After I read Josh Hawley’s Tweet on Monday, inferring that American slavery ended because of the actions of the church and Christianity I wished to explore it all more in depth. Whereas there were abolitionists within the Christian church, this was not the only viewpoint of those embracing Christianity and slavery, and in fact using the Bible in a way to justify slavery. Hawley’s simplified talking point, in an alternative historical manner as is observed by many Republicans nowadays, is unfortunate in that there is rose colored glasses effect to those who will not to consider American history with any motive rather than to mythify it to correspond to right wing Christian dogma. I have started out with a direct rebuttal of this tweet from Fredrick Douglas. I have included a large number of quotes extolling the “sin” of slavery, as well as two who wish to defend it. I have included quite a lot of a book from 1857 entitled Slavery as Ordained by God by Fredrick Ross a minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama, and wealthy onetime slave owner. I encourage the excerpts to be read to understand the ‘Christian’ argument being made just prior to the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln studied this book to prepare for his famous debates. I included information on a New York City debate between Fredrick Ross and Moses Wisner. I studied this subject during the week of Juneteenth. I made a special effort to find a quote or account of the American rabbis of the Civil War period, and what may have been their message. I end on an example of a well known rabbi of the time, Isaac Mayer Wise.
Personally, my great grandfather was born in Virginia in 1833. He and family members moved from what is now West Virginia to Iowa in 1854. He had three children when he joined the Iowa 33rd Infantry to fight for the Union. He was wounded and captured in Arkansas and spent time in a prison camp in east Texas. He died in his forties due to complications from his battle injuries. His older brother was in Missouri at the beginning of the war and chose to belong to the pro-Union state militia during the conflict. There were relatives however, who seemed to fight for the confederacy as well. Some apparently fought for the Confederacy before changing sides to the Union. This is what my exploration on Ancestry-com has indicated. So I have quite a lot of interest in this subject. I have toured the battle site of Vicksburg, MS and know of that remarkable story. So this research satisfied some hunger in this subject.
I must admit that I recognize many similarities with the pro-slavery voices in the writings and with today’s Republican Party. Perhaps you will agree?
“I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of the land... I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of 'stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.' I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. . . . The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.”
― Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1817 or 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to enslavers' arguments that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been enslaved. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography.
“I envy neither the heart nor the head of that man who rises here to defend slavery from principle.”
—J. Randolph.
John Randolph (June 2, 1773 – May 24, 1833), commonly known as John Randolph of Roanoke, was an American planter, and a politician from Virginia, serving in the House of Representatives at various times between 1799 and 1833, and the Senate from 1825 to 1827. With mixed feelings about slavery, he was one of the founders of the American Colonization Society in 1816, to send free blacks to a colony in Africa. At the same time, he believed that slavery was a necessity in Virginia, saying, "The question of slavery, as it is called, is to us a question of life and death ... You will find no instance in history where two distinct races have occupied the soil except in the relation of master and slave." In addition, Randolph remained dependent on hundreds of slaves to work his tobacco plantation. However, he provided for their manumission and resettlement in the free state of Ohio in his will, providing money for the purchase of land and supplies. They founded Rossville, now part of Piqua, Ohio and Rumley, Ohio.
“A people who have been enslaved and oppressed for some years, are most grateful to their liberators.”
— Lord Macaulay.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, PC, FRS, FRSE (25 October 1800 – 28 December 1859) was a British historian and Whig politician, who served as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and as the Paymaster-General between 1846 and 1848. Macaulay's The History of England, which expressed his contention of the superiority of the Western European culture and of the inevitability of its sociopolitical progress, is a seminal example of Whig history that remains commended for its prose style. Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire on 25 October 1800, the son of Zachary Macaulay, a Scottish Highlander, who became a colonial governor and an abolitionist.
“Slavery and the slave - trade ought to be abolished, because they are inconsistent with the will of God.”
— Bishop T. Burgess.
Thomas Burgess (18 November 1756 – 19 February 1837)[1] was an English author, philosopher, Bishop of St Davids and Bishop of Salisbury, who was greatly influential in the development of the Church in Wales. He founded St David's College, Lampeter, was a founding member of the Odiham Agricultural Society, helped establish the Royal Veterinary College in London, and was the first president of the Royal Society of Literature. In 1788 Burgess published his Considerations on the Abolition of Slavery, in which he advocated the principle of gradual emancipation.
“Slavery, in all its forms, in all its degrees, is a violation of Divine law, and a degradation of human nature.”
— Brissot.
Jacques Pierre Brissot (15 January 1754 – 31 October 1793), also known as Brissot de Warville was a French journalist, abolitionist, and revolutionary leading the faction of Girondins, (initially called Brissotins) in the National Convention. In February 1788 Brissot was the founder of the anti-slavery Society of the Friends of the Blacks. From the outbreak of the revolution in July 1789, he became one of its most vocal supporters.
“There is an alacrity in a consciousness in a consciousness of freedom, and a gloomy, sullen insolence, in a consciousness of slavery.”
— Feltham.
Owen Feltham (1602 – 23 February 1668) was an English writer, author of a book entitled Resolves, Divine, Moral, and Political (c. 1620), containing 146 short essays. It had great popularity in its day. Feltham was still a teenager when he published his first edition of Resolves in 1623. This collection of essays played a crucial role in the development of the English essay as a genre.
“Death is natural to a man, but slavery unnatural; and the moment you strip a man of his liberty, you strip him of all his virtues; you convert his heart into a dark hole, in which all the vices conspire against you.”
— Burke.
Edmund Burke (12 January [NS] 1729– 9 July 1797) was an Anglo-Irish statesman, economist, and philosopher. Born in Dublin, Burke served as a member of Parliament (MP) between 1766 and 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party. It is often forgotten in this connection that Burke was an opponent of slavery, and therefore his conscience was refusing to support a trade in which many of his Bristol electors were lucratively involved.
“It is a debt we owe to the purity of our religion, to show that it is at variance with that law which warrants slavery.”
— Patrick Henry.
Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736 – June 6, 1799) was an American politician and orator who declared to the Second Virginia Convention (1775): "Give me liberty, or give me death!" A Founding Father, he served as the first and sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia, from 1776 to 1779 and from 1784 to 1786. A slaveholder throughout his adult life, he hoped to see the institution end but had no plan beyond ending the importation of slaves. Henry is remembered for his oratory and as an enthusiastic promoter of the fight for independence.
“God pardon the man who, in this year of grace, should think that a project to defend slavery could be crowned with success.”
— R. Cobden.
Richard Cobden (3 June 1804 – 2 April 1865) was an English Radical and Liberal politician, manufacturer, and a campaigner for free trade and peace. He was associated with the Anti-Corn Law League and the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty. In his opposition to the Opium Wars, Cobden argued that just as "in the slave trade we [the British] had surpassed in guilt the world, so in foreign wars we have the most aggressive, quarelsome, warlike and bloody nation under the sun."
“Slavery is not only opposed to all the principles of morality, but is pregnant with appalling and inevitable danger to the republic.”
— Humboldt.
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt is seen as "the father of ecology" and "the father of environmentalism". He often showed his disgust for the slavery and inhumane conditions in which indigenous peoples and others were treated and he often criticized Spanish colonial policies.
“It perverts human reason, and induces men endowed with logical powers to maintain that slavery is sanctioned by the Christian religion.”
— J. Q. Adams.
John Quincy Adams (July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American politician, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. During his time in Congress, Adams became increasingly critical of slavery and of the Southern leaders whom he believed controlled the Democratic Party. He was particularly opposed to the annexation of Texas and the Mexican–American War, which he saw as a war to extend slavery and its political grip on Congress. He also led the repeal of the "gag rule", which had prevented the House of Representatives from debating petitions to abolish slavery. Historians concur that Adams was one of the greatest diplomats and secretaries of state in American history; they typically rank him as an average president, as he had an ambitious agenda but could not get it passed by Congress. By contrast, historians also view Adams in a more positive light during his post-presidency because of his vehement stance against slavery, as well as his fight for the rights of women and Native Americans.
“We have found that this evil, slavery, has preyed upon the very vitals of the Union, and has been prejudicial to all the States in which it has existed.”
— James Monroe.
James Monroe (April 28, 1758 – July 4, 1831) was an American statesman, lawyer, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825, a member of the Democratic-Republican Party. He was the last president who was a Founding Father as well as the last president of the Virginia dynasty and the Republican Generation. Monroe was a member of the American Colonization Society which supported the colonization of Africa by freed slaves, and Liberia's capital of Monrovia is named in his honor. His father Spence Monroe (1727–1774) was a moderately prosperous planter and slave owner who also practiced carpentry.
“Any man claiming to be a Christian, and yet dares to hold his fellow - man in slavery, is recreant to all the principles and obligations of Christianity.”
— W. L. Garrison.
William Lloyd Garrison (December 10, 1805 – May 24, 1879) was an American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, which Garrison founded in 1831 and published in Boston until slavery in the United States was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. He was one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society and promoted immediate and uncompensated, as opposed to gradual and compensated, emancipation of slaves in the United States.
“Whenever a slave shall enter Hawaiian territory, he shall be free.”
— Kamehameha V.
Kamehameha V (Lota Kapuāiwa Kalanimakua Aliʻiōlani Kalanikupuapaʻīkalaninui;[2] December 11, 1830 – December 11, 1872),reigned as the fifth monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi from 1863 to 1872. His motto was "Onipaʻa": immovable, firm, steadfast or determined; he worked diligently for his people and kingdom and was described as the last great traditional chief. “He was a wise sovereign; he had seen something of the world; he was educated & accomplished, & he tried hard to do well by his people, & succeeded. There was no trivial royal nonsense about him; He dressed plainly, poked about Honolulu, night or day, on his old horse, unattended; he was popular, greatly respected, and even beloved.” — Mark Twain
“Do you ask me whether I would help a slave to gain his freedom? I answer, I would help him with heart, and hand, and voice; I would do for him what I shall wish I had done, when, having lost his dusky skin and blossomed into the light of eternity, he and I shall stand before our Master, who will say, Inasmuch as ye did it unto him, slave as he was, ye did it unto me.”
— H. W. Beecher.
Henry Ward Beecher (June 24, 1813 – March 8, 1887) was an American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker, known for his support of the abolition of slavery, his emphasis on God's love, and his 1875 adultery trial. His rhetorical focus on Christ's love has influenced mainstream Christianity to this day. Several of his brothers and sisters became well-known educators and activists, most notably Harriet Beecher Stowe, who achieved worldwide fame with her abolitionist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.
“No country is wretched until it consents to its slavery.”
—Jane Porter.
Jane Porter (3 December 1775 – 24 May 1850) was an English historical novelist, dramatist and literary figure. Her bestselling novels, Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) and The Scottish Chiefs (1810) are seen as among the earliest historical novels in a modern style and among the first to become bestsellers. They were abridged and remained popular among children well into the twentieth century.
“I hate slavery, though the chains be of gold.”
— Mme . Fonseca
Eleonora de Fonseca Pimental (Rome, 1752-Naples, 1799) Eleonora Anna Feliz Teresa de Fonseca Pimentel was a notable poet, activist, journalist, and revolutionary, acknowledged worldwide for her role in the 1799 Neapolitan Revolution. Fonseca Pimentel asked to be beheaded, as was customary aristocrats sentenced to death; however her request was denied. The Kingdom of Naples only recognized her father's nobility, and additionally as a Jacobin she was no longer publicly viewed as nobility. As a woman once viewed as noble, who had however spoken out against the monarchy, she was made an example of through her public hanging. And of eight other patriots sentenced, she was the last to be hanged.
“Not only does the Christian religion, but nature herself, cry out against the state of slavery.”
— Pope Leo X.
Pope Leo X (born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, 11 December 1475 – 1 December 1521) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 9 March 1513 to his death in December 1521.
“Slavery is inconsistent with the genius of republicanism; it lessens the sense of the equal rights of mankind, and habituates us to tyranny and oppression.”
— Luther
Martin Luther OSA (10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, professor, and Augustinian friar. He was the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation, and his theological beliefs form the basis of Lutheranism.
“The same punishment [death] is here deservedly denounced against man-stealers as against murderers; for, so wretched was the condition of slaves, that liberty was more than half of life; and hence to deprive a man of such a great blessing, was almost to destroy him. Besides, it is not man-stealing only which is here condemned, but the accompanying evils of cruelty and fraud, i.e., if he, who had stolen a man, had likewise sold him.”
— John Calvin
John Calvin (10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) was a French theologian, pastor and reformer in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism, including its doctrines of predestination and of God's absolute sovereignty in the salvation of the human soul from death and eternal damnation. Calvinist doctrines were influenced by and elaborated upon the Augustinian and other Christian traditions. Various Congregational, Reformed and Presbyterian churches, which look to Calvin as the chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world.
“Slavery is the sum of all villainies.”
— J. Wesley.
John Wesley (28 June [O.S. 17 June] 1703 – 2 March 1791) was an English cleric, theologian, and evangelist who was a leader of a revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The societies he founded became the dominant form of the independent Methodist movement that continues to this day. Under Wesley's direction, Methodists became leaders in many social issues of the day, including the abolition of slavery and support for women preachers.
“I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.”
— Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and became best known for her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which depicts the harsh conditions experienced by enslaved African Americans. The book reached an audience of millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and in Great Britain, energizing anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. Stowe wrote 30 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential both for her writings as well as for her public stances and debates on social issues of the day.
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.”
― Harper Lee
Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016) was an American novelist. She wrote the 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird that won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and became a classic of modern American literature. Lee received numerous accolades and honorary degrees, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007 which was awarded for her contribution to literature.
There were the supporters of slavery of curse. And in doing so implying or flatly saying it was a divine right from God. Soon we will see this in much more detail by a Presbyterian minister from Alabama. Below are two quotes of note.
“Slavery is in reality a political institution, essential to the peace, safety, and prosperity of those states of the Union in which it exists.
— Calhoun.
John Caldwell Calhoun (March 18, 1782 – March 31, 1850) was an American statesman and political theorist from South Carolina who held many important positions including being the seventh vice president of the United States from 1825 to 1832. He adamantly defended slavery and sought to protect the interests of the slave owners in the South. In the late 1820s, his views changed radically, and he became a leading proponent of states' rights, limited government, nullification, and opposition to high tariffs. He saw Northern acceptance of those policies as a condition of the South remaining in the Union. His beliefs and warnings heavily influenced the South's secession from the Union in 1860–1861. He was the first vice president to resign from the position, and the only one to do so until Spiro Agnew resigned in 1973.
“The right of the Caucasian to hold in slavery an inferior race, bears the signet of Divine authority.”
— J. T. Morgan.
John Tyler Morgan (June 20, 1824 – June 11, 1907) was an American politician was served as a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War and later was elected for six terms as the U.S. Senator (1877–1907) from the state of Alabama. A prominent slaveholder before the Civil War, he became the second Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama during the Reconstruction era. Morgan and fellow Klan member Edmund W. Pettus became the ringleaders of white supremacy in Alabama and did more than anyone else in the state to overthrow Reconstruction efforts in the wake of the Civil War. When President Ulysses S. Grant dispatched U.S. Attorney General Amos Akerman to prosecute the Klan under the Enforcement Acts, Morgan was arrested and jailed.
On the question of the sin of slavery found in the northern mind.
“There are two sorts of secure sinners; those who vaunt it in the confidence of their own righteousness, and those who are secure through an insensibility of their own wickedness.”
— Bishop E. Hopkins.
Ezekiel Hopkins (died 1690) was an Anglican divine in the Church of Ireland, who was Bishop of Derry from 1681 to 1690.
Frederick Augustus Ross (December 25, 1796 – April 13, 1883) was a Presbyterian New School clergyman in both Kingsport, Tennessee, and Huntsville, Alabama, slave owner, publisher and pro-slavery author of the book Slavery As Ordained of God (1857).
Heading for "F.A. Ross' Corner," a series in the William Gannaway Brownlow's Jonesborough Whig that attacked Presbyterian minister Frederick Augustus Ross. Frederick Augustus Ross was born in Cumberland County, Virginia, as the son of David Ross, a wealthy businessman in Richmond, Virginia, who himself had emigrated from Scotland in the mid-eighteenth century.
Ross was educated at Dickinson College located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, with the class of 1815, although he did not graduate with his class.
During 1818, Ross entered into the Presbyterian ministry, emancipated his slaves, and then he moved to Kingsport, Tennessee, where he had his massive Rotherwood mansion, constructed on the Netherland Inn Road. Ross had his daughter, Rowena, educated at boarding schools located within the northern United States. Ross became pastor of Old Kingsport Presbyterian Church in Kingsport during 1826, and during 1828 he briefly labored as an evangelist in both Kentucky and Ohio. During the eruption of the Old School–New School Controversy division of the Presbyterian general assembly in 1837 and 1838, Ross aligned himself with the New School branch and he would remain as pastor of the Old Kingsport Presbyterian Church until 1852. Beginning in 1855, Ross became pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama, holding this charge until 1875 and continuing as pastor emeritus until his death in 1883.
The following can be found online of Ross’s Slavery As Ordained of God (1857).
SPEECH AT NEW YORK. The challenge to argue the question of slavery from the Bible was thrown down on the floor of the Assembly, as stated. Presently I took up the gauntlet, and made this argument. The challenger never claimed his glove, then nor since; nor has anybody, so far as I know, attempted to refute this speech. Nothing has come to my ears (save as to two points, to be noticed hereafter) but reckless, bold denial of God's truth, infidel affirmation without attempt at proof, and denunciations of myself. Dr. Wisner having said that he would argue the question on the Bible at a following time, Dr. Ross rose, when he took his seat, and, taking his position on the platform near the Moderator's chair, said, "I accept the challenge given by Dr. Wisner, to argue the question of slavery from the Scriptures."
*****
WISNER, Moses, lawyer, born in Aurelius, New York, in 1818: died in Lexington, Kentucky, 5 January, 1863. He was carefully educated, moved to Michigan in 1839, studied law, and was admitted to the bar at Pontine in 1842. He became prosecuting attorney for Lapeer County in 1843, and was governor of Michigan in 1849-61. In 1862 he entered the National Army as colonel of the 22d Michigan Regiment, but died on his way to the seat of war. Appletons’
Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 582.
Wisner was not especially active in politics until after the election of U.S. President Franklin Pierce in 1852, when he became active in the anti-slavery movement. He was one of the foremost critics in Michigan of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 which repealed the Missouri Compromise and opened the territories to slavery. He participated in the first convention of the U.S. Republican Party in Jackson, Michigan in July, 1854 where he declined nomination as Michigan Attorney General. That same year he was an unsuccessful candidate from Michigan's 4th congressional district to the U.S. House against Democrat George Washington Peck.
Leading up the war, few voices were more forceful than that of 1859-1860 Gov. Moses Wisner, who criticized fellow Republican Abraham Lincoln as being too conciliatory toward the South and opposed efforts to weaken Michigan laws designed to thwart slave traders. He emphasized Michigan's refusal to recognize the right of a state to secede from the Union by declaring "we cannot consent to have one star obliterated from our flag."
*****
SPEECH,
DELIVERED IN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY
NEW YORK, 1856.
THE circumstances, under which this speech was delivered, are sufficiently shown in the statement below. It was not a hasty production. After being spoken, it was prepared for the "Journal of Commerce," with the greatest care I could give to it: most of it was written again and again. Unlike Pascal, who said, as to his longest and inferior sixteenth letter, that he had not had time to make it shorter, I had time; and I did condense in that one speech the matured reflections of my whole life. I am calmly satisfied I am right. I am sure God has said, and does,say, "Well done."
The speech brings to view a wide range of thought, all belonging to the subject of slavery, of immense importance. As introductory,-there is the question of the abolition agitation the last thirty years; then, what is right and wrong, and the foundation of moral obligation; then, the definition of sin; next, the origin of human government, and the relations, in which God has placed men under his
rule of subjection; finally, the word of God is brought to sustain all the positions taken.
[The following is an excerpt from the speech from Dr. Ross]
That admirable book is a commentary upon this part of Genesis. It is the philosophy of geography. And it is the philosophy of the rule of the higher races over the inferior, written on the very face of the earth. He tells you why the continents are shaped as they are shaped; why the mountains stand where they stand; why the rivers run where they run; why the currents of the sea and the air flow as they flow.
And he tells you that the earth south of the Equator makes the inferior man. That the oceanic climate makes the inferior man in the Pacific Islands. That South America makes the inferior man. That the solid, unindented Southern Africa makes the inferior man. That the huge, heavy, massive, magnificent Asia makes the huge, heavy, massive, magnificent man. That Europe, indented by the sea on every side, with its varied scenery, and climate, and Northern influences, makes the varied intellect, the versatile power and life and action, of the master-man of the world. And it is so. Africa, with here and there an exception, has never produced men to compare with the men of Asia. For six thousand years, save the unintelligible stones of Egypt, she has had no history. Asia has had her great men and her name. But Europe has ever shown, and now, her nobler men and higher destiny. Japheth* has now come to North America, to give us his past greatness and his transcendent glory. (Applause.) And, sir, I thank God our mountains stand where they stand; and that our rivers run where they run. Thank God they run not across longitudes, but across latitudes, from north to south. If they crossed longitudes, we might fear for the Union. But I hail the Union,-made by God, strong as the strength of our hills, and ever to live and expand,-like the flow and swell of the current of our streams. (Applause.)
*Japheth (Hebrew: יֶפֶת Yép̄eṯ, in pausa יָפֶת Yā́p̄eṯ; Greek: Ἰάφεθ Iápheth; Latin: Iafeth, Iapheth, Iaphethus, Iapetus) is one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis, in which he plays a role in the story of Noah's drunkenness and the curse of Ham, and subsequently in the Table of Nations as the ancestor of the peoples of the Aegean Sea, Anatolia, and elsewhere.
These two theories of Right and Wrong,-these two ideas of human liberty,-the right, in the nature of things, or the right as made by God, the liberty of the individual man, of Atheism, of Red Republicanism, of the devil,-or the liberty of man, in the family, in the State, the liberty from God, these two theories now make the conflict of the world. This anti-slavery battle is only part of the great struggle: God will be victorious, —and we, in his might.
I now come to particular illustrations of the world-wide law that service shall be rendered by the inferior to the superior. The relations in which such service obtains are very many. Some of them are these:-husband and wife; parent and child; teacher and scholar; commander and soldier,-sailor; master and apprentice; master and hireling; master and slave. Now, sir, all these relations are ordained of God. They are all directly commanded, or they are the irresistible law of his providence, in conditions which must come up in the progress of depraved nature. The relations themselves are all good in certain conditions. And there may be no more of evil in the lowest than in the highest. And there may be in the lowest, as really as in the highest, the fulfilment of the commandment to love thy neighbor as thyself, and of doing unto him whatsoever thou wouldst have him to do unto thee.
Why, sir, the wife everywhere, except where Christianity has given her elevation, is the slave. And, sir, I say, without fear of saying too strongly, that for every sigh, every groan, every tear, every agony of stripe or death, which has gone up to God from the relation of master and slave, there have been more sighs, more groans, more tears, and more agony in the rule of the husband over the wife.
Sir, I have admitted, and do again admit, without qualification, that every fact in Uncle Tom's Cabin has occurred in the South. But, in reply, I say deliberately, what one of your first men told me, that he who will make the horrid examination will discover in New York City, in any number of years past, more cruelty from husband to wife, parent to child, than in all the South from master to slave in the same time. I dare the investigation.
And you may extend it further, if you choose,-to all the results of honor and purity. I fear nothing on this subject. I stand on rock, the Bible,-and therefore, just before I bring the Bible, to which all I have said is introductory, I will run a parallel between the relation of master and slave and that of husband and wife. I will say nothing of the grinding oppression of capital upon labor, in the power of the master over the hireling-the crushed peasant- the chain-harnessed coal-pit woman, a thousand feet under ground, working in darkness, her child toiling by her side, and another child not born; I will say nothing of the press-gang which fills the navy of Britain the conscription which makes the army of France -the terrible floggings-the awful court-martial- the quick sentence-the lightning-shot- the chain, and ball, and everyday lash the punishment of the soldier, sailor, slave, who had run away. I pass all this by:
I will run the parallel between the slave and wife. Do you say, The slave is held to involuntary service.? So is the wife. Her relation to her husband, in the immense majority of cases, is made for her, and not by her. And when she makes it for herself, how often, and how soon, does it become involuntary! How often, and how soon, would she throw off the yoke if she could! O ye wives, I know how superior you are to your husbands in many respects,-not only in personal attraction, (although in that particular, comparison is out of place,) in grace, ill refined thought, in passive fortitude, in enduring love, and in a heart to be filled with the spirit of heaven. Oh, I know all this. Nay, I know you may surpass him in his own sphere of boasted prudence and worldly wisdom about dollars and cents. Nevertheless, he has authority, from God, to rule over you. You are under service to him. You are bound to obey him in all things. Your service is very, very, very often involuntary from the first, and, if voluntary at first, becomes hopeless necessity afterwards. I know God has laid upon the husband to love you as Christ loved the church, and in that sublime obligation has placed you in the light and under the shadow of a love infinitely higher, and purer, and holier than all talked about in the romances of chivalry. But the husband may not so love you. He may rule you with the rod of iron. What can you do? Be divorced? God forbids it, save for crime. Will you say that you are free,-that you will go where you please, do as you please? Why, ye dear wives, your husbands may forbid. And listen, you cannot leave New York, nor your palaces, any more than your shanties. No; you cannot leave your parlor, nor your bedchamber, nor your couch, if your husband commands you to stay there! What can you do? Will you run away, with your stick and your bundle? He can advertise you!! What can you do? You can, and I fear some of you do, wish him, from the bottom of your hearts, at the bottom of the Hudson. Or, in your self-will, you will do just as you please. (Great laughter.)
[A word on the subject of divorce. One of your standing denunciations on the South is the terrible laxity of the marriage vow among the slaves. Well, sir, what does your Boston Dr. Nehemiah Adams say? He says, after giving eighty, sixty, and the like number of applications for divorce, and nearly all granted at individual quarterly courts in New England,-he says he is not sure but that the marriage relation is as enduring among the slaves in the South as it is among white people in New England. I only give what Dr. Adams says. I would fain vindicate the marriage relation from this rebuke. But one thing I will say: you seldom hear of a divorce in Virginia or South Carolina.]
LETTER FROM DR. ROSS.
I NEED only say, in reference to this letter, that my friends having questioned my position as to the good of the agitation, I wrote the following letter to vindicate that point, as given in the New York speech:-
HUNTSVILLE, ALA., July 14, 1856.
Brother Blackburn:-I affirmed, in my New York speech, that the Slavery agitation has done, and will accomplish, good. Your very kind and courteous disagreement oh that point I will make the occasion to say something more thereon, without wishing you, my dear friend, to regard what I write as inviting any discussion. I said that agitation has brought out, and would reveal still more fully, the Bible, in its relation to slavery and liberty,-also the infidelity which long has been, and is now, leavening with death the whole Northern mind. And that it would result in the triumph of the true Southern interpretation of the Bible; to the honor of God, and to the good of the master, the slave, the stability of the Union, and be a blessing to the world. To accomplish this, the sin per se doctrine will be utterly demolished.
That doctrine is the difficulty in every Northern mind, (where there is any difficulty about slavery,) whether they confess it or not. Yes, the difficulty with every Northern man is, that the relation of master and slave is felt to be sin. I know that to be the fact. I have talked with all grades of Northern men, and come in contact with all varieties of Northern mind on this subject. And I know that the man who says and tries to believe, and does, partially in sober judgment, believe, that slavery is not sin, yet, in his feelings, in his educated prejudices, he feels that slavery is sin.
Yes, that is the difficulty, and that is the whole of the difficulty, between the North and the South, so far as the question is one of the Bible and morals. Now, I again say, that that sin per se doctrine will, in this agitation, be utterly demolished. And when that is done,-when the North will know and feel fully, perfectly, that the relation of master and slave is not sin, but sanctioned of God, then, and not till then, the North and South can and will, without anger, consider the following questions:-Whether slavery, as it exists in the United States, all things considered, be or be not a great good, and the greatest good for a time, notwithstanding its admitted evils?
Again, whether these evils can or cannot be modified and removed? Lastly, whether slavery itself can or cannot pass away from this land and the world? Now, sir, the moment the sin question is settled, then all is peace. For these other questions belong entirely to another category of morals. They belong entirely to the category of what is wise to realize good. This agitation will bring this great result. And therefore I affirm the agitation to be good. There is another fact also, the result, in great measure, of this agitation, which in my view proves it to have been and to be of great good.
I mean the astonishing rise and present stability of the slave-power of the United States. This fact, when examined, is undeniable. And it is equally undeniable that it has been caused, in great part, by the slavery question in all its bearings. It is a wonderful development made by God. And I must believe he intends thereby either to destroy or bless this great Union. But, as I believe he intends to bless, therefore I am fortified in affirming the good there has been honor of God, and to the good of the master, the slave, the stability of the Union, and be a blessing to the world. To accomplish this, the sin per se doctrine will be utterly demolished. That doctrine is the difficulty in every Northern mind, (where there is any difficulty about slavery,) whether they confess it or not. Yes, the difficulty with every Northern man is, that the relation of master and slave is felt to be sin. I know that to be the fact.
I have talked with all grades of Northern men, and come in contact with all varieties of Northern mind on this subject. And I know that the man who says and tries to believe, and does, partially in sober judgment, believe, that slavery is not sin, yet, in his feelings, in his educated prejudices, he feels that slavery is sin.
Again, whether these evils can or cannot be modified and removed? Lastly, whether slavery itself can or cannot pass away from this land and the world? Now, sir, the moment the sin question is settled, then all is peace. For these other questions belong entirely to another category of morals. They belong entirely to the category of what is wise to realize good. This agitation will bring this great result. And therefore I affirm the agitation to be good.
There is another fact also, the result, in great measure, of this agitation, which in my view proves it to have been and to be of great good. I mean the astonishing rise and present stability of the slave-power of the United States. This fact, when examined, is undeniable. And it is equally undeniable that it has been caused, in great part, by the slavery question in all its bearings. It is a wonderful development made by God. And I must believe he intends thereby either to destroy or bless this great Union. But, as I believe he intends to bless, therefore I am fortified in affirming the good there has been and is in this agitation. Let me bring out to view this astonishing fact.
1. Twenty-five years ago, and previously, the whole slave-holding South and West had a strong tendency to emancipation, in some form. But the abolition movement then began, and arrested that Southern and Western leaning to emancipation. Many people have said, and do say, that that arrest was and is a great evil. I say it was and is a great good. Why? Answer: It was and would now be premature. Had it been carried out, it would have been and would now be evil, immense, inconceivable,-to master, slave, America, Africa, and the world because neither master, slave, America, Africa, the world, were, or are, ready for emancipation. God has a great deal to do before he is ready for emancipation.
He tells us so by this arrest put upon that tendency to emancipation years ago. For He put it into the hearts of abolitionists to make the arrest. And He stopped the Southern movement all the more perfectly by Permitting Great Britain to emancipate Jamaica, and letting that experiment prove, as it has, a perfect failure and a terrible warning. JAMAICA IS DESTROYED. And now, whatever be done for its negroes must be done with the full admission that what has been attempted was in violation of the duty Britain owed to those negroes. But her failure in seeing and doing her duty, God has given to us to teach us knowledge; and, through us, to instruct the world in the demonstration of the problem of slavery.
2. God put it into the hearts of Northern men - especially abolitionists-to give Texas to the South. Texas, a territory so vast that a bird, as Webster said, can't fly over it in a week. Many in the South did not want Texas. But many longer-headed ones did want it. And Northern men voted and gave to the South exactly what these longer-headed Southern statesmen wanted. This, I grant, was Northern anti-slavery fatuity, utterly unaccountable but that God made them do it.
3. God put it into the hearts of Northern men - especially abolitionists-to vote for Polk, Dallas, and Texas. This gave us the Mexican War; and that immense territory, its spoil,-a territory which, although it may not be favorable for slave-labor, has increased, and will, in many ways, extend the slave-power.
4. This leads me to say that God put it into the hearts of many Northern men-especially abolitionists-to believe what Great Britain said, -namely, that free trade would result ill slave emancipation. But lo! the slave-holder wanted f?-ee
trade. So Northern abolitionists helped to destroy the tariff policy, and thus to expand the demand for, and the culture of, cotton. Now;, see, the gold of California has perpetuated free trade by enabling our merchants to meet the enormous demand for specie created by free trade. So California helps the slave-power. But the abolitionists gave us Polk, the Mexican War, and California.
5. God put it into the hearts of the North, and especially abolitionists, to stimulate the settlement of new free States, and to be the ardent friends of an immense foreign emigration. The result has been to-send down to the South, with railroad speed and certainty, corn, wheat, flour, meal, bacon, pork, beef, and every other imaginable form of food, in quantity amazing, and so cheap that the planter can spread wider and wider the culture of cotton.
6. God has, by this growth of the Northwest, made the demand for cotton enormous in the North and Northwest. Again, he has made English and French experiments to procure cotton somewhere else than from the United States dead failures,-in the East Indies, Egypt, Algeria, Brazil. God has thus given to the Southern planter an absolute monopoly. A monopoly so great that he, the Southern planter, sits now upon his throne of cotton and wields the commercial sceptre of the world. Yes, it is the Southern planter who says to-day to haughty England, Go to war, if you dare; dismiss Dallas, if you dare. Yes, he who sits on the throne of the cotton-bag has triumphed at last over him who sits on the throne of the wool-sack. England is prostrate at his feet, as well as the abolitionists.
7. God has put it into the hearts of abolitionists to prevent half a million of free negroes from going to Liberia; and thereby the abolitionists have made them consumers of slave products to the extension of the slav-power. And, by thus keeping them in America, the abolitionists have so increased their degradation as to prove all the more the utter folly of emancipation in the United States.
8. God has permitted the anti-slavery men in the North, in England, in France, and everywhere, so to blind themselves in hypocrisy as to give the Southern slave-holder his last perfect triumph over them; for God tells the planter to
say to the North, to England, to France, to all who buy cotton, "Ye men of B]3oston, New York, London, Paris,-ye hyptites,-ye brand me as a pirate, a kidnapper, a murderer, a demon, fit only for hell, anl -Set ye buy my blood-stained cotton. O ye hypocrites!-ye Boston hypocrites! why do ye throw the cotton in the sea, as your fathers did the tea? Ye Boston hypocrites! ye say, if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the slave-trade!
Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves that ye are the children of them who, in fact, kidnapped and bought in blood, and sold the slave in America! for now, ye hypocrites, ye buy the blood-stained cotton in quantity so immense, that ye have run up the price of slaves to be more than a thousand dollars,-the average of old and young! O ye hypocrites! ye denounce slavery; then ye bid it live, and not die,-in that ye buy sugar, rice, tobacco, and, above all, cotton! Ye hypocrites! ye abuse the devil, and then fall down and worship him!
-ye hypocrites,-ye New England hypocrites,ye Old England hypocrites,-ye French hypocrites,-ye Uncle Tom's Cabin hypocrites,-ye Beecher hypocrites,-ye Rhode Island Consociation hypocrites! Oh, your holy twaddle stinks in the nostrils of Got, and he commands me to lash you with my scorn, and his scorn, so long as ye gabble about the sin of slavery, and then bow down to me, and buy and spin cotton, and thus work for me as truly as my slaves! O ye fools and blind, fill ye up the measure of your folly, and blindness, and shame! And this ye are doing. Ye have, like the French infidels, made reason your goddess, and are exalting her above the Bible; and, in your unitarianisin and neology and all modes of infidelity, ye are rejecting and crucifying the Son of God."
Now, my brother, this controlling slave-power is a world-wide fact. Its statistics of bales count by millions; its tonnage counts by hundreds of thousands; its manufacture is reckoned by the workshops of America and Europe; its supporters are numbered by all who must thus be clothed in the world. This tremendous power has been developed in great measure by the abolition agitation, controlled by God. I believe, then, as I have already said, that God intends one of two things. He either intends to destroy the United States by this slave-power, or he intends to bless my country and the world by the unfoldings of his wisdom in this matter. I believe he will bless the world in the working out of this slavery. I rejoice, then, in the agitation which has so resulted, and will so terminate, to reveal the Bible, and bless mankind.
Your affectionate friend,
F. A. Ross.
REV. A. BLACKBURN.
Reference is made in an online document WHAT LINCOLN READ, on Abraham Lincoln’s take on the book Slavery As Ordained of God, which he read preparing for debates with Douglas.
WHAT LINCOLN READ
One of the defenders of slavery moved to argument by Mrs. Stowe's story was the Reverend Frederick Augustus Ross, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Huntsville, Alabama, who in 1857 published a widely circulated pamphlet entitled Slavery as Ordained of God. It was read by Lincoln, who found in its interpretation of the divine will material for a telling passage in one of his debates with Douglas. "The sum of pro-slavery theology," he declared, taking quick advantage of an opening given him by his antagonist, “seems to be this: 'Slavery is not universally right, nor yet universally wrong: it is better for some people to be slaves; and, in such cases, it is the will of God that they be such.' Certainly there is no contending against the will of God; but still there is some difficulty in ascertaining and applying it to particular cases. For instance, we will suppose the Rev. Dr. Ross has a slave named Sambo, and the question is, is it the will of God that Sambo shall remain a slave, or be set free?' The Almighty gives no audible answer to the question, and His revelation, the Bible, gives none — or, at the most, none but such that admits a squabble as to His meaning; no one thinks of asking Sambo's opinion on it.
"So at last it comes to this, that Dr. Ross is to decide the question; and while he considers it he sits in the shade, with gloves on his hands, and subsists on the bread that Sambo is earning in the burning sun. If he decides that God wills Sambo to continue a slave, he thereby retains his own comfortable position; but if he decides that God wills Sambo to be free, he thereby has to walk out of the shade, throw off his gloves, and delve for his own bread. Will Dr. Ross be actuated by the perfect impartiality which has ever been considered most favorable to correct decisions?"
Finally, what did the American Jewish synagogues of the Civil War period say of slavery? An early rabbi of the time, Isaac Mayer Wise, a Bohemian Immigrant obtained influence at that time. He was a rabbi first in Albany, New York, then in Cincinnati, Ohio. He published a Jewish periodical and in his biography I found mention of his activities in regards with the divide in the country around slavery. I have placed some excerpts below from the book available online. Certainly this is only one rabbi, but I found this account worthwhile for my writing as an example of the time.
Isaac Mayer Wise, The Founder of American Judaism A Biography, By Max B. May, A. M. 1916
Besides, his paper had a large subscription list in the South, and he felt that he would be unable to publish his paper if there should be a breach between the North and South. Before the attack on Fort Sumter he was opposed to disunion, and hoped some compromise would be reached between the two sections. Certainly this attitude was not uncommon at that time. He opposed then, as he always did, political preaching, maintaining that politics were foreign to the pulpit. Such a position, however, does not sustain the charges that he favoured slavery. Even so careful a writer as Max J. Kohler, in his article on "The Jews and the Anti-Slavery Movement," most unjustly charges Wise with sanctioning slavery. Mr. Kohler writes: "Dr. Raphall's remarks were most apologetic, but he took the square stand that Judaism sanctioned slavery and that that institution was morally right. Extreme as his position was, it cannot be regarded as original, nor did it lack approval, for Dr. Wise, in the American Israelite, and Isaac Leeser, in the Occident, expressed their approbation of his stand." As far as Leeser is concerned, Mr. Kohler is correct, and his citations, the Occident, January 24, 1861, p. 268, and January 31, 1861, p. 274, bear this construction. But as far as Wise is concerned, the statement is absolutely false, and his references to the following issues of the Israelite, vol. vii., pp. 172, 188, 205-6, 212, 220, 228, 230, 244, 254, 334, and 396, do not contain even a scintilla of evidence to that effect, and not a syllable from which such an inference could be drawn. Why Mr. Kohler misinterpreted these articles in so sweeping, false, and unjust a manner it is difficult to understand.
After the outbreak of hostilities, after Sumter had been fired on, Wise wrote in the Israelite job April 19, 1861, under the head, "Silence our Policy":
“They say civil war is commenced. . . . What can we say now? Shall we lament and weep like Jeremiah over a state of things too sad and too threatening to be looked on with indifference? We would only be laughed at... . Or should we choose sides with one of the parties? We cannot, not only because we abhor war, but also because we have dear friends and near relatives, beloved brethren and kinsmen in either section of the country that our heart bleeds in thinking of their distress, of the misery that might befall them. Therefore, silence must henceforth be our policy, silence on all questions of the day until conciliation shall move the hearts of millions to a better understanding of the blessings of peace, freedom, and union."
And so, with the exception of the protest against the infamous Order No. 11 above referred to, the editor was silent on the war.
Lincoln was assassinated on Friday night, April 14, 1865, and died early Saturday morning. The־very night that Lincoln was shot, Dr. Wise delivered a peace oration at the synagogue, and on the following Sabbath morning he preached a great eulogy characterizing Lincoln as the "brightest jewel, the greatest hero, and noblest son of the ־nation." The Israelite of April 21, 1865,1 appeared in heavy mourning, and contained a full report of his sermon eulogizing Lincoln.
Below is a link to Wise’s Wikipedia page, FYI.
Isaac Mayer Wise (29 March 1819, Lomnička (Bohemia) – 26 March 1900, Cincinnati) was an American Reform rabbi, editor, and author. At his death he was called "the foremost rabbi in America".
I end with slavery quote unlike others above, but it may be more pertinent to this time as the others.
“Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves.”
— Garrick.
David Garrick (19 February 1717 – 20 January 1779) was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of European theatrical practice throughout the 18th century, and was a pupil and friend of Samuel Johnson.
40th posting, June 22, 2023.