Lincoln and Other Abolition Era Leaders
Christianity was richly cited in support of slavery and its cruelty. Frederick Douglas in his autobiographical narrative (1845) reported: “I have said my master found religious sanction for his cruelty. As an example, I will state one of many facts going to prove the charge. I have seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy cow skin upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip; and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage of Scripture—‘He that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.’ [Luke 12:47] Master would keep this lacerated young, woman tied up in this horrid situation four or five hours at a time. I have known him to tie her up early in the morning, and whip her before breakfast; leave her, go to his store, return at dinner, and whip her again, cutting her in the places already made raw with his cruel lash.”
The Bible was used to justify the condemning of those believed to be the descendants of Ham (Africans) to slavery. There were four “just titles” for slavery endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church. These were: slaves captured in war, persons condemned to slavery for a crime; persons selling themselves into slavery, including a father selling his child; children of a mother who is a slave. The Catholic Church in southern states was solidly supportive of slavery. This apparently included an explicit endorsement of slavery by Pope Pius IX as late as 1866:
“Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several just titles of slavery and these are referred to by approved theologians and commentators of the sacred canons.... It is not contrary to the natural and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or given”.
--Pius IX (Instruction 20 June 1866 AD). (1)
One of the first people to speak out against slavery was Thomas Paine. In 1775, he wrote "African Slavery in America.” “With what consistency, or decency,” he wrote, could colonists “complain so loudly of attempts to enslave them, while they hold so many hundred thousand in slavery.” This was not the first publication to speak out against slavery but it was very influential. Within weeks it resulted in the founding of the first anti-slavery society in America. Paine was an outspoken non-Christian.
There were tensions between northern and southern Baptists over the issue of slavery. Many Baptists in the north thought that slavery was immoral. Southern Baptists thought that God meant for that races to be separate. The economy of the south was dependent on the labor of slaves. The Baptist churches in the south strongly supported the institution of slavery. This resulted in the Southern Baptist Convention being organized in May 8, 1845. (2)
William Lloyd Garrison was the founder and editor of the “Liberator.” This was the most significant issue oriented newspaper advocating for the emancipation of slaves. It was published weekly from 1831 till the end of the Civil War in 1865. He was the founder and leader of the American Antislavery Society with tens of thousands of members.
Garrison was personally religious but the heavy emphasis on the religious justification of slavery forced him to be a freethinker concerning the role of the Bible and religion in general. In the November 21, 1845 issue of the Liberator he said, “The Bible should be judged by its reasonableness and utility, by the probabilities of the case, by historical confirmation, by the intuition of the spirit. Truth is older than any parchment.”
Upton Sinclair quoted Garrison as saying. “American Christianity is the main pillar of American slavery.” (3) This was demonstrably true of the states which had societally and legally sanctioned slavery and with the many pro-slavery churches in other states.
Garrison is also quoted as saying, “The Sabbath, as now recognized and enforced, is one of the main pillars of Priestcraft and Superstition, and the stronghold of a merely ceremonial Religion.” (4) He deliberately scheduled a series of lectures in Boston in conflict with Sunday services. Garrison’s position on the role of religion was unmistakable and clear.
Frances Wright, a secularist, was the first women known to speak out against slavery. She, along with Robert Dale Owen, was co-leader of the radical Freethought movement. She founded a notorious Nashoba community designed to allow slaves to work for their freedom and become educated.
Sarah and Angelina Grimke had an even greater influence in the emancipation effort. They grew up on a slave plantation in Charleston, South Carolina where they had first hand experience with the routine whippings and rapes that were part of slavery. They became Hicksite Quakers, more anticlerical, anti-ritualist and antislavery than the orthodox Society of Friends. Hick’s desire to uproot a reliance on Biblical scripture opened him and his followers to charges of being non-Christian.
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History of American Government
Foundational Documents of the United States
