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Cannibals all!

Annotation Cannibals All! got more attention in William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator than any other book in the history of that abolitionist journal. And Lincoln is said to have been more angered by George Fitzhugh than by any other pro-slavery writer, yet he unconsciously paraphrased Cannibals All! in his House Divided speech. Fitzhugh was provocative because of his stinging attack on free society, laissez-faire economy, and wage slavery, along with their philosophical underpinnings. He used socialist doctrine to defend slavery and drew upon the same evidence Marx used in his indictment of capitalism. Socialism, he held, was only "the new fashionable name for slavery," though slavery was far more humane and responsible, "the best and most common form of socialism." His most effective testimony was furnished by the abolitionists themselves. He combed the diatribes of their friends, the reformers, transcendentalists, and utopians, against the social evils of the North. "Why all this," he asked, "except that free society is a failure?" The trouble all started, according to Fitzhugh, with John Locke, "a presumptuous charlatan," and with the heresies of the Enlightenment. In the great Lockean consensus that makes up American thought from Benjamin Franklin to Franklin Roosevelt, Fitzhugh therefore stands out as a lone dissenter who makes the conventional polarities between Jefferson and Hamilton, or Hoover and Roosevelt, seem insignificant. Beside him Taylor, Randolph, and Calhoun blend inconspicuously into the American consensus, all being apostles of John Locke in some degree. An intellectual tradition that suffers from uniformity--even if it is virtuous, liberal conformity--could stand a bit of contrast, and George Fitzhugh can supply more of it than any other American thinker
eBook, English, 1960
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1960
Controversial literature
1 online resource (306 p.). 1 online resource (264 pages).
9780674036925, 9780674094512, 0674036921, 0674094514
1097152222
""CONTENTS""; ""“George Fitzhugh, Sui Generis�""; ""CANNIBALS ALL! or Slaves without Masters""; ""Dedication""; ""Preface""; ""Introduction""; ""I. The Universal Trade""; ""II. Labor, Skill, and Capital""; ""III. Subject Continued�Exploitation of Skill""; ""IV. International Exploitation""; ""V. False Philosophy of the Age""; ""VI. Free Trade, Fashion, and Centralization""; ""VII. The World is Too Little Governed""; ""VIII. Liberty and Slavery""; ""IX. Paley on Exploitation""; ""X. Our Best Witnesses and Masters in the Art of War"" ""XI. Decay of English Liberty, and Growth of English Poor Laws""""XII. The French Laborers and the French Revolution""; ""XIII. The Reformation�The Right of Private Judgment""; ""XIV. The Nomadic Beggars and Pauper Banditti of England""; ""XV. Rural Life of England""; ""XVI. The Distressed Needle-Women and Hood's “Song of the Shirt�""; ""XVII. The Edinburgh Review on Southern Slavery""; ""XVIII. The London Globe on West India Emancipation""; ""XIX. Protection and Charity to the Weak""; ""XX. The Family""; ""XXI. Negro Slavery""; ""XXII. The Strength of Weakness""; ""XXIII. Money"" ""XXIV. Gerrit Smith on Land Reform, and William Lloyd Garrison on No-Government""""XXV. In What Anti-Slavery Ends""; ""XXVI. Christian Morality Impracticable in Free Society�But the Natural Morality of Slave Society""; ""XXVII. Slavery�Its Effects on the Free""; ""XXVIII. Private Property Destroys Liberty and Equality""; ""XXIX. The National Era an Excellent Witness""; ""XXX. The Philosophy of the Isms�Showing Why They Abound at the North, and Are Unknown at the South""; ""XXXI. Deficiency of Food in Free Society""; ""XXXII. Man Has Property in Man"" ""XXXIII. The Coup de Grâce to Abolition""""XXXIV. National Wealth, Individual Wealth, Luxury, and Economy""; ""XXXV. Government a Thing of Force, Not of Consent""; ""XXXVI. Warning to the North""; ""XXXVII. Addendum""; ""Index""
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English
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