REL 1350 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Richard Furman, First Epistle To Timothy, History Of The Southern United States
5 Apr 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
The triumph of pro-slavery in the antebellum south. Reasons: cotton is king, defensive response to abolition, hardening and fear after slave rebellions, denmark vesey (1823) Aborted revolt in south carolina: nat turner. Conscious of being an avenging messiah against slavery. Over 50 slaves executed; over 100 killed by mobs: racial supremacy not interested in hearing otherwise. The abolitionist argument: the bible is against oppression of any kind, slavery passages were permissive statues that would be superceded, abolitionists interpreted bible differently. They argued that it was the spirit rather than the letter of the bible that was antislavery. The pro slavery rebuttal: slavery is a civil institution. The abolitionists had pushed religion into the political realm where it did not belong: secular reasoning. Some did say that africans were primarily culturally deficient barbarians who had to be civilized, thus they were like children: but southerners thought the slaves" potential to be equal only in abstract terms.
