George Fitzhugh

George Fitzhugh (November 4, 1806 – July 30, 1881) was an American social theorist who published racial and slavery-based sociological theories in the antebellum era. He argued that "the negro is but a grown up child"^[1][2] who needs the economic and social protections of slavery. Fitzhugh decried capitalism as spawning "a war of the rich with the poor, and the poor with one another"^[3] – rendering free blacks "far outstripped or outwitted in the chase of free competition."^[4] Slavery, he contended, ensured that blacks would be economically secure and morally civilized.

Fitzhugh practiced law and was a painter for years, but attracted both fame and infamy when he published two sociological tracts for the South. He was a leading pro-slavery intellectual^[5] and spoke for many of the Southern plantation owners. Before printing books, Fitzhugh tried his hand at a pamphlet titled "Slavery Justified" (1849). His first book, Sociology for the South (1854) was not as widely known as his second book, Cannibals All! (1857).

Fitzhugh differed from nearly all of his southern contemporaries by advocating a slavery that crossed racial boundaries. Writing in the Richmond Enquirer on 15 December 1855, Fitzhugh proclaimed: "The principle of slavery is in itself right, and does not depend on difference of complexion", "Nature has made the weak in mind or body slaves ... The wise and virtuous, the strong in body and mind, are born to command", and "The Declaration of Independence is exuberantly false, and arborescently fallacious."

Life

George Fitzhugh was born on November 4, 1806, to George Fitzhugh Sr. (a surgeon/physician) and Lucy Stuart. He was born in Prince William County, Virginia, but moved to Alexandria, Virginia, when he was six. He attended public school though his career was built on self-education. He married Mary Metcalf Brockenbrough in 1829 and moved to Port Royal, Virginia. There he began his own law business. Fitzhugh took up residence in a "rickety old mansion" known for a vast collection of bats in its attic that he inherited through his wife's family. He was something of a recluse in this home for most of his life and rarely travelled away from it for extended periods of time, spending most of his days there engaged in unguided reading from a vast library of books and pamphlets. Of the writers in his library, Fitzhugh's beliefs were most heavily influenced by Thomas Carlyle, whom he read frequently and referenced in many of his works. Atypical for a slavery advocate, Fitzhugh also subscribed to and regularly read abolitionist pamphlets such as The Liberator. He made only one major visit to other parts of the nation in the entire antebellum period – an 1855 journey to the north where he met and argued with abolitionists Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips.

Never politically active in his own right, Fitzhugh managed to find the company of well known political figures in his day. In addition to the two abolitionists, Fitzhugh was an acquaintance of several public officials. In 1857 Fitzhugh served as a minor law clerk in Washington, D.C. under Attorney General Jeremiah Sullivan Black. He gained fairly wide circulation in print, writing articles for several Virginia newspapers and for the widely circulated Southern magazine DeBow's Review.^[6]

After moving to Richmond, Virginia, in 1862 he began to work in the Treasury of the Confederacy. After the Civil War, Fitzhugh spent a short time judging for the Freedmen's Court and then retiring to Kentucky after his wife's death in 1877. He later moved to his daughter's residence in Huntsville, Texas, where he died on July 30, 1881.

Writings

Sociology for the South

Sociology for the South, or, the Failure of Free Society (1854) was George Fitzhugh's most powerful attack on the philosophical foundations of free society. In it, he took on not only Adam Smith,^[7] the foundational thinker of capitalism, but also John Locke,^[8] Thomas Jefferson, and the entire liberal tradition. He argued that free labor and free markets enriched the strong while crushing the weak. What society needed, he wrote, was slavery, not just for blacks, but for whites as well. "Slavery," he wrote, "is a form, and the very best form, of socialism."^[9]

Fitzhugh believed that slavery reduced the pressure on the poor and lower classes; in other words, he advocated slavery for poor whites as well as blacks.^[10] He also strongly opposed the racial doctrines of the time.^[11]

Cannibals All!

Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857) was a critique further developing the themes that Fitzhugh had introduced in Sociology for the South. Both the book's title and its subtitle were phrases taken from the writing of Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish social critic and a great hero to Fitzhugh's generation of proslavery thinkers.^[12] The aim of his book, Fitzhugh claimed, was to show that "the unrestricted exploitation of so-called free society is more oppressive to the laborer than domestic slavery."^[13]

Cannibals All! was a sharp criticism of the system of "wage-slavery" found in the north.^[14] Fitzhugh's ideas were based on his view that the "negro slaves of the South" were considerably more free than those trapped by the oppression of capitalist exploitation.^[15] His idea to rectify social inequality created by capitalism^[16] was to institute a system of universal slavery, based on his belief that "nineteen out of every twenty individuals have... a natural and inalienable right to be slaves."^[17]

Fitzhugh's ideas in Cannibals All!, while often used in the defense of anti-abolition, have a more socially egalitarian undertone which attempted to remedy inequalities in "Property of man."^[18] His ideas of reform could be seen in terms of a non-Marxist socialist ideology.^[19] The extremes advocated by Fitzhugh's writing led even some of his allies to denounce his bold claims. Fitzhugh was also an advocate of women's rights. In Cannibals All!, he asserts that women deserve the right to vote.

Cannibals All! garnered more attention in the Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, than any other book. Lincoln is said to have been more angered by George Fitzhugh than by any other pro-slavery writer, yet he unconsciously paraphrased Cannibals All! in his House Divided speech.^[20]

Works

• (1854). Sociology for the South, or, the Failure of Free Society, A. Morris Publisher.^[21][22]
• (1857). Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters, A. Morris Publisher.^[23]

Articles

Other

• A Controversy on Slavery Between George Fitzhugh and A. Hogeboom, Printed at the "Oneida Sachem" Office, 1857.
• Ante-bellum: Writings of George Fitzhugh and Hinton Rowan Helper on Slavery, Capricorn Books 1960.

Notes

Further reading

• Adler, Mortimer J. (1969). The Negro in American History, Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corp.
• Ambrose, Douglas (1980). Henry Hughes and Proslavery Thought in the Old South, Louisiana State University Press.
• Cayton, Andrew; Elisabeth Israels Perry, Linda Reed, and Allan M. Winkler (2002). America: Pathways To The Present. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
• Donald, David (1971). "The Proslavery Argument Reconsidered," The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 37, No. 1.
• Eaton, Clement (1964). The Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old South, Harper Torchbooks.
• Franklin, John Hope (2002). The Militant South, 1800–1861, University of Illinois Press.
• Genovese, Eugene D. (1967). The Political Economy of Slavery, Vintage Books.
• Genovese, Eugene D. (1969). The World the Slaveholders Made: Two Essays in Interpretation, Pantheon Books [Wesleyan University Press, 1988].
• Genovese, Eugene D. (1995). The Southern Front: History and Politics in the Cultural War, University of Missouri Press.
• Hite, James C. and Hall, Ellen J. (1972). "The Reactionary Evolution of Economic Thought in Antebellum Virginia," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 80, No. 4.
• Hofstadter, Richard (1948). The American Political Tradition and the Men who Made it, Vintage Books.
• Horkheimer, Max (1947). Eclipse of Reason, Oxford University Press.
• Jenkins, William Sumner (1935). Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old South, University of North Carolina Press.
• Kirkpatrick, Mary Alice (2004). "George Fitzhugh, 1806–1881". Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina.
• Leavelle, Arnaud B. and Cook, Thomas I. (1945). "George Fitzhugh and the Theory of American Conservatism," The Journal of Politics, Vol. 7, No. 2.
• Lyman, Stanford M. (1988). "System and Function in Ante-Bellum Southern Sociology," International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 2, No. 1.
• Mayes, Sharon S. (1980). "Sociological Thought in Emile Durkheim and George Fitzhugh," The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 31, No. 1.
• McCardell, John (1979). The Idea of a Southern Nation: Southern Nationalists and Southern Nationalism, 1830–1860, W. W. Norton & Company.
• McKitrick, Eric L., ed. (1963). Slavery Defended: The Views of the Old South, Spectrum-Prentice Hall.
• O’Brien, Michael (2010). Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810–1860, University of North Carolina Press.
• Perry, Lewis and Fellman, Michael (1979). Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists, Louisiana State University Press.
• Pole, J. R. (1978). The Pursuit of Equality in American History, University of California Press.
• Saunders Jr., Robert (2000). "George Fitzhugh." In Encyclopedia of the American Civil War, ABC-Clio.
• Scott, Anne Firor (1970). The Southern Lady: from Pedestal to Politics, 1830–1930, University of Chicago Press.
• Tyler, Alice Felt (1944). Freedom's Ferment; Phases of American Social History to 1860, The University of Minnesota Press.
• Wilson, Edmund (1962). Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of The American Civil War, Oxford University Press.
• Wish, Harvey (1943). George Fitzhugh, Propagandist of the Old South, Louisiana State University Press.

External links

• Works by George Fitzhugh, at Internet Archive
• Works by George Fitzhugh, at Hathi Trust
• George Fitzhugh, Sui Generi by C. Vann Woodward
• Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters, by George Fitzhugh, Applewood Books, 2008
• George Fitzhugh, 1806–1881, by Eugene D. Genovese
• George Fitzhugh (1804–1881), by Anne G. Jones
• Fitzhugh, George, by Mark C. Henrie
• Sociology for the South, or, The Failure of Free Society