George Fitzhugh (November 4, 1806 – July 30, 1881) was an American social theorist who published racial and pro-slavery social theories in the pre-Civil War era. He argued that the negro was "but a grown up child"Fitzhugh, George (1854). "Negro Slavery", Sociology for the South, Chap. V, A. Morris Publisher, p. 83."George Fitzhugh Advocates Slavery", The Black American: A Documentary History, Foresman and Company, Illinois, 1976, 1970. needing the economic and social protections of slavery. Fitzhugh favorably contrasted slavery in the American South with capitalism in the Northern United States, decrying the latter as "a war of the rich with the poor, and the poor with one another",Fitzhugh (1854), p. 22. which rendered free blacks "far outstripped or outwitted in the chase of free competition."Fitzhugh (1854), p. 84. Slavery, he contended, ensured that blacks would be economically secure and morally civilized. Some historians consider Fitzhugh's worldview to be proto-fascist in its rejection of liberal values, defense of slavery, and perspectives toward race.
Fitzhugh practiced law but attracted both fame and infamy when he published two sociological tracts for the South. He was a leading pro-slavery intellectualGilpin, Drew Faust (1977). A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South, 1840–1860, Johns Hopkins University Press. and spoke for many of the Southern plantation owners. Before printing books, Fitzhugh tried his hand at a pamphlet, "Slavery Justified" (1849). His first book, Sociology for the South (1854) was not as widely known as his second book, Cannibals All! (1857). Sociology for the South is the first known English-language book to include the term "sociology" in its title.; accessed August 27, 2017.
Fitzhugh differed from nearly all of his southern contemporaries by advocating a slavery that crossed racial boundaries. In Sociology for the South, Fitzhugh proclaimed, "Men are not 'born entitled to equal rights!' It would be far nearer the truth to say, 'that some were born with saddles on their backs, and others booted and spurred to ride them,' – and the riding does them good."; and that the Declaration of Independence "deserves the tumid yet appropriate epithets which Major Lee somewhere applies to the writings of Mr. Jefferson, it is, 'exhuberantly false, and arborescently fallacious.'"Sociology for the South, or, the Failure of Free Society, pp. 179, 182.
Life George Fitzhugh was born on November 10, 1806, to George Fitzhugh Sr. (a surgeon/physician) and Lucy (née Stuart) Fitzhugh. He was born in Prince William County, Virginia. His family moved to Alexandria, Virginia, when he was six. He attended public school though his career was built on self-education. He married Mary Metcalf Brockenbrough in 1829 and moved to Port Royal, Virginia. There he began his own law business. Fitzhugh took up residence in a "rickety old mansion" that he inherited through his wife's family, known for a vast collection of bats in its attic. He was something of a recluse in this home for most of his life and rarely travelled away from it for extended periods of time, spending most of his days there engaged in unguided reading from a vast library of books and pamphlets.
Of the writers in his library, Fitzhugh's beliefs were most heavily influenced by Thomas Carlyle, whom he read frequently and referenced in many of his works.Straka, Gerald M. (1957). "The Spirit of Carlyle in the Old South," The Historian 20 (1), pp. 39–57. Atypical for a slavery advocate, Fitzhugh also subscribed to and regularly read abolitionist pamphlets such as The Liberator. He made only one major visit to other parts of the nation in the entire antebellum period – an 1855 journey to the north where he met and argued with abolitionists Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips.
Never politically active in his own right, Fitzhugh managed to find the company of well known political figures in his day.Hartz, Louis (1955). The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. In addition to the two abolitionists, Fitzhugh was an acquaintance of several public officials. In 1857 Fitzhugh served as a law clerk in Washington, D.C. under Attorney General Jeremiah Sullivan Black. He gained fairly wide circulation in print, writing articles for several Virginia newspapers and for the widely circulated Southern magazine DeBow's Review.Leland, Charles G. (1862). "A Southern Review," The Continental Monthly 2 (4), pp. 466–469.Skipper, Ottis Clark (1958). J.D.B. De Bow: Magazinist of the old South. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press.
After moving to Richmond, Virginia, in 1862 he began to work in the Treasury of the Confederacy. After the Civil War, Fitzhugh spent a short time judging for the Freedmen's Court and then retiring to Kentucky after his wife's death in 1877. He later moved to his daughter's residence in Huntsville, Texas, where he died on July 30, 1881. He is buried in a grave in Oakwood Cemetery, Huntsville, where his daughter, Mariella Fitzhugh Foster and her husband Capt. Marcellus Aurelius Foster are also buried.George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) Encyclopedia of Virginia website. Contributed by Calvin Schermerhorn and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography
Writings Sociology for the South Sociology for the South, or, the Failure of Free Society (1854) was George Fitzhugh's most powerful attack on the philosophical foundations of free society. In it, he took on not only Adam Smith,Dodd, William E. (1920). The Cotton Kingdom: A Chronicle of the Old South, Yale University Press, p. 64. the foundational thinker of capitalism, but also John Locke,Loewenberg, Robert (1985). "John Locke and the Antebellum Defense of Slavery," Political Theory 13 (2), pp. 266–291. Thomas Jefferson, and the entire liberal tradition. He argued that the transition away from feudalism and the adoption of liberal values like freedom and equality had been detrimental to workers and to society as a whole, and that the liberal experiment had failed and a return to a pre-liberal mode of society was necessary:
Fitzhugh's position was rooted in a kind of medievalism, widely popular in his day, and held up what he thought medieval society was as an ideal for America, as he clarified in 1858: "In the balmy days of royalty, of feudal nobility, and of Catholic rule, there were no poor in Europe"., cited in He argued in Sociology for the South that all societies have a substratum, and that the new liberal social order was more harmful to this substratum than either the previous feudal order or to slavery:
Fitzhugh believed that slavery represented a lingering element of pre-liberal, or even pre-feudal social organization, and proposed the expansion of the institution of slavery to return to a pre-feudal social order of antiquity and alleviate the supposed harm caused by liberalism and capitalism:
In order to expand the institution of slavery, Fitzhugh proposed both the enslavement of all free black people and the enslavement of working-class people of all races, making him notable as possibly the only anti-abolitionist to propose slavery be expanded to include white people.Craven, Avery (1944). "Southern Attitudes Toward Abrahan Lincoln," Papers in Illinois History and Transactions for the year 1942, The Illinois State Historical Society, p. 17. Fitzhugh referenced racist justifications for his proposal to re-enslave all free black people, stating that, "unlike the white man, they have no hope of changing and improving their condition whilst free",Fitzhugh (1854), pp. 281–282 and that "every other form of government than that of slavery has signally failed in the case of the negro. He is an enemy to himself, and an intolerable pest and nuisance to society, where ever among the whites he is free [...] it is the right and duty of the State to enslave them, because experience has clearly proved that it is the only practicable mode of governing them."Fitzhugh (1854), pp. 282–283 While he subscribed to many of the racist views towards black people which were common among anti-abolitionists at the time, he did criticize the racial pseudo-scientific theories proposed by Josiah C. Nott in his book The Types of Mankind."We abhor the doctrine of the "Types of Mankind;" first, because it is at war with scripture, which teaches us that the whole human race is descended from a common parentage; and, secondly, because it encourages and incites brutal masters to treat negroes, not as weak, ignorant and dependent brethren, but as wicked beasts, without the pale of humanity. The Southerner is the negro's friend, his only friend. Let no intermeddling abolitionist, no refined philosophy, dissolve this friendship." — Fitzhugh (1854), p. 95.
Cannibals All! Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857) was a critique further developing the themes that Fitzhugh had introduced in Sociology for the South. Both the book's title and its subtitle were phrases taken from the writing of Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish social critic and a great hero to Fitzhugh's generation of proslavery thinkers.Dodd, William E. (1918). "The Social Philosophy of the Old South," American Journal of Sociology 23 (6), pp. 735–746. The aim of his book, Fitzhugh claimed, was to show that "the unrestricted exploitation of so-called free society is more oppressive to the laborer than domestic slavery."
Cannibals All! expanded on Fitzhugh's premise that "slavery to human masters" was "less intolerable" than the "slavery to capital" found in free societies,Persky, Joseph (1992). "Unequal Exchange and Dependency Theory in George Fitzhugh," History of Political Economy 24 (1), pp. 117–128.Woodward, C. Vann (1964). "A Southern War Against Capitalism." In: American Counterpoint: Slavery and racism in the North-South Dialogue. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, pp. 107–139.Wiener, Jonathan M. (1979). "Coming to Terms with Capitalism: The Postwar Thought of George Fitzhugh," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 87 (4), pp. 438–447. as well as expanding on his critiques of notions of liberty and equality more generally. In addressing Thomas Jefferson's notions of "natural rights", Fitzhugh stated:
Under this same context, Fitzhugh asserted that society was obligated to protect the weak by controlling and subjugating them. Fitzhugh wrote:
Regarding the question of who should be free and who should be enslaved, Fitzhugh wrote:
Fitzhugh also argued that the feudal system had its roots in slavery, and much like slavery, offered more favorable conditions to laborers than those found in liberal free-market capitalist economies:
Cannibals All! continued Fitzhugh's criticisms of the foundational guiding principles of the American Revolution, including criticizing the validity of the notion of the consent of the governed:
Cannibals All! garnered more attention in the Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, than any other book. Abraham Lincoln is said to have been more angered by George Fitzhugh than by any other pro-slavery writer, yet he unconsciously paraphrased Cannibals All! in his House Divided speech.Phillips, Michael (2007). "George Fitzhugh (1806–1881)." In: Junius P. Rodriguez (ed.), Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, Vol. I, ABC-CLIO, p. 285.
Views
Socialism Fitzhugh's stated position on socialism varies wildly between and even within his works. At times he is harshly critical of socialists of his time, linking them to abolitionism, stating in Sociology for the South: