This pamphlet on The Political Economy of Slavery, written by Edmund Ruffin illustrates clearly the entrenched belief of many Americans that slavery was not only natural but undeniably important to the U.S. economy.

Edmund Ruffin’s primary contribution to the history of the United States was as a talented farmer, a staunch anti-abolitionist and a passionate secessionist. So passionate, in fact, that he committed suicide upon the loss of the Civil War by the South, claiming he could not bear to live under "Yankee rule". This document was a popular pamphlet written by Ruffin to argue for the necessity of slavery for the Southern economy. And though Ruffin died for the Southern cause his work was noticed by a man who theoretically was an enemy. Andrew Johnson stood with Abraham Lincoln in election and served as his vice president for six weeks, before a gun shot in a theater catapulted him into the Presidency. He is widely viewed by many historians as being one of the worst candidates for the presidency in this period due to his pro-slavery attitude. Johnson’s interest in this pamphlet shows the powerful arguments of the pro-slavery movement. In Ruffin’s leaflet, he relies on a number of popular arguments to press his point for slavery. These ranged from arguing that the Bible advocated slavery, that enslaved people were inherently unable to look after themselves and that therefore they actually benefited from the "support" of slavery and, most powerfully, questioning what exactly the slavery abolitionists proposed to do with thousands of freed, previously inferior and mistreated, new citizens? Another popular argument was that slavery was a natural part of society. This argument gained traction in 1858 with the often quoted "Mudsill" theory. This theory claimed that society was built on foundations and that each layer of the foundation was necessary for society to function. Consequently, there must always be a collection of people at the bottom to allow those at the top to move civilization forward. Without these people staying at the bottom, society would collapse. This is in turn linked to Ruffin’s argument on Southern economy. Whilst the South relied on agriculture based around plantations the use of free labor was essential to its success. Though Southern anti-abolitionists argued for moral, religious, political and pseudo-scientific reasons for the continuation of slavery, their concern returned again and again to their economic reliance on the free labor force. The U.S. had begun with the colonists and their indentured servants. They could not imagine a world where this could not be continued to be relied upon. These were powerful and forceful arguments and they were arguments that persisted into the Civil War.

The majority of the anti-abolitionists believed that slavery was natural, slavery was necessary and the absence of slavery would equal the end of the Southern economy. It was a powerful belief and one that was not easily shaken. Even with the emancipation proclamation, the idea that to be African-American was to be inferior clung to American society until the 1960s, when the civil rights movement began to finally shake pamphlets like this from the mind-set of Anglo-American society.

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