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Primary source: George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All!, or, Slaves Without Masters, 1857.
Caption: Apologists for slavery, like George Fitzhugh, often argued that the investment in slaves positively influenced the way slaveowners treated them.
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It is impossible to place labor and capital in harmonious or friendly relations, except by the means of slavery, which identifies their interests. Would that gentleman lay his capital out in land and negroes, he might be sure, in whatever hands it came, that it would be employed to protect laborers, not to oppress them; for when slaves are worth near a thousand dollars a head, they will be carefully and well provided for.
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Capital exercises a more perfect compulsion over free laborers than human masters over slaves; for free laborers must at all times work or starve, and slaves are supported whether they work or not. Free laborers have less liberty than slaves, are worse paid and provided for, and have no valuable rights. Slaves, with more of actual practical liberty, with ampler allowance, and constant protection, are secure in the enjoyment of all the rights which provide for their physical comfort at all times and under all circumstances. The free laborer must be employed or starve, yet no one is obliged to employ him. The slave is taken care of, whether employed or not.
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George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! or, Slaves Without Masters (Richmond, Va.: A. Morris, 1857); reprint, C. Vann Woodward, ed. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960), 31–32.
Courtesy of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
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