John C. Calhoun
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John Caldwell Calhoun (* 18. März 1782 in Calhoun Mills bei Abbeville, Abbeville County, South Carolina; † 31. März 1850 in Washington, D.C.) war der siebte Vizepräsident der USA (1825 bis 1832), langjähriger US-Senator sowie Außenminister. Er war ein energischer Verteidiger der Sklaverei. In den 1960er Jahren benannte die US Navy ein U-Boot nach ihm (USS John C. Calhoun).
Verteidigung der Sklaverei
Calhoun warnte die Sklaverei-Gegner im Norden der USA, dass der Süden 'cannot remain here in an endless struggle in defense of our character, our property, and institutions.' He said that if abolitionist agitation did not end, 'we must become, finally, two peoples…. Abolition and the Union cannot co-exist.'
In den 1830er Jahren ging Calhoun in die Offensive. Er wollte die Sklaverei nicht immer nur als notwendiges Übel rechtfertigen, sondern als moralisch richtig darstellen.
- Calhoun endorsed slavery as 'a good — a great good,' based on his belief in the inequality inherent in the human race. Calhoun believed that people were motivated primarily by self-interest and that competition among them was a positive expression of human nature. The results of this competition were displayed for all to see in the social order: those with the greatest talent and ability rose to the top, and the rest fell into place beneath them.
- The concepts of liberty and equality, idealized during the Revolutionary period, were potentially destructive to this social order, Calhoun believed. With the stratification of society, those at the top were recognized as authority figures and respected for their proven wisdom and ability. If the revolutionary ideal of equality were taken too far, the authority of the elite would not be accepted. Without this authority, Calhoun argued, society would break down and the liberty of all men would be threatened. In his manifesto A Disquisition on Government, he asserted that liberty was not a universal right but should be 'reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving.'
- Calhoun believed the liberty Southerners enjoyed depended on slavery. Contrary to the writings of those who unabashedly celebrated the North's free labor system, antebellum Southern society, though definitely stratified, was highly fluid. Fortunes could be and were made in a single generation. Agriculture, specifically cotton, was what made that society so mobile. Cotton was a labor-intensive crop, and as a farmer acquired greater cotton wealth, he required a greater number of field hands to work his expanding fields. So the ownership of slaves became a measure of status and upward mobility. To destroy slavery, according to Calhoun, would be to destroy a powerful symbol of what motivated the Southern man to improve himself.
- In the end, Calhoun supported the institution of slavery for many reasons, but at the bottom of all his argument was this: he believed the African race was inferior. He shared the prevailing prejudices of the day — held in both the North and South — that black people were mentally, physically, and morally inferior to whites. This inferiority necessitated that they be slaves. 'There is no instance of any civilized colored race of any shade being found equal to the establishment and maintenance of free government,' Calhoun argued. He pointed to the impoverished living conditions of Northern free blacks as proof that black people lacked the ability to exercise their freedom positively.
- In Calhoun's view, slavery benefited black people. 'Never before has the black race…from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually,' he asserted in Congress. 'It came to us in a low, degraded, and savage condition, and in the course of a few generations it has grown up under the fostering care of our institutions.'
- Slavery provided black people with a quality of existence Calhoun believed they were incapable of obtaining for themselves. To his mind, despite all the progress the race had supposedly made in America, to free the slaves and place them in situations where they would have to compete with white people on an equal basis would only result in catastrophe. The freed slave's inherent inferiority would place him at such a disadvantage that he would not be able to achieve the quality of life he enjoyed as a slave, Calhoun insisted.
- Calhoun noted that slave-owners provided for their slaves from birth to infirmity. He urged critics of slavery to 'look at the sick, and the old and infirm slave, on one hand, in the midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintending care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poor house' in Europe and the North. In support of his argument, he cited census figures indicating that free blacks were much more likely to suffer mental or physical disabilities than were slaves.
- In the long run, Calhoun believed, regardless of what happened with slavery, the progress of civilization would in time doom the inferior African race to extinction. Until that time, he asserted, slavery at least gave black people security and made them useful.
- When confronted with the argument that slavery was an exploitative labor system, Calhoun replied that in every civilization a propertied class emerged and exploited the labor of the others. This enabled the master class to pursue intellectual and cultural endeavors that advanced the progress of civilization. 'Slavery is indispensable to a republican government,' he proclaimed.
- In the South it was inevitable, Calhoun argued, that the African race would be the exploited class. The South merely institutionalized this into a system that benefited both master and servant. The master got his labor and the slave received a standard of living far above what he could achieve on his own.
- While Calhoun was defending slavery, he extended his argument to indict the North and industrial capitalism. He asserted that the slave system was actually superior to the 'wage slavery' of the North. He believed that slavery, by intertwining the economic interests of master and slave, eliminated the unavoidable conflict that existed between labor and capital under the wage system. The amount of money a master invested in his slaves made it economically unfeasible to mistreat them or ignore their working and living conditions. In the North, the free laborer was as much a slave to his employer as was the black man in the South, Calhoun argued, but he lacked the protection the black slave enjoyed from a paternalistic master.
- With or without Calhoun, the Southern institution of slavery would have disappeared, but it will always remain a black mark on the history of the United States and on Calhoun's reputation. Still, Calhoun deserves a prominent place in the history of American political thought — if only for this irony: while he fought to protect the Southern minority's rights and interests from the Northern majority, he felt free to subordinate the rights of the African American minority to the interests of the South's white majority.