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AP U.S. History 1.1 Period 4: 1800-1848
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AP U.S. History 1.2 Period 4: 1800-1848
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AP U.S. History 1.2 Period 4: 1800-1848. A growing trend among slaveholders in the South was to argue that slavery was...what?

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AP U.S. History 1.2 Period 4: 1800-1848 274 Views


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AP U.S. History 1.2 Period 4: 1800-1848. A growing trend among slaveholders in the South was to argue that slavery was...what?

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English Language

Transcript

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by flawed logic,

00:06

arguments in need of a little touch-up.

00:08

All right, take a look at this excerpt.

00:10

No argument is necessary... [ mumbles ]

00:13

All right, and the question:

00:14

A growing trend among slaveholders in the South

00:17

was to argue that slavery was...

00:20

What? And here are your potential answers.

00:23

[ mumbles ]

00:28

All right, well since slavery had been an accepted institution

00:30

in American culture from our earliest days...

00:34

Southern slaveholders had never really needed to justify its existence.

00:39

But once Northern abolitionists

00:41

started campaigning against slavery,

00:43

plantation owners were forced to come up with

00:45

ways to defend the horrible practice.

00:47

Let's see which of the answers best describes

00:50

the line of reasoning they used.

00:54

Was their argument that slavery was

00:56

A - a necessary evil in the Southern economy?

01:00

Well, few people in the South argued

01:01

that it was a necessary evil.

01:03

Really, they didn't even see it as being evil...

01:07

given the twisted racial ideology

01:09

they had about Africans being lesser in value than whites.

01:13

So it ain't A.

01:15

Did they believe that slavery was

01:17

B - an institution that would eventually

01:19

die out without outside interference?

01:21

Well, quite the contrary.

01:22

At this point, the Southern economy was so dependent

01:25

on the cotton industry that the entire system

01:27

would've fallen apart if plantation owners all of a sudden

01:29

had to pay their employees.

01:31

What a concept.

01:34

So they didn't see a problem with the institution at all.

01:36

And that eliminates B and D.

01:38

Which means their main argument was that slavery was C -

01:42

a practice that stabilized society and deserved

01:45

the government's protection.

01:46

In their desperation to legitimize

01:49

slavery as a necessary institution...

01:53

slaveholders concocted all sorts of arguments.

01:57

One of these arguments was that slavery was a stabilizing

01:59

factor for society and needed to be

02:01

protected by the government. Really.

02:03

We're not kidding. That makes C the right answer.

02:06

You know how it goes.

02:06

When your ears are full of cotton, well,

02:08

it's really hard to listen.

02:10

[ gasp ] [ how dare you ]

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