died in 1850, the section of slaveholders and plantations had become a permanent minority in a nation increasingly characterized by free labor capitalism, reform enthusiasm, and social democracy. 30
Such political circumstances led Calhoun and other Southern political thinkers to ask hard questions about the structure of American politics. In the name of slaveholding planters, Calhoun questioned the potential tyranny of a democratic majority over the rights and property of a minority and sought answers in the construction of “concurrent majorities”—that is, majorities based upon more than raw numbers of voters, majorities of classes and sections combined with that composed of ballots. George Fitzhugh carried Calhoun’s analysis a step further. During the 1850s the Virginia planter wrote books
(Cannibals All
and
Sociology for the South)
in which he struck at the basic assumptions of free labor and contended that the masses might fare better under some form of benevolent despotism, which Fitzhugh believed already existed on Southern plantations. Such discussions, rendered moot by the advance of liberal democracy in the nineteenth century, were nonetheless important. By dissenting and proposing alternatives, they revealed the essendally un-American side of Southern political thought. 31
Like Southern writers, Southern political thinkers ultimately saw a romantic vision: the reincarnation of Greek democracy in the nineteenth-century South. Again Calhoun led the way. To Americans, already conditioned by their recent struggle for independence to admire the Greeks, he offered the South as a replica of Greece in its golden age. Like ancient Athenians, Southerners held slaves; like the Greeks, Southerners lauded the equality of free people who in terms of wealth and status were anything but equal. 32 The Greek model seemed to justify slavery at the same time that it spoke to the aspirations of yeoman democrats in the words of Pericles: “… we enjoy, as between [free] man and [free] man complete equality of legal status. In our public life individual talent is the one thing valued. Preferment depends on merit, not on class; nor does obscurity of rank prevent any from making his contribution to the common weal.” 33
Greek democracy not only cloaked the Southern status quo with respectability; it offered the vision of a social and political system superior to the North’s. Thus, as early as 1838, Calhoun could assert that:
Many in the South once believed that it [slavery] was a moral and political evil. That folly and delusion are gone. We see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world. It is impossible with us that the conflict can take place between labor and capital, which makes it so difficult to establish and maintain free institutions in all wealthy and highly civilized nations where such institutions as ours do not exist. The Southern States are an aggregate, in fact, of communities, not of individuals. Every plantation is a little community, with the master at its head, who concentrates in himself the united interests of capital and labor, of which he is the common representative. These small communities aggregated make the State in all, whose action, labor, and capital is equally represented and perfectly harmonized. Hence the harmony, the union, the stability of that section which is rarely disturbed, except through the action of this Government. The blessing of this state of things extends beyond the limits of the South. It makes that section the balance of the system; the great conservative power, which prevents other portions, less fortunately constituted, from rushing into conflict…. Such are the institutions which these deluded madmen are stirring heaven and earth to destroy, and which we are called on to defend by the highest and most solemn obligations that can be imposed on us as men and patriots. 34
To sustain this vision of the South
Such political circumstances led Calhoun and other Southern political thinkers to ask hard questions about the structure of American politics. In the name of slaveholding planters, Calhoun questioned the potential tyranny of a democratic majority over the rights and property of a minority and sought answers in the construction of “concurrent majorities”—that is, majorities based upon more than raw numbers of voters, majorities of classes and sections combined with that composed of ballots. George Fitzhugh carried Calhoun’s analysis a step further. During the 1850s the Virginia planter wrote books
(Cannibals All
and
Sociology for the South)
in which he struck at the basic assumptions of free labor and contended that the masses might fare better under some form of benevolent despotism, which Fitzhugh believed already existed on Southern plantations. Such discussions, rendered moot by the advance of liberal democracy in the nineteenth century, were nonetheless important. By dissenting and proposing alternatives, they revealed the essendally un-American side of Southern political thought. 31
Like Southern writers, Southern political thinkers ultimately saw a romantic vision: the reincarnation of Greek democracy in the nineteenth-century South. Again Calhoun led the way. To Americans, already conditioned by their recent struggle for independence to admire the Greeks, he offered the South as a replica of Greece in its golden age. Like ancient Athenians, Southerners held slaves; like the Greeks, Southerners lauded the equality of free people who in terms of wealth and status were anything but equal. 32 The Greek model seemed to justify slavery at the same time that it spoke to the aspirations of yeoman democrats in the words of Pericles: “… we enjoy, as between [free] man and [free] man complete equality of legal status. In our public life individual talent is the one thing valued. Preferment depends on merit, not on class; nor does obscurity of rank prevent any from making his contribution to the common weal.” 33
Greek democracy not only cloaked the Southern status quo with respectability; it offered the vision of a social and political system superior to the North’s. Thus, as early as 1838, Calhoun could assert that:
Many in the South once believed that it [slavery] was a moral and political evil. That folly and delusion are gone. We see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world. It is impossible with us that the conflict can take place between labor and capital, which makes it so difficult to establish and maintain free institutions in all wealthy and highly civilized nations where such institutions as ours do not exist. The Southern States are an aggregate, in fact, of communities, not of individuals. Every plantation is a little community, with the master at its head, who concentrates in himself the united interests of capital and labor, of which he is the common representative. These small communities aggregated make the State in all, whose action, labor, and capital is equally represented and perfectly harmonized. Hence the harmony, the union, the stability of that section which is rarely disturbed, except through the action of this Government. The blessing of this state of things extends beyond the limits of the South. It makes that section the balance of the system; the great conservative power, which prevents other portions, less fortunately constituted, from rushing into conflict…. Such are the institutions which these deluded madmen are stirring heaven and earth to destroy, and which we are called on to defend by the highest and most solemn obligations that can be imposed on us as men and patriots. 34
To sustain this vision of the South
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