XO57 Cannibals All! Or, Slaves Without Masters

George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! Or, Slaves Without Masters (Richmond, VA: A. Morris, 1857).

Penn Libraries, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, 326.973 F574

Amid the fights for abolition across the United States, the Virginian polemicist George Fitzhugh invoked Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery as his justification for the continued enslavement of Black people in America. Some Aristotelian texts do advocate for slavery, though the racialized chattel slavery of the United States is not something Aristotle ever imagined. Reinventing Aristotle requires reckoning with the injustices that his ideas are used to perpetuate.