Slavery Attacked and Defended

James Henley Thornwell, Frederick Douglass, Lydia Maria Child

Anti-Slavery/Abolitionism

• Enlightenment and American Revolution• American Colonization Society• 2d Great Awakening• Immediatism• David Walker’s Appeal• William Lloyd Garrison, Liberator• American Anti Slavery Society• American and Foreign Anti Slavery Society• Moral Suasion to Direct Action

See your Declaration Americans! ! ! Do you understand your won language? Hear your languages, proclaimed to the world, July 4th, 1776 -- "We hold these truths to be self evident -- that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL! ! that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! !"

Compare your own language above, extracted from your Declaration of Independence, with your cruelties and murders inflicted by your cruel and unmerciful fathers and yourselves on our fathers and on us -- men who have never given your fathers or you the least provocation! ! ! ! ! !

–David Walker, Appeal, In Four Articles: Together With A Preamble To The Coloured Citizens Of The World, But In Particular, And Very Expressly, To Those Of The United States Of America,

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.—W. L. Garrison, The Liberator, Jan. 1, 1831

Free Soil/Free Labor

• Liberty Party—became Free Soil Party by 1848• “There are many who main impulse is to secure the new

territories for free white labor.” N. Y. Tribune• Slavery threatened free white labor, diminished the

dignity of labor.• “We are opposed to the extension of slavery because . . .

it diminishes the productive power of the population. It is an obstacle to compact settlements, and to every general system of public instruction. . . . If the free labor . . . goes [into the territories] the slave labor of the southern states will not, and in a few years the country will teem with an active and energetic population.” –Free Soil Paper

Slavery Defended

• Ancient Example

• Biblical Precept

• Political Economy

Political Economy

• Thomas Roderick Dew, An Essay in Favor of Slavery (1832)

• George Fitzhugh, Sociology of the South, or the Failure of Free Society (1854), Cannibals All, or Slaves without Masters (1857)

• Henry Hughes, A Treatise on Sociology: Theoretical and Practical (1854)

Biblical

• Thornton W. Stringfellow, Scriptural and Statistical Views in Favor of Slavery (1856)

• 1st. The sanction of the Almighty in the Patriarchal age.

• 2d. That it was incorporated into the only National Constitution which ever emanated from God.

• 3d. That its legality was recognized and its relative duties regulated, by Jesus Christ in his kingdom; and

• 4th. That it is full of mercy.

Ephesians and the Relative Duties

• 5:22 “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.”

• 6:1 “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.”

• 6:5 “Servants, be obedient to them that are [your] masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.”

E. N. Elliott, Cotton is King (1860)

Religious Debates/Schisms over Slavery

• Francis Wayland-Richard Fuller, 1845

• Old School-New School Schism (1837)

• Triennial Convention Schism (1844); SBC formed 1845

• Methodist General Conference Schism (1844); MEC,S founded in 1844.