How did slaveholders justify slavery?

They said the cotton trade, America's biggest export, couldn't survive without it.

They said blacks were better-off in America than they would be if they'd stayed in Africa.

They said that blacks were simple, happy folk who didn't want responsibilities, and weren't fit for them anyway.

They said that slavery was a perfect, God-given arrangement of master and man, and that the Almighty would end slavery when He saw fit.