John Calhoun's Anti-Slavery Sentiments

In Calhoun’s response to anti-slavery sentiments expressed to the senate, Calhoun makes the argument that abolition is something that must be swiftly dealt with in order to preserve the union. Calhoun constructs a carefully worded argument which, while morally wrong today, is extremely persuasive. He arranges his argument so that the issue of slavery is not seen as a nefarious institution but rather a keystone on which every great civilization, including America, was built. Over the course of his argument he manages to make it seem as though the dangers to the union were not the institution of slavery itself but the growing demand for abolition. Through careful wording and construction Calhoun is successful at creating an effective argument
He makes the point that “never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other.”(Calhoun) Calhoun then makes the argument that slavery is not something the south should apologize for and even goes so far as asserting that slavery is actually not an evil but “a positive good” for not only slave holders, but blacks and the rest of country as well(Calhoun). To support this assertion Calhoun says that before slavery Africans had never reached a level of civilization in which they had benefited as much morally and intellectually as they had under the institution of slavery in the United States. He brings up the conditions that slaves in European countries are exposed to and says that by comparison slaves in the United States benefit far more. “I may say with truth, that in few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer, and so little exacted from him.”(Calhoun) With these points Calhoun is trying to appeal to the morality of his audience by getting rid of any sort of guilt that his contemporaries might have had in regards to the effects of slavery after discussing the abolitionist