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Seventeen Centuries of Sin: The Christian Past in Antebellum Slavery Debates
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 October 2020
Abstract
Historians of American religion generally agree that religious debates over slavery were characterized by a reliance on the plain meaning of the Bible. According to the conventional wisdom, antebellum Americans were uninterested in or even overtly hostile to tradition and church history. However, a close study of pro- and antislavery literature complicates this picture of ahistorical biblicism. For some defenders of slavery, not merely the Bible but also Christian tradition supported their position, and these Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists mined the past for examples of Christian slaveholding. On the other hand, both white and Black antislavery authors used religious history to bolster their cases against the peculiar institution, with African Americans leading the way in developing an antislavery account of the Christian past. The previously unnoticed historical dimensions of religious arguments over slavery prove central to understanding why these debates failed, while also modifying how we conceive of scripture, tradition, and religious authority in nineteenth-century America. Arguments over slavery show that religious Americans—even many who claimed to be biblicists—did not read the Bible alone but always alongside and in relation to other texts, traditions, and interpreters.
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References
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91 [Schaff, Philip], “The Influence of the Early Church on the Institution of Slavery,” Mercersburg Review 10 (October 1858): 616Google Scholar; and Schaff, Philip, Slavery and the Bible: A Tract for the Times (Chambersburg, Pa.: M. Kieffer, 1861), 30–31Google Scholar.
92 Barnes, Albert, The Church and Slavery (Philadelphia: Parry and McMillan, 1857), 44, 26Google Scholar.
93 For example, see Gurowski, Adam, Slavery in History (New York: A. B. Burdick, 1860), 165–166Google Scholar.
94 See Ernest, Liberation Historiography, 309; and Pennington, J. W. C., “A Review of Slavery and the Slave-Trade,” Anglo-African Magazine 1, no. 5 (May 1859): 156Google Scholar.
95 One discussion of slavery in the South Carolina assembly cited Bishop England's interpretation of Catholic tradition: Report of the Minority of the Special Committee of Seven, to whom was Referred so much of Gov. Adams’ Message, No. 1, as Relates to Slavery and the Slave Trade (Columbia, S.C.: Steam Power Press Carolina Times, 1857), 8.
96 So argues Brophy, Alfred L., University, Court, and Slave: Pro-Slavery Thought in Southern Colleges and Courts and the Coming of Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 227CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
97 Cobb, Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery, cvi–cix.
98 See Brophy, University, Court, and Slave, 251–253.
99 Sawyer, Southern Institutes, 122–124, 147.
100 See Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Mind of the Master Class, 80.
101 For Fitzhugh's thought, see O'Brien, Conjectures of Order, 251–252; and Schneider, Thomas E., “George Fitzhugh: The Turn to History,” in Lincoln's Defense of Politics: The Public Man and His Opponents in the Crisis Over Slavery (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006), 54–72Google Scholar.
102 Fitzhugh, George, Cannibals All! Or, Slaves Without Masters (Richmond: A. Morris, 1857), 158Google Scholar.
103 For examples, see Wallace, Catholics, Slaveholders, and the Dilemma of American Evangelicalism, 139.
104 Fitzhugh, Cannibals All!, 194, 196–199.
105 In 1864, Presbyterian minister William A. Hall argued that the South was ultimately fighting against the Reformation's emphasis on personal conscience. See Wallace, Catholics, Slaveholders, and the Dilemma of American Evangelicalism, 102.
106 Boyden, Ebenezer, The Epidemic of the Nineteenth Century (Richmond: Chas. H. Wynne, 1860), 14, 16–18Google Scholar.
107 MacMahon, T. W., Cause and Contrast: An Essay on the American Crisis (Richmond: West and Johnston, 1862), ix–x, 4, 21, 25Google Scholar.
108 Gleeson, David T., The Green and the Gray: The Irish in the Confederate States of America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 115–117Google Scholar.
109 For Hopkins's developing views on Christianity and slavery, see Levy, Ronald, “Bishop Hopkins and the Dilemma of Slavery,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 91, no. 1 (January 1967): 56–71Google Scholar.
110 Marsh, Leonard [Vermonter, A, pseud.], preface to Review of a Letter from the Right Rev. John H. Hopkins, D.D. LL.D., Bishop of Vermont, on the Bible View of Slavery (Burlington, Vt.: Free Press Print, 1861)Google Scholar; and Goodwin, Daniel R., Southern Slavery in its Present Aspects: Containing a Reply to a Late Work of the Bishop of Vermont on Slavery (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1864), 13Google Scholar.
111 One article noted that Henry VIII was more enlightened than Bishop Hopkins: “Slavery in England,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, 27 August 1864. Several publications printed a satirical letter that reproduced Hopkins's argument but replaced “slavery” with “polygamy”: “A Bishop Basted,” Harper's Weekly, 5 December 1863, 770; and “A Bishop Basted,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, 11 June 1864. For a list of others, see Levy, “Bishop Hopkins,” 56–57.
112 Goodwin, Southern Slavery, 16–17. For Northern support of slavery, see Weber, Jennifer L., Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.
113 Marsh, Review of a Letter, 4–5.
114 See also Atkins, Thomas, American Slavery: Just Published: A Reply to the Letter of Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, on this Important Subject (New York: W. G. Green et al. , 1861)Google Scholar; and Stroud, George, The Views of Judge Woodward and Bishop Hopkins on Negro Slavery at the South, Illustrated from the Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation (Philadelphia: s.n., [1863?])Google Scholar.
115 Hopkins, John Henry, A Scriptural, Ecclesiastical, and Historical View of Slavery, from the Days of the Patriarch Abraham, to the Nineteenth Century [. . .] (New York: W. I. Pooley, 1864), 211, 100–02, 115–16Google Scholar.
116 See Review of A Scriptural, Ecclesiastical, and Historical View of Slavery, from the Days of the Patriarch Abraham, to the Nineteenth Century [. . .], by John Henry Hopkins, North American Review 99, no. 205 (October 1864): 619–620.
117 De Wolfe Howe, M. A., A Reply to the Letter of Bishop Hopkins, Addressed to Dr. Howe, in the Print Called “The Age” of December 8th, 1863 (Philadelphia: King and Baird, 1864), 18Google Scholar.
118 Goodwin, Southern Slavery, 70–73, 123–29, 142, 144–146, 149–151.
119 In this sense, uses of tradition and history mirror what Molly Oshatz argues about biblical exegesis—namely, that antislavery activists focused on the “spirit” of the text while proslavery authors insisted on the “letter”: Oshatz, Slavery and Sin, 59–60.
120 Hopkins's grandson addressed this when he wrote that his grandfather's defense of slavery “increased his popularity in the South, [but] made for him many influential enemies . . . throughout the North”: John Henry Hopkins III, “John Henry Hopkins, First Bishop of Vermont,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 6, no. 2 (June 1937): 201.
121 Thompson, Joseph P., Christianity and Emancipation; Or, The Teachings and the Influence of the Bible Against Slavery (New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1863), 14, 41, 51–52Google Scholar. Thompson traced anti-slavery sentiments throughout the Middle Ages and quoted from a number of fathers, councils, and popes: Thompson, Christianity and Emancipation, 53–56, 58–59.
122 See Wallace, Catholics, Slaveholders, and the Dilemma of American Evangelicalism, 2.
123 For Dabney's life and thought, see Wilson, Charles Reagan, “Robert Lewis Dabney: Religion and the Southern Holocaust,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 89, no. 1 (January 1981): 79–89Google Scholar; and Lucas, Sean Michael, Robert Lewis Dabney: A Southern Presbyterian Life (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P and R, 2005)Google Scholar.
124 Dabney, Robert L., A Defence of Virginia, [And Through Her, of the South,] in Recent and Pending Contests Against the Sectional Party (New York: E. J. Hale and Son, 1867), 6, 186, 204Google Scholar.
125 Noll, Civil War as a Theological Crisis, 8.
126 Perry, Bible Culture and Authority, 2.
127 For example, see Noll's arguments about white supremacy in Noll, Civil War as Theological Crisis, 57, or Holifield's discussion of biblicism and common sense philosophy in part 2 of Holifield, Theology in America. This study further challenges the Protestant ideal of biblicism which relied on a sharp contrast between scripture's authority and human authorities, including history and tradition.