Of course, with the except of a few Quakers here and there, no one (except the slaves themselves) before about 1750 ever asked the question of "why is this justified." Slavery existed everywhere in the ancient world and in most of Africa and the Middle East and Southern Europe (including Spain) in the late 1400s.  The first slaves in the transatlantic slave trade were Carib Indians brough back to Spain.  

Most southern whites accepted most or all of the following justifications for slavery.  For an easy read on this I (self-servingly) recommend my little book Defending Slavery:  Proslavey Thought in the Old South (Bedford Books).

Here are the major proslavery arguments and justifications:

1) people captured in war can be killed (on Geneva Convention on POWs at that time) and thus it is more humane to allow them to live as slaves.  This is true for soldiers, but also captured towns. This was a common justification in Rome, Greece, Carthage, Egypt, the ancient middle east and Sub-sahara Africa
2)  people who cannot pay their debts can be enslaved or they can give away a child or even a wife as a slave.  Common in Rome, Asia and Africa.  Debt slavery (illegel of course) is found in India and other parts of Asia to today)
3)  in a world with no jails or prisons, slavery is an acceptable form of punishment, since the only alternative is to execute the person.
4)  ethnic enemies are always enslaveable, and again it is more humane than killing them.  
5)  Europeans argued that slavery was a way to spread Christianity * those "lucky" Africans got to become Chrisitans! 
6)  They are not Moslems so it is ok to enslave the infidel * common throughout North African and Middle East.
7)  I bought the slave from someone else and it is not *my* problem how the person became a slave
)  this person was born a slave and that is the law
and most importantly for the US context
9)  Cotton is King and without slaves the American economy will collapse
10)  slavery allows for democracy because it elevates all white voters and removes the lowest classes from the political process.
11)  God ordains slavery.  The Bible supports it
12)  God made black people be slaves * the story of Noah and Cannan (the curse of Ham)
13) Africans and African-Americans cannot live as free people among us * Jefferson said they are "pests on society" * and so we *must* keep them as slaves.

Paul Finkelman

Paul Finkelman
President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law
     and Public Policy
Albany Law School
80 New Scotland Avenue
Albany, New York   12208-3494

518-445-3386 
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>>> [log in to unmask] 6/11/2007 12:45:23 PM >>>
I don't understand the justification for slavery, whether it was European or 
African slaves. It is pure and simple a means of taking from one group for 
the economic benefit of another.  Those who owned slaves are now facing the 
God they claimed to worship. These learned men had to have known that 
slavery was immoral, and enslaving another human being was not something 
that any God sanctioned. To bring suffering to another living creature is an 
abomination (IMHO). All we can do is look back and continue to learn from 
those past mistakes.