Why did the “twenty-negro law” enrage many white southerners during the civil war?

“Lyman Trumbull, a northern legislator from Illinois who had been living in the South for twenty years, declared that “the negro is a physically and intellectually inferior being.” 

Furthermore, he said that this inferiority of blacks was more readily apparent to southerners during the war. There were still pockets of resistance to the Union’s gradual abolition of slavery; many white Southerners had not reconciled themselves with their new freedom. 

These Confederates found it difficult to comprehend why they would be expected to give up ownership and control over people whom they viewed as slave property. To them, emancipation was a most undemocratic maneuver by the north.” 

Here is the answer for, why did the “twenty-negro law” enrage many white southerners during the civil war?

“The slaves who lived in the south before the war were descendants of Africans who had been brought to America against their will. The white southerners viewed their slaves as property that belonged to them, not as people with free will. This is clearest in how they often refer to blacks by body parts.”

“Southerners found it heart-breaking to see the emancipation taking place because it meant losing something that they owned. Southerners disliked freeing their “property” because it went against their respect for private property.

1. Slaves were property of their owners, not people.

They didn’t live freely, they were basically slaves. The Confederate’s couldn’t imagine giving people what they considered their property. 

This is called respect for property. The southerners didn’t see black people as equals, they were mainly slaves that had no rights. 

2. Blacks were not considered fully human.

Southerners saw black people as property, not full humans. A simple way of looking at slavery is to picture it as a person being auctioned off on a block of wood. 

The slave is the wooden person who has no rights and has no say what happens to him or her. His or her body belongs to his or her owner. 

This was a huge issue for the south because they didn’t want to give up their slaves because they cared for them and couldn’t imagine life without them .

3. Abolishing slavery went against their respect to private property.

Slaves weren’t willing to be free for the southerners to keep their private property. They lived in cages, were beaten if they tended to talk, could not marry or have children without the permission of their owner, and were completely controlled by the owner. 

The southerners didn’t view them as humans at all. 

“Southern resentment to the new law was influenced by the idea that the North was changing the rules. 

For many southerners, the idea of slavery, owning slaves, and having a society built on slavery was a very significant part of their way of life. 

As stated by Rev. Robert F. Dabney, a prominent Virginia pastor and theologian, “The South is founded upon the principle of Slavery; its labor system is based directly upon this relation between master and slave.

4. Southerners couldn’t imagine living life without slaves.

The southerners didn’t want to give up their property, they loved their slaves. The southerners were different from the northerners, they had slaves and lived off of them. 

They didn’t want to give up their free labor. The south had a way of life and philosophy that was based on owning other human beings. 

” Lest we should be too quick to condemn the Confederacy for this view, we should note that many white northerners also subscribed to this idea and found it difficult to imagine a world without slavery as well. 48% of Northern whites answered a wartime question asking if they “would free the slaves at once if it were possible to do so” with a flat no. In the north, the abolition of slavery was never even seriously debated.” 

5. The north changed what they thought about slavery.

In the north, there was a lot of animosity towards slavery and how it impacted society. The northern states saw blacks as equals and fought to make them free. 

They saw freeing slaves as a way of defeating enemies in the south by attacking their way of life, but most importantly, they believed in equality and felt that blacks should be free from control by others. 

“This was a difficult task. How can you convince people to care for slaves in the south when they are being told that their neighbors are trying to oppress them? 

The northern anti-slavery society’s propaganda was full of ideas that portrayed the south as oppressive and unfair, notably that slavery made blacks less than human.