|
Introduction
The South has
long carried the stigma of racism and bigotry The fact that slavery ended
abruptly because the South lost the War serves to reinforce this common
stereotype. For this
reason, most Southerners take little pride in their nation's role in the
War Between the States.
The only thing they can boast about is how well they fought — but they
are not allowed to
defend the cause itself. They have been told that they cannot talk of
principle or speak of
righteousness. The institution of slavery has so blackened the Southern
position that nothing
about the South can be viewed as good or right. Slavery is considered to
be such a wicked
practice that it alone is sufficient to answer the question of which side
was right in that
unfortunate war. The fact that the South practiced slavery is enough to
cause many moderns
to feel they do not even have to listen to the various biblical and
constitutional arguments
that swirled around that controversy. Consequently, to have a closed mind
on this issue is to
be cloaked in virtue.
How could men
have supported slavery? The question is especially difficult when we
consider that these were men who lived in a pervasively Christian culture.
We have all heard
of the heartlessness — the brutalitites, immoralities, and cruelties —
that were supposedly
inherent in the system of slavery. We have heard how slave families were
broken up, of the
forcible rape of slave women, of the brutal beatings that were a
commonplace, about the
horrible living conditions, and of the unrelenting work schedule and
back-breaking routine
— all of which go together to form our impression of the crushing
oppression which was
slavery in the South. The truthfulness of this description has seldom been
challenged.
The point of
this small booklet is to establish that this impression is largely false.
It is
important to note, however, that the impression is not entirely false. The
truth is, Southern
slavery is open to criticism because it did not follow the biblical
pattern at every point. Some
of the state laws regulating slavery could not be defended biblically (the
laws forbidding the
teaching of reading and writing, for example). One cannot defend the abuse
some slaves had
to endure. None can excuse the immorality some masters and overseers
indulged in with
some slave women. The separation of families that sometimes occurred was
deplorable.
These were sad realities in the Southern system.
Our purpose
here is not to defend any such practices — where and when they
occurred. We
have no interest in defending the racism (in both the North and the South)
which was often seen as the basic justification for the system, and we do
in fact condemn it most heartily. But the question still needs to be
asked, "How widespread were these instances of unbiblical
and ungodly treatment on the part of Southern slave holders?" We have
condemned such
abuses, but were they commonplace or exceptional?
Our concern is
first to lay out certain biblical principles, and then turn to facts which
are
seldom addressed in public, though they are not altogether unknown. An
accurate
representation of the nature of Southern slavery has yet to be widely
disseminated. And as a
consequence, there has been a great deal of falsehood paraded about in the
pretense of truth.
The South has been stigmatized and slandered, and generations have
been misled over the
true nature of the "peculiar institution" and, as a consequence,
they have not understood the
true nature of the South in general. We must know the truth about
slavery. We have no
concern to whitewash the sins of the South — or the North, for that
matter. Where there is |