the arguments for slavery by southern spokesmen said that chattel slavery (slaves as property), as practiced in the south, was more humane than the system of "wage slavery" practiced in the industrialized northern united states. george fitzhugh, in his book published in 1857, "cannibals all!", maintained that pro-slavery held the moral high ground in the national debate over slavery. fitzhugh maintained that because slaveholders owned their slaves they took better care of them than the northern capitalists who only "rented" their workers. in his earlier "sociology for the south" he proposed that many white people should also be slaves.