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The slavery debate was so heated that three Protestant denominations split over the issue. Pro-slavery Christians saw the plain meaning of Scripture; abolitionists pointed to a sophisticated anti-slavery biblical argument.  

Both sides used the Bible as a shield (to deflect criticism) and a weapon (to criticize and even demonize their sinful opponents).  Both sides also claimed the moral high ground.

As the winds of controversy buffeted the landscape, bending branches and uprooting trees, there was a surprisingly calm place of agreement.  Conscientious Southern Christians and their Northern counterparts believed that “all have sinned” and need salvation.  They also agreed that American slavery fell short of biblical standards. 

Historian Eugene D. Genovese sheds light on this subject in A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South.

In this thoughtful, compact book, Genovese states that Southern Christian reformers forcefully argued for “the conversion of the slaves, the sanctity of the slave family, and the right of slaves to read the Bible.”¹

The Rev. Robert L. Dabney, the future chaplain of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, wrote that “where the female [slave] is not mistress of her own chastity … it is an obstacle to the Prince of Peace [Jesus].”²

Southern ministers knew that Jesus taught that married couples become “one flesh.”  Jesus said, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”  The Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge of Kentucky said that selling off a husband or a wife made slavery “a hell upon earth.”³

Northern and Southern ministers also agreed that slaves needed to be able to read the Bible for themselves.  This echoed the “Old Deluder, Satan” Act.  Passed in 1647, the Massachusetts legislature established public schools so that children could learn to read the Bible and thereby thwart the “Old Deluder, Satan.”⁴

By the 1840s, literacy laws forbad teaching slaves to read, ostensibly so they wouldn’t read abolitionist literature that poured into the South.  Some Southern preachers then promoted oral Christian instruction.⁵

A minority of ministers dissented against the literacy prohibition.  For example, one Methodist preacher taught his slaves to read (shortly before the Civil War).  Neighbors threatened violence.  Ex-slave O.J.M. McCann said that the preacher declared “he would teach them [slaves] to read the word of God [even] if they hung him.”⁶

There is evidence of a small but growing number of Southern ministers who thought slavery should be reformed.  However, no Southern churches – to Genovese’s knowledge – expelled slave-holding members for abusing slaves or violating other scriptural mandates.  Instead, ministers viewed secession as a golden opportunity for state legislatures to reform slavery.⁷

Midway through the Civil War, a Mississippi Presbyterian Church select committee in 1863 demanded that Confederate law recognize and protect slave marriages.  The report states, “God himself will sooner or later avenge his own laws.”⁸

These words foreshadow President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.  Lincoln didn’t claim to speak for God.  And yet he wondered whether it was God’s will that the war continue until “all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.”⁹

In the final analysis, Northern and Southern Christians probably agreed with the old hymn:

“God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform.  He leaves his footsteps on the sea, and rides upon the storm.”¹⁰

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Endnotes

1.         E.D. Genovese, A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009), 29-30.

2.         T.C. Johnson, The Life and Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney (Richmond: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1903), 129.

3.         Matthew 19:6, King James Version; V.B. Howard, “Robert J. Breckinridge and the Slavery Controversy in Kentucky in 1849,” Filson Club Quarterly (1979).

4.         The Massachusetts Teacher and Journal of Home and School Education, vol. IX (Boston: Samuel Coolidge, 1856), 394.

5.         Genovese, 23-24.

6.         Genovese, 26.

7.         Genovese, 52, 60.

8.         Southern Presbyterian Review, Vol. XVI (Columbia: 1866), 29.

9.         A. Delbanco, ed., “Second Inaugural Address,” The Portable Abraham Lincoln (New York: Viking, 1992), 321.

10.       W. Cowper, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way,” in J. Newton, Twenty-six Letters on Religious Subjects; to Which are Added Hymns (1774).