Hugh Garland’s Treatise on Slavery comprised twenty-five chapters. Garland articulates a conservative and hierarchical vision of Southern society. The Treatise on Slavery can be divided into five themes.
(1) Christian, Paternal Duty. Garland’s argument cites the “Love thy neighbor as thyself” to legitimize slavery. For enslaved individuals, the masters’ duty was to provide for and morally govern the enslaved. Slavery is a relationship of care and control.
(2) Agriculture versus Capitalism. Slave society was superior to capitalism. Garland portrayed slavery as conservative and stable. He portrayed commerce and capitalism, associated with New England and England. Profit was the only factor in capitalism. He envisioned slave society as static and hierarchical, comprising upper-class whites, poor whites, and enslaved people.
(3) Historical Responsibility. Garland placed responsibility for slavery onto England and West Indian slave societies; thus, Americans were dependent participants in a system imposed upon them. England, West Indian slaveholders, and African societies bore greater responsibility than the United States.
(4) “Scientific” Inequality. Science was mostly pro-slavery in the 1830s to 1850s. “The superior mind governs the inferior,” is the law of nature, and ethnology confirms that (allegedly).
(5) Emancipation Catastrophe. Emancipation and amalgamation threatened the hierarchical principle of Garland’s worldview.
1. Force of Ideas
2. Promotion of Christianity
3. Commercial Spirit
4. Africa
5. America
6. Negro Training
7. Master and Mistress
8. England and the Slave Trade
9. Society Formed
10. Slave Trade, British West Indies
11. Cotton
12. Abolition in the West Indian Islands
13. Conservatism
14. New England Society
15. Socialism
16. Results (West Indies Emancipation)
17. A Return to the Subject
18. The Southern Plantation
19. Non-Slavery States
20. Domestic Slave Trade
21. Slavery in England
22. The Laboring Classes in England
23. Emancipation and East India Cotton
24. Amalgamation
25. Emancipation