A History of American Christianity

L >> Leonard Woolsey Bacon >> A History of American Christianity

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It was not strange that while sentiments like these prevailed without
contradiction in all parts of the country, while in State after State
emancipations were taking place and acts of abolition were passing, and
even in the States most deeply involved in slavery "a great, and the
most virtuous, part of the community abhorred slavery and wished its
extermination,"[270:1] there should seem to be little call for debate.
But that the antislavery spirit in the churches was not dead was
demonstrated with the first occasion.

In the spring of 1820, at the close of two years of agitating
discussion, the new State of Missouri was admitted to the Union as a
slave State, although with the stipulation that the remaining territory
of the United States north of the parallel of latitude bounding Missouri
on the south should be consecrated forever to freedom. The opposition to
this extension of slavery was taken up by American Christianity as its
own cause. It was the impending danger of such an extension that
prompted that powerful and unanimous declaration of the Presbyterian
General Assembly in 1818. The arguments against the Missouri bill,
whether in the debates of Congress or in countless memorials and
resolutions from public meetings both secular and religious, were
arguments from justice and duty and the law of Christ. These were met by
constitutional objections and considerations of expediency and
convenience, and by threats of disunion and civil war. The defense of
slavery on principle had not yet begun to be heard, even among
politicians.

The successful extension of slavery beyond the Mississippi River was
disheartening to the friends of justice and humanity, but only for the
moment. Already, before the two years' conflict had been decided by "the
Missouri Compromise," a powerful series of articles by that great
religious leader, Jeremiah Evarts, in the "Panoplist" (Boston, 1820),
rallied the forces of the church to renew the battle. The decade that
opened with that defeat is distinguished as a period of sustained
antislavery activity on the part of the united Christian citizenship of
the nation in all quarters.[271:1] In New England the focus of
antislavery effort was perhaps the theological seminary at Andover.
There the leading question among the students in their "Society of
Inquiry concerning Missions" was the question, what could be done, and
especially what _they_ could do, for the uplifting of the colored
population of the country, both the enslaved and the free. Measures were
concerted there for the founding of "an African college where youth were
to be educated on a scale so liberal as to place them on a level with
other men";[271:2] and the plan was not forgotten or neglected by these
young men when from year to year they came into places of effective
influence. With eminent fitness the Fourth of July was taken as an
antislavery holiday, and into various towns within reach from Andover
their most effective speakers went forth to give antislavery addresses
on that day. Beginning with the Fourth of July, 1823, the annual
antislavery address at Park Street Church, Boston, before several united
churches of that city, continued for the rest of that decade at least
to be an occasion for earnest appeal and practical effort in behalf of
the oppressed. Neither was the work of the young men circumscribed by
narrow local boundaries. The report of their committee, in the year
1823, on "The Condition of the Black Population of the United States,"
could hardly be characterized as timid in its utterances on the moral
character of American slavery. A few lines will indicate the tone of it
in this respect:

"Excepting only the horrible system of the West India Islands,
we have never heard of slavery in any country, ancient or
modern, pagan, Mohammedan, or Christian, so terrible in its
character, so pernicious in its tendency, so remediless in its
anticipated results, as the slavery which exists in these
United States.... When we use the strong language which we
feel ourselves compelled to use in relation to this subject,
we do not mean to speak of animal suffering, but of an immense
moral and political evil.... In regard to its influence on the
white population the most lamentable proof of its
deteriorating effects may be found in the fact that, excepting
the pious, whose hearts are governed by the Christian law of
reciprocity between man and man, and the wise, whose minds
have looked far into the relations and tendencies of things,
none can be found to lift their voices against a system so
utterly repugnant to the feelings of unsophisticated
humanity--a system which permits all the atrocities of the
domestic slave trade--which permits the father to sell his
children as he would his cattle--a system which consigns one
half of the community to hopeless and utter degradation, and
which threatens in its final catastrophe to bring down the
same ruin on the master and the slave."[272:1]

The historical value of the paper from which these brief extracts are
given, as illustrating the attitude of the church at the time, is
enhanced by the use that was made of it. Published in the form of a
review article in a magazine of national circulation, the recognized
organ of the orthodox Congregationalists, it was republished in a
pamphlet for gratuitous distribution and extensively circulated in New
England by the agency of the Andover students. It was also republished
at Richmond, Va. Other laborers at the East in the same cause were
Joshua Leavitt, Bela B. Edwards, and Eli Smith, afterward illustrious as
a missionary,[273:1] and Ralph Randolph Gurley, secretary of the
Colonization Society, whose edition of the powerful and uncompromising
sermon of the younger Edwards on "The Injustice and Impolicy of the
Slave Trade and of the Slavery of the Africans" was published at Boston
for circulation at the South, in hopes of promoting the universal
abolition of slavery. The list might be indefinitely extended to include
the foremost names in the church in that period. There was no adverse
party.

At the West an audacious movement of the slavery extension politicians,
flushed with their success in Missouri, to introduce slavery into
Illinois, Indiana, and even Ohio, was defeated largely by the aid of the
Baptist and Methodist clergy, many of whom had been southern men and had
experienced the evils of the system.[273:2] In Kentucky and Tennessee
the abolition movement was led more distinctively by the Presbyterians
and the Quakers. It was a bold effort to procure the manumission of
slaves and the repeal of the slave code in those States by the agreement
of the citizens. The character of the movement is indicated in the
constitution of the "Moral Religious Manumission Society of West
Tennessee," which declares that slavery "exceeds any other crime in
magnitude" and is "the greatest act of practical infidelity," and that
"the gospel of Christ, if believed, would remove personal slavery at
once by destroying the will in the tyrant to enslave."[274:1] A like
movement in North Carolina and in Maryland, at the same time, attained
to formidable dimensions. The state of sentiment in Virginia may be
judged from the fact that so late as December, 1831, in the memorable
debate in the legislature on a proposal for the abolition of slavery, a
leading speaker, denouncing slavery as "the most pernicious of all the
evils with which the body politic can be afflicted," could say,
undisputed, "_By none is this position denied_, if we except the erratic
John Randolph."[274:2] The conflict in Virginia at that critical time
was between Christian principle and wise statesmanship on the one hand,
and on the other hand selfish interest and ambition, and the prevailing
terror resulting from a recent servile insurrection. Up to this time
there appears no sign of any division in the church on this subject.
Neither was there any sectional division; the opponents of slavery,
whether at the North or at the South, were acting in the interest of the
common country, and particularly in the interest of the States that were
still afflicted with slavery. But a swift change was just impending.

We have already recognized the Methodist organization as the effective
pioneer of systematic abolitionism in America.[275:1] The Baptists, also
having their main strength in the southern States, were early and
emphatic in condemning the institutions by which they were
surrounded.[275:2] But all the sects found themselves embarrassed by
serious difficulties when it came to the practical application of the
principles and rules which they enunciated. The exacting of "immediate
emancipation" as a condition of fellowship in the ministry or communion
in the church, and the popular cries of "No fellowship with
slave-holders," and "Slave-holding always and every where a sin," were
found practically to conflict with frequent undeniable and stubborn
facts. The cases in which conscientious Christians found themselves, by
no fault of their own, invested by inhuman laws with an absolute
authority over helpless fellow-men, which it would not be right for them
suddenly to abdicate, were not few nor unimportant.[275:3] In dealing
with such cases several different courses were open to the church: (1)
To execute discipline rigorously according to the formula, on the
principle, Be rid of the tares at all hazards; never mind the wheat.
This course was naturally favored by some of the minor Presbyterian
sects, and was apt to be vigorously urged by zealous people living at a
distance and not well acquainted with details of fact. (2) To attempt to
provide for all cases by stated exceptions and saving clauses. This
course was entered on by the Methodist Church, but without success. (3)
Discouraged by the difficulties, to let go all discipline. This was the
point reached at last by most of the southern churches. (4) Clinging to
the formulas, "Immediate emancipation," "No communion with
slave-holders," so to "palter in a double sense" with the words as to
evade the meaning of them. According to this method, slave-holding did
not consist in the holding of slaves, but in holding them with evil
purpose and wrong treatment; a slave who was held for his own advantage,
receiving from his master "that which is just and equal," was said, in
this dialect, to be "morally emancipated." This was the usual expedient
of a large and respectable party of antislavery Christians at the North,
when their principle of "no communion with slave-holders" brought them
to the seeming necessity of excommunicating an unquestionably Christian
brother for doing an undeniable duty. (5) To lay down, broadly and
explicitly, the principles of Christian morality governing the subject,
leaving the application of them in individual cases to the individual
church or church-member. This was the course exemplified with admirable
wisdom and fidelity in the Presbyterian "deliverance" of 1818. (6) To
meet the postulate, laid down with so much assurance, as if an axiom,
that "slave-holding is always and everywhere a sin, to be immediately
repented of and forsaken," with a flat and square contradiction, as
being irreconcilable with facts and with the judgment of the Christian
Scriptures; and thus to condemn and oppose to the utmost the system of
slavery, without imputing the guilt of it to persons involved in it by
no fault of their own. This course commended itself to many lucid and
logical minds and honest consciences, including some of the most
consistent and effective opponents of slavery. (7) Still another course
must be mentioned, which, absurd as it seems, was actually pursued by a
few headlong reformers, who showed in various ways a singular alacrity
at playing into the hands of their adversaries. It consisted in
enunciating in the most violent and untenable form and the most
offensive language the proposition that all slave-holding is sin and
every slave-holder a criminal, and making the whole attack on slavery to
turn on this weak pivot and fail if this failed. The argument of this
sort of abolitionist was: If there can be found anywhere a good man
holding a bond-servant unselfishly, kindly, and for good reason
justifiably, then the system of American slavery is right.[277:1] It is
not strange that men in the southern churches, being offered such an
argument ready made to their hand, should promptly accept both the
premiss and the conclusion, and that so at last there should begin to be
a pro-slavery party in the American church.

The disastrous epoch of the beginning of what has been called "the
southern apostasy" from the universal moral sentiment of Christendom on
the subject of slavery may be dated at about the year 1833. A year
earlier began to be heard those vindications on political grounds of
what had just been declared in the legislature of Virginia to be by
common consent the most pernicious of political evils--vindications
which continued for thirty years to invite the wonder of the civilized
world. When (about 1833) a Presbyterian minister in Mississippi, the
Rev. James Smylie, made the "discovery," which "surprised himself," that
the system of American slavery was sanctioned and approved by the
Scriptures as good and righteous, he found that his brethren in the
Presbyterian ministry at the extreme South were not only surprised, but
shocked and offended, at the proposition.[278:1] And yet such was the
swift progress of this innovation that in surprisingly few years, we
might almost say months, it had become not only prevalent, but violently
and exclusively dominant in the church of the southern States, with the
partial exception of Kentucky and Tennessee. It would be difficult to
find a precedent in history for so sudden and sweeping a change of
sentiment on a leading doctrine of moral theology. Dissent from the
novel dogma was suppressed with more than inquisitorial rigor. It was
less perilous to hold Protestant opinions in Spain or Austria than to
hold, in Carolina or Alabama, the opinions which had but lately been
commended to universal acceptance by the unanimous voice of great
religious bodies, and proclaimed as undisputed principles by leading
statesmen. It became one of the accepted evidences of Christianity at
the South that infidelity failed to offer any justification for American
slavery equal to that derived from the Christian Scriptures. That
eminent leader among the Lutheran clergy, the Rev. Dr. Bachman, of
Charleston, referred "that unexampled unanimity of sentiment that now
exists in the whole South on the subject of slavery" to the confidence
felt by the religious public in the Bible defense of slavery as set
forth by clergymen and laymen in sermons and pamphlets and speeches in
Congress.[278:2]

The historian may not excuse himself from the task of inquiring into the
cause of this sudden and immense moral revolution. The explanation
offered by Dr. Bachman is the very thing that needs to be explained.
How came the Christian public throughout the slave-holding States, which
so short a time before had been unanimous in finding in the Bible the
condemnation of their slavery, to find all at once in the Bible the
divine sanction and defense of it as a wise, righteous, and permanent
institution? Doubtless there was mixture of influences in bringing about
the result. The immense advance in the market value of slaves consequent
on Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin had its unconscious effect on
the moral judgments of some. The furious vituperations of a very small
but noisy faction of antislavery men added something to the swift
current of public opinion. But demonstrably the chief cause of this
sudden change of religious opinion--one of the most remarkable in the
history of the church--was panic terror. In August, 1831, a servile
insurrection in Virginia, led by a crazy negro, Nat Turner by name, was
followed (as always in such cases) by bloody vengeance on the part of
the whites.

"The Southampton insurrection, occurring at a time when the
price of slaves was depressed in consequence of a depression
in the price of cotton, gave occasion to a sudden development
of opposition to slavery in the legislature of Virginia. A
measure for the prospective abolition of the institution in
that ancient commonwealth was proposed, earnestly debated,
eloquently urged, and at last defeated, with a minority
ominously large in its favor. Warned by so great a peril, and
strengthened soon afterward by an increase in the market value
of cotton and of slaves, the slave-holding interest in all the
South was stimulated to new activity. Defenses of slavery more
audacious than had been heard before began to be uttered by
southern politicians at home and by southern representatives
and senators in Congress. A panic seized upon the planters in
some districts of the Southwest. Conspiracies and plans of
insurrection were discovered. Negroes were tortured or
terrified into confessions. Obnoxious white men were put to
death without any legal trial and in defiance of those rules
of evidence which are insisted on by southern laws. Thus a
sudden and convincing terror was spread through the South.
Every man was made to know that if he should become obnoxious
to the guardians of the great southern 'institution' he was
liable to be denounced and murdered. It was distinctly and
imperatively demanded that nobody should be allowed to say
anything anywhere against slavery. The movement of the
societies which had then been recently formed at Boston and
New York, with 'Immediate abolition' for their motto, was made
use of to stimulate the terror and the fury of the South....
The position of political parties and of candidates for the
Presidency, just at that juncture, gave special advantage to
the agitators--an advantage that was not neglected. Everything
was done that practiced demagogues could contrive to stimulate
the South into a frenzy and to put down at once and forever
all opposition to slavery. The clergy and the religious bodies
were summoned to the patriotic duty of committing themselves
on the side of 'southern institutions.' Just then it was, if
we mistake not, that their apostasy began. They dared not say
that slavery as an institution in the State is essentially an
organized injustice, and that, though the Scriptures rightly
and wisely enjoin justice and the recognition of the slaves'
brotherhood upon masters, and conscientious meekness upon
slaves, the organized injustice of the institution ought to be
abolished by the shortest process consistent with the public
safety and the welfare of the enslaved. They dared not even
keep silence under the plea that the institution is political
and therefore not to be meddled with by religious bodies or
religious persons. They yielded to the demand. They were
carried along in the current of the popular frenzy; they
joined in the clamor, 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians;' they
denounced the fanaticism of abolition and permitted
themselves to be understood as certifying, in the name of
religion and of Christ, that the entire institution of slavery
'as it exists' is chargeable with no injustice and is
warranted by the word of God."[281:1]

There is no good reason to question the genuineness and sincerity of the
fears expressed by the slave-holding population as a justification of
their violent measures for the suppression of free speech in relation to
slavery; nor of their belief that the papers and prints actively
disseminated from the antislavery press in Boston were fitted, if not
distinctly intended, to kindle bloody insurrections. These terrors were
powerfully pleaded in the great debate in the Virginia legislature as an
argument for the abolition of slavery.[281:2] This failing, they became
throughout the South a constraining power for the suppression of free
speech, not only on the part of outsiders, but among the southern people
themselves. The regime thus introduced was, in the strictest sense of
the phrase, "a reign of terror." The universal lockjaw which thenceforth
forbade the utterance of what had so recently and suddenly ceased to be
the unanimous religious conviction of the southern church soon produced
an "unexampled unanimity" on the other side, broken only when some fiery
and indomitable abolitionist like Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, of the
Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, delivered his soul with invectives
against the system of slavery and the new-fangled apologies that had
been devised to defend it, declaring it "utterly indefensible on every
correct human principle, and utterly abhorrent from every law of God,"
and exclaiming, "Out upon such folly! The man who cannot see that
involuntary domestic slavery, as it exists among us, is founded on the
principle of taking by force that which is another's has simply no
moral sense.... Hereditary slavery is without pretense, except in avowed
rapacity."[282:1] Of course the antislavery societies which, under
various names, had existed in the South by hundreds were suddenly
extinguished, and manumissions, which had been going on at the rate of
thousands in a year, almost entirely ceased.

The strange and swiftly spreading moral epidemic did not stop at State
boundary lines. At the North the main cause of defection was not,
indeed, directly operative. There was no danger there of servile
insurrection. But there was true sympathy for those who lived under the
shadow of such impending horrors, threatening alike the guilty and the
innocent. There was a deep passion of honest patriotism, now becoming
alarmed lest the threats of disunion proceeding from the terrified South
should prove a serious peril to the nation in whose prosperity the hopes
of the world seemed to be involved. There was a worthy solicitude lest
the bonds of intercourse between the churches of North and South should
be ruptured and so the integrity of the nation be the more imperiled.
Withal there was a spreading and deepening and most reasonable disgust
at the reckless ranting of a little knot of antislavery men having their
headquarters at Boston, who, exulting in their irresponsibility,
scattered loosely appeals to men's vindictive passions and filled the
unwilling air with clamors against church and ministry and Bible and law
and government, denounced as "pro-slavery" all who declined to accept
their measures or their persons, and, arrogating to themselves
exclusively the name of abolitionist, made that name, so long a title of
honor, to be universally odious.[282:2]

These various factors of public opinion were actively manipulated.
Political parties competed for the southern vote. Commercial houses
competed for southern business. Religious sects, parties, and societies
were emulous in conciliating southern adhesions or contributions and
averting schisms. The condition of success in any of these cases was
well understood to be concession, or at least silence, on the subject of
slavery. The pressure of motives, some of which were honorable and
generous, was everywhere, like the pressure of the atmosphere. It was
not strange that there should be defections from righteousness. Even the
enormous effrontery of the slave power in demanding for its own security
that the rule of tyrannous law and mob violence by which freedom of
speech and of the press had been extinguished at the South should be
extended over the so-called free States did not fail of finding citizens
of reputable standing so base as to give the demand their countenance,
their public advocacy, and even their personal assistance. As the
subject emerged from time to time in the religious community, the
questions arising were often confused and embarrassed by false issues
and illogical statements, and the state of opinion was continually
misrepresented through the incurable habit of the over-zealous in
denouncing as "pro-slavery" those who dissented from their favorite
formulas. But after all deductions, the historian who shall by and by
review this period with the advantage of a longer perspective will be
compelled to record not a few lamentable defections, both individual and
corporate, from the cause of freedom, justice, and humanity. And,
nevertheless, that later record will also show that while the southern
church had been terrified into "an unexampled unanimity" in renouncing
the principles which it had unanimously held, and while like causes had
wrought potently upon northern sentiment, it was the steadfast fidelity
of the Christian people that saved the nation from ruin. At the end of
thirty years from the time when the soil of Missouri was devoted to
slavery the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill" was proposed, which should open for
the extension of slavery the vast expanse of national territory which,
by the stipulation of the "Missouri Compromise," had been forever
consecrated to freedom. The issue of the extension of slavery was
presented to the people in its simplicity. The action of the clergy of
New England was prompt, spontaneous, emphatic, and practically
unanimous. Their memorial, with three thousand and fifty signatures,
protested against the bill, "in the name of Almighty God and in his
presence," as "a great moral wrong; as a breach of faith eminently
injurious to the moral principles of the community and subversive of all
confidence in national engagements; as a measure full of danger to the
peace and even the existence of our beloved Union, and exposing us to
the just judgments of the Almighty." In like manner the memorial of one
hundred and fifty-one clergymen of various denominations in New York
City and vicinity protested in like terms, "in the name of religion and
humanity," against the guilt of the extension of slavery. Perhaps there
has been no occasion on which the consenting voice of the entire church
has been so solemnly uttered on a question of public morality, and this
in the very region in which church and clergy had been most stormily
denounced by the little handful of abolitionists who gloried in the
name of infidel[285:1] as recreant to justice and humanity.

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