"The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and in some sense, the freest people in the world." These are the beginning words in George Fitzhugh's Cannibal's All!, a work created to convince people that slavery is indeed a positive endeavor. Fitzhugh goes on to explain how slaves are treated well and how they are being done a favor by forcing slavery onto them (since naturally they are unable of doing anything else well), in addition to being an economical need of society. He comments that slavery is not a sin, and that it is, in fact, supported by The Bible. Frederick Douglass" The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass proves Fitzhugh's points false with first hand examples.
Fitzhugh claims that slaves are "the freest people in the world," that they can "sleep at any hour" and "luxuriate in corporeal and mental repose." Douglass" Narrative disputes these points. He gives an example of a mistress killing Douglass" wife's cousin for sleeping. "The offence for which this girl was thus murdered was this: She had been set that night to mind Mrs. Hicks" baby, and during the night she fell asleep, and the baby cried. She, having lost her rest for several nights previous did not hear the crying. Mrs. Hicks, finding the girl slow to move, jumped from her bed, seized an oak stick of wood by the fireplace, and with it broke the girl's nose and breastbone, and thus ended her life" (p. 257). Freedom to sleep is not the only right that the slaves are falsely claimed to enjoy, "corporeal and mental repose" is also not granted to slaves. "Luxurious corporeal repose" is illustrated in the Narrative as a monthly allowance of "eight pounds of pork, or its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal" (p. 247), and a yearly allowance of clothing, consisting of "two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers, one jacket, one pair of trousers for winter, one pair of stockings, and one pair of shoes" (p.
