Even antislavery-by-blame writers argued enslavement was positively good for Africans

Evidence

Philadelphia Federalist Robert Walsh published An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain Respecting the United States of America in 1819. “Your work will furnish the first volume of every future American history,” Thomas Jefferson accurately predicted. Though Walsh blamed the British for slavery, he said the institution endeared masters with “sensibility, justice and steadfastness.” For the African, whose “colour is a perpetual momento of their servile origin,” their enslavement is “positively good.” The slave was “exempt from those racking anxieties” experienced by the English. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 375

Categorization

• XREF: A vivid specimen of paternalistic proslavery reasoning — useful for tagging arguments into the three-way scheme.