. It continues to underpin today’s capitalist world. Additionally, the internalization of these individualistic values led people to justify their own bad actions, even when they knew that their actions were clearly wrong.
David Brown, a Northern traveler who ventured down into the South in the 1850s, transcribed an encounter between some Northerners traveling to the South to explore investment opportunities through slavery, and a Southern poet. After exploring one single plantation where the master happened to be generous, the Northern travelers came to the conclusion that slavery was not as horrible of an institution as it truly was. However, knowing that this was atypical of the regular slave owner, the Southern poet argues that this
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‘But,’ said the poet, "you must not expect to find all masters like Mr. R. He has always felt his great responsibility deeply, as a Christian master of slaves; and with his best powers and faculties, he fulfils (sic) its obligations, faithfully and affectionately. Among all the apostles, there was but one St. John." ‘And but one Judas,’ interposed a bystander.
‘True,’ continued the poet; ‘and if there be not found among slaveholders, - as I think there are not, - a greater proportion who shamefully and cruelly betray their trust, there would seem no good reason for the wholesale condemnation of the institution; which we are so often pained to hear, knowing as we do, that the laboring negroes of the South are so far more comfortable than the laboring poor, both white and black, at the North.’ ‘And yet,’ said one, ‘Slavery is still slavery.’
‘Yes; and poverty is still poverty; and misery is still misery; and evil, of every kind, is still evil; and it is likely, for a long time to come, to remain so. Every condition of life has its own peculiar evils; and that would seem the most desirable which has the least and the