“If the Bible is of divine origin, then holding of slaves is right.”

American Christian Plantocrat

THE BODY OF CHRIST in America was strong and extensive. The biggest denominations to which the followers of Christ who believed in the sanctity of slavery belonged in the southern states were those of the Episcopalians (Anglicans), Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists. Some churches in the southern states even had entrance examinations, in which a belief by an applicant that slavery was for the good of the universe was an admission criterion.

Wow.

The only exceptions were the Quakers, who were strongly against slavery ab initio. The Presbyterian General Assembly declared slavery a sin against God, but many chapters in the south disagreed strongly. The Presbyterians of the southern states met in Carolina and resolved that slavery was ordained by God, and man had no right to question this practice:

“Those who say otherwise and call for abolition oppose the will of God and succumb to the will of man.”368

These Christians avowed that slavery was completely consistent with the teaching of the Bible and the practice of their faith’s apostles and prophets:

“The slaves in our midst are servants who God committed to our charge,” they averred.

The Baptists resolved that God himself did not expressly forbid slavery, but left it up to people. God only put some guidelines on servant and master behaviour. Therefore, the question should be left for the people in slave terri­tories to decide.

Initially, the Methodist General Conference was firmly against slavery. The southerners took note and said some members had perverted God’s manifested view and resolved slavery was not a moral evil, and definitely not a sin. Therefore, the church should not interfere and leave it to the civil authorities.

The following is a summary of some of the declarations that were made in the southern states by the followers of Christ. These declarations were made at local, regional, and state assemblies or general conferences.

1. Slavery is an innocent and lawful relation, as much as that of parent and child, husband and wife, or any other lawful relation of society. The good Lawd has set down the relationship of husband and wife and vice versa; He has similarly defined the role of the parent and their child and vice versa; so too is the relationship between master and the slave: cast in Biblical stone. The whims, wishes, admonitions, concerns, and sought-for-clarifications of those who question the Bible, and therefore, question Gawd himself, will be adequately addressed on the return of the Saviour.
2. The state of slavery is consistent with the most fraternal regard for the good of the slave.
3. Masters ought not to be disciplined for selling slaves without their consent.
4. That the right to buy, sell, and hold men for purposes of gain, was given by the express permission of God. There is nowhere in the Old Testament and in the life of Christ where it is forbidden to hold the descendants of Ham and Canaan as slaves in perpetuity. In the Old Testament, The Lord called Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses; all these servants of God were slave-holders. Therefore, that which God has 369 Some Pronouncements From the Protestant Followers of Christ

permitted, recognised, and commanded cannot be inconsistent with his will.

5. The laws which forbid the education of the slave are right and meet the approbation of the reflecting part of the Christian community.
6. The fact of slavery is not a question of morals at all but is purely one of political economy.
7. The right of masters to dispose of the time of their slaves has been distinctly recognised by the Creator of all things.
8. Slavery, as it exists in these United States, is not a sin, and it is not a moral evil. Nowhere in the Bible does it state that slavery is a sin. If the Bible is true, then no deduction from general principles can be made that the holding of slaves is wrong.
9. A master who does his duty to his slaves has authority from the Scriptures to hold them as slaves.
10. Without a new revelation from heaven, no man is entitled to pronounce slavery wrong. God has always allowed slavery in the Scriptures. Did Jesus free the slaves who were all around? He did not. Jesus healed servants, but did he free them? No. Jesus alluded to slavery (as in servants), but did he forbid slavery? No. Therefore, we shall deal with fellow men not as they desire, but as the Holy Bible directs. Period.
11. The separation of slaves by sale should be regarded as separation by death, and the parties allowed to marry again.
12. The testimony of coloured members of the churches shall not be taken against a white person.
13. It has been plainly avowed, by the expressed principles and practice of Christians of various denominations, that they regard it right and proper to put down all inquiry upon this subject by Lynch law.

This putting down of all inquiry was done through vigilante groups that harassed and assaulted anyone who preached against slavery in the southern states. The vigilantes countered abolition sentiments, railed against any agents of abolition movements, and burnt any publication deemed to be against slavery. Indeed, in many slave states, speaking or publishing anything against slavery was punishable by a fine, imprisonment, or even death. For promi­nent abolitionists, a large reward was put up for their capture anywhere in the Union, and their repatriation to the southern states to face lynching. Being labelled an abolitionist in the slave-holding southern states was to be marked for loss of life or limb by mobs of poor whites prodded by slave-holders.370

These avowed Christians and their atheist brethren were absolutely adamant that a God who wanted to interfere with their profits was not their God.

Some abolitionists, including men of God, were arrested by vigilante groups and forced to recant or face the whip or similar southern-type baptisms. These vigilante activities were illegal, but for the sake of money, these Americans were prepared to break their own Constitution. Even concerned Senators and Congressmen who ventured down south to inquire on the fate of kidnapped free Negroes were not safe and were chased unceremoniously.

In the slave-holding states, the majority of Christians held slaves, while overall, a third of the population held slaves. Only the Quakers and tiny break­away factions of the Big 4 (Episcopalian [Anglican], Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist) and some fringe Christian groups did not hold slaves. For the majority of southerners who did not have slaves, the reason was that they did not have the means. Only a few chose not to.

The Christians who held slaves competed with others in cruelty, including the killing of slaves through excessive punishment. They bought and sold slaves for profit, defended slavery with quotes from the Bible, and inveighed against abolition and abolitionists. Any congregant having doubts had them dispelled by the ministers.

In fact, many clergy-owned slaves, and some were noted to be assiduously cruel as they quoted Bible passages that allowed them to give stripes to the slaves. One of their favourite passage was KJV, Luke 12:47:

“He that knows what his master wants but does not prepare or do it not shall be whipped vigorously.”

Some clergy would leave their plantations under the care of overseers and go around taking care of their white flock, then come back to check on their investments. In this way, they avoided seeing the perverse cruelty of their overseers directly.

Many slaves took up Christianity with a passion. The Baptist and Methodist faiths were the most popular with slaves, followed by the Presbyterian denom­ination. As happened all too often, if these slaves were married and then one or both were sold to different masters, they became reluctant to remarry. This was because the slaves knew their husband or wife was still alive, somewhere. This attitude by Christianised slaves was detrimental to the “peculiar insti­tution” of slavery in the Confederate states. This was because slaves had to 371 Some Pronouncements From the Protestant Followers of Christ

reproduce as many slaves as possible as their children were pure profit to their owners; living, breathing, black gold. “Future increase” was the term for these unborn slave children.

To allay the concerns of these Christian slaves about committing adultery if they remarried whilst their spouse was still alive, the white clergy came up with a solution. The good Christians in the south proclaimed that separation of a co-habiting slave couple was the same as one of them dying. Therefore, they averred, such slaves were allowed to remarry without any objection from God. What kind and considerate Christians these southerners were, God bless their souls! After all, God did say go forth and multiply. But they added a codicil that God apparently forgot:

“Go forth and multiply, but the male descendants of Ham and Canaan (black men) must not multiply with the female descendants of Shem and the others (white women). There you go, God, you forgot this bit! Oil does not mix with water; but water can mix with oil.”

The hypocrisy in encouraging separated slaves’ spouses to remarry is elephantine. These are the same church people who believed that marriage between slaves was not sacred and was not sanctioned by God. So, how could the same God object or not object to something He allegedly could not sanction?

Christianised slaves could be sanctioned for many “sins”, including unchristian behaviour. Somehow, the white Christians could not see the log in their eye.

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To the southern white Christians, God also said go forth and enslave, or so they chose to believe. Their Great American Dream was being realised by their boot firmly on the throat of the African slave and the whip repeatedly on his back, and they were not prepared to give an inch. And so, in response to the abolition movements and sentiments from the north, the southern Christians mounted a furious and spirited push-back.

Then came a seminal book in 1852, titled Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Or Life Among the Lowly by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The book laid out graphic details of the sufferings of slaves in the southern states and the complicity of the southern 372

Christians. The book was right on song.

Verily, verily, the south was extremely angry with Mrs Stowe, and a bounty was put on her head. However, Mrs Stowe had anticipated this righteous messianic indignation from the south. In fact, after publishing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Mrs Stowe waited in ambush for a reaction. The southerners, foaming at the mouth from the depiction of their cruelty in her book, went on a PR attack, and unleashed wave after wave of second-rate rebuttals through news­paper articles and pro-slavery books to counter Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The reason for this reaction was that this was truly a looking glass moment for the south, and they did not like what they saw.

The southern apologists went on tours and wrote books like Aunt Phillis’s Cabin; Or Southern Life As It Is by Mary Henderson Eastman; The Lofty and The Lowly; or Good in All and None All Good by Maria Jane McIntosh; Frank Freeman’s Barbershop by Rev Baynard R. Hall: and Uncle Robin in His Cabin in Virginia and Uncle Tom Without One in Boston by J. W. Page, to mention but a few.

In these pro-slavery writers’ narratives, Negro characters were portrayed as obsequious worshipers of their masters, warts and all. Slaves plotting to escape were cast as ungrateful buffoons and northern whites enticing the slaves were cast as shady, ignorant interfering SOBs. Freedmen and born-free Negroes were portrayed as suffering waifs on the verge of starvation and living a life of toil in the north.

There were others of the intellectual class, like William Gilmore Simms and George Fitzhugh, who wrote on the justifications of slavery. George Fitzhugh was a pro-slavery writer who preached that the Negro was like a grown-up child who needed the social and economic protection of slavery and must be governed as a child, not as a lunatic or criminal. Fitzhugh also pontificated that the African cannibal, caught, Christianised, and enslaved in America was in a more elevated position than he was in Africa. He preached that the Negro was like a wild horse who must be caught, tamed, and domes­ticated. William Gilmore Simms was a prominent writer and politician who strongly supported slavery. He wrote on history and also wrote many poems and articles on slavery. Mr Simms also penned The Sword and Distaff or Woodcraft, an anti-Uncle Tom’s Cabin novel.

Even way after slavery had ended, apologists minimised the sufferings of slaves. Ulrich B. Phillips, a slavery apologist and well-known American professor of history, writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, described the Middle Passage with the words “the food if coarse was gener­ally plenteous and wholesome and the sanitation fairly adequate”.373 Some Pronouncements From the Protestant Followers of Christ

Wow! Food plenteous and wholesome, and the holds had flushing toilets, but occasionally toilet paper was in short supply? In the Middle Passage! Was this professor, who was born and bred in the southern states, living in a parallel universe?

Professor Phillips also thought enslaving Africans was analogous to the domestication of beasts of the field, and that the slave-holders in the south treated the slaves benevolently.

What a prig.

The pro-slavery fiction writers, together with the political scientists and sociologists, scented the whole stinky slave scenario with myrtle and lavender and literally gave halos to the slave-holders on their treatment of the descen­dants of Africans. These writers liberally quoted the verifiable good deeds of slave-holders. However, they deliberately glossed over the sufferings of the many millions of slaves who went through the hell of slavery perpetuated by both slave-holders and non-slave-holders.

Mrs Stowe responded to the misinformation in the alliterative pro-slavery books and let loose a volley of facts to back her assertions in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Through a detailed book titled The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the author and social warrior laid on the table irrevocable proof of how inhumane and unchristian slaves were treated by the followers of Christ in the southern states. The second Stowe book was a class-act. The southern propagandists wilted, and soon after, the long-delayed American Civil War erupted and convulsed their “peculiar institution” to the core.

The southerners had opined that according to their interpretation of the Bible, only the Lord would decide on when it was time to stop enslaving Africans. Well, the Lord made a clear decision on the ending of slavery by what He decreed as the outcome of the Civil War. Sadly, it’s an outcome that many descendants of southern slave-holders have refused to accept. They were now hunkering down for another civil war, which they shall lose again, for surely, God can never change his mind and restore their Lost Cause.

Mrs Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a phenomenal success. It greatly sharp­ened the feelings against slavery in America and Europe. The book sold 300,000 copies in America in the first year alone and over 1 million copies in the UK and Europe and was translated into dozens of languages. All the pro-slavery books combined did not match these sales figures. The most successful pro-slavery book was by a Mrs Eastman; it sold between 20,000 to 30,000 copies. Purely from a literature point of view, the copy-cat pro-slavery books were very infe­rior compared to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The books had very poor or no plots and 374

were made up of numerous contrived story-lines and scenes to counter specific scenes and story-lines in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Without putting too fine a point on it, the pro-slavery books stunk to high heaven, and still do.

These pro-slavery books were meant to show that slaves in the southern states lived, if not exactly in an Elysium, at least in far better conditions than the free niggers and poor whites in both the north and the south. The books stated that the only cause of anguish in the south were the abolitionists who led the slaves astray with false promises of freedom and jobs. The authors posited that capitalism and abolitionism were evil. They stated that northern niggers were not guaranteed food, shelter, or raiment like their enslaved brethren south of the Dixie and Mason line. In any case, they pontificated, Africans were needy and childlike and needed the paternalistic guidance of white people. They preached that their system was far more humane than the system of labour in the northern states. They defended slavery as a neces­sary evil and a positive good but not a sin. The good was in the profits generated from slave labour irrespective of the physical, psychological, emotional, and social cost to the slaves.

The pro-slavery books were a study in disinformation. In these books:

• De niggers’ only pleasure wus in pleasing dere Gawd-given massas and missises.
• Slabes rejoiced when runaways, decoyed by evil abolitionists, were captured and punished or humiliated.
• De slabes in de south whar treated like frens and extend’d family by dere massas.
• De m’jority of slabes whar furnished wid tings to make dem comf’table.
• De labour in dem cotton and sugar cane fields was mild, and gud fur de body.
• Slabes would rader pick cotton dan work in dem factories in de norf on empty tummy.
• Gawd, ‘im say: suvant, obey your massa. Gawd no say, massa must habe African suvant. Nawsuh. But by what Gawd he did say, he gibe p’mis­sion fur whyte massa to habe slabe.
• Slabes refused to be freed on dere massas’ death bed, as dere massas had done nutin’ wrong. De massa only follow de Gud Book.
• De niggers hated de sight of abolitionists, out to confuse and decoy dem from dere contented station in life as slabes to whyte people.
• Slabe owners had tears in dere eyes as dey sold problem chattels to soul 375 Some Pronouncements From the Protestant Followers of Christ

traders. Gawd forbid, if a family had to be sold, dere were numerous buyers falling all ober each oder to ensure dat de families whar not separated.

• Slabes tanked de Holy Sperrit, Jesus, and his Pappy fur de menial position dat de Trio had engineered fur de descendants of Ham and Canaan.
• As he died, de slabe would tank de master for gittin’ him outta Africa and showing him Christ de Sabiour so dat he be saved. Oderwise, in Africa, he be dinner fur dem cannibals, fur sure.
• In fact, ’twas de souferners who were de real frends to de Negroes. Dem norferners whar fake philanthropists out to make political capital out of de peculiar institution of de souf. Gawd damn de norferners! Dey whar indeed de bery debil coming into de Negro Eden!

In 1857 another strongly anti-slavery book was published by Hinton Rowan Helper of North Carolina titled The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It. The book was a strong attack on slavery as inefficient and a barrier to the economic advancement of the non-slave-holders and the small farmers. Helper wanted the non-slave-holders to unite against the slavers.

In form of tables and figures, the book presented irrefutable proof that slave labour was deleterious. Helper compared the north and the south in all sorts of economic indicators. The conclusions were damning: the south was falling further and further behind the north economically and industri­ally, and the cause was slavery. Helper advocated an end to slavery because it impoverished the non-slave-holding whites in the south, not because of the treatment meted out to the Negroes. Helper disliked Negroes intensely, and his preferred solution to the Negro Problem was to ship all the free blacks to Africa and South America. Helper’s book was used by the northerners to campaign against slavery. The book was banned in the south, and like Mrs H. B. Stowe, H. R. Helper was a marked man by his own kin from the south. Many southern states had made the publication of any incendiary litera­ture or literature that could excite the coloured population an offence. The sentence in Maryland was 10 to 20 years in prison, if the vigilante groups did not get hold of the writer first.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was more of a religious and moral call to stop slavery, while The Impending Crisis was a call to stop slavery based on its stultifying effects on the social, political, and economic development of the southern states. Mr Helper, in a show of disdainful sexism, said words to the effect that 376

he would let the women moralise about slavery, while he would present facts and figures. For the record, the religious and moral arguments had far more effect than facts and figures.

The study by H. R. Helper was made possible because from 1780, soon after their independence and the start of the Union, America became the perfect experiment in the study of slavery and the slave trade. America divided itself into the non-slave-holding free states of the north and the slave-holding southern states. In the 1780s, as the Americans consolidated their Union, the northern states decided to abolish slavery, while the states in the south at the time decided to continue with slaves. Then new states were added as either free or slave-holding. In this way, the perfect experiment was set up, and over the decades it was possible to trace and quantify the effects of slavery on the social, economic, political, and mental health of the two Americas. The Brits followed closely this experiment in their former colony. By 1830, the Brits could see clearly that their intended direction to stop slavery altogether after halting the slave trade in 1807 was definitely the right one. The two American territories provided more than ample proof that slavery was a brake on devel­opment in all spheres of human endeavour.

In America, all the innovations and inventions were coming from the northern free states. The manufacturing industries which created wealth by export were predominantly set up in the north. The agricultural production, in which the south was slightly ahead in 1780, was tilting decisively in the north’s favour. The arts and sciences were way, way ahead in the north. In addition, literacy rates in the north were much higher than in the south.

Except for the dull and uneducated poor whites of the south together with the slave-whipping ruling upper classes there, everyone else looking at the results from this perfect laboratory reached only one conclusion: that slavery was very bad for development. The British took the lesson in hand, and in 1833, they abolished slavery in their overseas territories. The Americans in the south refused to accept the evidence and threatened the purveyors of the results of this their man-made experiment with lynching.

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The southerners contended that since:

“God Himself had decreed the Africans’ station in life, why then, in God’s name, were the northerners and the damn British bent on upsetting their apple-cart? Why could the northerners not leave them alone to enjoy what 377 Some Pronouncements From the Protestant Followers of Christ

God had decreed in the Holy Bible? The northerners were definitely guilty of imagined sorrows of slaves who had around them many comforts. Besides which, the northerners’ economy was not dependent on slaves like the plan­tation economy of the south. As a result, the north was footloose and fancy-free when it came to the south’s economy. What hypocrites. When it had suited them, the northerners and the British had used slaves for centuries. Didn’t these insufferable northerners know that all free niggers were good-for-nothing worthless layabouts who could not pick a decent pound of cotton even if they were paid in gold? The only way to get decent output from them niggers was for them as slaves. Period.”

The southerners insisted that all the maltreatment, the torture, the murders, and the denial of basic human rights written about by aboli­tion-minded northerners was all fake news. The southerners even went so far as to aver that the Sable race in their midst did not want emancipation at all, as they were all quite contented with their lot in the slave states. Anything else was all fake news, folks.

Fake news?

The Slave Laws fake news?

The Slave Codes fake news?

The slave patrols fake news?

The lynchings fake news?

The whippings and other forms of moderate correction fake news?

The slave-breeding fake news?

The mulattoes, the quadroons, the octoroons all fake news?

The enforced ignorance fake news?

The auctions fake news?

The slave-trading fake news?

The slave coffles fake news?

The separation of families fake news?

That slaves were not citizens of America fake news?

That slaves, in their own right, could not own anything, even their own bodies, fake news?

Fake news that these Christians did not allow slaves to be married in church or to have legal marriages?

That slaves had no legal rights to defend themselves in a court of law fake news?378

That slaves who were outlawed could be legally butchered by any means fake news?

Really? All fake news? Did Mrs Eastman, the foremost pro-slavery writer and her ilk, seriously believe that the slaves were okay with all the inhu­manity in the slave society? Wherever she is, Mrs Eastman should take a look at herself holding a copy of her repugnant assertions and conceited beliefs aloft in a Dorian Gray mirror, and see how they both resonate with Jehovah and his cast of Angels. With the callousness, the cruelty, the greed, and the selfishness of Mrs Eastman and her ilk, doubtlessly, their Dorian Gray reflec­tion will not be a pretty one at all. Only after all the slavers experienced a taste of their own medicine and saw the light would the Dorian Gray reflection of themselves be a happy one.

I do hope that the slaves have had a chance to palaver and compare notes with Mrs Eastman and other naysayers living on the other side of the Rubicon. Better still, let Mrs Eastman come back in 1840 CE in her next life as a breeding wench whose twelve live children are torn from her bosom and sold to slave traders and passers-by. After that, Mrs Eastman should be sold to a passing coffle and be taken on a thousand-mile walk, while 7 months big with her sixteenth child. After that, let Mrs Eastman talk about how God loves his African children to be slaves. Mrs Eastman was a Virginian, the state that pioneered slave breeding for profit, and it would be interesting to see how she reacts to a taste of her own medicine.

In all this pro-slavery push-back, the only fake news was Mrs Eastman’s vision of a Utopian southern plantation with carefree, happy servants, who were rarely referred to as slaves. With comfortable whitewashed cabins, lawns of green grass and rose gardens, the slaves spent their weekends lounging and singing. Their breakfast consisted of egg and bacon, and their southern masters had hearts of gold. The masters’ benevolence and good intentions were rivalled only by Jesus, blah, blah, blah…

For sure, Mrs Eastman penned her own version of The Truman Show. Thousands of wanna-make-believe Americans loved and bought her books in the 1850s. It seemed that they verily believed that it pleased the Lord to place the Negro in the service of the white man. By any norm or standard, Christian or otherwise, these slave-holding Christians of the southern states were here­tics who lived by the sword. Violence was the only language they understood.

The American Civil War spoke that language.