false philanthropy, which we look upon as a
cousin german to Abolitionism--bad for the master, worse for
the slave." Calhoun pronounced slavery "the most solid and
durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political
institutions[326]." Hammond claimed, in a eulogy of slavery in the
Senate, March 4, 1858, that its "frame of society is the best in the
world." Jefferson Davis defended it as "a form of civil government for
those who by nature are not fit to govern themselves";[327] Mason, a
descendant of the great Mason of revolutionary days, described it as
"ennobling to both races."[328]

It is useless to try to explain these statements by attributing to
their authors moral perverseness; the explanation must be sought in
the conditions that surrounded them. We have already alluded to the
fact that our moral conceptions are absorbed from the social milieu in
which we are reared. The prevailing ideals of family, business, the
social, political or national group of which we happen to be members
we absorb as part of our "social copy" and build into the fabric of
our social selves. The larger the group and the more vital any given
ideal is considered by the group as a whole the greater will be its
hold upon the loyalty of the individual member. Everything conspired
to give to the social sanction of the slave-aristocracy an
authoritativeness and binding force without a parallel in the history
of the nation. Upon the basis of the slave as the industrial unit was
reared in the course of years a mass of _mores_ which conditioned the
entire world-view of the slave-owner. Economic methods, social
differentiations, political institutions, religious ideals, moral
values, local patriotism and pride, all took their color from the
"peculiar institution" of the section. To question its validity or to
deny its divine authority was to threaten the entire social order with
an _Umwerthung aller Werthe_ that to the southern mind was
unthinkable. The increase of the slave population and the ever
widening gap between white and black made it all the harder for the
white to consider schemes for emancipation or manumission which meant
economic and social chaos. The weight of accumulated traditions, the
hardening of social habits and even the constantly increasing economic
handicaps of the ruinous slave-labor made any change more difficult
and dangerous. Many, who would gladly be rid of slavery, found
themselves in the predicament descri