How the Definitions of Slavery Changed After the American Civil War

The dial carrel spans from 1841 to 1926 — from the antebellum Transcendentalist era through the post-war Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and into the modernist 1920s. By assigning each cited sentence to its publication date, we can trace how the journal's discourse on slavery shifted across three distinct periods: before the Civil War (1841–1844), the post-war decades (1885–1910), and the modernist era (1911–1926).

Period I: Before the Civil War (1841–1844) — Slavery as Moral and Spiritual Condition

In the Transcendentalist volumes, slavery is defined primarily in moral, spiritual, and philosophical terms. The institution of chattel slavery is present — the 1844 volume discusses West Indian emancipation and the Jamaican apprenticeship system — but the dominant definitions are abstract and universal.

Slavery as the making of tools:

Slavery makes men our tools. — item hvd.32044054766902-03 (1841)

Slavery as a bare moral wrong:

Slavery is wrong. — item hvd.32044054766902-03 (1841)

Slavery as the opposite of freedom and mind:

Freedom, of mind; Servitude, of Force. — item hvd.32044054766902-04 (1841)

Slavery as spiritual subjection:

But where the spirit of the church is, there is slavery. — item hvd.32044054766902-03 (1841)

Slavery as enthrallment to anything less than the self:

The ancient Grecians had an expressive mode of representing such servitude in any of its instances, saying that the man is less than pleasure, less than money, less than whatever it be which enthrals him. — item hvd.32044054766902-04 (1841)

Slavery as the condition of the masses under the few:

The few have in all ages lorded it over the many, and this determines that the masses are born for servitude. — item hvd.32044054766894-01 (1842)

Slavery as a condition that justice abolishes:

But if I am just, then is there no slavery, let the laws say what they will. — item hvd.32044054766886-01 (1843)

Slavery as the subjection of the soul:

The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such as shared the serenity of nature. — item hvd.32044054766886-01 (1843)

Slavery extended to women:

In slavery, acknowledged slavery, women are on a par with men. — item hvd.32044054766878-01 (1844)

Slavery extended to white labor:

White slavery is refined by a poetic periodical, or rendered more tolerable by music. — item hvd.32044054766878-01 (1844)

Slavery as chattel property (the lone institutional definition):

The slave became a serf, attached to the soil, instead of being merely a personal chattel. — item hvd.32044054766894-02 (1842)

Slavery as reversible by fortune:

It was the fortune of battle, and the slave, by a reverse of fortune, might become the master. — item hvd.32044054766894-02 (1842)

The pre-war characteristic: In the Transcendentalist volumes, slavery is defined as a moral and spiritual condition — the subjection of the soul, the reduction of persons to tools, the domination of mind by force. Chattel slavery is acknowledged but treated as one manifestation of a universal human problem. The definitions are aphoristic, philosophical, and moralistic. The voice is that of the preacher and the philosopher, not the historian or the economist.

Period II: After the Civil War (1885–1910) — Slavery as Historical System and Political Economy

After the 41-year gap (1845–1884), the revived Dial returns to the topic of slavery with a fundamentally different approach. Slavery is now defined as a historical, political, and economic system — something to be studied, analyzed, and understood as a past institution with lasting consequences.

Slavery as a system of personal property disconnected from morals:

sovereign States, slavery a mere matter of personal property, and not a matter of morals. — item mdp.39015030979564-02 (1889)

Slavery as a total political-economic system:

Slavery was well-organized, had vast wealth, had unlimited social support, had special provisions for its defense in the Constitution of the United States, had seats in Congress, controlled elections, made presidents, judges, and officers of every grade. — item inu.32000000678567-02 (1899)

Slavery as the "peculiar institution":

Slavery was called by one of its defenders 'our peculiar institution'; surely here was the counter peculiar institution. — item inu.32000000678567-02 (1899)

Slavery as bad political economy:

it is clear to me that slavery means, for the white man, bad political economy; bad social morality; bad internal political organization, and a bad influence upon free labour and freedom all over the world. — item chi.19171245-05 (1900)

Slavery as an obstacle to democracy:

Slavery is to be studied merely as an obstacle to their regular and normal working. — item mdp.39015030979598-05 (1893)

Slavery as a subordinate fact in American history:

Thus the slavery struggle is the subordinate and not the principal fact in our history; it is to be studied in its dependence upon the irresistible expansion of American democracy. — item mdp.39015030979598-05 (1893)

Slavery as economically inefficient:

Slave labor was unskilful. — item mdp.39015030979598-04 (1893)

Slaves lacked versatility. — item mdp.39015030979598-04 (1893)

Slavery as a national problem that required constitutional resolution:

The overthrow of slavery was essential to the accomplishment of our national ends, and the question could not be left to local option. — item mdp.39015030979598-05 (1893)

Slavery abolished by economic interest, not philanthropy:

Even the abolition of slavery has been due, not to philanthropy and Christian (altruistic) principles, but to economic interest: 'It was the discovery, not that Christ had proclaimed the equality of men, but that freedom and rewards were more efficient than slavery and punishments in calling forth the energies of labor.' — item mdp.39015030979614-02 (1894)

Slavery as a historical subject worthy of study:

A History of Slavery and Serfdom. — item pst.000020201036-05 (1895)

White Servitude in the Colony of Virginia. — item pst.000020201043-05 (1896)

The Emancipation Proclamation as a historical event:

The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, showed the irresistible march of time. — item pst.000020201043-01 (1896)

The Thirteenth Amendment as constitutional resolution:

the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery forever from the United States and from all places under their jurisdiction, towards which the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln was merely a preparatory step. — item mdp.39015031048187-05 (1913)

Slavery as a settled question:

Slavery was the problem of your day, and that was settled. — item mdp.39015031048161-01 (1911)

The post-war characteristic: In the post-war volumes, slavery is defined as a past institution — something to be studied historically, analyzed economically, and understood as a system that was overthrown. The definitions are concrete, institutional, and analytical. The moral absolutism of the Transcendentalist volumes ("Slavery is wrong") gives way to the dispassionate analysis of the historian and the economist ("Slave labor was unskilful"). Slavery is no longer a universal spiritual condition but a specific American institution with specific causes, mechanisms, and consequences.

But this period also sees the analogical extension of slavery to new forms of bondage:

Wage slavery:

The Wage Slaves of New York. — item chi.78013557-06 (1899)

his condition that of industrial slavery. — item pst.000020201081-02 (1898)

Tolstoy's critique of wage labor:

The Slavery of Our Times. — item chi.19171245-06 (1900)

White slavery (prostitution):

Slavery of Prostitution: A Plea for Emancipation. — item mdp.39015031076501-05 (1916)

Child slavery:

White Child Slavery. — item hvd.32044089408371-06 (1890)

Penal servitude:

'Penal Servitude' is a pamphlet directed against the prison contractor, who here figures as a slave driver under state authority. — item mdp.39015031048245-03 (1912)

Intellectual slavery:

ing these long centuries to almost abject intellectual slavery. — item inu.32000000678567-03 (1899)

Servitude to an idea:

no servitude is more helpless than that of unintelligent submission to an idea. — item pst.000020201159-04 (1902)

This analogical extension is a bridge between the Transcendentalist universalism and the modernist existentialism that follows. The post-war volumes both concretize slavery as a historical institution and re-extend it as a metaphor for new forms of oppression — wage labor, prostitution, imprisonment, intellectual conformity.

Period III: The Modernist Era (1911–1926) — Slavery as Existential and Psychological Condition

In the final period, the definitions shift again. Slavery is no longer primarily a historical institution to be analyzed but an existential and psychological condition — a feature of the self and its relationship to desire, chance, and mastery.

Slavery as the condition of having a master, regardless of who:

We shall not escape slavery by a change of masters. — item iau.31858028292138-05 (1922)

Slavery as the subjection of the self to desire:

The man who has a desire is condemned to be a slave. — item pst.000020203214-04 (1920)

Slavery as identification with labor:

He is a slave, it appears, of his two hands. — item pst.000020203283-06 (1923)

Slavery as the recurring possibility after emancipation:

For centuries the world has defined progress in terms of emancipation, and is now cruelly hurt to find that in freeing men it has perforce set them free to enslave their fellows. — item pst.000020203214-06 (1920)

The limits of emancipation:

To the Black Belt, emancipation has brought none of the good predicted; but it has brought good to the white districts. — item pst.000020201203-03 (1904)

The position of the negro since emancipation has improved but little. — item pst.000020201203-05 (1904)

The modernist characteristic: In the modernist volumes, slavery returns to the universal and the existential — but now without the Transcendentalist confidence that moral clarity can abolish it. The tone is darker, more skeptical. Slavery is no longer simply "wrong" (as in 1841) or "settled" (as in 1911) but recurring — a permanent feature of the human condition that emancipation cannot finally eradicate. The insight that "we shall not escape slavery by a change of masters" is a modernist repudiation of the progressive faith that institutional reform can solve the problem of domination.

Summary: The Evolution of Definitions Across Three Periods

The Arc of Change

The evolution can be described as a movement through three phases:

1. Moral universalism (1841–1844): Slavery is a spiritual condition — the subjection of the soul to force, the reduction of persons to tools. Chattel slavery is one manifestation of a universal wrong. The remedy is moral: justice, freedom of mind, the recognition of the infinite worth of the individual soul.

2. Historical particularism (1885–1910): Slavery is a past American institution — a system of property, political economy, and constitutional crisis that was overthrown by war and amendment. The remedy was institutional: the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, the Civil War. But the analogical extension of slavery to wage labor, prostitution, imprisonment, and intellectual conformity suggests that the moral universalism of the Transcendentalists survived beneath the historical analysis.

3. Existential skepticism (1911–1926): Slavery is a permanent human condition — the subjection of the self to desire, to chance, to mastery itself. Emancipation did not end slavery but merely changed its forms. The remedy is uncertain: "We shall not escape slavery by a change of masters." The modernist volumes return to the universality of the Transcendentalist definition but without its moral confidence — slavery is no longer simply "wrong" but inexpugnable, woven into the fabric of human existence.

The arc thus traces a movement from certainty through analysis to skepticism. The Transcendentalists knew that slavery was wrong and believed it could be ended. The post-war historians knew that slavery had been ended and analyzed why. The modernists discovered that ending slavery had not ended bondage — that "in freeing men it has perforce set them free to enslave their fellows."