John C. Calhoun: “Slavery a Positive Good”

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

From a modern perspective this 1837 speech before the U.S. Senate may be among the most embarrassing speeches ever delivered by an important American statesman, because of assertions that are not only racist but also often seem absurd. Yet this speech, also called “On the Reception of Abolition Petitions,” was taken very seriously in its day, and much of Calhoun's reasoning became part of the defenses of the institution of slavery used by slave-state politicians until the end of the Civil War and by racial segregationists after the war. The underlying premise of the speech is that white-American civilization is superior to other civilizations and that people of other races are blessed even just by being exposed to white-American civilization. It is a premise that many, perhaps most, Americans would have agreed with in 1837.

Although Calhoun was a very well-read man, he had surprising gaps in his knowledge of cultures other than his own, and in “Slavery a Positive Good,” his experience of other cultures seems very narrow—so narrow that he seems to be disingenuous when extolling the benefits slavery in America has had on those of African ancestry. His depiction of central Africa as a place of savagery does not jibe with the actual cultures of central Africa. His insistence that black Americans live better, happier lives than they would have lived in Africa seems out of touch with reality.

There are two slightly mitigating aspects related to his argument. One is that he was devoted to his state of South Carolina, and his experiences with slavery derived primarily from that state. As Calhoun points out many times in his writings, each slave state had its own special customs. In the plantation regions of southern South Carolina, slaves outnumbered their white masters. The economy of the region could not have prospered without slaves being able to travel and conduct trade on behalf of their owners; this resulted in slaves of that region having more independence than elsewhere and in their being able to conduct commercial business of their own. Calhoun likely had these slaves in mind in this speech, rather than the ones in states where they were forbidden by law to be literate, where they could be whipped at an overseer's whim, or where they could be hung from trees in cages to starve to death for insubordination. The other slightly mitigating factor is Calhoun's juxtaposition of slavery with the abuses of workers in northern factories. His message that free states should clean up their own cruelty toward the working class before decrying the abuses in the South had a powerful ring to it. Even so, he reveals a blindness toward the underlying moral issues that fueled outrage among abolitionists.