HISTORY + EDUCATION
Why Some Make The False Claim “Slave Owners” Were “Victims”
Justifying the chattel slavery system is their obvious goal
Despite the vast sea of resources available on the experiences of enslaved people, the myth that “slave owners” were the real victims lives on. Of course, it’s a ridiculous position to hold since White people held Black people against their will in a system of hereditary, race-based bondage. Nevertheless, we should be careful about dismissing their banter as harmless white noise. Indeed, this pro-slavery perspective has become more mainstream in recent years.
For instance, PragerU, a far-right, published various pro-slavery educational videos for children. Kevin Kruse, an American history professor at Princeton, noted that their goal is to “replace American history with propaganda and indoctrination.” Florida has approved their pro-slavery curriculum, and Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of Oklahoma schools, noted that he wants to bring PragerU into his state’s public school curriculum. So, while some may gasp at the caucasity of White people trying to pitch a pro-slavery perspective to students, we should realize this debate isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Nathan Jones, a beta reader and author, first tip-toed around the moral issue of slavery by questioning whether enslavers were “inherently bad people,” claiming that some were “good.” Then, he let the bottom out of the barrel by arguing that White enslavers were the true “victims of their time.” If anything, the sheer ignorance of his statement is in of itself a case for why black history should be taught in public schools. Anyone who studies the chattel slavery system or the transatlantic slave trade can tell you who benefited. White privilege was built by trampling Black people’s human rights. This is not an opinion or conjecture. It’s a historical fact.
James Madison, our nation’s fourth president, described the slave trade as “dishonorable to the national character,” yet throughout his political career, he failed to propose abolition. Instead, he favored the Western expansion of slavery despite his proclamation that the system was unjust. On his Virginia plantation, Madison enslaved more than a hundred people. So, the idea that White enslavers were “victims” is not true, nor is it intellectually honest to suggest they didn’t know any better. Madison’s quotes regarding slavery dispel that notion, noting that he wished “to depend as little as possible on the labour of slaves,” he admitted to facing difficulties “reconciling these views.” Likewise, James Monroe, America’s fifth president, was equally aware of the ills of chattel slavery. Despite enslaving seventy-five people, Monroe lamented that “American citizens are instrumental in carrying on a traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in violation of the laws of humanity and in defiance of those of their own country.” The notion that slave owners were just victims of their time is ahistorical.
When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis claimed Black people “benefited” from slavery, he was taking the argument further than even some enslavers, like Madison and Monroe, who, despite participating in the slave trade, would not describe the system as beneficial to Black people, or consider themselves victims. DeSantis wanted Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black person to hold the position, to debate him on the topic, an invitation she declined. To Harris and millions of Black Americans who descend from enslaved people, debating the morality of slavery is insulting, nonsensical, and unwarranted. The evidence that slavery harmed Black people is indisputable. “Well, I’m here in Florida. I will tell you, there is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: There were no redeeming qualities of slavery,” Harris said in August. While chattel slavery was abolished over a century ago, the debate has continued, as it has since the country’s founding. While Harris was right that no Black person should be going back and forth with white supremacists, arguing that slavery was an abomination, these ideas are nevertheless making their way into public schools. If these ideas are not contested, they may become cemented in the minds of the youth.
Black people, stolen from their homelands and shackled on the bottom of ships, forced to abandon their original languages and cultural practices, kept in unsanitary conditions, and forced to endlessly labor until death were the true victims of the chattel slavery system, and anyone who says otherwise is either feigning ignorance or the real McCoy. While opposing slavery and those who profited from human trafficking and exploitation is pretty common sense, there’s a reason why some White people continue to repeat this buffoonery. Let’s unpack this.
During the chattel slavery system, people often defended the chattel slavery system, eager to continue lining their pockets with money. In an 1857 text, George Fitzhugh claimed, “the Negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world,” compared to White enslavers who were burdened with considering the welfare of their families, and plantations. Pro-slavery Southerners often described the capitalism of the North as a form of wage slavery they suggested was much worse than “Negro slavery.” “But, reader, well, may you follow the slave trade. It is the only trade worth following, and slaves are the only property worth owning. All other is worthless, a mere caput mortuum,” he added. Through Fitzhugh’s report, we can see that slavery was immensely profitable for White people. Without the enslaved, White Southerners would have land but no people to cultivate crops and turn a profit. They would have money but no ability to earn more. Indeed, white enslavers viewed slavery as a financial benefit. White men of this era certainly didn’t consider themselves victims of the system they created.
Now that White people no longer profit from chattel slavery, why are they defending it? We can see this worldview resonate throughout American society, in school curricula, in public debates, and in the political arena. As Matthew Willis wrote, some “Southern Protestants refused to revise their pro-slavery views,” and neither have conservatives, for that matter. Jones wasn’t the first White man to endorse a pro-slavery position in modern times, and he certainly won’t be the last because by defending slavery, they can maintain the racial hierarchy. They hope to justify why White men receive the most opportunities and hold the most wealth in this country, and the only way they can make this privilege seem normal like it isn’t the culmination of generations of stolen people and profits, is to portray them as victims. Nevertheless, it needs to be said that slave owners, enslavers, human traffickers, colonizers, whatever you want to call them, were not the victims; they were perpetrators, and the fact that we can’t agree on that is the real problem. For the descendants of the enslaved, many of whom believe we’re owed a debt for the crimes committed against our ancestors, it’s very surreal to live in an era where the merits of slavery are still openly debated, where public schools can’t say “slave owners were bad people,” without getting a sternly written letter from White parents calling this characterization “unfair.”
As a reminder, White abolitionists lived side-by-side with enslavers, meaning that while White people enslaved millions, they knew it was wrong because their contemporaries told them so. Before the Civil War, a Christian abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, argued the North should secede from the nation rather than accept slavery. Luther Martin, then attorney-general of Maryland, thought slavery was “inconsistent with the principles of the American Revolution and dishonorable to the American character.” If these enslavers were simply victims of their time, then how is it that so many White people living in the same era vehemently condemned slavery? It’s time to kill the myth and bury it out back. The “slave owners” were not victims. They were bullies who strongarmed free states in the North to return runaways and consider Black Americans three-fifths of a person. As abolitionist Theodore Parker argued, “If “slaves are men,” “then they should be taxed as men and have their vote as men.”
Whether you think enslavers were “inherently bad people” or believe “some of them” were “good” depends on your worldview, not the period in which you were born. But one thing is undeniable: the chattel slavery system did not turn White people into victims by any stretch of the imagination. When the war ended, Lincoln authorized the District of Columbia Emancipation Act to pay enslavers for each person they freed to compensate them for “loss of property.” Of course, on the flip side of the coin, Black formerly enslaved Americans received nothing, zip, nada. It’s clear that those spreading the myth that “slave owners” were “victims” do not want students to learn the real history of chattel slavery in America. Because they know once students have historical facts at hand, they won’t fall for the okey-doke.
For those interested in expanding their understanding of enslaved people’s experiences, the Library of Congress is an excellent resource to start.
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