George Fitzhugh was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 social theorist who published racial and slavery-based sociological theories in the antebellum era. He argued that "the negro is but a grown up child" who needs the economic and social protections of slavery. Fitzhugh decried capitalism as spawning "a war of the rich with the poor, and the poor with one another" – rendering free blacks "far outstripped or outwitted in the chase of free competition." Slavery, he contended, ensured that blacks would be economically secure and morally civilized.

Fitzhugh practiced law and was a painter for years, but attracted both his fame and infamy when he published two sociological tracts for the South.