Proslavery in the antebellum United States

Proslavery is an ideology that perceives slavery as a positive good.

Aristotle claimed that some people were natural slaves, and that it was in the best interests of these people to be enslaved. He writes in book I of the Politics:

Accordingly, those who are as different [from other men] as the soul from the body or man from beast—and they are in this state if their work is the use of the body, and if this is the best that can come from them—are slaves by nature. For them it is better to be ruled in accordance with this sort of rule, if such is the case for the other things mentioned. For he is a slave by nature who is capable of belonging to another–which is also why he belongs to another–and who participates in reason only to the extent of perceiving it, but does not have it.

Thomas Aquinas argued that slavery was not part of natural law, but nonetheless he defended it as a consequence of human sinfulness and necessary for the good of society. He viewed the natural state of humanity as that which had existed prior to the fall of man, in which slavery was non-existent; on those grounds, many commentators see him as rejecting Aristotle's claim that some people were naturally slaves, although it is a matter of controversy as to whether he fully rejected Aristotle's views on the matter.

John Locke discusses slavery in his Second Treatise of Government. He rejects the idea that a person could voluntarily consent to enslavement, saying "a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact or by his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another" (emphasis in original). However, he goes on to argue that enslavement of those who are guilty of capital offences is permissible. He also defends the enslavement of those captured in war: "This is the perfect condition of slavery, which is nothing else, but the state of war continued, between a lawful conqueror and a captive" (emphasis in original).

James Farr describes John Locke as "a merchant adventurer in the African slave trade and an instrument of English colonial policy who proposed legislation to ensure that 'every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his negro slaves'" (the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina). Farr argues that Locke's theoretical justifications of slavery were inadequate to justify his practical involvement in the enslavement of Africans. He sees this contradiction as ultimately unsolvable:

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