“The Negro in His Own Country” Versus “The Negro in America”
Slave owners and their intellectual and religious allies responded to abolitionists’ attacks by defending slavery as a “positive good.” These two images, from Josiah Priest’s Bible Defence of Slavery (1852), support the argument that enslavement saved Africans from a savage, war-ridden life (note the skeleton in the top image) and exposed them to the civilized world. Such publications achieved wide circulation and popularity among the planter classes. Chicago History Museum.