James Henry Hammond, South Carolina senator and plantation owner: “Our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people." and “None of that race on the whole face of the globe can be compared with the slaves of the South.”

George Fitzhugh, Virginia slaveholder: “The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world.”

John C. Calhoun, South Carolina slaveholder, former vice president, and U.S. senator: “I may say with truth, that in few countries so much is left to the share of the [enslaved American] laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where there is more kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age.”