The doctrine of justifying enslavement through natural hierarchy

The doctrine of justifying enslavement through natural hierarchy presents domination as a fact of nature: some beings, it claims, have a rightful purpose in serving others, and granting them agency merely disturbs the order of things. John Francis Willard gives this argument its most explicit formulation, dressing it in classical philosophy. The wider narrative tests that claim against Washington Black’s experience, showing how racial hierarchy survives not only in enslavement but also in the language of property, labor, respectability, and public belonging.

The Doctrine as Willard’s Argument

In conversation with Washington, Willard recounts a village whose children sickened and disappeared. A surviving widow, he says, sewed dolls to resemble the missing villagers; he interprets the dolls as evidence that “the true and the living disappear, and in their place rise the disfigured and the unnatural and the damned.” The story turns social difference into a supposed natural boundary between the fully human and those deemed lesser. Willard then asks whether it is natural to sever “low beings” from their “natural-born purpose,” or to give them a “false sense of agency.” His analogy is blunt: just as cows exist to be eaten, he argues, some creatures exist in the service of others.

Willard frames this as a philosophical argument rather than a personal prejudice. He invokes Aristotle’s statement that nothing is accidental and that everything exists for the sake of something else, presenting hierarchy as part of an orderly, universal design. The appeal to a European thinker gives his position the surface of learned reasoning, but Washington recognizes the maneuver: Willard has memorized a prestigious quotation in order to bend it toward racial domination. The doctrine’s supposed neutrality is therefore exposed as advocacy. It makes a particular arrangement of power appear inevitable by describing it as nature.

From Philosophy to Social Practice

The narrative sets Willard’s rhetoric against the material organization of Faith Plantation. After a new master takes control, he dismisses the old overseers and brings in men drawn from the docks, including former soldiers and enslavers. Under this management, punishment and violence become routine instruments of control. Workers are injured, and James’s attempted escape ends in his death; the enslaved people are then branded again. The doctrine’s abstract division between those entitled to rule and those assigned to serve has a practical counterpart in a system that claims authority over people’s labor, movement, and bodies.

The same hierarchy appears in disputes over work and property. When the plantation master refuses to risk losing fifteen enslaved workers for a proposed undertaking, his calculation treats their labor and presence as resources belonging to him. Later, when Washington asks what happened to the people at Faith after the plantation was sold, a member of the Wilde family answers that they were no longer enslaved but apprentices and workers, paid for grounds work and given lodging. Her defense describes formal status and compensation, but Washington’s concern is whether the people he knew were simply transferred with the property. The exchange reveals the gap between a changed legal description and the continued power of former owners to narrate the lives of those who worked for them.

The Hierarchy Beyond the Plantation

Washington’s experience in North America shows that escape from enslavement does not end the threat of being treated as property. In Norfolk, Captain Benedikt Kinast challenges Titch’s description of Washington as a friend by asking whether Washington is property. Titch answers that he is, even while explaining that Washington has been made his scientific illustrator and personal assistant. His defense recognizes Washington’s skill and argues that he deserves respect, yet it still uses the language of ownership to secure protection. The scene shows how a benevolent or practical intervention can challenge degrading treatment without escaping the assumptions that make one person’s status dependent on another’s authority.

The Kinasts ultimately allow Washington and Titch to leave their ship discreetly. They have guessed something of the pair’s history, but ask only that their names and vessel not be mentioned in connection with the arrival. Their restraint contrasts with the slave-catching system Washington fears, but does not erase his precarious position. Walking through Norfolk, he sees people apparently moving through their own lives without compulsion, then recognizes that this freedom does not include him. The contrast between public movement and his fugitive status makes freedom a matter not merely of where a person can travel, but of whether others recognize that person as entitled to choose.

In Nova Scotia, the danger changes form without disappearing. Washington fears that kidnappers will seize freed Black people and carry them to the Southern states for enslavement. He is also attacked by a local man in a tavern street; although bystanders identify the attacker as a local brawler, Washington cannot shake the sense that he has escaped John Willard. The episode links individual racial hostility to the broader insecurity of Black freedom: even where Washington is not formally enslaved, the prospect of being seized or attacked shapes how safely he can inhabit public space.

Respect, Visibility, and the Limits of Inclusion

During the voyage to England with Tanna and G. M. Goff, racial hierarchy is voiced in a direct demand for segregation. A woman on the viewing deck tells Goff that Washington belongs below deck with the animals. Goff is outraged and rebukes her, while Tanna’s caution prevents the dispute from becoming a larger incident. Afterward, Goff increasingly confronts people who insult Washington, reacting as though the slight were directed at himself. These acts of defense matter, but the episode also makes clear that Washington remains exposed to public humiliation and that his acceptance can depend on whether someone with social standing chooses to challenge it.

The public gathering outside Newgate Prison offers another measure of Washington’s place in society. In the crowd assembled for executions, he has to push a path for himself and Tanna through the press of spectators. His height and broad shoulders give him the physical ability to do so; the scene places that ability alongside the racial and social divisions of the crowd, which includes sailors, former enslaved people, poorly dressed women, and children. The gathering is not itself an argument about natural hierarchy, but it shows a world in which Black people’s freedom and standing remain visible questions, contested in shared public spaces rather than settled once and for all by an individual’s escape.

Narrative Significance

Willard’s argument names the logic that the novel repeatedly encounters in practice: domination is defended by claiming that the subordinated were made for service, while the powerful present their control as order, prudence, or even protection. The scenes at Faith, aboard ship, in Nova Scotia, and during the crossing with G. M. Goff complicate any simple opposition between slavery and freedom. Legal status and personal allies can change; the assumptions that mark Washington as property, labor, or an intruder continue to shape what he can safely do and how others respond to him.

Washington’s response to Willard is a refusal to grant the doctrine intellectual authority. He sees that the appeal to Aristotle does not establish a natural order; it furnishes an imposing vocabulary for a hierarchy whose beneficiaries already hold power. Across the novel, the force of the argument is measured against concrete contradictions: Washington possesses scientific and artistic skill, forms relationships of mutual respect, and makes choices that cannot be reduced to a prescribed service. The doctrine depends on denying such agency as false or unnatural. The narrative, by following Washington’s life and perception, makes that denial visible as an instrument of domination rather than a truth about human nature.