This study argues that the Virginia slavery debate of 1831-32 was an occasion when radical transformations in the nature of the proslavery argument occurred and where changing popular perceptions about the role of government can be seen. Since the Revolution, government in Virginia had been based upon the Lockean concept of the inviolable right of private property and of property's central relationship to government. During the slavery debate, when the initial emancipationist plan, which addressed the slaveholders' property rights, was dismissed as impractical, a more radical antislavery doctrine was proposed that challenged traditional beliefs concerning property and the function of government. This doctrine was the legal concept of eminent domain, the right of the state to take private property for public purposes without the consent of the owner. Arguing that slavery threatened public safety, emancipationists called on the state government to act within its eminent domain powers to confiscate this harmful species of property. In the climate of increased public fear, brought on by the recent slave insurrection in Southampton County, this particular emancipationist argument subverted the traditional necessary evil justification for slavery. Defenders of slavery became impaled upon the horns of a dilemma. If they continued to acknowledge that slavery was evil, then they risked engendering the expansive government powers that the emancipationists advocated. If slavery could no longer be justified as a necessary evil, then upon what grounds must its defense now rest? In the face of this dilemma, defenders abandoned their traditional apologetic justification and instead advanced the idea of slavery as a "positive good." / Master of Arts

This study seeks to explore the nature and activities of the anti-abolitionists in the era of British abolition. There were Britons who actively opposed the idea of abolishing the slave trade and West Indian slavery. They published works promoting and defending the trade and the institution of slavery. They challenged abolitionist assertions and claims about life in the colonies and the nature of the slaves and attacked the sentimental nature of abolitionist rhetoric. Proslavery MPs argued in Parliament for the maintenance of slavery and the slave trade. Members of the West Indian interest formed committees to produce their own propaganda and petitions. They also worked with Parliament to develop strategies to ameliorate slavery and end British slaveholding, whilst securing several more years of plantation labour and financial compensation for slaveholders. Politicians, writers, members of the West Indian interest, and their supporters actively fought to maintain colonial slavery and the prosperity of Britain and the colonies. A wide range of sources has been employed to reveal the true nature of the proslavery arguments advanced in Britain in the era of abolition. These include committee minutes, petitions, pamphlets, reviews, manuals, travel writing, scientific studies, political prints, portraits, poetry and song, plays, and the records of every parliamentary debate on slavery, the slave trade, and the West Indian colonies. Specific proslavery and anti-abolitionist arguments have been identified and analysed using these sources, with some commentary on how the setting or genre potentially impacted on the argument being presented. This analysis reveals that economic, racial, legal, historical, strategic, religious, moral, and humanitarian arguments were all used to counter the growing popularity of abolition and emancipation. Proslavery rhetoric in Parliament is also analysed, revealing an active proslavery side committed to fighting abolition. Overall, this study contributes to our current understanding of the timing, nature, and reception of British abolition in Britain by showing that the process was influenced by a serious debate.

Slavery, protected by the United States constitution, expanded as new territories opened up. Heated debate over abolition accompanied slavery’s expansion. In Kentucky’s constitutional convention of 1792, antislavery sentiments for abolition were countered by an argument for protecting slavery. This thesis analyzes the proslavery argument of lawyer George Nicholas who opposed the antislavery argument of minister David Rice. Analyzing that debate, this thesis argues that an entrenched, economic and legal, proslavery argument overcame a humane, moral, antislavery argument. Including an analysis of the consequences for African Americans, the thesis concludes how and why a growing minority of slaveholders was able to perpetuate slavery in the second constitutional convention of 1799. Consequently, Kentucky presents an important case study of how slavery took hold and expanded in a state where the majority did not own slaves.

This dissertation examines the conflict over slavery and freedom in Philadelphia from 1820 to 1847. As the northernmost southern city in a state that bordered three slave states, Philadelphia maintained a long tradition of abolitionism and fugitive slave activity. Conflicts that arose over fugitive slaves and the kidnapping of free African-Americans forced Philadelphians to confront the politics of slavery. This dissertation argues that until 1847, Pennsylvania was in effect a slave state. The work of proslavery groups, namely slave masters, their agents, white and black kidnappers, and local, state, and national political supporters, undermined the ostensible successes of state laws designed to protect the freedom of African-Americans in Pennsylvania. Commonly referred to as “liberty laws,” this legislation exposed the inherent difficulty in determining the free or enslaved status of not only fugitive slaves but also African-American kidnapping victims. By studying the specific fugitive or kidnapping cases that inspired these liberty laws, one finds that time and again African-Americans and their allies forced white politicians to grapple with the reality that Pennsylvania was not a safe-haven for African-Americans, regardless of their condition of bondage or freedom. Furthermore, these cases often precipitated into desperate rescues and bloody riots on the streets of Philadelphia; these civil wars in miniature reflected the negotiated and compromised realities of living while black in the city. Ordinary African-Americans living in Philadelphia bore the burden of comity, or friendly relations between states, by practicing what I term “street diplomacy”: the up-close and personal struggles over freedom and slavery that had local, state, and national ramifications. In a larger sense, street diplomacy in Philadelphia magnified the stakes of national comity, i.e. the Union, by showcasing how dividing states by their condition of bondage remained impossible due to permeable geographic borders that fostered perpetual fugitive slave and kidnapping crises. Thus, this dissertation argues that African-Americans and their allies’ struggles with slave-masters, slave-catchers, kidnappers and proslavery politicians disrupted the best efforts of white politicians to maintain a compromised and compromising Union. / History

This study analyzes the rhetoric of William "Parson" Brownlow during the Civil War era. Within the pages of the Whig, Brownlow's famous newspaper, he created a fixed image of African Americans. Brownlow argued that when removed from slavery, people of African descent naturally became barbaric, and thus slavery was needed to ensure the safety of the white population. Despite this consistency in racial thought, Brownlow, through the course of the 1850s shifted from defending slavery as a necessary evil to promoting slavery as an unqualified blessing in the years before the Civil War. Furthermore, during Brownlow's governorship of Tennessee during Reconstruction, Brownlow argued that slavery was economically deleterious to poor white farmers. These findings have important implications for the history of Appalachia. Most specifically, Brownlow's racist rhetoric suggests that race perceptions in East Tennessee were not significantly separable from the race sentiments of the larger South.