The Theology of the Confederacy

Part Six

IV. Slavery.

In any discussion on Confederate theology a position on slavery is of crucial importance. The first problem encountered on the subject is that it is so very highly charged with emotion from the outset. Virtually everyone begins with the presupposition that slavery is wrong, evil, vile, and immoral. This leads to no discussion at all, for if slavery is all of the above, then what point could there possibly be for discussing it further?

A. Considered Biblically.

Therefore, the first order of business is to examine the presupposition that slavery is immoral. For if that is ever found to be fallacious, then the entire course of American history needs to be rethought.

As with any moral issue, the Christian must begin with the Bible. For this is the ultimate source of our ethical system, as the Bible is nothing less than God speaking to us. As previously quoted from the Westminster Confession of Faith,

• The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture... The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.

In the preceding section it was shown that slavery was a religious matter, and so we must begin with the Bible to form our opinions about it. For everything, and this excludes nothing, which the Christian believes to be good or evil, must be received as such from the Holy Scriptures. All things which man needs for his life are to be found there. As James Henley Thornwell declared,

• The Bible, and the Bible alone, is her [the Church's] rule of faith and practice. She can announce what it teaches, enjoin what it commands, prohibit what it condemns... Beyond the Bible she can never go, and apart from the Bible she can never speak. To the law and to the testimony, and to them alone, she must always appeal; and when they are silent it is her duty to put her hand upon her lips.

For instance, why is murder wrong? The answer is because God has forbidden it in His Word. Why are prostitution and adultery immoral? Because they are forbidden in the Bible. Why is stealing wrong? Because God has forbidden it in Scripture.

So, what of the institution of domestic slavery? Is it forbidden in Scripture? Does the Bible speak of it as a vile evil which must be expunged from the earth by any means necessary? The answer to these questions is simply, "No."

Colossians 4:1 states, "Masters, grant to your slaves justice and fairness, knowing that you too have a Master in heaven."

Ephesians 6:5 enjoins, "Slaves, be obedient to those who are your master according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ."

In Luke 7 a centurion slaveholder sent his servants to ask Jesus to heal his slave. Not once did Christ condemn the man for being a master, but after healing his slave the Lord commended the master for his Christian character with these words, "I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such great faith."

In Genesis 16:9, we see the angel of the Lord say to a runaway slave, "Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her authority."

B. Thornwell's Defense.

The Bible has a great deal to say about the subject of slavery besides these four verses. None of it, however, pours any contempt upon the institution. Again quoting Thornwell,

• Certain it is that no direct condemnation of Slavery can anywhere be found in the Sacred Volume. A social element in all States, from the dawn of history until the present period, if it be the crying and damning sin which its enemies represent it to be, it is truly amazing that the Bible... nowhere gives the slightest caution against this tremendous evil. The master is nowhere rebuked as a monster of cruelty and tyranny... The manner in which the relation is spoken of and its duties prescribed... convey the impression that they [Biblical writers, i. e. prophets, apostles, etc.] themselves had not the least suspicion that they were dealing with a subject full of abominations and outrages.

There were those who argued against slavery on the grounds of compassion with Biblical maxims such as: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In answer to these Thornwell replied,

• The same principle which would make the master emancipate his servant on the ground of benevolence, would make the rich man share his estates with his poor neighbor... it is enough for a Christian man who compares Scripture with Scripture, to know that Slavery is expressly excepted from the application of this or any other principle in the sweeping sense of the Abolitionists.

The fact that a Christian treats another person in the manner in which he would want to be treated does not do away with all offices of authority. This was, however, the argument of the Abolitionist. For instance, fathers are enjoined in Scripture to use the rod in raising their children. The Abolitionist-type argument against this would logically be, "You shouldn't spank your child, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You wouldn't want him to beat you, would you?"

Thornwell saw the spuriousness of such an argument: The words of the golden rule are to be fitted into the social structure of society and are not meant to supplant it.

Dabney also had some good ideas on this logical fallacy of the Abolitionists,

• The whole reasoning of the Abolitionist proceeds on the absurd idea, that any caprice or vain desire we might entertain towards our fellowman, if we were in his place, and he in ours, must be the rule of our conduct towards him, whether the desire would be in itself right or not... On this rule, a parent who, were he a child again, would be wayward and self-indulgent, commits a clear sin in restraining or punishing the waywardness of his child, for this is doing the opposite or what he would wish were he again the child. Judge and sheriff commit a criminal murder in condemning and executing the most atrocious felon; for were they on the gallows themselves, the overmastering love of life would very surely prompt them to desire release.

Concerning those Christians who were intent on condemning the institution of slavery despite the fact that they had no Biblical basis for such assertions, Thornwell had these words,

• They seem much more like apologists for the defects and omissions of the Scriptures, than like humble inquirers sitting at the feet of Jesus to learn His will. They have settled it in their own minds that Slavery is a sin; then the Bible must condemn it, and they set to work to make out the case that the Bible has covertly and indirectly done what they feel it ought to have done.

Thus from a Biblical point of view, we can find no condemnation of the institution of slavery, nor, by extension, of the Southern nation. For although clear and odious abuses of slaves by their masters did sometimes occur, this same type of sin is also committed in our present-day society by those holding authority over others. To reject the institution of slavery on the basis of the occasional abuses within the institution, would logically require that we overthrow all authority in every institution because abuses occur within every institution and within every relationship. We can therefore state authoritatively that the slander and ridicule which has been heaped upon us because of slavery has been unbiblical, self-righteous, hypocritical, and Pharisaical. Regardless of how many people believe that our forefathers were intrinsically wicked because they owned slaves, those condemnations carry no moral weight whatsoever!

C. Considered Sociologically.

1. All Major Civilizations Practiced Slavery.

Considering slavery sociologically, it first needs to be said that prior to 1861 slavery had been practiced in all of the major civilizations of the world up to that time. The African-American author Thomas Sowell states,

• Slavery had long existed among the African tribes, as it had existed for centuries among Europeans, going back to ancient Greece and Rome. But massive commercial sales of Negro slaves began after the conquest of Northern Africa by the Arabs in the eighth century.

To this we can add that slavery was practiced by the Hebrews centuries before the Greek Empire. In view of the facts, the Abolitionists' claim that "slavery is sinful and immoral" was, at best, a novel idea.

2. Blacks Already Enslaved.

We also need to realize that the Africans who were brought here were already enslaved to their tribal chieftains or were prisoners of war before contact with the Europeans was ever established. Rushdoony states,

• ... when he was transported to America. He [the Negro] was not taken from freedom into slavery, but from a vicious slavery to degenerate chiefs to a generally benevolent slavery in the United States. There is not the slightest evidence that any American Negro had ever lived in a "free society" in Africa; even the idea did not exist in Africa. The move from Africa to America was a vast increase of freedom for the Negro, materially and spiritually as well as personally. The Negroes were sold from a harsh slavery into a milder one. Slavery was basic to the African way of life, to the point that slaves were the actual money of the African economy. Elsewhere, gold and silver served as money; in Africa, it was slaves.

There is also the declaration by Carleton Putnam, the former Chairman of Delta Air Lines, in his book Race and Reason: A Yankee View, "The worst conditions of slavery in the South never approached the horrors from which the American Negro was delivered when he was removed from the slavery of his own race in Africa to slavery under the white man."

These assertions are important because they so irrefutably put the lie to the concept, so often presented, that Americans went to Africa on hunting expeditions, tracked down free and successful Africans from the bush, and forcibly carried them from Africa to America. Truthful scholars know this is untrue and it is high time that the truth become known by the people at large.

3. The Conditions of Southern Slavery.

The domestic condition of the Southern slaves has also been grossly distorted and exaggerated by the South's opponents. It has been alleged that the slaves were systematically kidnapped, physically wasted, sexually abused, whipped, branded, shot, chained, lynched, and torn from their filial affections. As with all fallacies there is at least a slight element of truth in these charges. However, the cases in which these events occurred represented deviant exceptions of Southern life as opposed to the general rule, which would render a much more accurate portrait of Southern life.

If you were to write a history of the city of Atlanta, and use nothing but the police arrest records as source material, then you would have about as accurate a picture of Atlanta as has been rendered about plantation life by Abolitionist literature.

The Presbyterian minister, William S. White, in whose church General Thomas Jackson was a deacon, addressed this point,

• In all lands there are husbands and fathers who mistreat their wives and children. So, there are masters among us who maltreat their slaves. But the prevailing spirit is one of great kindness, showing itself in innumerable ways: their mutual dependence begets a mutual attachment. I could fill volumes with instances occurring under my eyes illustrating the statement. But, I write this for my own people, especially my own children, and not for the abolitionist.

We cannot and do not deny that Southern plantation owners were sinful men and some of them committed sinful deeds in regards to their slaves. Nonetheless, the occasional actions of the few does not define the character of the entire society.

a. Brutality.

The basic fact to understand here is that slaves constituted valuable property, and businessmen do not generally abuse their business assets. Considered logically, what motivation could a slave-owner have for whipping, branding, shooting, or lynching his valuable property if no offence had been committed which warranted such punishment?

A slave who had become angry and sullen through unjustified cruelty was hardly fit to work. He could cause far more trouble than he was worth. There was simply no incentive for a master to abuse his slaves. Civil War historian Reverend Steve Wilkins states,

• Now quite a few masters would not allow whipping at all, or only allowed it very mildly and only in their presence. Far more important than whipping was trying to motivate them [the slaves]. No plantation owner wanted slaves that were sullen and discontented and hostile, which they could have been if they were mistreated... You don't want sullen, discontented, angry, and hostile men working for you. Rather you want happy, honest, responsible men who identify their fortune with yours. And so what you want to do is win their confidence and win their affection. The problem the Southerners had was motivating and encouraging. They did not do a great deal of negative punishment because they were afraid of the reaction.

Besides this, there were laws on the books which protected slaves from physical abuses by their masters. Major Robert Dabney wrote,

• It is also an outrageous misrepresentation to say that our laws imposed no check upon the master's brutality in punishing, and took away the slave's natural right to self-defence... The laws of Virginia protected not only the life, but the limb of the slave against white persons, and even his own master... when a master took the life of his servant, especially if it were done by cruel punishments, the publick scorn for his meanness and tyranny, and the general feeling of kindliness for our dependent fellow-creatures, were apt to secure a far more faithful execution of the law against him, than if he had slain his white peer for any insult or wrong... Any coloured person whatsoever, conceiving himself to be unlawfully detained in bondage, may apply to any justice of the peace, or county or superior circuit court, to enter a suit for his freedom...

To this we can add the experiences of a British journalist and writer who toured the South and studied the institution of slavery as it existed here,

The South was visited many times by journalists from the North as well as from Europe, in order to send back first hand reports on the nature of the South in general, and the nature of slavery in particular. In the 1840s the Englishman, Charles Lyell, travelled through the nation and published his observations in a book called Travels in North America in the Years 1841-1842. Lyell's description of slavery as it operated in the South were widely publicized in the North, and pointedly contradicted the prevalent Abolitionist propaganda. Lyell noted the remarkable affection that existed between the races in the South. He was amazed that there was so much affection between master and slave.

He noted the fact that he found slaves better fed, he said, than a large part of the laboring class of Europe. He said there were no whips or chains, or gross mistreatment. Now he didn't see everything, but that was his observations, as far as he saw. He didn't see the kind of mistreatment that he had been led to expect.

To Lyell, slavery was a mild institution, though he felt it very uneconomical and inefficient.

b. Family.

It has also been alleged that slavery systematically ripped apart black families and blood ties. This is absurd as the nuclear family was essentially an unknown element to black society. Again the words of Dabney are pertinent,

• Another charge against us is that our laws abrogated the rights of marriage among slaves, authorized their capricious separation by masters, and thus consigned them to promiscuous concubinage, like that of beasts... That is, first, a monstrous perversion of the facts, in that the Africans never had any marital rights or domestic institutions to be deprived of. Have men forgotten, that in their native country there was no marriage, and no marriage law, but the negroes either lived in vagrant concubinage, or held their plurality of wives as slaves, to be either sold or slain at will?

Little has changed as the greatest social problem facing African-Americans today is their lack of a family structure. Studies show that about 65 percent of African-American children are born out of wedlock. And of those who do get married, the divorce rate is twice as high as it is among whites, which is quite high in its own right.

Americans are generally unaware of a multi-volume set of documents which resides in the Library of Congress named The Slave Narratives. This is too important of a work to ignore when investigating the institution of slavery in the antebellum South.

One of the most ignored documents in the Library of Congress... is The Slave Narratives. This was the result of a federal works project during the depression, where a number of out of work writers were employed by the federal government to travel through the South, or, in some cases, Southern journalists were hired to interview former slaves who were living during that time - to ask them about the conditions of slavery, to get a first-hand account of what slavery was like.

Now one would think that the verbal testimony of over 2300 former slaves would be a fairly important piece of information, if you want to get a picture of slavery in the South... The fact is that after they were compiled, they were buried and continue to be denounced every time someone raises the issue of The Slave Narratives. People are surprised by that, but they shouldn't be. The fact is that historians are not neutral, nor are they normally led about by the facts. They see the facts, not with their eyes, but with their prejudices...

The narratives consistently portray an amazingly, to our modern eyes, benign picture of Southern plantation life. Affection for former masters and mistresses is expressed in terms of unmistakable devotion. Testimony to the good treatment, and kindness, and gentleness of many so-called heartless slave-owners, abounds. Many of the old slaves express a wistful desire to get back to the plantation.

Slave life to them, according to their own words, was a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, and clothes, and good medical care. There is no pervasive cry of rage and anguish. There is no general expression of bitterness or outrage. Instead, what you find on page after page are protestations of affection for a condition that most of us have thought that every slave despised.

Overwhelmingly, there is a positive view of slavery set forth... Modern abolitionists have fallen over themselves in an effort to discredit this amazing testimony...

The anger and the rage over slavery in the African-American community has originated since the time of the War Between the States and since the time of the Great Depression. It is, in fact, a product of the Civil Rights movement. Similarly to other communist social crusades, the Civil Rights movement has encouraged a systematic class and ethnic warfare between African-Americans and Southerners, and all of this has been undertaken in the name of justice, equality, and unity.

c. Wages.

In actuality, the slaves of the South had a higher standard of living than that of the peasants of Europe. This baffled many who came here knowing about the South only the vicious lies and slanders which had been propagated through Abolitionist literature. The University of Alabama historian, Forrest McDonald, says it this way,

• Travelers to colonial Virginia from the North and from Europe, expecting to see horrors, repeatedly reported that they saw none and that slaves appeared to live easy and easygoing lives. Americans who had traveled in Europe knew that `free' European peasants suffered considerably greater oppression and misery than did American bondsmen. Modern scholarship has shown that the exploitation rate - the percentage of the worker's production that was taken from him by his owners - was lower among slaves than among European peasants, that work loads were light, and that slaves actually experienced a considerable measure of personal freedom.

To this we can add the story of an actual slave as related in a lecture by Reverend Steve Wilkins,

• Now all this evidence points to the fact that slaves lived at various levels of income. The average pecuniary income actually received by a prime field hand was 15 percent greater than the income he would have received as a free agricultural worker...

  Occasionally, some slaves saved their money and were quite wealthy after the war. Simon Phillips, a slave from Alabama, says this: "People has the wrong idea about slave days. We was treated good. My master never laid a hand on me the whole time I was with him, and sometimes we loaned him money when he was hard pushed.

Despite the facts and the testimony of an array of scholars, the loud, wild-eyed, half-crazed fictions of African-American leaders and their Abolitionist fellow-travelers continue to be heard in this land. They speak over and over about how badly slaves were treated and how wicked our forefathers were for manhandling them in such a manner, along with how much we owe them for their trouble. The facts, nonetheless, demonstrate that the most fortunate event in the history of the Africans now in America occurred on the day an ancestor of theirs was brought to this land. Never before had they experienced such freedom or humane treatment at the hands of another human being. Never before had they been given the opportunity to experience the fruits and joys of Christian civilization.

This is one of the main reasons that the Abolitionist agitator, John Brown, was unsuccessful. The Africans' condition on the Southern plantations was simply not so bad as to arouse the slaves to undertake the kind of action for which Brown was calling.

D. The Slave Trade.

The evils associated with slavery came not in the institution itself, but in two other areas: (1) the slave trade, and, (2) abuses by individuals within the institution. The slave trade is fair game for moral condemnation. Even though the Africans were not captured and brought to America at gun point, as is commonly depicted, but were sold to slave traders by their own rulers for rum, it was nonetheless immoral for white men to engage in such a business practice.

1. A New England Business.

The slave trade was not a Southern business practice, but was carried on almost exclusively by New Englanders. In his book, The Story of Religion in America, author William W. Sweet has these words,

• Hand in hand with the New England slave trade went rum-making, for the best article of trade on the African coast was rum. By 1730 Rhode Island alone was sending eighteen or more vessels each year to Africa to trade in slaves, carrying at least eighteen hundred hogsheads of rum.

Dabney also had a lot to say about this,

• It need hardly be said that we abhor the injustice, cruelty, and guilt of the African slave trade. It is justly condemned by the public law of Christendom - a law which not Wilberforce, nor the British Parliament, nor British, nor Yankee Abolitionists, have the honor of originating, but the slave-holding Commonwealth of Virginia. It is condemned by the law of God. Moses placed this among the judicial statutes of the Jews: "and he that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death."

Virginia was the first political jurisdiction to outlaw the slave trade. This was done in 1778. None of the Southern states trafficked in slaves. That business was a Northern business.

The consensus of opinion, in Virginia and the South, was that if a person was already a slave, and recognized as such by the law of the commonwealth, then it was perfectly legitimate, and many times compassionate, to purchase said individual. Our people bought those already enslaved, and this was a benefit for both parties. For the slave traders did not have the familial interest in the slaves which the plantation owners had. The slave traders' interest were purely financial.

So the Southerners bought those who were already enslaved. Yet, the actual traffic in the slaves was the work of their future conquerors.

2. The Complicity of Blacks in the Slave Trade.

It needs to be reiterated that the Africans have always been treated most brutally by other Africans, and this is as true today as ever. The slaves in America had virtually all been sold to Europeans by Africans. Although, slavery was outlawed in America in the 1860s, slavery continued to be practiced legally in Africa until the 1960s, and is still practiced today on that continent, albeit without statutory sanction.

The following news item illustrates the true status of slavery in Africa,

• at the Casa Blanca Conference of African heads of state in January, 1961, a delegate from the Republic of Mali asked the Libyan representative for the extradition of a tribal chief from Mali who was accused of leading his whole tribe on a "pilgrimage," selling it in the "Holy Land," and then retiring to Libya to live peacefully on the money he had made."

This is a true story from the 1950s. A tribal chief marched his entire tribe across Africa and sold every one of them as a slave in Arabia. He then took the money he made from the sale and retired to Libya. In 1961, Mali was petitioning Libya for his extradition.

Surely this was an unusual occurrence, but not one that was unique.

The Theology of the Confederacy

Part Seven

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