The American Proslavery Movements of the 18th and 19th Centuries: A Biblical Perspective

The American Proslavery Movements of the 18^th and 19^th Centuries: A Biblical Perspective

By Aaron A. Shamp

While much of the history surrounding the movement to abolish slavery in the United States focuses on the time period between the 1820s and 1860s, history shows that there are two distinct periods in American history in which serious questions arose regarding the ethical, moral, and legal legitimacy of slavery. The first period involves the years immediately following the American Revolution, while the second period involves the more commonly recognized years of the main abolition and anti-slavery movements previously mentioned, 1820-1860s. The goal of this paper is to analyze the religious standpoint of those within American society who stood on the side of slavery, in light of these movements, in order to develop a better understanding of the role religion played in their attempts to justify what would become to be known as America’s “peculiar institution.”

During the colonial era the majority of churches, both northern and southern, were alike in that they shared a long history of proslavery ideology.[1] In addition, most churches throughout the colonies were either neutral or on friendly terms with the institution with only a few exceptions.[2] Of the religions that did mount a protest to slavery in the colonies, the most prominent were the Quakers and various societies that formed around their stance including the Society of Friends.[3] While most of these anti-slavery movements received little recognition from the other major religions of the time, John R. Mckivigan and Mitchell Snay, in their introduction to a contemporary volume of essays on religion and slavery titled, Religion and the Antebellum Debate Over Slavery, point out that the ideals surrounding the American Revolution and the new views regarding states of freedom and bondage, created a new undercurrent of short-lived anti-slavery sentiment among portions of the religious community within the new country:

In the aftermath of the Revolution, however, the wide acceptance of Enlightenment concepts regarding natural rights and human liberty led several denominations to incorporate condemnations of slaveholding in their disciplines. But this early burst of antislavery vigor in the churches barely lasted out the century, and few denominations actually enforced disciplinary actions against slave-owning members.[4]

To understand the abolition movement that dominated the 19^th century, it is important to understand the underlying reasons surrounding the failure of proto-abolitionist movements initiated in some denominations following the American Revolution.

Two distinct spheres of relations existed in this early period, the private and the public, which help explain the political realities. Although today’s historians might speculate on the veracity of a true distinction between the public and private spheres of social life in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, Douglas Ambrose points out that despite the changes taking place in the political public sphere, domestically within the private sphere of the home the structure remained relatively intact:

… [t]he character of the transformation that the Revolution, disestablishment, and the triumph of religious liberty brought to Virginia deserves further examination. For if the structures, attitudes, and practices that characterized the public realm had been transformed by the turn of the century, the structures, attitudes, and practices of the private realm remained remarkably intact.[5]

Ambrose’s emphasis on the distinction between the private and public realms, as well as the varying impacts of the social changes occurring within American society during the latter years of the 18^th century, touch at the root cause behind the failure of the early abolition movement. In his essay, Ambrose focuses his study of the impact of religion on the debate over slavery in the State of Virginia. In this study, he concludes that Virginians during this time drew a sharp distinction between the “values and relations of the household and the values and relations of the larger polity.”[6] Ambrose further contends:

Although in large measure public authority in post revolutionary Virginia “was based on the mutual contract of the individuals who composed society,” white male Virginians never extended this notion of “contract” between equal “individuals” to the household. Far from it. In the household—understood to mean both the home and the farm or plantation—the values of hierarchy, interdependence, and obedience held firm against the egalitarianism, individualism, and autonomy, that informed the rhetoric and, to a considerable extent, the reality of the polity.[7]

Ambrose makes an important point in noting the reluctance of Virginians during this time to extend the changes taking place in the public realm of post revolutionary America into their domestic affairs. The success of most of the South to maintain this separation of spheres, coupled with the enormous influence of the laity both in the North and South, would be a major determining factor in the continued survival of the institution of slavery in the decades to come.

The reluctance of many Virginians to incorporate external changes in their political and social structure into the structural workings of the home is completely in accordance with the broader national political changes that were taking place in the post-revolutionary restructuring of America. Americans had fought against centralized control by a foreign power and were struggling to structure a form of government that many believed should hold limited power over the individual lives of its constituents. This sentiment transcended into the layman’s views regarding the extent of power of religious organizations to influence political and economic matters. This, however, did not stop many of the major religions from attempting an anti-slavery movement as witnessed by the maneuverings of the Methodist and Baptist Church towards the end of the 18^th century. In 1784, the Methodist Church declared that slaveholders had but one year, except Virginia which was given two, to manumit their slaves or be “expelled from the church.”[8] As Ambrose points out, this generated such an enormous amount of opposition from the laity that the Church withdrew its demand a mere six months later.[9] The Methodists were not alone in both the existence of an anti-slavery movement following the war, as well as the brevity of its existence. In 1785, the Baptist General Committee attempted to address the issue and, as Ambrose notes, “declared ‘hereditary slavery to be contrary to the word of God….’ Little resulted from this declaration and in 1790 the committee again agreed to consider the ‘equity of hereditary slavery.’”[10] Eventually, the committee appointed Rev. John Leland to organize a final resolution to the question of the Baptist Church’s stance on slavery, which Ambrose quotes as follows:

The committee “[r]esolved, that slavery, is a violent deprivation of the rights of nature, and is inconsistent with a republican form of government; and therefore recommend it to our brethren to make use of every legal measure, to extirpate the horrid evil from our land….”[11]

However, the Committee was reluctant to make a broad ruling on the issue and in both 1791 and 1792 passed the issue on to the district associations to determine the proper course of action for themselves.[12] This proved to be unsuccessful in resolving the argument surrounding slavery, and in 1793 the General Committee “finally resolved ‘that the matter respecting hereditary slavery be taken up….’”, to which end, as Ambrose points out, the committee “‘voted by a large majority … that the subject be dismissed from the committee, as it belongs to the legislative body.’”[13] The failure of the various anti-slavery groups within these two religions to achieve any lasting unified church stance against slavery, clearly illustrates both the power of the laity within these organizations, as well as the unwillingness of Church leaders to go against the grain of opinion that so many of their parishioners held.

The reluctance of most southern parishioners to allow their respective churches to dictate economic and domestic affairs is in complete conjunction with their views surrounding political intrusion into the private sphere. An explanation as to how these people could consider themselves to be good Christians while at the same time continue to participate in, and support, an institution like slavery, can be found in the previously mentioned distinction which many Southerners made between the changing public world and the hierarchal and paternalistic structure of the home. Ambrose attempts to illustrate that while it is easy to view slavery today as an undisputable evil, those in slaveholding areas including Virginia held a deeply different view, which southern ministers had no choice but to emphasize:

Some ministers did, however, talk about slavery; they presented it to their congregations; and they attempted to explain its relation to evangelical Christianity. Their words reveal a defense of slavery that rested on Christian principles of order and duty. While narrow self-interest played its part in the defense of slavery, the efforts of evangelical Christians to reconcile their Christianity with their slaveholding help explain why their commitment to slavery constituted much more than the protection of an investment. In a very real sense, evangelical Virginians understood slavery as a familial relation between unequal members of a hierarchical structured and divinely ordained household.[14]

Although most anti-slavery movements in the immediate years following the American Revolution would collapse under popular sentiment, this view of duty and responsibility to one’s family, and by default to one’s servants or slaves, opened a window for some type of influence and control over the institution that would placate most anti-slavery advocates for the next few decades. This control was based on a religious sense of Christian responsibility that the Church declared slaveholders had to their servants, which “[m]inisters continually reminded their flocks that how well individuals fulfilled or failed to fulfill those duties and obligations would bear heavily on the fate of their immortal souls.”[15]

By choosing to avoid the question regarding the legality of slavery, and opting instead to focus on the proper administration of the institution, the various religious denominations of the North and South created an opportunity for slaveholders to incorporate a sense of religious and social responsibility into their slaveholding practices. As Jack P. Maddox, Jr. notes, Southern Christians in the face of the new concepts of liberty and equality emanating from the American Revolution and the “Enlightenment,” began to cultivate a sense of moral and spiritual responsibility to the welfare of their slaves: “Instead of shunning blacks, they emphasized paternalistic moral responsibility for them.”[16] Maddox contends that this concept of a familial duty towards one’s slaves was a readily available response to the emerging anti-slavery movement, due to the Christian emphasis on familial responsibility within the household:

Slavery was a pervasive and accepted reality of everyday Southern life. Hierarchical models of Christian social ethics were readily available—in the Scriptures, the classic Christian writings, the standard Calvinist and Lutheran catechisms, and the modern clerical attacks on natural-rights “infidelity.” Southern churchmen plausibly asserted that, once they came to study the question, they sincerely concluded that slavery was morally unobjectionable. The moral appeal of paternalistic social responsibility could lead doubters into proslavery conviction.[17]

A clear and coherent description of the thought process behind the adoption of the moralistic and spiritual responsibilities that one held to one’s family, and the subsequent application of those principles to one’s slaves, can be found in an essay by one of “the most influential pro-slavery voices in the antebellum South.”[18] Born in Virginia, Thornton Stringfellow (1788-1869), eventually became a Baptist minister and would become one of the most prominent pro-slavery advocates in the South.[19] He would play a major role in the eventual division over the issue of slavery between the Northern and Southern Baptist Churches, and today the Southern Baptist Convention, which Stringfellow helped to found, is one the largest Christian churches in the world, “with membership well into the millions worldwide.”[20] Stringfellow questioned the truth behind the two principal tenets of the Declaration of Independence: that men are born free and equal. In his view, these statements contradict both natural and biblical law. In regards to man’s natural state of freedom, Stringfellow argues:

There has never been an assertion made and believed, which all might know with so much certainty to be untrue. Man, when born is helplessly dependent, free to do nothing without permission, and certainly under parental control, until he is given up to the control of the State, which holds him under control until death. If this constitutes freedom, then all men are born free, but not otherwise.[21]

This view strikes at the center of all pro-slavery arguments- that there is no natural state of freedom that man must be beholden to. Stringfellow couples his opinion regarding the natural state of freedom with an equally critical stance on the Declaration’s proposed theory on equality:

The second thing affirmed in this Declaration of Independence, and, which with the above error, has been adopted by a portion of our countrymen as part of the Bible, is, that “all men are born equal.” I will only reply in language which all men know to be true, that they are not born intellectually equal; that they are not born morally equal; that they are not born politically equal; that they are not born equal in social position, or advantages; nor are they in any other sense equal, as integral parts of earthly governments, of which I can conceive, from their birth until their death.[22]

Stringfellow presents these opinions to counter the growing anti-slavery movement that had begun to use the principles of equality and universal freedom as their war cry against slavery. In these passages he presents a coherent counter argument to the anti-slavery factions, which he roots firmly in biblical terms that at the time held a considerable amount of power. Stringfellow accuses those who hold what he considers to be a blasphemous concept, “that all good government must originate in the consent of the governed….” of replacing a biblical outline for the proper organization of state and home with their own secular belief systems.[23] According to Stringfellow and other adherents to the paternalistic argument in favor of slavery:

Family government is a necessity in nature. Every new family instinctively assumes it because it is God’s ordinance. It is the best model of a State. Here the principles and objects of governments are first learned. Without this school the idea of government could not be known.[24]

This argument contends that the family is the fertile soil from which all civilization must emerge. From within the hierarchal structure of the household come the lessons that prepare family members for their ultimate role in life. It is here where states of inequality are most evident according to Stringfellow, with the patriarch at the top and descending levels of power and authority below.[25] Stringfellow uses the family to argue in favor of slavery:

The service or labor of our child is legally our money; we can coerce this labor at home—we can hire out this labor to another—or we can sell it at any price it will command in the market … This, and no more, is true of the African slave, except as to length of time he serves. The service or labor of our slave, is legally our money for life. The service or labor of our child, is legally our money for twenty-one years.[26]

By likening the situation of slaves to that of the slaveholder’s children, Stringfellow attempts to soften the harsh image of slavery by likening it to the domestic structure of the home.

With this argument, Stringfellow and his contemporaries begin to develop a biblical foundation upon which to justify their advocacy of slavery. The Bible is used to illustrate how God never intended there to be a state of equality among all men. As the anti-slavery movement following the American Revolution began to lose steam due to the unwillingness of contemporary denominations to attack the institution, pro-slavery advocates used the Bible as evidence that their cause was ordained by God, not only in direct word, but in the Bible’s failure to condemn slavery outright. Stringfellow was very aware of the openness of the Scriptures to his interpretation of Divine acceptance of slavery, and skillfully balanced his defense of slavery with modern day notions of familial duty:

The Almighty has subjected all of Adam’s posterity to a state of slavery as they are born into the world. Instead of giving them at their birth full-grown maturity and freedom … He ordained helplessness at their birth—delegated power to Adam to rule over them—and then by a necessity growing out of this helplessness, compelled him to take charge of them, until their physical and intellectual natures could be educated to take charge of themselves.[27]

He presents the argument that it is the “want of inequality in every individual of the species” which is the “cohesive element,” that God has ordained that “binds all together in the social body; so the head cannot say to the feet, I have no need of thee…”[28] The belief behind this view is that it will lead to an equal and “harmonious” contribution of elements of production, in which every individual contributes in the best way suited, culminating in a balanced society.[29] Stringfellow states that in the family, “which is the oldest and most important social organization,” and which God himself has ordained and laid out in the Scriptures the proper structure thereof, “inequality is found to exist among all members.”[30] In this family structure the inequality of its members is the essential factor behind its success. Each member within the family has their own unique skills, or lack thereof, which determines what role or function within the family unit they are best suited. Stringfellow suggests that this parallels society at large when he writes:

In this most ancient organization, experience unfolds the principles for constructing a social body out of parts unequal, by which each member shall be rendered useful, made a contributor to the general welfare, and a partaker in the general result to the full amount of his due.[31]

This state of familial servitude in relation to “white” children was structured to last until the age of twenty-one, at which time the status of adult was achieved and the individual was considered to have reached a point in his life where he was “qualified to use political and constitutional freedom.”[32] However, as Stringfellow emphasizes:

If, upon trial, however, this supposition proves to be a mistake in the case of an individual, the State reserves to herself the right to withdraw his constitutional and political freedom, and to subject him to such a system of slavery or servitude, as in her judgment is best adapted to promote his own good, and that of the State; and to continue that state of slavery or servitude for any length of time which the State thinks will best subserve this end.[33]

Stringfellow uses the example of imprisonment by the State to drive home the point that states of freedom and un-freedom exist side-by-side in all societies, and that the condition is determined based upon whether the individual is capable of or mature enough to handle political and constitutional freedom. Stringfellow then applies the ability to handle the responsibility of these freedoms to slavery in general:

All this shows that the reason for which persons should be subjected to slavery in any form, for limited or unlimited periods, is because they are unfit to use freedom as a good to themselves, in subservience to the good of the community….[34]

In order to justify the application of the paternalistic structure of the family onto the institution of slavery, Stringfellow and his fellow pro-slavery advocates were tasked with explaining why the African slave population was incapable of achieving a state in which they, in comparison to a twenty-one year old white child, would be capable of handling “political and constitutional” freedom.* Many proslavery advocates, including Stringfellow, openly declared that the African race as a whole was “constitutionally inferior to the white race.”[35] The generally accepted, or at least more digestible, understanding regarding Africans was that their race had never contributed anything of significance to civilization as a whole and that there was a “great physical, moral, and intellectual difference between the two races.”[36] The argument held that although at the age of twenty-one black and whites would on the surface appear to have matured alike, that this maturation was indeed, only skin deep, and that “the African remains, at the end of that time, a mere child in intellectual and moral development, perfectly incapable of performing the great functions of social life.”[37] It is easy to understand how these beliefs, combined with the commonly held notion that blacks were inherently unable to progress or to sustain an acceptable standard of living without superior guidance or influence, made the pro-slavery argument in favor of a patriarchal obligation rooted in the Bible widely accepted among slaveholding societies throughout the South and in many parts of the North. Stringfellow’s final analysis of slavery in the South echoed the sentiments of many throughout the South who endeavored to keep slavery an integral part of American society:

My purpose, thus far, has been to show that African slavery in the United States is a social and political necessity, and to show that it is just to the African, as it accords to him, in a form best adapted to his nature, more than an equivalent for his service, or labor; and that it is in accordance with the obligation to “do good to all men,” and to “do to others as we would they should do unto us.”…[38]

In light of the extensive and prolific nature of slavery in the American South at the turn of the 19^th century, it is understandable that these arguments in favor of slavery were widely popular throughout the region. Viewing slavery as a social responsibility of the superior race to provide for and govern the inferior African race allowed the Southern slaveholder, and those throughout the country benefiting from the institution, a way to absolve themselves from any moral or ethical attack from anti-slavery forces that presented themselves.

The second and third decades of the 19^th century would witness the beginning of a more concerted and focused attack against slavery that would span the better part of the century, and eventually bring the fledgling nation to war with itself. This movement would force proslavery advocates to delve further into the scriptures for support of their institution against what was widely becoming the commonly accepted view that slavery was a sin of the worst sort.

Prior to the 1820s, Southern slaveholders had faced only minor anti-slavery movements of little significance. Things began to change as the country continued to grow, both socially and economically, and slaveholders once again found themselves under attack by anti-slavery forces and abolitionist movements in both the North and the South. A key factor to the power of the abolition movement beginning in the 1820s and 1830s was its main tenet that slavery was a sin. In a sermon delivered on November 24, 1842, James Freeman Clarke illustrates, the abolitionists view, contrary to his own, on slavery as a sin:

The first theory declares that to hold slaves, or to have anything to do with holding slaves, is always sinful, and to be repented of immediately,--that no slaveholder should be permitted to commune in our churches, and that we should come out and be separate from this unclean thing as far as possible. They support this theory by the inconsistencies of slavery with the rights of man and the spirit of the gospel.[39]

Clarke was not mistaken in his understanding that the main attack against Southern slavery was in the form of condemnation of the institution as a sin. In a sermon delivered by a Bostonian preacher, Theodore Parker, in 1841, this concept is upheld, as is the passion that many in the movement against slavery brought to the fight:

They start from the maxim that slavery is a sin, and that sin is to be abandoned at once and forever…. What wonder is it that these men sometimes grow warm in their arguments! What wonder that their heart burns when they think of so many women exposed to contamination and nameless abuse; of so many children reared like beasts, and sold as oxen; of so many men owning no property in their hands, or their feet, their hearts, or their lives.[40]

By choosing to take the battle against slavery into the religious arena once again, anti-slavery forces failed to recognize that they were putting the argument into terms that pro-slavery forces had had almost forty years to explore and prepare a Biblical defense. While many scriptures would be quoted to defend slavery, three main biblical themes received the most attention from the pro-slavery camp: what was considered to be the “curse of Canaan,” slaveholding evidence in the Bible including Abraham’s slaves and the writings of the apostle Paul; and the Mosaic law delivered to Moses by God on Mount Sinai.[41]

Some historians have argued that the most often referenced passage in the bible in the defense of slavery is Genesis 9:20-27.[42] In this passage, an account is given of an incident involving Noah, his son Ham, and his grandson Canaan. In this account, Noah has fallen asleep because he drank too much wine. Ham happens upon Noah in his tent naked and proceeds to tell his two brothers Shem and Japheth of their father’s condition, who enter the tent and without looking at their father’s nakedness cover him with a blanket.[43] When Noah awoke “and knew what his younger son had done to him, he said”:

“Cursed be Canaan;

lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers.”

He also said, “Blessed by the LORD my God be Shem;

And let Canaan be his slave.

May God make space for Japheth,

And let him live in the tents of Shem;

And let Canaan be his slave.”

Pro-slavery advocates grasped this scripture and held it up in defense against abolitionists, not only as a biblical basis for slavery, but as evidence that the African was predetermined to be subjected to slavery through the curse of Canaan, “which was designated by his blackness, the sign of this curse.”[44]

Another prominent biblical source of pro-slavery evidence is the fact that Abraham owned over three hundred slaves during his time. Many at the time viewed Abraham and his family’s lineage as the “first organization of the Church as a visible society, separate and distinct from the unbelieving world…” and argued that slavery had been ordained and condoned through the overwhelming evidence of God’s favor of Abraham.[45] In Genesis 17:12-14, God makes demands of Abraham regarding the circumcision of his slaves:

Throughout your generation

every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old,

including the slave born in your house

and the one bought with your money

from any foreigner who is not your offspring.

Both the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money

must be circumcised.[46]

In this passage, Southern slaveholders saw a clear reference to slavery by God, and utilize it against the anti-slavery forces as direct evidence that God not only acknowledged slavery, but also accepted and incorporated it into his relations with Abraham and his descendants.

Another popular biblical passage used extensively by pro-slavery factions was a letter written by St. Paul to Philemon in response to a request for advice that Philemon had extended to St. Paul over the proper Christian way to deal with a fugitive slave under his care named Onesimus.[47] As Martin Lowrance Jr., points out, “[a]s the Fugitive Slave Laws of 1793 and 1850 were being hotly debated in antebellum America, the Pauline doctrine concerning Onesimus became a central text in determining the Christian response to this legislation.”[48] According to Lowrance, St. Paul instructed Philemon that the “‘right thing to do’” was to return Onesimus to his owner, “but only after he has been sufficiently exposed to salvation through Christ and turned into a Christian.”[49] Southern pro-slavery voices, including Stringfellow, used the letter from Paul to Philemon not only to justify slavery but also to attack the morality and religious authority of states which provided protection to fugitive slaves:

Before the writing of this letter, no Scripture furnished information which is now needed—that is, in a form that cannot be misunderstood. In the progress of human events, this information was not needed until the nineteenth century. But the precise information which this letter furnishes is now wanting. It is wanted to show the sin which men are now committing against God and men—not only in opposing slavery, but in refusing to deliver up fugitive slaves.[50]

Pro-slavery advocates did not stop here with their claim that the Bible, and therefore God, not only defended slavery, but actually supported it as a central element to civilized society.

In an essay titled Slavery Defended from Scripture against the Attacks of the Abolitionists, Alexander McCaine presents his religious argument in favor of slavery in the form of propositions, each of which present his views on the issue.[51] In proposition II, titled Slavery has been sanctioned by Almighty God, McCaine refers to the passing down of the Ten Commandments to Moses and his people by God at Mount Sinai.[52] McCaine asserts that the last of these Commandments, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his man servant, nor his maid servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything else that is thy neighbor’s,” illustrates once again that God fully accepted the institution of slavery among his “chosen people” and solidified it through incorporation into the Mosaic law:

1. Slavery is recognized by God: for manservant and maidservant are slaves. 2. The slave is the property, as much so as the house, the ox, or the ass. 3. The right of the master to hold such property is allowed and defended. 4. Coveting this species of property is forbidden. 5. There can be nothing immoral in holding slaves, since God has sanctioned and defended slavery.[53]

McCaine took his defense of slavery a step further by rooting the argument in favor of slavery not only in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament as well. In proposition V, McCaine argues that “[t]he sanction given to slavery, in the Old Testament is renewed and confirmed by the Savior in the New.”[54] He quotes Christ as saying in his Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5: 17-18, “‘[t]hink not that I am come to destroy the Laws or the Prophets: I am not come to destroy the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill.’”[55] Many proponents of slavery viewed this as Christ’s direct affirmation of the previously established rules governing men set forth in the Old Testament, and therefore as Jesus’ acceptance and advocacy of slavery among men. Lewis M. Purifoy supports this concept in his essay, The Southern Methodist Church and the Proslavery Argument, in which he quotes a Methodist preacher from Knoxville, Tennessee, William G. Brownlow who points out that:

Christ, when condemned under Roman law, did not resist or complain; Christ did not counsel the Jews to rebel, did not denounce slavery in the Roman Empire nor object to its severity; Paul before Felix, did not oppose the Roman law but rather argued for his rights under the law; neither Luther nor Calvin ever made war upon the existing laws of their respective countries…[56]

This statement highlights the extent to which pro-slavery advocates went in adopting a defense against slavery rooted in the Bible.

Perhaps no better insight to the view that southern pro-slavery forces held towards slavery can be found than in an address given on slavery by James H. Thornwell, composed in 1861 and adopted by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America following the Presbyterian Church’s division over the issue of slavery:

We stand exactly where the Church of God has always stood—from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to Christ, from Christ to the Reformers, and from the Reformers to ourselves. We stand upon the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles, Jesus Christ Himself being the Chief corner stone. Shall we be excluded from the fellowship of our brethren in other lands, because we dare not depart from the charter of our faith? Shall we be branded with the stigma of reproach, because we cannot consent to corrupt the word of God to suit the intuitions of an infidel philosophy? Shall our names be cast out as evil, and the finger of scorn pointed at us, because we utterly refuse to break our communion with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with Moses, David and Isaiah, with Apostles, Prophets and Martyrs, with all the noble army of confessors who have gone to glory from slave-holding countries and from a slave-holding Church, and without ever having dreamed that they were living in mortal sin, by conniving at slavery in the midst of them? If so we shall take consolation in the cheering consciousness that the Master has accepted us.[57]

This passage illustrates the conviction with which many pro-slavery southerners went forward in their defense of slavery, as well as their deep belief that it was they who had religion on their side, while those who were against slavery were the committing the ultimate of sins by going against, and defaming the word of God.

The failure of those within these religions who opposed slavery to organize an effective counter-argument to the institution resulted in the ability of the Southern slaveholder, as well as those benefiting from the institution, to incorporate religion into their understanding of their role in the institution, and in the process form a coherent and logically organized argument in favor of slavery. This argument found its basis in the notion of a divinely ordained responsibility of the master class to take charge of and provide for inferior classes, which they incorporated into the preexisting paternalistic structure of the family unit. Moreover, there was a commonly purported belief that Africans as a race were incapable of existing on any level of freedom as that of the white race, and left to their own devices would inevitably wither away as a child forced too early from the home. While it is impossible to determine whether those who made these types of claims to support their practice of forced labor truly believed this, it is indisputable that religion was at the center of proslavery argument throughout the institution’s existence on American soil.

As the 19^th century progressed, a more concerted effort to remove the institution developed. Anti-slavery advocates and abolitionists spent the better part of the century attacking the institution of slavery as a sin against man and God. This tactic proved very difficult due to the lengthy amount of time pro-slavery factions had already had to base their defense of slavery in religious terms. The pro-slavery camp had strong scriptural evidence that held a lot of power in a society whose standards of morality were set in the Bible. The two sides in the hotly contested debate both claimed they were on the side of God while the other was guilty of blasphemy. The division over this issue ultimately resulted in schisms between many of America’s most prominent denominations. In the face of escalated attacks against their society’s lifeblood Southern slaveholding states would ultimately become convinced that their only option was to secede from the Union. It would take a war of tremendous magnitude to solve the debate over the issue of slavery in the U.S. South, a war that would claim thousands of lives on both sides and leave the country deeply divided over the moral and legal controversies surrounding one of the most “peculiar institutions” in our nation’s history.

Works Cited

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Virginia,” in John R. Mckivigan and Mitchell Snay eds., Religion and the Antebellum Debate over Slavery. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1998. pp. 36-40.

Chesebrough, David B., ed. “God Ordained This War”: Sermons on the Sectional Crisis 1830-

1865. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991. pp. 18.

Clarke, James Freeman. “Slavery in the United States, Sermon Delivered in Armory Hall,

Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1842,” in Mason I. Lowance, Jr., eds., A House Divided: The Antebellum Slavery Debates in America 1776-1865. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. pp. 101.

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Christianity,” in Paul Finkelman eds.,Articles on American Slavery, vol. 16., New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989. pp. 468. First published in Marxist Perspective vol. 2 (1979) 132-41.

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Finkelman eds., Articles on American Slavery, vol. 16. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989. pp. 575. First published in Journal of Southern History vol. 4 (1966) 3-16.

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Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1998. pp. 9.

Stringfellow, Thornton. “Slavery, Its Origin, Nature, and History Considered in the Light of

Bible Teachings, Moral Justice, and Political Wisdom,” in Mason I. Lowance, Jr., eds., A House Divided: The Antebellum Slavery Debates in America 1776-1865. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. pp. 68-79.

Thornwell, James H. “Address on Slavery,” in Robert R. Mathisen eds., The Role of Religion in

American Life: An Interpretive Historical Anthology. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 1982 pp. 104-106.

[1] John R. Mckivigan and Mitchell Snay, ed., Religion and the Antebellum Debate over slavery, (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 9.

[5] Douglas Ambrose, “Of Stations and Relations: Proslavery Christianity in Early National Virginia” in Religion and the Debate over Slavery, ed. John R. Mckivigan and Mitchell Snay, (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 36.

[16] Jack P. Maddex, Jr. “‘The Southern Apostasy’ Revisited: The Significance Of Proslavery Christianity,” in Articles on American Slavery, vol. 16. ed. Paul Finkelman, New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989) 468.

[18] Mason I. Lowance Jr. ed., A house divided: The Antebellum Slavery debates in America 1776-1865, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003) 61.

[21] Thornton Stringfellow, “Slavery, Its Origin, Nature, and History Considered in the Light of Bible Teachings, Moral Justice, and Political Wisdom,” in A House Divided: The Antebellum Slavery Debates in America 1776-1865, ed. Mason I. Lowance, Jr., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003) 68.

* At this point it is important to note that early on in the anti-slavery movement, slavery had not been attacked directly as a sin, rather, as discussed, the question was over whether it was the church’s responsibility to address the issue of slavery at all. Initially it was only necessary for pro-slavery advocates to defend the African’s state of inequality within the American social structure; the early part of the 19^th century would witness a more focused attack on slavery in regards to the morality of the institution, which would result in a more thorough scriptural defense of slavery.

[39] James Freeman Clarke, “Slavery in the United States, Sermon Delivered in Armory Hall, Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1842,” in A House Divided: The Antebellum Slavery Debates in America 1776-1865, ed. Mason I. Lowance, Jr., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003) 101.

[40] David B. Chesebrough, ed., “‘God Ordained This War’: Sermons on the Sectional Crisis, 1830-1865),” (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991) 18.

[45] James H. Thornwell, “Address on Slavery,” in The Role of Religion in American Life: An Interpretive Historical Anthology, ed., Robert R. Mathisen, (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 1982) 104.

[51] Alexander McCaine, “Slavery Defended from Scripture against the Attacks of the Abolitionists,” in A House Divided: The Antebellum Slavery Debates in America 1776-1865, ed. Mason I. Lowance, Jr., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003) 82-87.

[56] Lewis M. Purifoy, “The Southern Methodist Church and the Proslavery Argument,” in Articles on American Slavery, vol. 16. ed. Paul Finkelman, (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989) 575.