Talk:Pro-slavery ideology in the United States

Feedback from New Page Review process

I left the following feedback for the creator/future reviewers while reviewing this article: An interesting, well-written article..

Cwmhiraeth (talk) 07:46, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Anti-Democratic message?

(Just to put it out there, I'm pretty left-leaning so I do have some bias.) I do not wish to deny that Southern Democrats, along with quite a few northern ones, supported slavery, but this article seems to blame the Democrats as a party perhaps a bit excessively, especially the last section. Given that a popular conservative talking point is to bring up how Southern Democrats were responsible for much of Southern white supremacy in order to attack the party as a whole(despite these ideas not being that relevant to today's party), it does not seem that odd that a user like User:DoomedToRepeatHistory might want to hint at this argument via this article. A sentence which particularly jumped out at me was "the Democratic-dominated Confederacy;" while most of the Confederate leaders came from the Democratic Party (especially since the Whigs were gone and the Republicans were explicitly anti-slavery), the Confederacy itself didn't seem to have developed political parties. Also, the article seems to draw an implicit connection between slavery and socialism, or at least the slaveowners' opposition to Northern industrial capitalism. While all the factors listed in this article certainly existed, the way they are presented seems quite biased. --Alexschmidt711 (talk) 17:27, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for writing that down, I'm seeing that frequently through a lot of Articles dealing with slavery.

Calling southern slave owners Democrats feels designed to be pejorative. Alacard (talk) 09:32, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Title is ambiguous while RS contradicts it as a mainstream view

This article refers to views only held by certain people during the 18th and 19th centuries...It seems to simply refer to a quote by John C. Calhoun. "In 1837, Calhoun famously took to the floor of the Senate to declare that slavery was a "positive good." He became the champion of the states' rights debate which intensified in the decades before the Civil War."

So is this somehow the WP:COMMONNAME?

"Slavery as a positive good was the prevailing view of Southern U.S. politicians and intellectuals just before the American Civil War..."

And? Slavery was not commonly held as a "positive good" among many Americans at that time, so why is the title presenting the United States as represented by the views of very particular Southern U.S. politicians and intellectuals? Also see Abolitionism in the United States.

Historian Steven Mintz wrote... "Despite clear evidence that slavery was profitable, abolitionists--and many people who were not abolitionists--felt strongly that slavery degraded labor, inhibited urbanization and mechanization, thwarted industrialization, and stifled progress, and associated slavery with economic backwardness, inefficiency, indebtedness, and economic and social stagnation. When the North waged war on slavery, it was not because it had overcome racism; rather, it was because Northerners in increasing numbers identified their society with progress and viewed slavery as an intolerable obstacle to innovation, moral improvement, free labor, and commercial and economic growth." gilder lehrman institute of American history

A better title would be something like "The Southern Argument for Slavery before the Civil War". Currently, the title may violate WP:POVTITLE, especially if it is a descriptive title that was created by Wikipedia editors.

If this article is only about the views of "Southern U.S. politicians and intellectuals" that defended slavery from the 18th to 19th centuries, the title needs to reflect that. DN (talk) 02:03, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

POV title

See link at NPOVN DN (talk) 10:37, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 14 February 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. There is consensus for the move. (non-admin closure) TarnishedPath^talk 12:51, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

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Slavery as a positive good in the United States → Pro-slavery ideology in the United States – Proposed title seems to me more in line with the way mainstream scholarly sources frame this issue. There is no reason we can't handle both "positive good" and "necessary evil" arguments in the same article. Generalrelative (talk) 12:03, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

• support it's wildly wp:fringe to paint this as anything remotely good—blindlynx 15:05, 14 February 2025 (UTC)
• support at least until there is a better suggestion, if there is one. Cheers. DN (talk) 23:04, 14 February 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose This is specifically about a single pre-Civil War theory rather than a general examination of pro-slavery ideology. I'd support an alternate move to Positive Good defense of slavery or Positive Good theory of slavery to make it clear that it is not a generalization. After the move, the previous name should be deleted as misleading. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 12:52, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

  Could you explain how or why the phrase "positive good" in the title is supposed to be considered neutral? This is not a WP:COMMONNAME. DN (talk) 20:50, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

• Comment Right now, there is no page devoted to pro-slavery ideology in the United States. Proslavery thought § American proslavery movement identifies Slavery as a positive good in the United States as the main article, which is a bit odd, given that the latter is not representative of the American proslavery movement as a whole. Slavery in the United States § Justifications in the South has sections on American slavery as "a necessary evil" and American slavery as "a positive good", but only the latter refers readers to a main article. While I understand @Zxcvbnm's argument that the current article focuses specifically on the "positive good" argument, I think it would be better for it to be a section of a larger American proslavery movement article. However, that would mean that the article would need to be enlarged to include a significant section on the "necessary evil" arguments/proponents, and I'm wondering who is going to take that on. FactOrOpinion (talk) 17:54, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

  If a new, broader article is created, I have no opposition to a merger, but for the time being, we have to consider the current scope of the article and not expand the scope beyond what it is now. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 17:57, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

• Support article title seems questionable at best. Allan Nonymous (talk) 19:54, 16 February 2025 (UTC)
• Support While I understand what the current title is going for, as phrased it seems very POV. Wouldn't be opposed to ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ's alternatives, because I agree it's currently about this one particular perspective, but I also wouldn't be opposed to merging this into a more general article, and in fact I think I'd prefer that. Loki (talk) 20:28, 18 February 2025 (UTC)
• Support. The current title is just so wrong. The proposed new title is much more accurate. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:36, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Albert Taylor Bledsoe

Albert Taylor Bledsoe was one of the most prominent advocates of pro-slavery ideology in the United States as seen in his Essay on Liberty and Slavery (1856). In December 2025 this fact was added to this article, but the following March saw editors deleting the mention of Bledsoe. Various bogus reasons were given. Perhaps this article has been used as a source in a college course and the instructor was not ready to acknowledge Bledsoe, so his role in the slavery ideology was removed for course convenience. Fortunately, here we have the dialogue space to get to the bottom of the censorship. — Rgdboer (talk) 23:16, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Various bogus reasons ... not ready to acknowledge ... removed for course convenience ... censorship. Showing up here by flinging around assumptions of bad faith will get you nowhere. Feel free to start over by discussing the policy-based reasons which Dugan Murphy and I gave for reverting you.

Here, I'll show you how it's done. My own edit summary said:

Without WP:SECONDARY sources, it's unclear that this passage is WP:DUE. If such sources can be located, a restored version of this passage would require copy editing for encyclopedic WP:TONE.

We can start with the first part. If Bledsoe was indeed one of the most prominent advocates of pro-slavery ideology in the United States, you will have no trouble explaining how reliable secondary sources discuss this text, which will fully satisfy my first objection, and we can proceed to a discussion of tone and voice. Generalrelative (talk) 00:22, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Requested move 23 March 2026

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: speedy not moved. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 22:12, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

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Pro-slavery ideology in the United States → liberal slavery – This article talks about Africa and United States, it's transcontinental. No o vinho (talk) 08:47, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

— No o vinho (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 15:14, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose I don't see any reasoning in this very brief proposal that connects the potential new title to the content of the article. This doesn't look like a serious proposal to me. Dugan Murphy (talk) 12:55, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose I don't see any rationale behind this; and I don't think I want to. O3000, Ret. (talk) 13:01, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose and speedy close. The nomination is not even comprehensible. The article doesn't even use the word "liberal". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 15:14, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
  • I second the call for a speedy close to this nomination. Dugan Murphy (talk) 18:03, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.