Letters to the Editor

To the Editor:

     "The Slave Trader, the White Slave, and the Politics of Racial Determination in the 1850s" by Walter Johnson (June 2000 JAH) raises an important issue that is often neglected—the threat slavery posed to "white" Americans. The political ramifications of "white" chattel slavery have, however, been covered in detail by Lawrence R. Tenzer in The Forgotten Cause of the Civil War: A New Look at the Slavery Issue (1997). Tenzer's research answers many buried but important questions about slavery and the tensions that ultimately led to the Civil War:

     Why was slavery the great moral and political issue of the antebellum period if it affected only blacks, a people who were deemed an "inferior race"? The answer is that northern whites were aware of the fact that slavery was not limited to blacks but posed a constant danger to whites as well because of the maternal descent rule of inherited slave status, augmented by the kidnapping of "pure" whites. Northern whites did not easily distinguish between the "pure" and the "impure" white. Travelers and commentators on southern life, both northern and foreign, were shocked to see people as white as themselves held as slaves.

     Why did northern states exercise their "states' rights" by passing personal liberty laws to nullify the effects of the federal Fugitive Slave Law if it posed no danger to whites? This law gave the accused slave no right to bring witnesses, have a jury, or any other forms of due process. The judge was authorized by the law to receive a larger fee if he ruled against the accused slave than if he ruled in his or her favor. Tenzer shows that, when you consider the low wages of the average southern white male, coupled with the sharp rises in slave prices during the 1850s, slave catching was a tempting business. The slave catcher would earn more with one kidnapping expedition than he could earn by a year or two of hard labor.

     Why did abolitionist literature constantly emphasize white slavery? It's hard to find an abolitionist novel that doesn't feature quadroons, octoroons, etc. If slavery was justified by "race," shouldn't a "white" slave be free? The proslavery apologists replied that slavery white or black was justified and the institution didn't need an "inferior race" to justify its existence.

     Why did Republican political literature use the threat of white slavery to galvanize voters if it was a marginal issue? Southern proslavery apologists constantly stated that their slaves were better off than free white laborers in the North. More than that, the proslavery intellectuals defended slavery as a good in and of itself, regardless of "race" or "color." While the current fashion is to argue that southern states were merely resisting the tyranny of a federal government, we forget that The South effectively controlled Congress and the presidency for most of the antebellum period. Northern whites had seen the Fugitive Slave Act shoved down their throats, the mails censored, and the expansion of slavery into new territories. Abraham Lincoln wasn't the only one who knew that the nation couldn't exist half slave and half free—it would become all slave or all free. If slave society had triumphed over free society, who is naïve enough to think that greedy slave owners wouldn't have used their power to add many poor whites and Indians to their human property?

A. D. Powell

Madison, Wisconsin

To the Editor:

     As one who did research for Dr. Herbert Aptheker thirty years ago, I read with interest Professor Robin D. G. Kelley's conversation with him. Equally interesting was the "Autobiographical Note" in which Aptheker related how, by failing to respond to the U.S. Army's letter of inquiry about his Communist political activity, he lost his commission in December 1950. Since the letter's chronology of allegations ended in January of that year, it could not cite Aptheker's "The Truth about the Korean War" (Masses and Mainstream, Aug. 1950), written a few weeks after North Korea invaded the South in late June 1950. Here's how Aptheker portrayed the belligerents: . . .