The antebellum period is generally considered the time between 1820
             and the beginning of the war in 1865. Slavery was an integral component of
             the culture in the United States at that time. Abolitionists abounded in
             the North while the trade' continued to flourish in the south. Three
             documents from that era present the social as well as legal perspective
             The first is an article by a prominent doctor, Dr. Samuel Cartwright,
             entitled, Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race. It was his purpose
             to validate the ownership of slaves as a means of providing shelter and
             industry to a race handicapped to such a degree that they could not prosper
             on their own. The second document is the opinion of Justice Taney in the
             Dred Scott versus Sanford case of 1857. Here, it is legally determined
             blacks of the pre-Civil War era do not have the rights of an American
             citizen. The third document is a speech presented to the United States
             Senate on March 4, 1858 by James Henry Hammond wherein he argues that the
             black race are slaves through natural law. All of these documents were
             written in the belief that slavery was a legitimate social institution
             based on the inferiority of the black race.
             The Southern plantation system was socially and economically dependent
             on slave labor to continue. The chattel slave was owned and had absolutely
             no rights, including the right to life, that was not controlled by the
             owner. The plantation owners did not consider slave labor to be 'free'
             inasmuch as the care and upkeep of the slaves was their responsibility.
             In the 1840's a physician, Samuel Cartwright, created a psychiatric
             diagnosis called "drapetomania" that was specific to slaves - most notably
             found among freed slaves. The disorder was characterized by "a partial
             insensibility of the skin, and so great a hebetude of the intellectual
             faculties, as to be like a person half as...