Town Hall Reflection

 

During the town hall meeting, I had the opportunity of listening to arguments of proslavery and anti-slavery. While I had the privilege of arguing anti-slavery through the voice of Susan B Anthony, I was also able to listen to the perspective of pro-slavery thinkers. Even though I didn’t agree with their point I found it interesting how their opinion varied on pro-slavery.

The Improvement of slavery

During the town hall meeting I noticed a few pro-slavery thinkers had acknowledged negative aspects of slavery, but still saw it was necessary for America’s economy. For example, James Thornwell mentions in his speech that slaves should be allowed the right to stay with their families and not be separated, however in the same speech he mentions how the bible defines the relationship between slaves and men. A big supporter of the improvement of slavery was Thomas Jefferson. In his opinion, Jefferson firmly believed that blacks are inferior making slavery justifiable, but slavery can still be improved. Jefferson believed using older slaves on the farm and younger slaves in the housing could drastically increase the output of work completed by slaves.

(Thomas Jefferson)

Slavery is a Right

Another point that I heard being used by a lot of pro-slavery thinkers was that slavery is a right that can not be stripped away from them. This point was a big part of John Locke’s speech, he argued in the constitution every man has a right to own property. Since many slave owners had viewed the slaves as their property it was considered that they had a right to keep them according to the constitution. This was also a big point in John C Calhoun’s speech, however, instead of using the constitution, he argued that slavery is a state right.

(John Locke)

Slavery is necessary for America

The last major point that I noticed was that slavery was so embedded into America’s way of life that it would be impossible to detach from the practice. Alexander Jackson argued this heavily in his speech, he stated a white man can not run the country if he is working on his land. He also mentioned that while white men were here to run the country slaves were put on the earth to work. Thomas Robert also had similar thinking he mentioned that America had a system where the North relied on industrialism and the south focuses on slavery due to the conditions of their environment.

Each one of the pro-slavery thinkers made several points to create a sound argument. However, I found it interesting that the three points made above were constantly brought up by many of the pro-slavery speeches. Overall, I enjoyed hearing both sides of the argument and being able to speak through the voice of someone else.