SIX

This statement was forged in the context of a refusal to endorse the idea of immediate emancipation, even as both northern and southern Presbyterians agreed that emancipation was a desirable goal.[2] But as we have seen, Presbyterian moral discourse was changing, and traditional interpretations of biblical passages were being set aside as a common sense literal hermeneutic replaced the older contextual interpretation.[3]

Many historians have tackled the challenge of understanding the relation between antebellum religion and slavery. Edward Crowther has suggested that the traditional narrative argued that “the cessation of anti-slavery policy” was “the result of southern evangelicals caring more about converting lost souls [presumably an illegitimate purpose for a church] than in getting rid of slavery [presumably the real purpose of evangelicalism].”[4] Crowther challenges this interpretation, suggesting that the evangelical churches in the south were not particularly anti-slavery prior to 1830. But Crowther may go too far in asserting an unqualified proslavery movement in the south prior to 1830. He is certainly correct that few southerners expected slavery to end soon, and that even fewer took any steps to bring about the end of slavery; but that is not the same thing as articulating a coherent proslavery ideology.[5] John Patrick Daly has argued that the difference between the pre- and post-1831 defenses of slavery is that “after 1831 proslavery ideology became much more self-conscious, more thoroughly articulated, and more central to white southerners’ identity.”[6] Certainly southern Presbyterians believed that something changed in the 1830s.

Two events in 1835 set the context for the Old School debates. That November the Synod of Virginia debated the question of slavery. George Baxter presented a paper claiming that “Slavery is recognized by Scripture in precisely the same way as the other domestic relations of life. . . expressly affirming that slavery has the same scriptural authority as the marriage relation.” This prompted considerable debate. Dr. Hill objected that marriage was a divine ordinance, while slavery was an evil that was merely tolerated in scripture. When Dr. George Baxter insisted that the only way to combat the abolitionists was to insist that the “master has a moral right to retain his relation to his slaves,” Dr. Carroll, the president of Hampden-Sydney College, replied that he did not think that one had to go so far to combat the abolitionists. The Rev. Benjamin F. Stanton, thought the paper “extenuated slavery, and left false impressions upon the mind. I justify slavery, sir, not from Scripture, but from circumstances. Slavery is a moral evil, and ought to be done way as soon as possible. Better contend for immediate emancipation than for perpetual servitude.” Only the present condition of the slaves, he thought, could justify their continued slavery.[7]

Ruling elder William Maxwell was bothered by the claim that slavery had “precisely” the same relation as marriage. “For if the Bible sanctioned it, the thing was morally right; and if morally right, we were under no obligations to remove it. But is this scripture? Must we sit still, and do nothing for the removal of this crying evil?” There was no slavery in Eden. “It is preposterous to go to the Bible to defend slavery.” Circumstances could never make slavery right, only permissible. In a telling comment he affirmed that “I found my position not on Scripture, nor on the moral lawfulness of slavery; but simply on the fact of a necessity.” Killing a man is just as unlawful, but it may be permissible if I cannot avoid it. “Unless I do my best to get rid of the necessity, I am guilty of the sin of unjustifiable slavery.” In conclusion he declared, “God forbid, Sir, that this Synod should ever assume a position favorable even in appearance to the perpetuity of human bondage!”[8]

Dr. Baxter explained that he was not arguing for the moral rectitude of slavery in the abstract. He was dealing with the present relations between master and slave. This is what is placed on the same basis as all other domestic relations. “I grieve deeply, and as sincerely as any one, when I view the evil in its length and breadth throughout our land; and I will go as far as any one to remove it.” He agreed with Maxwell that “The principles of the gospel tend to mitigate the evil, and ultimately to abolish it altogether. These are my principles, Moderator. And I am not afraid therefore to say that he relation is lawful, under existing circumstances.”[9]

Maxwell thought that Baxter’s explanation was helpful. Nonetheless, “I would rather say that slavery is tolerated in consequence of circumstances, than to say it is morally lawful. There may be no essential difference; but it is dangerous to use terms in any way that will quiet the consciences of men.” Therefore he still opposed Baxter’s paper. “Slavery is not lawful before God or man!”[10]

Cortlandt Van Rensselaer reported that the Synod seemed moved by Maxwell’s argument. The final statement of the Synod was drafted by a committee consisting of Maxwell, Baxter, Hill, Wilson, and ruling elders Caski, J. Jones and Payne.[11] That statement declared that the abolitionist dogma “that slavery as it actually exists in our slave-holding states, is necessarily sinful, and ought immediately to be abolished. . . [is] directly and palpably contrary to the plainest principles of common sense, and common humanity, and to the clearest authority of the word of God.” Further they declared that “it is the duty of all ministers of the Gospel to follow the example of our Lord and Savior, and of his Apostles in similar circumstances, in abstaining from all interference with the state of slavery,” focusing instead on inculcating the duties of masters and slaves.[12]

The debate, however, is instructive. Many in the Synod of Virginia found Baxter’s paper disturbing and even Baxter himself insisted that the principles of Christianity would eventually remove the “evil” from the land.

Earlier that year, however, another author went a step further and declared that slavery was a positive good. According to contemporary accounts, the first overtly proslavery exegetical argument came from the Rev. James Smylie, the first settled Presbyterian minister in Mississippi.[13] In 1854 the Rev. John H. Van Court (PTS 1820), who had settled in Mississippi shortly after his ordination in 1821, reminisced in the Watchman and Observer about the novelty of Smylie’s views: Smylie had “found that the teachings of Scripture were greatly at variance with the popular belief” that scripture condemned slavery. His initial sermon on the subject in 1835 “gave great offence, not only to the church, but also to his brethren in the ministry, who seriously advised him to preach that sermon no more.” When the Presbytery of Chillicothe wrote a letter to the South, “exhorting them to abandon [slavery] as a heinous sin,” Smylie’s initial response was rejected by the presbytery, and they urged him not to publish his views, since few agreed with him. But “convinced of the correctness of his own conclusions” he published anyway. Van Court reported that

They appointed a committee of five ministers and five ruling elders, who drafted a plan of emancipation for the state that would provide for the emancipation of all slaves by their twenty-fifth birthday.

But when the committee presented the plan the following year, the synod refused to endorse the plan, suggesting that while the church could encourage its members to end slavery, it was inappropriate for the church to determine which plan was best. This prompted many anti-slavery Presbyterian laymen, such as James G. Birney, to move across the Ohio River to free soil. But the majority of anti-slavery Presbyterians remained in Kentucky, including John C. Young (PTS 1828), president of Centre College, Lewis Warner Green (PTS 1832), professor at Centre College, and Nathan L. Rice (PTS 1832) of Bardstown, Kentucky.[32]

The Virginia-born, Cincinnati minister, Joshua L. Wilson suggested a solution to the impasse. He wrote to the Hon. Belamy Storer in 1836, “I consider slavery in these United States sinful, impolitic, contrary to the revealed will of God, as unfolded in the supreme law of love, contrary to reason. . . repugnant to our declaration of independence. . . and a foul blot upon our national escutcheon,” but the only constitutional way to end slavery was by a mutual renunciation of slavery and its benefits by both the north and the south: “Let the South agree to give up the slave trade and the slave labour,” he suggested, “and let the North give up the Slave wealth. . . to indemnify the South.”[33] His younger colleagues in the Old School would try to persuade the nation of the wisdom of his plan.

R. J. Breckinridge wrote in 1833 that American slavery did not correspond to slavery as found in the scriptures.[34] 4. To set up between parents and their children an authority higher than the impulse of nature and the laws of God; which breaks up the authority of the father over his own offspring, and, at pleasure separates the mother at a returnless distance from her child; thus abrogating the clearest laws of nature; thus outraging all decency and justice, and degrading and oppressing thousands upon thousands of beings created like themselves in the image of the most high God!” (292) God had never sanctioned the particular practices of American slavery, such as selling children away from their parents, forbidding education, or denying the ordinance of marriage. He declared that the American slave system was “founded upon the principle of taking by force that which is another's,” namely, his labor. While the word of God called slaves to submit to their masters, it also condemned oppression and injustice. Therefore Breckinridge insisted that “Nature, and reason, and religion unite in their hostility to this system of folly and crime. How it will end time only can reveal; but the light of heaven is not clearer than that it must end.”[35] While Breckinridge was willing to give his fellow southerners time to formulate a wise and just plan of emancipation, he insisted that “justice never can permit one man to take without return the labour of another, and that by force.”[36] Suggesting that colonization could serve as “the great and effectual door which God has set for the deliverance of this country, for the regeneration of Africa, and for the redemption of the black race,” since he could not imagine the two races living together in harmony, and he was repulsed at the thought of “amalgamation.”[37]

An expatriate Kentuckian, Breckinridge took an equally strong stand against abolitionism.[38] Breckinridge warned in 1835 that the virulent attacks of the abolitionists would only make southerners more defensive. “Then will follow, increasing jealousy and hatred between the different sections of the Union--the breaking up of churches--the danger of personal intercourse, and finally disunion, and bloody wars.” How, Breckinridge asked, would this help the slaves?[39] In its place, Breckinridge urged gradual emancipation and colonization. Fearing that emancipation without colonization would result in “amalgamation” and “universal leveling,” he argued that the two races could not live in proximity to each other without a continual “alternation of bloody revolutions, and a succession of black and white servitude without end.”[40]

Charles Hodge added his voice in 1836, in a review of William Ellery Channing’s Slavery. Lamenting the recent rise of the proslavery movement in the South, Hodge noted that as recently as the 1820s, “it was spoken of in the slaveholding states, as a sad inheritance fixed upon them by the cupidity of the mother‑country in spite of their repeated remonstrances;”[41] but now proslavery sentiment was on the rise in the north as well as the south, and Hodge was convinced that it was the virulent rhetoric of the abolitionists that was driving both southerners and thoughtful northerners away from the anti-slavery ranks. “The idea of inducing the southern slaveholder to emancipate his slaves by denunciation, is about as rational as to expect the sovereigns of Europe to grant free institutions, by calling them tyrants and robbers.”[42] Appealing to the authority of scripture, and especially to the example of Jesus, Hodge argued that Jesus’ approach to ending slavery was “not by appeals to the passions of men on the evils of slavery, or by the adoption of a system of universal agitation. On the contrary, it was by teaching the true nature, dignity, equality and destiny of men; by inculcating the principles of justice and love; and by leaving these principles to produce their legitimate effects in ameliorating the condition of all classes of society.”[43] Hodge insisted that the biblical writers “did not regard slaveholding as in itself sinful,” but reminded his readers that they did “condemn all unjust or unkind treatment (even threatening) on the part of masters towards their slaves.” Christian masters must treat their slaves according to the law of love.[44] The slave system of the American south, however, did not meet this biblical standard for slavery. Though he defended slavery theoretically, as an institution, the actual practice of the south fell so far short of the biblical law of love that he could not justify its continuation. Hodge argued that the abolitionist attempt to declare slavery itself to be sinful was self-defeating, since an attack on specific slave laws could be much more effective in the south itself.[45] By enlisting conscience in the cause of abolition, they were driving towards “the disunion of the states, and the division of all ecclesiastical societies in this country.” While “feeling” could be aroused temporarily, “conscience” could not rest until the object was attained. “If the conscience. . . becomes the controlling principle, the alienation between the north and the south must become permanent. The opposition to southern institutions will be calm, constant, and unappeasible [sic].” No sacrifice would be too great for a conscience convinced that slavery was inherently sinful.[46]

Hodge’s moral reasoning followed a line of comparison between slavery and despotism. Arguing that both are comparatively evil (free labor and republicanism being better), Hodge argued that neither were inherently evil (since Jesus and the apostles tell Christian subjects to submit to Roman government, and Christian slaves to submit to their masters).[47] Following this line of reasoning, Hodge argued that a republican society had no use for slavery. It was not a matter of conscience, but of utility, or expedience.

Since southern slavery failed to meet the biblical standard for treatment of slaves, and because slavery was inconsistent with the American vision of liberty and republicanism, it simply could not survive. Christian moral influence would eventually eliminate it–unless prevented by the reactionary forces of abolitionism and proslavery. Like Breckinridge, Hodge feared the alternative:

More than twenty years later, this essay was reprinted in Elliot’s Cotton Is King. Curiously, this concluding statement is absent. The reason is unknown. If Hodge himself edited the copy sent to Elliot in 1859-1860, he may have wished to remove such a prophetic utterance in the face of the impending crisis. More likely, however, is the possibility that since this statement is not favorable to the designs of the proslavery movement, it was quietly eliminated from the essay by the editor himself. The result has been that many scholars, who seem to have read only the Cotton Is King version have not recognized that Hodge viewed the indefinite perpetuation of the American version of slavery as utterly contrary to the law of God.[49]

Mark Noll has pointed out that the hermeneutical stance of both Breckinridge and Hodge “was a tacit abandonment of biblical literalism. Both took for granted that the Bible must be an interpreted book, and that the meaning of its words must be conditioned by other realities–with Breckinridge, shifting social conditions over time, with Hodge the fuller context of the Scriptures themselves.”[50] Whereas southerners would appeal strictly to the letter of the law, Hodge and Breckinridge attempted to demonstrate that there was more at stake.

But Hodge’s attempt to provide a distinction between slavery in the abstract and the American slave system was not appreciated by all. Samuel Steel of Chillicothe Presbytery, replied in Breckinridge’s Baltimore Literary and Religious Magazine that the biblical practice of “slavery” was so unlike that of the American south that the same term should not be used for both. Pointing out that Abraham armed 318 of his servants and led them into battle, he asked, “is this the case with slaves in the South?”[51] Old Testament slaves were under the same law as their masters–but not in America. Therefore, he argued “that slavery, such as exists in these United States, is designated in the Bible by the term oppression, and forbidden to be practiced by the Jews, under the heaviest penalties.”[52] Nonetheless, Steel agreed that gradual emancipation was the best plan for ending slavery. The fact that Breckinridge was willing to publish this article at the very moment when the Old School most needed southern support (the winter of 1837-1838) is indicative both of the fact that Breckinridge did not believe that slavery was a major factor in the debate (since he risked alienating southern support), and also of Breckinridge’s inability to stay out of any controversy that came his way.[53]

The Old School newspapers in the north generally concurred with Hodge and Breckinridge. The Philadelphia Presbyterian and the New York Observer generally supported Hodge, agreeing that the “odium brought upon the Abolition cause by the ultraism of its modern advocates” was the catalyst that “emboldened the friends of perpetual slavery to utter their offensive sentiments.”[54]

2. South Carolina and the Charleston Union Presbytery

In the wake of the excision of the New School synods, many presbyteries and synods divided into two or sometimes three camps (in many presbyteries a moderate party refused to side with either the Old School or the New School). One of the divisions presaged the challenges that the Old School would face over the ensuing decades.

When Elipha White returned home to Charleston Union Presbytery in 1837, some questioned his stance against the exscinding acts. White defended his vote, arguing that the Old School had a strong abolitionist faction, and that southern Presbyterians should form a separate Assembly in order to protect themselves from abolitionist attacks. The presbytery concurred–but not without protest. That fall, the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia faced a determined minority that wanted to refuse adherence to either Assembly, so long as the 1818 declaration against slavery remained on the books. After several days of debate, the synod approved the abrogation of the Plan of Union 94-5 (the only negative votes were Dwight, White, Legare, Yates, and ruling elder Elliott), and approved the excision of the mixed synods 84-16 (the negative votes coming exclusively from Hopewell and Charleston Union Presbyteries–the centers of New England influence in the synod).[55] But while approving of the Assembly’s actions, the synod also took a stand on slavery: “Resolved 1, That this Synod consider Slavery as a civil institution, with which the General Assembly has nothing to do, and over which it has no right to legislate. Resolved 2, That this Synod look upon whatever acts heretofore passed by the Assembly which have been of the nature of legislative acts on the subject of Slavery, as without authority and void, and shall so consider all similar acts in time to come.” Then the synod called on the Assembly to give “an open and decided assent” to the principle embraced in the first resolution.[56] Some in the deep south still wanted to agitate on slavery.

But the divisions in Charleston could not be assuaged. While the majority followed Elipha White and Thomas Magruder, the minority had a resolute champion in Thomas Smyth, the pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church. When the presbytery voted on remaining connected with the General Assembly, a 7-7 tie prompted Smyth, Basil Gildersleeve (editor of the Charleston Observer) and several others to secede from the presbytery in order to remain connected to the General Assembly. Smyth and Gildersleeve insisted that the presbytery had to accept the actions of the 1837 General Assembly: “all who fail to send in their adoption of this resolution, and their consequent adherence to the Presbyterian Church on the basis aforesaid, within one year from this time, be no longer considered as connected with this Presbytery.”[57]

The Charleston Union Presbytery was a study in contrasts. Not surprisingly for the leading southern port, it had strong connections to New England. Of its twenty-eight ministers in 1837, only two are known to have done all of their studies in the South. At least ten were born in New England, and several others had New England parentage. Of the twenty-three whose educational background is known, twelve had attended New England colleges (and another five had attended other colleges in the north), while fifteen had studied at Princeton Seminary and four at Andover. It is worth noting that only two of the New England-born ministers stayed with the Old School after 1839, and that these two were Aaron Leland (professor at Columbia Theological Seminary) and Benjamin Gildersleeve (editor of the Charleston Observer), the only two who had developed institutional connections that tied them to the Scots-Irish in the backcountry.

The irony is that these transplanted New Englanders quickly became the most zealous defenders of slavery, and the most outspoken opponents of remaining united with any northern General Assembly. Given the Congregationalist background of the New Englanders, their tendencies toward independency are understandable, but the way in which New Englanders tended to become fire-eaters in South Carolina is somewhat more complex.

Charleston’s New England contingent denounced the Old School for violating the constitution of the church, and feared that the antislavery movement would follow the same procedure. William Dana called it a “consolidated despotism” which could move against slaveholders as easily as heretics.[58] Convinced that northern Old Schoolers were just as anti-slavery as the New School, Thomas Magruder proposed a southern Assembly in the Southern Christian Sentinel of March 2, 1839, as a means of permanently freeing “the Southern Churches from Abolitionist aggression, and from foreign interferences of every description.” But when I. S. K. Legare called for the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia to declare itself independent in 1838, his motion failed 9-60, with support coming only from Charleston Union Presbytery. In an attempt to create a southern Assembly, the Cassville Convention met in 1840 with sixteen ministers and a dozen elders, but in 1840 few southern Presbyterians were willing to surrender the national influence of the General Assembly of the Old School Presbyterian Church for a regional Assembly.[59] Slavery was not a sufficiently powerful enough issue in 1840 to divide the Presbyterian church.[60]

The Charleston Union Presbytery insisted that the statement of 1818 was “erroneous in itself, injurious to the Christian character of the Southern states, and unworthy of a place on the records of the Presbyterian church. If it remained “in full force,” the presbytery would be forced to withdraw from the church.[61] The New York Observer astutely commented that the Charleston Union Presbytery did not speak for the whole south.[62] Indeed, after the General Assembly of 1839 refused to even reply to the presbytery’s demand to repeal the Act of 1818, the Charleston Union Presbytery withdrew from the Old School.[63] The minority of the presbytery remained in the Old School as the Charleston Presbytery, confident that South Carolinians should not fear an Old School led by Breckinridge and Hodge.[64]

Ministers of the Charleston Union Presbytery, 1837

Name Dates Birth College Seminary Grad

Edward Palmer (1788-1882) SC Phillips Academy AndTS 1824

Reuben Post (1792-1858) VT Middlebury College PTS 1818

William States Lee (1793-1875) SC CNJ private 1812

Dyer Ball (1796-1866) MA Yale College AndTS 1829

George W. Boggs (1796-1871) SC Amherst College PTS 1831

James L. Merrick (1803-1866) MA Amherst College PTS & CTS 1833

John A. Mitchell (1806-1838) TN Washington C, TN PTS 1830

William B. Yates (1809-1882) SC Aberdeen University UTSVA& PTS 1833

William C. Dana (1810-1880) MA Dickinson College AndTS & CTS 1835

I. S. K. Legare (1810-1874) SC Yale College CTS 1834

Erastus Hopkins (1810-1872) MA Dartmouth College PTS & AndTS 1834

Elipha White New England ? ?

Benjamin M. Palmer, Sr New England ? ?

Zabdiel Rogers CT ? ?

Thomas Magruder (????-1854) GA Franklin College GA CTS 1835

John Dickson ? ? ?

Aaron Leland (1787-1871) MA Williams College private 1810

William A. McDowell (1789-1851) NJ CNJ PTS 1813

Benjamin Gildersleeve (1791-1875) CT Middlebury College PTS 1818

Arthur Buist (1798-1842) SC College of Charleston private 1822

John B. Van Dyck (1800-1840) NY Amherst College PTS 1829

James Lewers (1806-1868) Ireland Belfast College PTS 1832

Adam Gilchrist (1806-1861) SC Dickinson College PTS 1830

Thomas Smyth (1808-1873) Ireland Belfast College PTS 1831

Edward T. Buist (1809-1877) SC private PTS 1831

John F. Lanneau (1809-1867) SC Yale College PTS 1832

John B. Adger (1810-1899) SC Union College PTS 1833

Joseph Wallace ? ? ?

Bold=those who stayed with the Old School after the division of Charleston Union Presbytery in 1839

3. The Northwestern Debates, 1841-1845

With the departure of the most radical pro-slavery presbytery, the northwest became the focus of the slavery discussion in the Old School, centered in the three western papers, the Presbyterian Advocate of Pittsburgh, the Protestant and Herald of Louisville, Kentucky, and from 1841, the bimonthly Presbyterian of the West of Springfield, Ohio.

In Kentucky, the Protestant and Herald generally engaged the issue of slavery only when the Ohio synods raised the subject. Though their plan of gradual emancipation had failed in 1834, Kentucky Presbyterians remained generally in favor of emancipation, but feared that the abolitionist movement had dashed any hope of a peaceful solution. Editors William L. Breckinridge and Nathan L. Rice commented in 1839 that “if the Abolition party had sufficient strength, [it] might sever the Union, but can never abolish slavery.” Both anti-slavery in conviction, they agreed with R. J. Breckinridge and Hodge that only persuasion could succeed at ending slavery.[65]

In Pittsburgh, William Annan, editor of the Presbyterian Advocate, declared that “we regard slavery as in many respects an evil. We admire and most cordially approve the old Pennsylvania system of emancipation, and most heartily pray that the time may speedily come when all her sister states will go and do likewise. This is the extent of our abolitionism. . . . We are resolved to have no quarrel upon the subject” between immediate and gradual emancipation.[66] The Pittsburgh paper maintained this stance during Annan’s eighteen years as editor, periodically encouraging emancipation and colonization.

The Ohio River valley, however, was the center of a small group of Old School abolitionists. William A. Adair (WTS 1833) published an attack on Western Seminary and the Old School Presbyterian Church in the abolitionist Christian Witness in 1841. The occasion for the attack was the installation of Kentuckian slaveholder Lewis Warner Green (PTS and private 1833) as professor of Oriental and Biblical Literature in 1840. Adair waxed eloquent in his tirade against the influence of slavery in the Old School: “Is it not enough that Slavery shall sit in the moderator's chair in our GAs–. . . is it not enough that it enters our seminaries and takes its seat as expounder of the Bible--is it not enough that it shall bring upon our platform to defend truth and orthodoxy against the New School, a man notorious for his robbery and murder.” Since Green was a slaveholder, he must therefore, in Adair’s abolitionist logic, be a thief and a murderer. With Green on the faculty, the seminary had become “a sanctuary to Slavery's Legions.” Therefore, Adair asked, “Will the God of Mercy and Justice, the Avenger of the poor, and the Refuge of the needy smile upon an institution which incorporate with pure religion a system which is the fittest emblem of hell there is upon earth?”[67]

The editor, William Annan, remarked on his “deep and sickening sense of shame and wonder--that such an ebullition of spleen, and envy, and personal dislike, and settled hostility to, and denunciation of our church, and its institutions, and many of its most aged and venerable men, should be sent forth tho the world with the initials annexed of one of our youngest members.” Further, Annan pointed out that Adair had misfired in his attack on professor Green. No one else in the Synod of Pittsburgh has done more “both by his example and his purse, to advance the great cause of negro emancipation.” As the cousin of J. G. Birney and the brother of the late Judge Green “who led the Kentucky Emancipationists,” Green purchased slaves solely for the purpose of emancipating them, and had expended a “vast sum” in purchasing families to prevent them from being separated.[68] Three weeks later the facts were published in the Presbyterian Advocate. Green presently owned twenty slaves. Seven were aged, diseased, or blind, and had no means of supporting themselves. Eleven were children unable to support themselves, but had already been emancipated (which would take formal effect on their eighteenth birthdays), while the other two were healthy men who had been purchased by Green, and were presently working to pay him back for the purchase price. Annan concluded with but a single comment: “would each abolitionist be the means of emancipating one half as many, slavery would disappear very soon from our soil. Would each Presbyterian of his native State do as much, slavery would be immediately abolished there.”[69]

But such anecdotes did not assuage all northwesterners. Two years later more than fifty members of churches within the bounds of Richland Presbytery (in Central Ohio) petitioned their presbytery to make a clear statement against slavery. Echoing the language of the 1818 General Assembly declaration, the memorialists urged the presbytery to do all in their power to “purge the Church of this ‘blot upon Christianity.’” Expressing traditional Presbyterian deference to authority, the members declared that they did not wish to agitate but would “submit to your authority in the Lord.”[70] The presbytery replied that its silence did not imply approval, and suggested that “there is a wide difference between enslaving mankind, and in certain circumstances retaining them in slavery.” It could not agree with the petition to exclude “slave holding ministers from their pulpits, and slave-holding members from their communion” because “slavery. . . has never been regarded by the church as such a crime per se, as disqualified from ministerial fellowship or church communion.” Abuses could certainly result in exclusion from the church, but they would need a concrete case, not an abstract question in order to do this. Echoing Hodge and Breckinridge, the presbytery reminded the petitioners that “slavery did exist in both the old and new testament churches, without depriving persons of church membership.” The New Testament is contrary to the practice of enslaving men, but where it existed the apostle merely enjoins Christian love and brotherhood between master and slave, but does not reject the relation itself.[71]

Later in 1843, New School minister John Rankin began to inquire if abolitionists in the Old School would be interested in forming a church that would formally exclude slaveholders from membership. John A. Dunlap (PTS 1835) and William D. Smith (private 1830), editors of the Presbyterian of the West, commented that few Old School abolitionists were likely to go. “They are, it is true, decided Abolitionists, but with very few exceptions they are not ultra. Abolitionism with them is one thing, and that of great importance in their estimation; but it is not every thing.” In 1843, even abolition-minded Old School Presbyterians were unwilling to force the dictates of their conscience on others. While they earnestly desired “to see the church take stronger ground on the subject of slavery than it has done, they are far from thinking it their duty to leave the church, because that is not done in the time and manner they wish.”[72]

Therefore several northwestern presbyters took steps to reassert the anti-slavery thrust of the 1818 declaration. In November of 1843, Dr. Robert H. Bishop, a professor (and former president) of Miami University of Ohio, and a minister in Oxford Presbytery,[73] brought an overture to the Synod of Cincinnati resolving that “the time has fully come, when every minister, and every member of the Presbyterian church, whose lot is cast in any of the free States, ought to cease from defending, either directly or indirectly, slavery, in any of the forms in which it exists in the slave-holding States.” Bishop argued that “every attempt to justify or excuse slavery, in any of the forms in which it exists in these States, by scripture, is particularly unbecoming the character of the christian ministry, and must, in the present advanced state of religious knowledge, be highly criminal,” and urged the “full and friendly discussion (rather than division)” of the issue of slavery at the next General Assembly. Since the 1844 Assembly would be held in Louisville, Kentucky (the first time the Assembly had ever met in a slave state), Bishop suggested that this would be a particularly good time to discuss the matter. The fact that the Assembly “will be partaking of the hospitalities of slaveholders” would provide a healthy context for a fair discussion–and would prove that even the most zealous of the Old School anti-slavery advocates were not radical abolitionists.[74] George Junkin, president of Miami University, and Joshua L. Wilson of the First Presbyterian Church of Cincinnati led the opposition, arguing that the north needed to deal with the abolitionists first before they could effectively persuade the south to end slavery. After considerable debate and various proposals, the synod voted to indefinitely postpone the whole subject 39 to 29.[75] But emancipationist Kentuckians saw such decisions as evidence that the “great body of the Presbyterian church whose views are compared will be found in the main of one mind on this subject, opposed both to the system of American slavery, and to modern Abolitionism.”[76]

As the General Assembly of 1845 approached, Presbyterian newspapers watched the divisions in the Methodist and Baptist churches. The Methodist church had divided in the summer of 1844, and the Baptists followed a year later. William Swan Plumer of the Watchman of the South published news of these events in successive issues, along with an article on “The American Board of Missions and Slavery,” which gave notice from ABCFM headquarters that slaveholders could not become corporate members or missionaries, and that no agents were being sent to the south to raise money, in order to avoid the taint of slave money.[77] A few months later the Charleston Observer spoke of the increasing abolitionism of the northern religious press. “Such being the tone and spirit of these papers, it is obvious that should it continue and increase, all Christian intercourse between the North and South must soon cease, and with it all friendly political relations. Upon the facts here stated, it is not necessary to make any comment. Our readers can draw conclusions for themselves, and supply what we may have left unsaid.”[78] A month later, as the Baptists divided, Plumer wondered if the Presbyterians would follow.[79]

But after further reflection, Plumer thought that perhaps the division of the churches would actually benefit the Union. If the churches were no longer torn apart by internal strife, perhaps these divisions would actually work toward peace.[80] Gildersleeve concurred: “Many have imagined that the large Ecclesiastical bodies in our country, each embracing under one common standard the North and the South–the East and the West–were among the greatest safeguards to the perpetuity of the Union.” But the political differences between the regions were becoming so great that he wondered whether the “separate embodiment of feelings and sentiments, as they exist in different latitudes” with respect to slavery might not suggest the wisdom of having separate southern religious organizations.[81] Certainly the Baptists and Methodists were better off with separate churches “than to preserve a nominal union with embittered strife upon a subject which is foreign to the purposes of all legitimate ecclesiastical action.”[82] Would the Presbyterians follow suit?

4. The General Assembly of 1845

In April of 1845, the English-born minister Thomas E. Thomas (private 1836), pastor at Hamilton, Ohio, launched the Christian Monthly Magazine, a monthly periodical designed to facilitate communication among antislavery Old School Presbyterians.[83] Thomas, one of the few self-proclaimed abolitionists in the Old School, both advertised and reported on the pre-Assembly anti-slavery convention held on May 14, 1845. The convention, which only managed to attract five commissioners for the upcoming Assembly, drew only three ministers and three elders from outside of Ohio.

Figure 6.3. Attendance at the Presbyterian Anti-Slavery Convention in Cincinnati, 1845

Presbytery State Ministers Elders

Chillicothe OH 5 5

Coshocton OH 1* 1*

Cincinnati OH 1 1

Beaver PA 1* 3

Steubenville OH 1*

Peoria IL 1

Oxford OH 2 1

New Lisbon OH 1*

Indianapolis IN 1

St. Clairsville OH 1

Total 14 12

*Commissioners to 1845 General Assembly

Only one of its ministerial members had attended seminary (Benjamin C. Critchlow–WTS 1836), while the rest had all trained privately–mostly in Ohio.

Their first resolution claimed that in the “character and course of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, in reference to the sin of slaveholding, and those other sins against God and man which it necessarily involves, we see many of the principles and practices by which the scriptures designate 'the man of sin.'” Connecting anti-slavery with anti-Catholicism, they declared themselves against such tyranny, and condemned the halfway measures of their fellow northern Old School Presbyterians,