Comparing Historical Essays About Slavery

Throughout the years before the Civil War, people from the North and South argued about the institution of slavery. Blacks wanted to be recognized as humans and wanted to have the rights that were given to the whites. Others saw slavery as a way of life and thought that slaves were content under the conditions forced upon them. John C. Calhoun and George Fitzhugh make strong, intellectual arguments defending slavery, but Fredrick Douglass and William Craft provide a compelling challenge to these pro-slavery arguments.
In Calhoun's essay, "A Defense of Slavery," written in 1837, he states that slavery is the way of life for people, and if it is abolished, society will be destroyed. Calhoun thinks that slaves are happier and better off because of whites and the system of slavery. He says, "there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other." …