White southerners defended slavery as a necessary evil

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After the American Revolution, many white southerners defended slavery as a “necessary evil.” The criticisms of abolitionists and Nat Turner’s slave rebellion forced slavery’s defenders to reconsider that argument. Thomas Dew, George Fitzhugh and others fashioned a pro-slavery argument in which they maintained that slavery was beneficial to slaves and masters, and was superior to the North’s system of free labor. How did white southerners defend the institution of slavery?