Nation of Islam Research Group

"The ink of a scholar's pen is holier than the blood of the martyr." —Hadith

ArticlesBlacks and JewsHistoryRace RelationsSlave TradeSlavery

Did White abolitionists love Black people?

The Northern economy depended on the slave trade and the free labor of the Africans of the plantation South. Northern textile industries needed the cotton produced by Black hands, and the Northern manufacturers needed Southern buyers for their value-added products.Northerners were no different from Southerners in their insistence that Africans were predestined to work for them; all social, political and religious authorities in the North reinforced this notion.

The nasty historical truth is that there were only a pitiful few white abolitionists, and the majority of them wanted to end slavery for many reasons that had nothing to do with loving, or even liking, Black people.

By far, most abolitionists were Blacks. Many whites were abolitionists because they wanted a truly all-white country and wanted all Blacks deported; others were against slavery because it depressed white wages. And, further, many white “abolitionists” would not even allow Blacks into their meetings. Those who were sympathetic to Blacks still felt Blacks were inferior—just not deserving of the cruelty of slavery. [It is much like wanting your neighbor to stop beating his dog: you don’t want to eat, sleep, or speak with the dog or allow him to marry your daughter—you just don’t think the dog deserves to be beaten.] Many abolitionists believed that Blacks would work better on the plantations under a low-wage system. Yet others believed that slavery must be ended to save white people’s souls from being condemned as God condemned Blacks’.

 

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