Similarities Between Helper And Fitzhugh

Fitzhugh and Helper were both “zealous propagandists” whose work “added to the certainty of an irrepressible conflict.” There was a reason that Southern states were quick to secede following the election of Abraham Lincoln. The growing spread of abolitionism, they feared, would destroy their way of life. With both camps talking past each other, there was an absolute refusal of southern whites to consider any change in the economic structure. Many slave owners clearly believed in a Northern conspiracy, seeing only dark machinations. As long as cotton was king, slaves were needed.
The Mindset of the South: Cannibals All!
Fitzhugh’s first foray in publication, an 1851 pamphlet entitled “What Shall be Done With the Free Negroes?” called for harsh restrictions on former slaves and even urged for re-enslavement. With Cannibals All!, following up Sociology for the South, Fitzhugh was not initiating a radical call for abolition but providing a criticism of Northern capitalism almost Marxist in its declaration that the “White Slave Trade” was “far more cruel” than African
A “preoccupation with the short-term corrodes character” in the words of one Sociologist. A similar analogy has been held to that of modern-day Saudi Arabia, where “quantitative growth” does not lead to “qualitative development” leaving Southern wealth “based on the fortuitous ability to export ever-increasing quantities of a highly prized commodity” without thought of an end. Indeed, the analogy of Saudi Arabia provides another compelling parallel: the ability of vast commodity-based wealth on sustaining and perpetuating a very conservative ruling class reluctant towards any change or criticism. Slavery was the South. “The Old South…became a slave society in the strict sense: its politics, economy, and culture were primarily determined by