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President Lord's Defence of Slavery.

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ART. IV.—PRESIDENT LORD'S DEFENCE OF SLAVERY.*

THE pamphlets whose titles are given below are examples of a new sort of literature. Until within a few years it would have been hard to find a Protestant clergyman, either at the North or the South, willing to defend the system of American Slavery on grounds either of justice or of expediency. Almost every one then conceded that in the abstract it was wrong; almost every one granted that in the long run its practical effects on the community were bad. It was usually admitted that the Gospel of Christ, who came to preach deliverance to the captives, and who told men to do as they would be done by, is radically opposed to slavery. These views were entertained at the close of the Revolution by most of the great statesmen, at the North and South, who founded our republic. Such men as Jefferson, Madison, and Patrick Henry, though not prepared to abolish slavery where it existed, admitted its inconsistency with the principles of our republic, confessed it to be a great social and moral evil, and showed their sincerity by uniting with the North to exclude it by positive law from all the new territory northwest of the Ohio.

This being the public sentiment among statesmen, it is not extraordinary that a like opinion prevailed among Christian sects and Christian theologians. The opinion of the Presbyterian Church in the United States was publicly declared by its highest authority in 1818. It adopted with unanimity a declaration drawn up by Dr. Ashbel Green, then President of the College at Princeton. We give the following extract, premising that Dr. Green was a conservative man, of unquestioned orthodoxy, and that the Presbyterian Church was a conservative body, by no means celebrated for any zeal for reforms, and therefore well representing the conservative view at that time in the Christian Church on this subject.

1. A Letter of Inquiry to Ministers of the Gospel, of all Denominations, on Slavery. By a Northern Presbyter. Boston: Fetridge & Co. 1854. pp. 32. 2. A Northern Presbyter's Second Letter, &c. By NATHAN LORD, President of Dartmouth College. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co, New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1855. pp. 99.

We may be quite sure that Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, and Friends would at that time have gone at least as far as this in opposition to slavery.*

"The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, having taken into consideration the subject of SLAVERY, think proper to make known their sentiments upon it to the churches and people under their care.

6

"We consider the voluntary enslaving of one part of the human race by another, as a gross violation of the most precious and sacred rights of human nature; as utterly inconsistent with the law of God, which requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves; and as totally irreconcilable with the spirit and principles of the Gospel of Christ, which enjoin that all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.' Slavery creates a paradox in the moral system; it exhibits rational, accountable, and immortal beings in such circumstances as scarcely to leave them the power of moral action. It exhibits them as dependent on the will of others, whether they shall receive religious instruction; whether they shall know and worship the true God; whether they shall enjoy the ordinances of the Gospel; whether they shall perform the duties and cherish the endearments of husbands and wives, parents and children, neighbors and friends; whether they shall preserve their chastity and purity, or regard the dictates of justice and humanity. Such are some of the consequences of slavery, consequences not imaginary, but which connect themselves with its very existence. The evils to which the slave is always exposed often take place in fact, and in their very worst degree and form; and where all of them do not take place, as we rejoice to say that in many instances, through the influence of the principles of humanity and religion on the minds of masters, they do not,—still the slave is deprived of his natural right, degraded as a human being, and exposed to the danger of passing into the hands of a master who may inflict upon him all the hardships and injuries which inhumanity and avarice may suggest.

"From this view of the consequences resulting from the practice into which Christian people have most inconsistently fallen, of enslaving a portion of their brethren of mankind, — for ‘ God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth,' it is manifestly the duty of all Christians who enjoy the light of the present day, when the inconsistency of slavery both with the dictates of humanity and religion has

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*See "The New-Englander" for November, 1854, p. 635.

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Mr. Calhoun's Influence.

391

been demonstrated, and is generally seen and acknowledged, to use their honest, earnest, and unwearied endeavors to correct the errors of former times, and as speedily as possible to efface this blot on our holy religion, and to obtain the complete abolition of slavery throughout Christendom, and if possible throughout the world.”

This being the doctrine in 1818 of such a conservative sect, it is a natural and reasonable inference that it was the prevailing sentiment at that time in other Christian denominations. That it was so is admitted by those who now hold the opposite opinion.* But within a few years a great change has taken place, first in the opinions of Southern statesmen, secondly in the opinions of Southern theologians, and lastly among some theologians at the North. Mr. Calhoun led the way in this new direction, and may be considered as the founder of the new theology concerning slavery. He first assumed the position that slavery was not bad, but good; not wrong, but right; not injurious, but beneficial. A man of great logical acumen, and far removed from the race of compromisers, he believed, with Shakespeare, that "Yes and No are not good theology." The immense expansion in the United States of the culture of cotton had produced an increased demand for slave labor, making slavery so profitable that the difficulty of abolishing it, even by a gradual process, was greatly increased. It seemed to Mr. Calhoun a mental absurdity to admit that slavery was a wrong and an evil, and at the same time to persist in maintaining it. If it was wrong, it should be given up; but if it was not to be given up, it should be defended. This was Mr. Calhoun's view, because he was a man of logic. And the whole South followed him in this view, as men will always follow a leader who has the courage to push their secret principles of conduct to their manifest results. The Southern churches followed the statesman to his new conclusions; the Southern divines followed their churches; and now we have Northern theologians who follow their Southern brethren to the same results. Slavery is now also defended at the North, as right and beautiful in itself;

*See, in proof, the quotations in The New-Englander for November, 1854, Article VIII., "The Southern Apostasy."

and we have a national theology as well as a national policy. And before long, those of us who still hold the old-fashioned doctrine of Jefferson and Madison, of Washington and Franklin, of the Presbyterian Church in 1818, of Jonathan Edwards, Dr. Hopkins, and John Wesley, may perhaps be stigmatized as holding a sectional theology."

Conspicuous among these doctors, both by the influence of his position and the courageous frankness of his statements, is Dr. Nathan Lord, President of Dartmouth College. In his first "Letter of Inquiry to Ministers of the Gospel, of all Denominations," he gives his views under the form of questions. In the "Second Letter to Ministers of the Gospel, of all Denominations," he proposes to justify what he has before written, and to substantiate by additional reasonings his original positions. There are evidently three ways in which slavery may be defended by those who feel themselves called to that work. There is, first, the ground of ABSTRACT ETHICS; by which they may endeavor to show that slavery is in itself right, in sight of absolute reason. Secondly, it may be defended on the ground of ExpeDIENCY, as an institution which in practice works well. And, in the third place, it may be defended SCRIPTURALLY, by proofs taken from the Old and New Testaments. President Lord has selected the first line of

* In proof of the views formerly held at the South, and of the change there, see the following extract from an editorial in the Richmond Enquirer, July 3, 1856: "Before Abolitionism began its offensive operations, the South was not at all satisfied of the moral or social sanction of negro slavery. The truth is, our forefathers of the last generation, so far from justifying and defending the institution on its own merits, disclaimed any responsibility for its origin, apologized for its existence on the plea of inability to abolish it, and protested their desire to discover some safe and sufficient remedy for the imaginary evil. Now, all thinking men in the South are persuaded that slavery is the normal condition of the negro; that it is justified by the sanction of God's revealed as well as natural law; that it is an instrument of Providence in working out the material and moral development of civilization; and that it is a wise, salutary, and beneficent institution of Christian society. The consequence of these pervading and profound convictions throughout the South is a universal and earnest determination to protect the legal guaranties of slavery, to strengthen its basis, defend it against attack, and multiply its securities, until, having accomplished its appointed destiny, it shall be replaced by some other agency of progress and development. The period of its natural dissolution will be foreshadowed by unmistakable signs of decay, and the South will no more presume to resist the obvious decree of Providence, than they now think of acquiescing in the impious schemes of men who would usurp the function of Providence."

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Dr. Lord's Propositions.

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argument; Dr. Nehemiah Adams has distinguished himself by his enthusiastic labors in the second field of inquiry; and an innumerable company of divines have defended this institution by proofs taken from the Scriptures. It is with the argument in the abstract, as set forth by President Lord, that we now have to do.

The substance of the propositions in President Lord's first letter is as follows:

PROP. I. Ministers of the Gospel ought to consider the question of slavery, from its origin and foundations, as a question of divine right, rather than of prudence, policy, or economy.

PROP. II. Slavery is an institution of God, according to natural religion.

PROP. III. Slavery is also a positive institution of revealed religion.

PROP. IV. Slavery is not opposed to the specific law of love, which requires us to do to others as we would they should do to us.

PROP. V. The wide-spread humanitarian philosophy, which pronounces slavery to be essentially wrong, is a great heresy, and tends to alarming consequences.

PROP. VI. Slavery in itself, apart from its abuses, is a wholesome institution, adapted to educate the race of Ham, and an institution which may very profitably be

extended.

PROP. VII. The Nebraska Bill of Mr. Douglas ought not to be objected to, inasmuch as it allows slavery to extend itself, and so prevents a dangerous local overgrowth of slaves.

PROP. VIII. Christians ought not to encourage antislavery views.

PROP. IX. Christians, instead of opposing slavery, ought to oppose anti-slavery men and measures.

PROP. X. The abuses of slavery have prevented people from seeing its uses and its beauty.

PROP. XI. Dr. Lord hopes that his brethren will forgive him for frankly saying that he believes slavery (in itself) not a moral evil nor a political evil, but an ordi

Dr. Lord, in his first letter, modestly puts these propositions in the form of questions. But since, in his second letter, he defends them as propositions which he accepts, we put them in this form, for the sake of convenience. VOL. LX.-4TH S. VOL. XXVI. NO. III. 34