tion" ought to be reformed was regarded as disloyal to the south.'

The defenders of slavery were many, and made up for their lack of literary prestige by the liveliness of their feeling. Some foreign visitors, especially Sir Charles Lyell, condoned slavery; and some northern ministers were enthusiastic champions, especially the Reverend Nehemiah Adams, of Boston, on the basis of a brief visit to Savannah. Within the south the cudgels were taken up for slavery by leaders of every kind. The southern clergymen almost without exception defended the system. There was hardly a college president or professor who would not enter the lists in behalf of slavery, and Chancellor Harper, of the College of South Carolina, was one of a group of contributors, including Simms, the literary man, Dew, a college professor, and Hammond, a public man, who joined in a semi- official defence of slavery entitled The Pro-Slavery Argument. State governors, like McDuffie, of South Carolina, joined in the conflict, and legislatures adopted long, defensive reports.

In the discussion the south had a technical advantage in that not a single southern public man of large reputation and influence failed to stand by slavery; while from the northern ranks some, like Webster, stifled their natural objections; others, like Cass, "Northern men with Southern principles,”

1

Examples of defence of slavery, in Hart, Contemporaries, IV., 88 25-27.

ranged themselves alongside their southern brothers in an open defence of slavery.

The first argument in favor of slavery was that it was an institution traceable to the very roots and origins of society, "a principal cause of civilization. Perhaps . . . the sole cause." Aristotle recognized and approved slavery; the Romans had slavery, and it was the cause of their prosperity.1 The Jews had slavery under a system closely resembling that of the south. Hagar was a slave, “and the angel of the Lord said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands." Against the objection that the mediæval Catholic church was resolute against slavery was set the authority of some of the church fathers.3 Had not England admitted villeinage? Did not the philosopher Locke permit slavery in his model Constitution for the Carolinas? That Greece and Rome had perished in spite of their system of slavery; that England had for centuries disavowed both chattel and villein servitude; that by 1830 all Europe, except Russia, had rid itself of serfdom, took away the force of this argument of precedent, which is put forth chiefly by learned and casuistical writers.

1 Harper, in Pro-Slavery Argument, 3, 69-72.

'Genesis, xvi., 9; Exodus, xxi., 20, 21; Hopkins, View of Slavery, 74-98; Bledsoe, Liberty and Slavery, chap. iii.

Hopkins, View of Slavery, 99-119, 269-275.

♦ Ibid., 262-264, 276-283; Dew, in Pro-Slavery Argument, 312

The argument of the authority of the Scriptures was living, vital, and very effectual; for the Reformation habit of referring all cases of moral conduct to the Bible was almost universal in the United States. The advocates and the opponents of total abstinence, of woman's rights, of imprisonment for debt, of instrumental music in churches, of theatres, dipped into that great sea and fished out "prooftexts" which were triumphantly held to be conclusive. It was undeniable that both the Old and the New Testament mentioned, legislated on, and did not expressly condemn slavery; that though the word "slave" appears in but two places in the King James version, the word "servant" frequently refers to slaves. The Tenth Commandment forbids the coveting of "his man - servant, nor his maidservant." The Jews were allowed to buy "bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy." "If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's." "If a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money." In these and some similar passages were found Scriptural sanction for the purchase, sale, and extreme punishment of slaves, and even for

1 Exodus, xx., 17, xxi., 4, 20, 21; Leviticus, XXV., 44, 45.

the separation of families, in the United States of America.1

2

Another Scriptural argument, a thousand times repeated, goes back to the unseemly behavior of Ham, youngest son of Noah and father of Canaan; when the old patriarch “drank of the wine, and was drunken." And he said, "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant." If Shem was the ancestor of the Anglo-Saxons, if Canaan was the ancestor of the Africans, was it not a Q. E. D. that African slavery was not only allowed, but divinely ordained and commanded? In a generation ignorant of any theory of the Aryan race, and still little troubled by the damnation of unregenerate infants, such a curse upon unborn generations for a technical fault of a remote ancestor seemed not unreasonable.

The New Testament also contained passages highly encouraging to the slave-holders, such as, "Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called." "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." "Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor." And most comfortable of all was St. Paul's appeal

1 Brief summaries of these arguments in Hopkins, View of Slavery, 7-18; Hammond, in Pro-Slavery Argument, 105-108, 155-159. 'Genesis, ix., 18-26.

to Philemon to receive Onesimus (asserted to be a fugitive slave), who had “departed for a season, . . not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me."1

...

That both Old and New Testaments recognized the existence of slavery when they were written, and nowhere instituted direct commands against it, was absolutely irrefutable; but the anti-slavery people quoted Scripture against Scripture. They argued that the references to slavery in the Old Testament were precisely like those to polygamy; and if slavery was justified because of Hagar's children, concubinage was equally justified. There were also passages in the Old Testament bidding the master to set his bondsman free after seven years, and against man-stealing. Were not the Jews themselves, after four hundred years of slavery in Egypt, conducted into freedom by a divinely appointed leader? As for Onesimus, Paul speaks of him as a "brother" and a "beloved brother"-not a useful comparison for a slave-owner.

The most telling counter-argument was always the general spirit of Christ and the apostles. How could slavery be made to fit with the injunction, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature"; with the appeal to "be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honor preferring one another." If Abraham was a

2

1 1 Corinthians, vii., 20; Ephesians, vi., 5; 1 Timothy, vi., I; Philemon, 10-16. 2 Mark, xvi., 15; Romans, xii., 10.

VOL. XVI.-10