What is Pro-slavery (United States)?
[[File:Caroline_Lee_Hentz_7.jpg|thumb|[[Caroline Lee Hentz]], American author, known for opposing the abolitionist movement and her rebuttal to ''[[Uncle Tom’s Cabin]]'' in the pro-slavery novel ''[[The Planter's Northern Bride]]'']] '''Pro-slavery''' was an [[ideology]] that promoted the practice of [[slavery]] and [[wikt:defended|defended]] against any [[wikt:interference|interference]] with the system.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.dictionary.com/browse/proslavery |title=proslavery |publisher=Dictionary.com, LLC |access-date=13 June 2016}}</ref> By the 1830s, slavery was practiced mainly in the [[Southern United States]].<ref name=casPBS>{{cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2956.html |title=Conditions of antebellum slavery, 1830–1860 |publisher=WGBH/PBS Online |access-date=13 June 2016}}</ref> [[African American]] slaves were considered [[property]]. Slave [[owner]]s justified them being property because slaves were [[Black people|black]]—in other words not people. Slaves were used on large [[plantation]]s and small [[farm]]s as the primary form of [[Labour (economics)|labor]]. Largely in response to the [[Abolitionism|abolitionist]] arguments against slavery, pro-slavery [[wikt:advocate|advocate]]s developed arguments to justify slavery as being a good thing.<ref name=Appiah219>''Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience'', eds. Anthony Appiah; Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 219</ref> While anti-slavery groups pushed for a gradual end to slavery, and [[Free Soil Party|free-soilers]] sought to stop its expansion, abolitionists demanded an immediate end to the practice.<ref name=Appiah219/> Pro-slavery became as much anti-abolitionism as it was a defense of slavery.<ref name=Appiah219/> == Background == === Slave culture === It is sometimes hard to understand why southerners who did not own slaves would defend the practice of slavery.<ref name=RheaCWT>{{cite web |url=http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/civil-