"SLAVERY WILL SERVE A GREAT PURPOSE FOR THE NEGRO” (THE AUTHOR)"

Slavery in the Southern States. By a Carolinian.

[Afro-Americana. Pro-slavery] First edition. A pro-slavery tract in response to the question "What do you think of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' at the South." Pringle's purpose, he writes, is "to prove that the slave is not by his position necessarily below the reach of moral and religious cultivation. Our object in this has been not so much to answer the objections of the opponents of slavery as to prove for the slaveholder that his dependent laborer is capable of better things than the world would have him believe, and especially to remind him that whatever arguments he urges in favor of the slave's position are all of necessity so many pledges for the faithful discharge of his own duties" (p.43). Edward Jenkins Pringle (1826-1899), born a Charleston aristocrat, graduated from Harvard in 1845 and following the thinking of George Fitzhugh, argued that southern slaves had more freedom than the wage laborers of the North. Finding insufficient legal work in Charleston, he emigrated to San Francisco. The third edition, 1853, identified Edward J. Pringle as the author. Sabin 65684. Howes P619. LCP. Afro-Americana, 8471. Not in Blockson, Dumond, or Work.