I will critique the speech to the U.S senate, as a primary source in which Henry Hammond is recounting the thinking behind slavery and what it meant to south as well as the north. Whats remarkable about this speech it does not use so much slanted language to promote slavery, but rather he tired to justify it in terms in what it meant to the socio economic system of the time. The challenge about critiquing another person’s work is to put your own prejudices to the side and analyze the document as a page of history for what it is. The ideas in this speech may contradict what I believe in, but as a history blogger I have to interpret and analyze the speech for what it is and the implications that it holds in today’s society.
Hammond states, “In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.” This quote summarizes what is going on in today’s society and the divisions between the classes. Hammond does not distinguish slavery from "operatives," as the north called manual labors. He makes the argument that what we call slaves are better of than the north’s form of slavery, the manual laborers. It’s a very interesting comparison and I believe that, manual laborers are today’s modern day slaves.
The industries of today's modern cities employ the same labor that Hammond describes in this passage:
"the poor ye always have with you;" for the man who lives by daily labor, and scarcely lives at that, and who has to put out his labor in the market, and take the best he can get for it; in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and "operatives," as you call them, are essentially slaves. The difference between us is that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street in any of your large towns”.
The capitalist system and our society’s basic economy revolve around the laborers and the low income workers to benefit the upper classes. The inferiority of African Americans that Hammond refers to throughout the passage is ignorance and completely untrue, but slavery that he refers to in the north does exist and is just masked under a different term. In today’s societies we are not so called slaves, but we are slaves to the capitalist system constantly expending our time and energy to make a living, and not having the time to analyze and fight for a better future.
The correlation between slavery and laborers is motivated by money. Being a slave or laborer still filled that void of cheap laborers, it doesn’t matter which way you construe it the North and south were both extremely dependant on cheap labor.
The same inequalities that were seen in the past are still being fought today. Economic policy of low income labors and the division of rich and poor has been ingrained into us, and is seen as the status quo in the present day United States.
