"But if slaves were allowed to redeem themselves progressively, by purchasing one day of the week after another, as they can in the Spanish colonies, habits of industry would be gradually formed, and enterprise would be stimulated, by their successful efforts to acquire a little property. And if they afterward worked better as free laborers than they now do as slaves, it would surely benefit their masters as well as themselves …
But the slave holders try to stop all the efforts of benevolence, by vociferous complaints about infringing upon their property; and justice is so subordinate to self-interest, that the unrighteous claim is silently allowed, and even openly supported, by those who ought to blush for themselves, as Christians and as republicans."—Lydia Maria Child, from Propositions Defining Slavery and Emancipation, 1833
The arguments in this passage best represent the ideas of
small Southern landowners
antebellum reformers
Jacksonian Democrats
nativists