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Tim Perevozchikov Dr. Smith APUSH 11 10/30/12 City Upon a Stump The 19th century was a time of American reform. The pursuit of perfection took over, and drove the notion that in order to be the city upon a hill, society must formulate itself in accords with moral standards. The rise of religion in the form of the Second Great Awakening, the progressive struggle for womens rights, and the emergence of self-transcendentalist thought, which stressed the power of the individual, all shaped societal constructs of the idea of perfection. Yet despite these reforms, much of society overlooked the peculiar institution of slavery. With what has come to be known as the blemish in the city upon the hill, America neglected one of its most pressing problems. Thankfully, certain individuals noticed the evils occurring, and thus took it upon themselves to make a multi-tiered argument as to why slavery was immoral. These Abolitionists argued that slavery was an immoral institution by the denial of certain inalienable rights, the disassembling of family life, the destruction of religion in the South, and the objectification of humans based on race. America was founded upon the belief that each man was born with certain inalienable rights, among those being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, yet slavery denied humans these rights that society intrinsically held dear. While America for many represented a chance to get ahead, Theodore Dwight points out that the prospect for prosperity for slaves was bleak as they could, own nothing, and can acquire nothing, despite the promises outlined in the

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constitution.1While slaves often labored for hours in harsh conditions, they would see no benefit to their hard work, as it translated into more wealth only for their masters. These men and women, despite sustaining the Southern Economy, would never prosper and were stuck in an inescapable nightmare of abuse. As Fredrick Douglass plainly and firmly asserts, it should not be even necessary to "argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, [that] to rob them of their liberty," is to rob them of rights they were promised at birth as Americans. Yet, Southern plantation owners seemed content to do just that.2 Slave families were devastatingly fractured through sale, adding to the struggle 19th century Americans faced in perfecting domestic life. With the rise of authors such as Catherine Beecher, who stressed the importance of family life, and similarly Harriet Beecher Stowe, the idea of a cohesive family unit grew to be of great importance in American Society. The then profitable domestic slave trade functioned as a constant threat to the unity of slave families, never knowing if they would be ruthlessly divided. Soujourner Truth once said, I have had children and yet never owned one, due to the constant selling off of slave babies.3 This disregard for familial bonds was unbecoming of a country striving to be a city upon a hill. William Lloyd Garrison eloquently sums up that living as a slave would mean living in constant fear that, [your] wife is to be sold, that [your] children are to be torn from [your] arms, and disposed of to the highest bidder, like sheep in the market, while all the while having no power

Theodore Dwight Weld, The Bible Against Slavery (New York: The American Anti-Slavery Society, 1838), http://archive.org/stream/bibleagainstslav00weldthe#page/n7/mode/2up (accessed October 30, 2012), 1. 2 Fredrick Douglass, Fourth of July Speech, In A Documetary History of the Negro People, volume 1, ed herbert abdacker. (Sceavcus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1973), 333.
3

Sojourner Truth, "On the Injustice of Slavery," from Mary G. Butler, "The Words of Truth," A Journal of Local History, no. 8 (1997), http://www.sojournertruth.org/Library/Speeches/Default.htm (accessed October 30, 2012), 1.

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over what occurs.4 This constant separation of family life made slavery against the driving notion of what it meant to act morally.

While the Second Great Awakening revived what many considered to be a dying religious society across America, slave owners would oppress religion on their plantations and thus would disregard what many people believed was Gods will. Harriet Beecher Stowe portrays this oppression through arguably the most influential novel in American History, Uncle Toms Cabin. Upon being introduced to Tom, he begins a Methodist hymn to please Legree, his master. Yet despite these good intentions Legree roars, "Shut up you black cuss! Did ye think I wanted any o' yer infernal old Methodism?"5 The rejection of religion in slave quarters was also seen as immoral as Stowe, through the enigmatic character Cassy, furthers "but, [God] isn't here! There's nothing here, but sin and long, long, long despair."6 Moreover, slavery disregarded religious standards that society valued. As Theodore Weld points out two of the Ten Commandments deal death to slavery. The commandments, Thou shalt not steal," and, " Thou shalt not take from another what belongs to him," are both violated by slavery as all man's powers are God's gift to him, and thus cannot be owned by another human being.7 Finally, the objectification of humans based on race was, and is still considered disgustingly immoral. Weld argues passionately that slavery is the reduction of persons to things! Not robbing a man of privileges, but of himself, is so fundamentally immoral that one

William Lloyd Garrison, "Speech to the American Anti-Slavery society," from William Safire, Lend Me Your Ears, Great Speeches in History (New York: Norton, 1992), from Bob Butler, Causes of the Civil War, http://civilwarcauses.org/garrison.htm, (accessed October 30, 2012), 1-2. 5 Harriet Beecher Stowe, in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Words That Made American History, Richard Current et.al (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1962), 358.
6

Ibid., 372. Weld, 2.

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cannot argue against it.8 To use a person as a means to an end has always been regarded as a violation of autonomous rights enjoyed by every living individual. It is often argued that the right to individual autonomy precedes the power of state action upon oneself, yet slavery simultaneously denied individuals this right, and created a hell on earth for slaves. Even the mere act of trading slaves domestically reduced them to objects with a monetary value. Cassy, in Uncle Toms Cabin, states that her master came, to take possession, of his slaves to sell them away again on the market.9

While history has been littered with examples of cruelty, American Slavery stands alone, as it touched, by some historian estimates, 20 million men, women, and children, and extended for a period of two hundred years. While America prided itself upon being the city upon a hill, the prefect for model for imitation, it overlooked the obvious. A government that does not protect the rights of all humans is nothing to be modeled after, and thus, despite conscious efforts for perfection, American was never truly a city upon a hill.

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Weld, 1. Stowe, 370.