Apostles Of Slavery And The Liberator: An Analysis

An analysis of the Charles Dew’s Apostles of Disunion, George Fitzhugh’s The blessings of Slavery, and William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator reveals that the secession commissioners’ depictions of southern slavery differed from the language Southerners used to describe slavery to Northerners, specific commissioners’ arguments were more persuasive and effective in convincing Southern states to secede, and that Northerners, especially abolitionists, would have responded to the secession commissioners’ arguments in a hostile and instrumental way.
The commissioners’ depictions of southern slavery, when conveying information to other Southerners, differed significantly from the language used to communicate the same ideas to Northerners. Charles Dew discusses a speech given to the Mississippi State Legislature. Governor John J. Petus states that “Secession was the only way to avoid the blight of Black Republicans politics and free Negro morals” and that freed slaves would lead to the state of Mississippi becoming a “cess pool of vice, crime and infamy” (Dew, 50). The scare tactics used in this speech to influence the approval for secession, are built on the foundation of racism towards those of African descent and contradict with …show more content…
Regardless of whether or not a specific Northerner is an abolitionist or not, the general Northern population did not see a need for slavery in their more industrialized and urban lifestyle, nor a need for