James Henry Hammond, "The Mudsill Theory" (1858)
As the sectional crisis deepened, abolitionists (mostly in the North), and proslavery advocates
(mostly in the South) engaged in a war of words over whether or not slavery was wrong,
unnatural, and a blight on the nation. In this speech, James Henry Hammond defended slavery by
claiming that although the word slavery had fallen out of fashion, the institution of slavery
continued to thrive in all societies. He said that there was a dominant class and a "mudsill" class
everywhere and that the domination of the rich over the poor was enslavement by another name,
made only worse by the radical and disruptive practice of granting poor white men the right to
vote.
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Speech to the U.S. Senate, March 4, 1858
In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life.
That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor,
docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads
progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political
government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one
or the other, except on this mud-sill. Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that
purpose to her hand. A race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in
docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes. We use them for our
purpose, and call them slaves. We found them slaves by the common "consent of mankind,"
which, according to Cicero, "lex naturae est." The highest proof of what is Nature's law. We are
old-fashioned at the South yet; slave is a word discarded now by "ears polite;" I will not
characterize that class at the North by that term; but you have it; it is there; it is everywhere; it is
eternal.
The Senator from New York said yesterday that the whole world had abolished slavery. Aye, the
name, but not the thing; all the powers of the earth cannot abolish that. God only can do it when
he repeals the fiat, "the poor ye always have with you;" for the man who lives by daily labor, and
scarcely lives at that, and who has to put out his labor in the market, and take the best he can get
for it; in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and "operatives," as you call them,
are essentially slaves. The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well
compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and
not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily
compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street in any
of your large towns. Why, you meet more beggars in one day, in any single street of the city of
New York, than you would meet in a lifetime in the whole South. We do not think that whites
should be slaves either by law or necessity. Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race.
The status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in
which God first created them, by being made our slaves. None of that race on the whole face of
the globe can be compared with the slaves of the South. They are happy, content, unaspiring, and
utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations.
Yours are white, of your own race; you are brothers of one blood. They are your equals in natural
endowment of intellect, and they feel galled by their degradation. Our slaves do not vote. We
