as these images in the
northern press suggested, they must be worthy of freedom. Reprinted from
Harper's Weekly, July 2, 1864. In the original, "the escaped slave" appears
above "the escaped slave in the Union Army."
Anti-Capitalist Views
Walker:
1.
2.
The idea of “property” needs more
content. Pre-exisiting distribution of
wealth and power are crucial for claims
that trade or exchange in anything are
“just”.
A Lockean theory of property: slaves
worked the land, improved it, they should
own it.
Anti-Capitalist Views
Marx, Chapter 26, Capital:
...[C]apitalistic production presupposes the pre-existence of considerable masses of capital
and of labour-power in the hands of producers of commodities. The whole movement,
therefore, seems to turn in a vicious circle, out of which we can only get by supposing a
primitive accumulation (previous accumulation of Adam Smith) preceding capitalistic
accumulation; an accumulation not the result of the capitalistic mode of production, but
its starting point.
This primitive accumulation plays in Political Economy about the same part as original sin in
theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is
supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the past. In times long goneby there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal
elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living....
Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at
last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of
the great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and
the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to
work....
[A]s soon as the question of property crops up, it becomes a sacred duty to proclaim the
intellectual food of the infant as the one thing fit for all ages and for all stages of
development. In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery,
murder, briefly force, play the great part. In the tender annals of Political Economy, the
idyllic reigns from time immemorial. Right and “labour” were from all time the sole means
of enrichment, the present year of course always excepted....
Anti-Capitalist Views
Fitzhugh:
1.
2.
3.
All labor is enslaved. Better to be enslaved
to a master, who owns your value.
Competition is destructive, and competition
for property is corrosive to society and social
capital. Better to be settled, and have
community.
Subsistence wage in capitalist system may
not guarantee survival. No schooling, no
social mobility. So “freedom” is a cruel
illusion.
Anti-Capitalist Views
Fitzhugh:
4.
5.
6.
Predicts collapse of laissez-faire capitalism
Decries “social Darwinism.” Competition and
social “nature, red in tooth and claw” actually
destroy fabric of culture, make happiness
impossible. For him, slaves were the freest
of all, because they had no responsibilities.
Very similar to passages in Marx, describing
the proletariat after the revolution.
Worries about atomistic individualism.
Values communities, even among slaves
Commonalities
1. Human nature is fixed, and
immutable.
Fitzhugh: Aristotelian hierarchy, with many only
fit to serve others. Cannot rise
Walker: Whites are completely socialized to
keep blacks repressed. With only a very few
exceptions, all whites are inherently and
irredeemably racist. Only African power, and
white blood, will give freedom to blacks.
Commonalities
2. Rejection of Locke, or at least claim
Locke is irrelevant.
Walker: Pre-existing rights don’t. Or else they reify
illegitimate power relations. The way to get rights is
to seize power. Rules are made to protect the
powerful
Fitzhugh: Even more complete rejection of Locke.
Robert Filmer, Thomas Carlyle were his icons.
“Free” trade benefits only the wealthy, those with
access to the market. Hierarchy is not only natural,
but necessary, natural. Slaves are the freest, and
free labor is slavery to capital.
Commonalities
3. Rejection of Jefferson.
Walker: “Has Mr. Jefferson declared to the world, that we are inferior to
the whites, both in the endowments of our bodies and of minds? It is
indeed surprising, that a man of such great learning, combined with
such excellent natural parts, should speak so of a set of men in chains.
I do not know what to compare it to, unless, like putting one wild deer
in an iron cage, where it will be secured, and hold another by the side
of the same, then let it go, and expect the one in the cage to run as fast
as the one at liberty…
Mr. Jefferson's very severe remarks on us have been so extensively
argued upon by men whose attainments in literature, I shall never be
able to reach, that I would not have meddled with it, were it not to
solicit each of my brethren, who has the spirit of a man, to buy a copy
of Mr. Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia," and put it in the hand of his son.
For let no one of us suppose that the refutations which have been
written by our white friends are enough—they are whites—we are
blacks. We, and the world wish to see the charges of Mr. Jefferson
refuted by the blacks themselves, according to their chance: for we
must remember that what the whites have written respecting this
subject, is other men's labors and did not emanate from the blacks.
Commonalities
3. Rejection of Jefferson: He Had NOTHING to Do
With ’76, EVERYTHING to do with ‘61.
Fitzhugh: "All the bombastic absurdity in the Declaration of
Independence about the inalienable rights of man, had about
as much to do with the occasion as would a sermon or oration
on the teething of a child or the kittening of a cat . . . Our
institutions, State and Federal, imported from England where
they had grown up naturally and imperceptibly . . . would have
lasted for many ages, had not thoughtless, half-informed,
speculative men, like Jefferson, succeeded in basing them on
such inflammable materials. . . . The Revolution of 76 was, in
its action, an exceedingly natural and conservative affair; it
was only the false and unnecessary theories invoked to justify
it that were radical, agrarian and anarchical." (Fitzhugh,
“Revolutions of ’76 and ’61 Contrasted,” 1863).