Confederate History Month 2012: The Counter Current, or Slavery Principles (1856)

Louisiana

“We begin a great conservative reaction. We attempt to roll back the Reformation in all its phases.”
– George Fitzhugh, 1863

George Fitzhugh’s “The Counter Current, or Slavery Principles” appeared in the July 1856 edition of DeBow’s Review.

“The tendency of modern civilization is to beget one public opinion throughout Christendom. …

We think we perceive already unmistakeable evidence that a counter current of thought has already originated. Like all such reactions of opinion, it has been occasioned by experimental demonstrations of the fallacy and inadequacy of existing theories, and of practices founded on those theories. The great socialist and communist movement of the day, which is coextensive with free society, whilst it has not yet invoked the reestablishment of domestic slavery, asserts, in a thousand forms, the utter failure of existing social institutions, which have arisen from the ruins of feudal servitude. …

We have, then, the almost unanimous testimony of men of all conditions, that free society is a failure, is intolerable, and requires total subversion and reconstruction. This is, of itself, a mighty reactionary movement in favor of slavery

The slavery principle is a necessary and universal principle of government, and is the opposite of the let alone, or Laissez faire doctrine, of the political economists. The only difference that can exist between us and the abolitionists is this: are the negroes, as a class, weak, helpless, improvident or dependent, like women and children, and therefore, as a class, to be subjected to slavery; or are they fitted generally for the offices and functions of masters?

We presume that very few will not be willing to admit that the negroes are not fitted for the unrestricted liberties of white men. All men, whose opinions are worth considering, will agree, that more of the slavery principle should be adopted in the government of negroes than of white men. The question, then, as to the status of negroes, is narrowed down to this: is the kind of slavery to which he is subjected the proper and necessary one, looking to his moral and intellectual wants and capacities? He is certainly improving, and his bonds relaxes everywhere as he improves. We believe that nature best adapts and modifies slavery to suit its subjects, but are quite willing to see the subject discussed, how far it would be proper to define by law the obligations of the master and the rights of the slave?”

Note: George Fitzhugh was a Southern political theorist who broke with the dominant liberal paradigm and articulated a radical conservative defense of slave society. He is the author of Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters and Sociology for the South, or, The Failure of Free Society and a key figure in what has been described as The Reactionary Enlightenment.

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
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11 Comments

  1. Negroes are still slave, if only to the EBT card. The producers are still their masters, we’re just bad masters. It’s not like we’ve walked away. We’ll always be paying them, one way or the other. Does a good master keep an indolent slave? No. The master is also a slave to the slave. He bears that responsibility or he suffers the consequences.

    He who is slave to nothing will fall for anything. Especially the idea that unlimited liberty is any kind of recipe for reasonable society. Our freedom is defined by what we agree upon, not by what we can get away with. Else the slave becomes master. Also known as BRAmerica.

  2. You got this right LandShark. In a Western nation of European heritage, the Whites are going to have to pick up the tab for the Blacks. Any other conclusion is just live streaming, liberal jouche and reality denial. The only question is do the Whites pick up the tab on White terms or Black terms?

    White terms could be good terms, Christian terms, fair for all concerned terms. But that would be raycisss – don’t you know.

  3. When I first read Fitzhugh I was shocked by his illiberal arguments. And I considered myself Unreconstructed. I grew up reading about Wade Hampton and John C Calhoun but was shocked. Such is the extent to which we have been influenced by Enlightenment ideas.

  4. Why in heavens name did the Southern States go along with the Revolution?

    Surely they must have seen how radical the Bostonians were? The South was basically similar to Ulster or Russia. WTF were they thinking, going along with the radicals up north?

  5. They didn’t “go along”. Their idea was Confederation of States, not Unitary Nation. Lincoln’s War settled that issue. As for the Congoids, they shouldn’t be enslaved…on the Cavaliers’ cotton plantation or the Jews’ welfare/illfare plantation. They should be in Africa, where they can run, jump, and be happy, free from the toils of White Raycis’m.

  6. John, I think about that more and more. Why in the world didn’t the South overwhelming support Britain and help crush the Bostonians…Eventual, gradual emancipation and repatriation would have been the likely result instead of the disaster that was.

  7. because we didn’t want to be pissed on by the Brits just like we don’t like the damnyankees

  8. Check out the sickening image of a negro Adam wearing a crown of thorns and a blond white Even the satanic monsters at the New York Times tried to slip by us today in their op ed section.

    I’m so freaked out by this image, I need to hear comments on it to remain sane.

    Sincerely,

    – Arturo

    crimesofthetimes.com

  9. Stay sane, Arturo and don’t read the Jew Yawk Times. This rat sac is their idea of pest control for Whites. Allow me to reassure you, the Scots Irish did not come to Tennesee seeking liberalism and diversity. They were escaping this:

    http://billrolston.weebly.com/1980s.html

    The people who fled out of Ireland were escaping the Crown ownership of Eire through the Bank of England. As you see on this historic flag: The Crown. This is the Crown of the Judaic ownership of England and Ireland through the Corporation of the City of London. See – it sets above the Star of Zion. The Red Palm is the famous “King Willie’s loff” (pronouced loof) as in the ‘The Braes of Killiecrankie” – you can hear good versions of this famous Scottish Ballad on YouTube by The Corries.

    The phrase is “ya better kiss King Willie’s loff (pronounced loof) than cam by Killiecrankie-o”.

    Refers to the famous Jacobite battle when the Highlanders under Dundee (as in the famous ballad by Sir Walter Scott “Bonnie Dundee”) ambushed McKay’s march into the Highlands on the N S route in the passes of Killiecrankie of the Athol mountains. McKay led King Willie’s forces come to claim all Scottish lands forfeit to the Crown – the Jews who own the Consuls of the Bank of England.

    There is still a pub in Killiecrankie called the Whig’s Leap, I think, with a cartoon of King Willie’s sons of the Scottish Rite and the bloody whigs of the Scottish Convention leaping off the craigs of the Athol mountains rather than face the fury of the Highlanders on the passes. What they didn’t show is that even the artillery was hurled down after them into the Garry River.

    The famous ballad tells the story of King Willie’s (the Crown stooge’s) march into the Highlands to settle the debts of the English Parliament and Scottish Convention of Estates to the Nasi of Mulheim Synagoge and their Amsterdam Bank. The terms of the loan were all land titles of England, Ireland and Scotland.

    That is what the Scots Irish were fleeing – the sack of the Highlands and the North by the forces of the Crown. Even today you come across these empty glens and the old stone crofts where all the windows are boarded up. This is because the landlords who were given title by the Crown taxed every window on every house.

    So, as in the famous ballad “Braes of Killiecrankie” – which I think we should sing to these Jew Yawk Times: if ye ha seen wha I ha seen, ya wadnae been so cantie-o with all your mindfuck shyte about the Scots Irish in Tennesee seeking liberalism and diversity.

    And this: “if ye ha been wha I ha been – cam ye by Killiecrankie-o” Yes. For these mindfuckers and genociders there is no way they will avoid the passes of Killiecrankie.

  10. How did the rebelious northerners end up treating the southerners?

    I don’t think the crown was pissing on the south ever. It was a “Tory” stronghold. Had the South blitzed the north back then seccession would never have been required in the first place.

  11. While the upper class in the South seemed to be pro empire; the South was full of Ulster Scots in a time where my people would eat a mile of our own guts to earn a chance of killing a Brit. John, your a good man and proud of your national history like you should be, but many folks in the South had good reasons for hating the English.

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