According to Eric Foner in his book Give Me Liberty!, there were basic elements of the proslavery defense and some were especially aimed at non-southern audiences.
Basically, the southerners were worried about their standing in the eyes of the world, especially how other others viewed the intelligent life of their area. Because free states surpassed the slave states in public education, the amount of colleges, and in newspapers, literary journals, and other types of publications. However, the life of the mind thrived in the south, and the region did not absent novelists, political philosophers, and scientists.
Thirty years before the Civil War began, the northern criticism of the “peculiar institution” began to deepen, proslavery thought
