ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by flawed logic,

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arguments in need of a little touch-up.

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All right, take a look at this excerpt.

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No argument is necessary... [ mumbles ]

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All right, and the question:

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A growing trend among slaveholders in the South

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was to argue that slavery was...

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What? And here are your potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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All right, well since slavery had been an accepted institution

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in American culture from our earliest days...

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Southern slaveholders had never really needed to justify its existence.

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But once Northern abolitionists

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started campaigning against slavery,

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plantation owners were forced to come up with

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ways to defend the horrible practice.

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Let's see which of the answers best describes

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the line of reasoning they used.

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Was their argument that slavery was

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A - a necessary evil in the Southern economy?

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Well, few people in the South argued

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that it was a necessary evil.

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Really, they didn't even see it as being evil...

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given the twisted racial ideology

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they had about Africans being lesser in value than whites.

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So it ain't A.

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Did they believe that slavery was

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B - an institution that would eventually

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die out without outside interference?

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Well, quite the contrary.

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At this point, the Southern economy was so dependent

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on the cotton industry that the entire system

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would've fallen apart if plantation owners all of a sudden

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had to pay their employees.

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What a concept.

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So they didn't see a problem with the institution at all.

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And that eliminates B and D.

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Which means their main argument was that slavery was C -

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a practice that stabilized society and deserved

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the government's protection.

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In their desperation to legitimize

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slavery as a necessary institution...

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slaveholders concocted all sorts of arguments.

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One of these arguments was that slavery was a stabilizing

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factor for society and needed to be

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protected by the government. Really.

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We're not kidding. That makes C the right answer.

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You know how it goes.

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When your ears are full of cotton, well,

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it's really hard to listen.

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[ gasp ] [ how dare you ]

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