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African slave trade, and to make it a penal offense. Her action antedates by thirty years the much bepraised legislation of the British parliament, and by ten years the earliest movement of Massachusetts on the subject .... "7 In 1771, Virginia appealed to the King to stop the trade, saying that they had long regarded it as a practice of "great inhumanity." In 1778, Virginia prohibited the introduction of slaves into their state. Georgia was the first state to write a prohibition of the slave trade into its constitution. And we must remember that the Confederate Constitution outlawed the slave trade (Art. I/Section 9).

In contrast, the slave trade by New Englanders and Northeasterners continued illegally until 1861. "As late as 1861 the Congress of the United States was appropriating nearly two million dollars in an effort to stamp it [i.e. the illegal slave trade] out."

The slave trade was an abomination. The Bible condemns it, and all who believe the Bible are bound to do the same. Owning slaves is not an abomination. The Bible does not condemn it, and those who believe the Bible are bound to refrain in the same way. But if we were to look in history for Christians who reflected this biblical balance — i.e. a hatred of the slave trade and an acceptance of slavery in itself under certain conditions — we will find ourselves looking at the ante bellum South.

To conclude this point, Dabney is worth quoting again.

It is one of the strange freaks of history, that this commonwealth, which was guiltless in this thing, and which always presented a steady protest against the enormity, should become, in spite of herself, the home of the largest number of African slaves found within any of the States, and thus, should be held up by Abolitionists as the representative of the 'sin of slaveholding;' while Massachusetts, which was, next to England, the pioneer and patroness of the slave trade, and chief criminal, having gained for her share the wages of iniquity instead of the persons of the victims, has arrogated to herself the post of chief accuser of Virginia.

To say the least, it is strange that the thing the Bible condemns (slave-trading) brings very little opprobrium upon the North, yet that which the Bible allows (slave-ownership) has brought down all manner of condemnation upon the South.

The simplistic understanding of the relationship of slavery to the War for Southern Independence must be rejected. As George Lunt noted in 1866, "Slavery was the cause of the War, just as property is the cause of robbery."

The True Nature of Slavery in The South

If slavery had been as bad as the abolitionists maintained that it was, and as we have been reminded countless times on supposedly good authority, then why were there not thousands of rabid abolitionists demanding an end to the evil? Or, even more to the point, why were there not hundreds of slave rebellions? These questions have not been asked often or loudly enough. The answer would shock and dismay the vast majority of our nation who have been carefully schooled in abolitionist propaganda. As we have already mentioned, the "peculiar institution" of slavery was not perfect or sinless, but the reality was a far cry from the horrific descriptions given to us in modern histories, which are often nothing more than a hackneyed