"The 'Mudsill' Theory," by James Henry Hammond

 Hammond carefully outlined the number of months women slaves could nurse their babies, the length of time they could spend each day with their infants, the amount of work they were expected to perform, and even the body temperature they should maintain before nursing.

Speech to the U.S. Senate, March 4, 1858

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill. Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand. A race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes. We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves. We found them slaves by the common "consent of mankind," which, according to Cicero, "lex naturae est." The highest proof of what is Nature's law. We are old-fashioned at the South yet; slave is a word discarded now by "ears polite;" I will not characterize that class at the North by that term; but you have it; it is there; it is everywhere; it is eternal.

James Henry Hammond was a senator and wealthy plantation owner from South Carolina. This excerpt is from a speech he made to the Senate on March 4, 1858, in which he lays out his famous "mudsill theory" and states, "In all societies that must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life." This class, says Hammond, makes it possible for the higher class to move civilization forward.

In the antebellum period, pro-slavery forces moved from defending slavery as a necessary evil to expounding it as a positive good. Some insisted that African Americans were child-like people in need of protection, and that slavery provided a civilizing influence. Others argued that black people were biologically inferior to white people and were incapable of assimilating in free society. Still others claimed that slaves were necessary to maintain the progress of white society.

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From Leslie Harris, “Slavery in Colonial New York,” in In the Shadow of Slavery: African
Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 (2003)

African slaves became the most stable element of the New Netherland working class and
population. The Dutch West India Company’s importation and employment of most of the
colony’s slave labor enabled the settlement and survival of the Europeans at New Amsterdam as
well as the limited economic success that the colony experienced. The first eleven African slaves
were imported in 1626. The company, not individuals, owned these slaves who provided labor for
the building and upkeep of the colony’s infrastructure. In addition to aiding in the construction of
Fort Amsterdam, completed in 1635, slaves also built roads, cut timber and firewood, cleared
land, and burned limestone and oyster shells to make the lime used in outhouses and in burying
the dead.

Plantation manual, 1857-58.James Henry Hammond. James Henry Hammond Papers

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