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The Use of the New Testament in the American Slave Controversy: A Case History in the Hermeneutical Tension between Biblical Criticism and Christian Moral Debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

J. Albert Harrill
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Extract

The study of nineteenth-century U.S. biblical exegesis on the slavery question illumines a fundamental paradox in American religious culture. The relationship between the moral imperative of anti-slavery and the evolution of biblical criticism resulted in a major paradigm shift away from literalism. This moral imperative fostered an interpretive approach that found conscience to be a more reliable guide to Christian morality than biblical authority. Yet, the political imperative of proslavery nourished a biblicism that long antedated the proslavery argumentation and remains prevalent in American moral preaching. The nineteenth-century desire to resolve this paradox led to important innovations in American interpretations of the Bible.

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Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Summer 2000 , pp. 149 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2000

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References

Notes

Thanks go to Stephen J. Stein, James Grossman, David Brakke, and my colleagues Ellen T. Eslinger and Charles Strain for their advice, criticisms, and helpful suggestions on earlier drafts. They are, of course, in no way responsible for whatever errors and shortcomings may remain. A 1997 summer research grant from DePaul University's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences made the completion of this essay possible.

1. See Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975), 523-56Google Scholar; see also Jerry Dean Campbell, “Biblical Criticism in America, 1858-1892” (Ph.D. diss., University of Denver, 1982), 29-66.

2. See Walters, Kerry S., The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 29–31 Google Scholar; and Walters, Kerry S., Rational Infidels: The American Deists (Durango, Colo.: Longwood Academic, 1992), 294 Google Scholar.

3. See Wright, Conrad, The Beginnings of Unitarianism in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 77 Google Scholar.

4. See Bozeman, Theodore Dwight, Protestants in an Age of Science: The Baconian Ideal and Antebellum American Religious Thought (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), 95–96 Google Scholar; Hovenkamp, Herbert, Science and Religion in America, 1800-1860 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 57–78 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Turner, James, Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 143-50Google Scholar; and Moore, James R., “Geologists and Interpreters of Genesis in the Nineteenth Century,’ in God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, ed. Lindberg, David C. and Numbers, Ronald L. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 322-50Google Scholar.

5. See Walhout, M. D., “The Hermeneutical Turn in American Critical Theory,” Journal of the History of Ideas 57, no. 4 (October 1996): 683–703 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. For the emergence of American biblical studies, see Brown, Jerry Wayne, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 1800-1870: The New England Scholars (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969)Google Scholar. For its precedents, see William Baird, History of New Testament Research, vol. 1: From Deism to Tübingen (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992). The Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis was founded in 1880 and is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States.

7. See Cheever, George B., The Guilt of Slavery and the Crime of Slaveholding: Demonstrated from the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1860), 332-40Google Scholar. This work was the most scholarly attempt to argue abolitionism from biblical exegesis.

8. See Barnes, Albert, An Inquiry into the Scriptural Views of Slavery (Philadelphia: Perkins and Purves, 1846), 242-49Google Scholar; see also Charles Elliott, Sinfulness of American Slavery, 2 vols. (Cincinnati: L. Swormstedt and J. H. Power, 1851), 2:337; and Elliott, Charles, The Bible and Slavery (Cincinnati: L. Swormstedt and A. Poe, 1857), 34, 281-82Google Scholar.

9. See Hofstadter, Richard, Anti-intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), 91 Google Scholar; and Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery (Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1969), 317 Google Scholar. See also Fisher-Ogden, Daryl, “Albert Barnes (1798-1870),’ in Dictionary of Heresy Trials in American Christianity, ed. Shriver, George H. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997), 11–20 Google Scholar, although the charges of Old School Presbyterians that condemned Barnes twice for heresy concerned his preaching and publication of New School evangelical theology on original sin, atonement, justifkation, and other doctrines unrelated to his views on slavery.

10. J. Blanchard and N. L. Rice, A Debate on Slavery Held in the City of Cincinnati, on the First, Second, Third, and Sixth Days of October, 1845, upon the Question: Is Slave-Holding in Itself Sinful, and the Relation between Master and Slave, a Sinful Relation? (Cincinnati: Wm. H. Moore, 1846), 336, emphasis in original.

11. For background, see G. Whit Hutchison, “The Bible and Slavery, a Test of Ethical Method: Biblical Interpretation, Social Ethics, and the Hermeneutics of Race in America, 1830-1861” (Ph.D. diss., Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1996), 153-228; Mullen, Robert Bruce, “Biblical Critics and the Battle over Slavery,” Journal of Presbyterian History 61, no. 2 (Summer 1983): 210-26Google Scholar; Thompson, J. Earl Jr., “Abolitionism and Theological Education at Andover,” New England Quarterly 47, no. 2 (June 1974): 238-61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Giltner, John H., “Moses Stuart and the Slavery Controversy: A Study in the Failure of Moderation,” Journal of Religious Thought 18, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1961): 27–39 Google Scholar; and Giltner, John H., Moses Stuart: The Father of Biblical Science in America (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 123-30Google Scholar.

12. Blanchard and Rice, Debate on Slavery, 228; see also 229, 240, 327, 340, 360, 419.

13. See Longstreet, Augustus Baldwin, Letters on the Epistle of Paul to Philemon (Charleston: B. Jenkins, 1845), 14 Google Scholar; Bourne, G., “A Condensed Anti-Slavery Bible Argument,” in Essays and Pamphlets on Antislavery (1833-1898; repr., Westport, Conn.: Negro Universities Press, 1970), 82–83 Google Scholar; and Shanks, Caroline L., “The Biblical Anti-Slavery Argument of the Decade 1830-1840,” Journal of Negro History 16, no. 2 (April 1931): 148-49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Callahan, Allen Dwight, Embassy of Onesimus: The Letter of Paul to Philemon (Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1997), 11–12 Google Scholar, although without awareness of the larger “servant” translation issue or of the ideology that affects the interpretation.

14. Barnes, Inquiry, 318-31; see also Hutchison, “The Bible and Slavery,” 140-50.

15. See Ross, Fred A., Slavery Ordained of God (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1857), 176-79Google Scholar; and Dabney, Robert A., A Defence of Virginia (New York: E. J. Haie and Son, 1867), 182-85Google Scholar.

16. See Laura L. Mitchell, “'Matters of Justice between Man and Man': Northern Divines, the Bible, and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850,” in Religion and the Antebellum Debate over Slavery, ed. John R. McKivigan and Mitchell Snay (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 134-65.

17. Goodwin, Daniel R., Southern Slavery in its Present Aspects: Containing a Reply to the Late Work of the Bishop of Vermont on Slavery (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1864), 116 Google Scholar, emphasis in original.

18. Bacon, Leonard, Slavery Discussed in Occasional Essays (1846; repr., Miami, Fla.: Mnemosyne Publishing, 1969), 180 Google Scholar. For Bacon's role in antislavery, see McKivigan, John R., The War against Proslavery Religion: Abolitionism and the Northern Churches, 1830-1865 (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1984), 122, 153, 176, 190Google Scholar; and Hugh Davis, “Leonard Bacon, the Congregational Church, and Slavery, 1845-1861,” in Religion and the Antebellum Debate, ed. McKivigan and Snay, 221-45. See also Barnes, Inquiry, 258.

19. See Mitchell, “‘Matters of Justice,’” 139-49.

20. An important finding of twentieth-century historical criticism is that the New Testament does contain multiple voices, with different theologies and ethics. See, e.g., Wayne A. Meeks, “The Polyphonic Ethics of the Apostle Paul,” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics (1988): 17-29.

21. See Swartley, Willard M., Slavery, Sabbath, War, and Women: Gase Issues in Biblical Interpretation (Scottdale, Pa., and Waterloo, Ontario: Herald Press, 1983), 43–46, 61Google Scholar, although without tracing the historical development of the abolitionist argument. On the Cheevers, Weld, and Hosmer, see Mc-Kivigan, War against Proslavery, 137-41, 171.

22. I owe the formation of these hermeneutical strategies to Meeks, Wayne A., “The ‘Haustafeln’ and American Slavery: A Hermeneutical Challenge,” in Theology and Ethics in Paul and His Interpreters: Essays in Honor of Victor Paul Furnish, ed. Lovering, Eugene H. Jr., and Sumney, Jerry L. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 245-52Google Scholar.

23. See Butterfield, Herbert, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931; repr., London: G. Bell and Sons, 1965)Google Scholar; and Novick, Peter, That Noble Dream: The “öbjectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 13 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and passim on the ideological factors involved in how one thinks about history.

24. Hosmer, William, Slavery and the Church (Auburn, Maine.: William J. Moses, 1853), 44–45 Google Scholar; Fuller, Richard and Wayland, Francis, Domestic Slavery Considered as a Scriptural Institution (New York: Lewis Colby, 1845), 78 Google Scholar.

25. See Barnes, Inquiry, 376; Elliott, Bible and Slavery, 284; Channing, William E., Slavery (Boston: James Munroe, 1835), 8–9 Google Scholar; Fuller and Wayland, Domestic Slavery, 77-94; Wayland, Francis, Elements of Moral Science (New York: Sheldon, 1877), 221-28Google Scholar; and The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, vol. 3: No Union with Slave-Holders: 1841-1849, ed. Walter M. Merrill (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1973), 485.

26. An idea present as early as Barnes, Inquiry, 346-55.

27. See Cheever, Guilt of Slavery, 411-13.

28. See Finley, Moses, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (New York: Viking, 1980), 12–17, 27, 32-33, 42, 55, 64, 127-28Google Scholar. The influential work arguing that Christianity ended slavery was Henri Walion, Histoire de Vesclavage dans Vantiquite, 3 vols., 2d ed. (Paris: Hachette, 1879), which elevated this moral-spiritual idea to the level of dogma. Wallon's work proved useful to American abolitionists.

29. See Channing, Slavery, 111. Channing was a gradualist who, although antislavery, opposed abolitionism. See also Wayland, Elements, 223-25; Wayland and Fuller, Domestic Slavery, 63-76; and Barnes, Inquiry, 283-304.

30. See Cheever, Guilt of Slavery, 340, who criticizes Barnes for overlooking 1 Timothy 1:10.

31. For a history of scholarship and possible exegetical solution, see J. Albert Harrill, The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1995), 68-128.

32. Emphasis in original. The use of italics identifles a word inserted by the translators, which is not in the original Greek. See American Bible Society, Committee on Versions, Report on the History and Recent Collation of the English Versions of the Bible: Presented by the Committee on Versions to the Board of Managers of the American Bible Society (New York: American Bible Society's Press, 1851), 24.

33. Brownlow, W. G. and Pryne, A., Ought American Slavery to be Perpetuated: A Debate (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1858), 131 Google Scholar; see also 211 and Sunderland, La Roy, The Testimony of God against Slavery (1835; repr., St. Clair Shores, Mich.: Scholarly Press, 1970), 86 Google Scholar; Elliott, Sinfulness of American Slavery, 1:104, 2:295; and Elliott, Bible and Slavery, 287.

34. Cheever, Guilt of Slavery, 416. For an interpretation of the meaning of this passage in its ancient context, see J. Albert Harrill, “The Vice of Slave Dealers in Greco-Roman Society: The Use of a Topos in 1 Timothy 1:10,” Journal of Biblical Literature 118, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 97-122.

35. Cheever, Guilt of Slavery, 416.

36. Meeks, “‘Haustafeln’ and American Slavery,” 245; Stewart, James Brewer, “Abolitionists, the Bible, and the Challenge of Slavery,” in The Bible and Social Reform, ed. Sandeen, Ernest R. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1982), 51 Google Scholar. Influential was also the Scottish school of Common Sense Realism. See Marsden, George M., “Everyone One's Own Interpreter? The Bible, Science, and Authority in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America,” in The Bible in America: Essays in Cultural History, ed. Hatch, Nathan O. and Noll, Mark A. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 79–100 Google Scholar.

37. See Sloan, Douglas, The Scottish Enlightenment and the American College Ideal (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1971)Google Scholar; May, Henry F., The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Sher, Richard B., Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Sher, Richard B. and Smitten, Jeffrey R., eds., Scotland and America in the Age of Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Robert P. Forbes, “Slavery and the Evangelical Enlightenment,” in Religion and the Antebellum Debate, ed. McKivigan and Snay, 68-106. The American Transcendalists held similar views. See Grusin, Richard A., Transcendentalist Hermeneutics: Institutional Authority and the Higher Criticism of the Bible (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

38. See Bozeman, Protestants in an Age of Science, 132-59; and Hovenkamp, Science and Religion, 57-78.

39. See Howe, Daniel Walker, The Unitarian Conscience: Harvard Moral Philosophy, 1805-1861 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 270–305 Google Scholar; Wayland, Elements, 57-69; and Jenkins, William Sumner, Proslavery Thought in the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935), 234 Google Scholar. Wayland's work was the “moral science” textbook used in many Colleges, something Southerners lamented. See Sloan, James A., The Great Question Answered; or, Is Slavery a Sin in Itself (Memphis, Tenn.: Hutton, Gallaway, 1857), 140 Google Scholar. While holding antislavery views (such as amelioration of slave conditions toward gradual emancipation), Wayland was no abolitionist. He banned discussion of slavery in Brown University classes, and his 1838 tract, The Limits of Human Responsibility, condemned abolitionists and particularly the Garrisonian immediatists for their lack of sensitivity to the burdens of Christian slaveholders. See Deborah Bingham Van Broekhoven, “Suffering with Slaveholders: The Limits of Francis Wayland's Antislavery Witness,” in Religion and the Antebellum Debate, ed. McKivigan and Snay, 196-230.

40. Wogaman, J. Philip, Christian Ethics: A Historical Introduction (Louisville, Ky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), 180-90Google Scholar.

41. Garrison, , Letters, vol. 6: To Rouse the Slumbering Land: 1868-1879, ed. Merrill, Walter M. and Ruchames, Louis (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981), 145 Google Scholar; Garrison, Letters, vol. 4: From Disunionism to the Brink of War: 1850-1860, ed. Louis Ruchames (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975), 25, 78; Stewart, “Abolitionists,” 51, quoting Henry C. Wright. On Garrison's view that Bible passages glorifying war are not the Word of God, see Snay, Mitchell, Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 64 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42. The Liberator, May 31, 1850 (see also The Liberator, June 7, 1850, and June 14,1850); The Liberator June 28,1850, and August 2,1850; “The Raid of John Brown, and the Progress of Abolition,” Southern Presbyterian Review. 12 Qanuary 1860): 797; W. T. Hamilton, Duties of Masters and Slaves Respectively: or, Domestic Servitude as Sanctioned by the Bible (Mobile, Ala.: F. H. Brooks, 1845), 8.

43. McKivigan, War against Proslavery, 66 (see also 93-110), 184.

44. Frederick Douglass, Speech in Boston, Massachusetts, February 8, 1855, in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, vol. 3: 1855-63, ed. John W. Blassingame (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 6; Frederick Douglass, Speech in New York, New York, August 3, 1857, in Frederick Douglass Papers, ed. Blassingame, 182. Garrison did just what Douglass proposed, when he flung the Constitution into a fire at a public meeting in 1854. See Perry, Lewis, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973), 189 Google Scholar.

45. See Lewis Hayden, Testimony at the Massachusetts State House, Boston, February 13, 1855, in The Black Abolitionist Papers, ed. C. Peter Ripley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 4:266-69; and Jermain Wesley Loguen, Letter to Frederick Douglass, March 1855, in Black Abolitionist Papers, ed. Ripley, 4:270-73.

46. Frederick Douglass, Speech in New York, New York, May 12, 1859, in Frederick Douglass Papers, ed. Blassingame, 258; Frederick Douglass, Speech in Glasgow, Scotland, March 26,1860, in Frederick Douglass Papers, ed. Blassingame, 363. Douglass satirizes the Garrisonian slogan, “No Union with Slaveholders.” See also Frederick Douglass Papers, ed. Blassingame, 559, where Douglass mocks the proslavery claim that Philemon supports the Fugitive Slave Law.

47. Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, rev. ed. of My Bondage and My Freedom (1892; repr., New York: Collier Books, 1962), 6-17.

48. See Frederick Douglass, Speech in Halifax, England, December 7, 1859, in Frederick Douglass Papers, ed. Blassingame, 283-85; Frederick Douglass, Speech in Rochester, New York, June 16, 1861, in Frederick Douglass Papers, ed. Blassingame, 440-41; and Martin, Waldo E. Jr., The Mind of Frederick Douglass (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 48–49 Google Scholar.

49. Resolutions by Lloyd H. Brooks delivered at the Third Christian Church, New Bedford, Massachusetts, June 16, 1858, in Black Abolitionist Papers, ed. Ripley, 4:392.

50. Association for the Religious Instruction of the Negroes in Liberty County, Georgia, Tenth Annual Report of the Association for the Religious Instruction of the Negroes in Liberty County, Georgia (Savannah, Ga.: The Association, 1845), 24-25, emphasis in original; Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 294-95.

51. Barnes, Inquiry, 319 n. See also Callahan, Embassy ofOnesimus, 1-2; Milton C. Sernett, Black Religion and American Evangelicalism: White Protestants, Plantation Missions, and the Flowering of Negro Christianity (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press and American Theological Library Association, 1975), 77; and Ciarice J. Martin, “The Haustafeln (Household Codes) in African American Biblical Interpretation: ‘Free Slaves’ and ‘Subordinate Women,” in Stony the Road We Trod, ed. Cain Hope Felder (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 216-17.

52. See Raboteau, Slave Religion, 242-43, 250-51; and Hutchison, “The Bible and Slavery,” 276-341.

53. Smith, Theophus H., Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 207 Google Scholar.

54. Ibid., 222-48.

55. Raboteau, Slave Religion, 163-64; Smith, Conjuring Culture, 159-60; and Mullin, Gerald W., Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 160 Google Scholar.

56. See Scherer, Lester B., Slavery and the Churches in Early America, 1619-1818 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 39–43, 69-74, 129-32Google Scholar. There were a few other isolated white voices speaking out against slavery, some Presbyterian and Baptist, others Methodist, but not many (see ibid., 132-41).

57. See Tise, Larry E., Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 16, 116-20, 308-22Google Scholar; see also Soderlund, Jean R., Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

58. See Sandeen, Ernest R., The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Mülenarianism, 1800-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), esp. 103-31Google Scholar; Noll, Mark A., “The Bible and Slavery,” in Religion and the Civil War, ed. Millar, Randall M., Stout, Harry S., and Wilson, Charles Reagan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 43–73 Google Scholar; and Christopher H. Owen, “‘To Keep the Way Open for Methodism’: Georgia Wesleyan Neutrality toward Slavery, 1844-1861,” in Religion and the Antebellum Debate, ed. McKivigan and Snay, 114-15.

59. Brookes, Iveson L., A Defence of the South against the Incroachments of the North (Hamburg, S.C.: Republican Office, 1850), 32 Google Scholar (see also William C. Buck, The Slavery Question [Louisville: Harney, Hughes and Hughes, 1849], 4, 9); Blanchard and Rice, Debate on Slavery, 291 (see also Hamilton, Duties of Masters and Slaves, 6); James H. Hammond, “Letters on Slavery,” in The Pro-Slavery Argument (1852; repr., New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968), 108; Fuller and Wayland, Domestic Slavery, 169,185.

60. See Fuller and Wayland, Domestic Slavery, 186; see also Hofstadter, Anti-intellectualism, 125 n. 5.

61. See Forbes, “Slavery and the Evangelical Enlightenment,” 92-93.

62. On Stuart's antiabolitionism, see Mitchell, “'Matters of Justice,” 139-49.

63. Fletcher, John, Studies on Slavery: In Easy Lessons (Natchez, Miss.: Jackson Warner, 1852), 163, 506-85Google Scholar, criticism directed at the “servant” hypothesis of Albert Barnes. See also Ross, Slavery Ordained, 59; Thornton Stringfellow, Scriptural and Statistical Views in Favor of Slavery (Richmond, Va.: J. W. Randolf, 1856), 52; [William Henry Drayton], The South Vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of the Northern Abolitionists (Philadelphia: H. Manly, 1836), 94; Armstrong, George D., The Christian Doctrine of Slavery (New York: Charles Scribner, 1857), 18–21 Google Scholar; Hopkins, John H., Bible View of Slavery (New York: Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge, 1863), 1 Google Scholar; Sloan, Great Question, 204-6; Graham, William, The Contrast, or the Bible and Abolitionism: An Exegetical Argument (Cincinnati: Daily Cincinnati Atlas, 1844), 23–26 Google Scholar; and Schaff, Philip, Slavery and the Bible: A Tractfor the Times (Chambersburg, Pa.: M. Kieffer, 1861), 20–21 Google Scholar.

64. Fuller and Wayland, Domestic Slavery, 167.

65. Hammond, “Letters on Slavery,’ 106-7, emphasis in original.

66. See Bledsoe, Albert T., “Liberty and Slavery,” in Cotton Is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments, ed. Elliott, E. N. (Augusta, Ga.: Pritchard, Albert and Loomis, 1860), 359-74Google Scholar; Meredith, Thomas, Christianity and Slavery (Boston: Gould, Kendall, and Lincoln, 1847), 45–51 Google Scholar; Ross, Slavery Ordained, 176-85; and Longstreet, Letters, 8-47.

67. Ross, Slavery Ordained, 97 (he adds: “Many of your most pious men, soundest scholars, have been led to the study of the Bible more faithfully in the light of the times. And they are reading it more and more in harmony with the views which have been reached by the highest Southern minds.” [98-99]); Charles Hodge, Essays and Reviews: Selected from the Princeton Review (New York: Robert Carter and Bros., 1857), 481.

68. Rice, N. L., Lectures on Slavery; Delivered in the North Presbyterian Church, Chicago (Chicago: Church, Goodman and Cushing, 1860), 18 Google Scholar; [Drayton], South Vindicated, 95 (see also Fletcher, Studies on Slavery, 116-17; Dabney, Defence, 153-54; and Meredith, Christianity and Slavery, 16); Stringfellow, Scriptural and Statistical Views, 23. Stringfellow's proslavery tract became one of the most influential in the late antebellum period. See Beth Barton Schweiger, “The Restructuring of Southern Religion: Slavery, Denominations, and the Clerical Profession in Virginia,” in Religion and the Antebellum Debate, ed. McKivigan and Snay, 300-301.

69. See Brookes, Defence, 2-3.

70. See Stringfellow, Scriptural and Statistical Views, 42-43; and Sloan, Great Question, 176-78.

71. Sloan, Great Question, 152. See also Fuller and Wayland, Domestic Slavery, 172; and Paulding, J. K., Slavery in the United States (New York: Harper and Bros., 1836), 20–29 Google Scholar.

72. Oakes, James, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 52–67, 145-47Google Scholar.

73. [Drayton], The South Vindicated, 95, 98. See also Armstrong, Christian Doctrine, 114-16; How, Samuel B., Slaveholding Not Sinful: Slavery, the Punishment of Man's Sin; Its Remedy, the Gospel of Christ (New Brunswick, N.J.: John Terhune, 1856), 39–41 Google Scholar; Hopkins, John Henry, The Scriptural Eccesiastical, and Historical View of Slavery (New York: W. I. Pooley, 1864), 240-43Google Scholar; and Jenkins, Proslavery Thought, 223-27.

74. [Drayton], The South Vindicated, 99; Hamilton, Duties of Masters and Slaves, 14-17.

75. Barnwell, William H., Views upon the Present Crisis: A Discourse Delivered in St. Peter's Church, Charleston (Charleston, S.C.: Letter-Press of E. C. Councell, 1850), 14 Google Scholar; Wheaton, N. S., A Discourse on St. Paul's Epistle to Philemon (Hartford, Conn.: Case, Tiffany, 1851), 23 Google Scholar.

76. Tise, Proslavery, 229; Stringfellow, Scriptural and Statistical Views, 75 (see also Ross, Slavery Ordained, 97; and Blanchard and Rice, Debate on Slavery, 44; on conservative republicanism as the center of proslavery ideology, see Tise, Proslavery, 204-60); Brookes, Defence, 30, the editorial reprinted in pamphlet form (see also Dabney, Defence, 188).

77. Ferguson, Jesse B., Address on the History, Authority and Influence of Slavery (Nashville, Tenn.: J. T. S. Fall, 1850), 4 Google Scholar.

78. Fuller and Wayland, Domestic Slavery, 6; Dabney, Defence, 203. See also Edward R. Crowther, “‘Religion Has Something … to Do with Politics’: Southern Evangelicals and the North, 1845-1860,” in Religion and the Antebellum Debate, ed. McKivigan and Snay, 332-33; Sloan, Great Question, 16675; and Brookes, Defence, 28-29.

79. See Graham, Contrast, 41; Fuller and Wayland, Domestic Slavery, 189-90 (on the authority of St. John Chrysostom's interpretation); Rice, Lectures, 34, 56; Hopkins, Scriptural, Ecclesiastical, and Historical View, 100, 161, 168 (important evidence for the use of scholarly commentaries in the nineteenth-century debate over slavery), 211; and Bledsoe, Liberty and Slavery, 375-78.

80. See Schaff, Slavery, 25-26, with knowledge of the patristic exegetical history on the crux. See also The Christian Doctrine of Human Rights and of Slavery: In Two Articles, from the Southern Presbyterian Review (Columbia, S.C.: I. C. Morgan, 1849), 6; Stuart, Moses, Conscience and the Constitution (1850; repr., New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), 52–56 Google Scholar; Blanchard and Rice, Debate on Slavery, 157, 218; and Dagg, J. L., The Elements of Moral Science (New York: Sheldon, 1861), 349 Google Scholar.

81. See Dabney, Defence, 160-61.

82. See Sloan, Great Question, 209. Part of the condemnation included criticism of abolitionism joining forces with the women's suffrage movement, which unsexed the female gender. See Bledsoe, Liberty and Slavery, 379; and Hammond, “Letters on Slavery,’ 174 n.

83. See Bancroft, Frederic, Slave Trading in the Old South (1931; repr., New York: Frederick Ungar, 1959), 365-81Google Scholar; and Tadman, Michael, Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 179–210 Google Scholar. Interestingly, a similar contempt is found in ancient slavery. See Harrill, “Vice of Slave Dealers.”

84. See Bledsoe, Liberty and Slavery, 358; Sloan, Great Question, 211-14; Ross, Slavery Ordained, 140-59; and Fletcher, Studies on Slavery, 57002.

85. Bledsoe, Liberty and Slavery, 377.

86. See Shannon, James, An Address Delivered before the Pro-Slavery Convention of the State of Missouri (St. Louis, Mo.: Republican Book and Job Office, 1855), 14 Google Scholar; Hopkins, Bible View of Slavery, 5; George D. Armstrong, Politics and the Pulpit: A Discourse Preached in the Presbyterian Church, Norfolk, Va. (Norfolk, Va.: J. D. Ghiselin, Jr., 1856), 35-36; Dabney, Defence, 185-92; and Stringfellow, Scriptural and Statistical Views, 48-49.

87. See Jenkins, Proslavery Thought, 233-34.

88. On the public debate over Wayland's textbook, see Van Broekhoven, “Suffering with Slaveholders.”

89. Fletcher, Studies on Slavery, 15,17 (emphasis in original), 97.

90. Ibid., 20; Bledsoe, Liberty and Slavery, 375-76; Stuart, Conscience, 61-62; Fuller and Wayland, Domestic Slavery, 140; and Graham, Contrast, 3941.

91. Slavery had been abolished in the French territories previously, in 1794, by the French National Convention, but the law was repealed by Napoleon in 1802.

92. Ross, Slavery Ordained, 77 (emphasis in original), 86 (emphasis in original).

93. Jenkins, Proslavery Thought, 236; and Ruffner, William H., Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity (New York: Robert Carter and Bros., 1853), 297 Google Scholar. Yet, the major source of xenophobia was perhaps the heavy rate of immigration in this period.

94. Hopkins, Scriptural Ecclesiastical, and Historical View, 219-20, emphasis in original.

95. Hopkins, Bible View of Slavery, 118; see also 132.

96. See Meeks, “‘Haustafeln’ and American Slavery,” 245; and Kevin Giles, “The Biblical Argument for Slavery: Can the Bible Mislead? A Case Study in Hermeneutics,” Evangelical Quarterly 66, no. 1 (January 1994): 3-17.

97. Meeks, “‘Haustafeln’ and American Slavery,” 233.