SEVEN

So long as the Old School could hold together, they thought, the nation would be preserved. The vote was 127 for Charleston and 64 for New York City.

1. The Growth of Sectionalism

But such token displays of unity could not overcome the simple reality that Old School Presbyterians were increasingly divided, both physically and ideologically. The physical division was accomplished through the development of sectional institutions. While the ecclesiastical structure of synods was regional in nature, and most newspapers had a regional circulation, Princeton Seminary, the Princeton Review, the Philadelphia Presbyterian, and the New York Observer all had national influence. But regional institutions gradually became more and more important in the life of the south.[2]

C. C. Goen has argued that “evangelical Christianity was a major bond of national unity for the United States during the first third of the nineteenth century,” and that the division of the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist churches along sectional lines formed “the first major national cleavage between slaveholding and non-slaveholding sections,” and that these denominational schisms “broke a primary bond of national unity, encouraged the myth of ‘peaceable secession,’ established a precedent of sectional independence, reinforced the gorwing alienation between North and South by cultivating distorted images of ‘the other side,’ and exacerbated the moral outrage that each section felt against the other.”[3] Other historians have concurred that the division of the churches presaged the division of the nation.[4] Such divisions, however, could take other institutional forms. While Old School Presbyterians remained one denomination, they developed regional networks of colleges, seminaries and newspapers that fostered strong regional identities. Most of these institutions had been formed in the 1820s and 1830s, so by the 1850s they had established their own character and influence.[5]

As early as the middle of the 1840s communication between north and south was becoming increasingly difficult–and the most common obstacle was slavery. When the New York Observer in 1846 published and endorsed “some of the most thorough-going abolition articles,” P suggested that southerners should stop subscribing to such a paper and patronize “our own Southern Religious Papers.”[6] The essays in question consisted of a series of articles by “Philanthropos” that attempted to show that the Bible taught that “that the imposition of involuntary servitude upon the servant without his contract or consent, and the withholding or deprivation of his personal liberty by the arbitrary will and authority of the master, is necessarily and essentially, always and every where, a sin against God.” The author admitted, however, that slavery may exist without sin, if the master does all he can to “respect all the rights of his slave as a creature of God.”[7]

The New York Observer was widely taken throughout the south, but after a year had passed, and no response had appeared (in spite of some written by southerners, but rejected by editor Samuel Irenaeus Prime because they covered only part of the original argument), “Alexander” wrote to say that “a large proportion of the subscribers in this part of Virginia to that paper have lately withdrawn their support.”[8] A few, however, were satisfied with Prime’s response, and wondered why no southerner had attempted a full reply. “A Southern Man with Northern Principles” hinted that perhaps the anti-slavery position was correct.[9]

Moderate southerners like Benjamin Gildersleeve feared the rising southern nationalism that developed through the wrangling over the Wilmot Proviso, the Compromise of 1850, and the reaction to the fugitive slave law, and hoped to be a voice of reason and peace. When the Synod of Pittsburgh rejected 46-24 an overture condemning the fugitive slave law, the Richmond Whig wondered how Virginia Presbyterians could remain in the same denomination with even a minority of abolitionists. Gildersleeve replied that “we believe that our church is one of the great conservative elements of the Union, and that it is as sound on the whole question, as any body of men covering the same space in the country. And we believe that Henry Clay never evinced his sagacity in a profounder degree than when he said that he would not despair of the Union until our church divided on the question of slavery.” A few extremists would not dampen his confidence. Indeed, he replied that such “injurious suspicions” were “calculated to destroy our influence as one of the great girdling bonds of the Union,” and he was determined to do his best to maintain southern confidence in their northern brethren.[10]

Thomas V. Moore and Moses Hoge agreed with Gildersleeve in 1858, after Joseph G. Monfort, editor of the Presbyter declared their views on slavery “heresy.” The Baptist paper in Richmond, the Religious Herald, wondered how southern Presbyterians could remain in the same church as Monfort. Moore and Hoge replied with a bit of a jab, “We have long since learned to make all due allowance for the weakness and prejudices of both our anti-slavery and anti-paedobaptist opponents–and we have no hesitancy in communing with either the one or the other, provided their error does not assail the essential principles of the gospel.” They were convinced of the true catholicity of their “ecclesiastical union” and were willing to maintain “Christian fellowship” even with those who considered them heretics.[11]

But maintaining Christian fellowship did not mean remaining silent on the matter. When their ostensible friends in the North declared that slavery was a curse and delighted in the overthrow of the Missouri Compromise, Gildersleeve could only fear for the future of both the church and the nation: “Holding the power the North intends to hold it, and keep the South in perpetual subserviency to her interests.” When Samuel Irenaeus Prime of the New York Observer declared himself for free soil during the debates over the Nebraska Bill in 1854, Gildersleeve warned his readers, “And here let it be noted that the South has no better friend at the North than the Observer and the Conservative (?) party which it represents.” For Gildersleeve, as for many of his readers, this was not merely a matter of politics. “It involves all the interests of the South temporal and spiritual. It is the great question of the day.”[12]

Two years later, as the 1856 presidential campaign began to heat up, the editor of the Central Presbyterian urged his readers to “pray for your country.” Warning that disunion would be “accompanied or followed by war,” he assured his readers that such a rupture could not “be peacefully effected.” Border disputes, navigation of the Mississippi, division of military and finances, “and above all, the seduction of fugitive slaves and their recapture, that festering sore of the body politic, will inevitably break out in to fatal mischief, just as soon as the Constitution and the Union are removed.” But he hoped that the four million Christians could do something to prevent this.[13]

Even the resolutely conservative Presbyterian faced southern criticism. When editor William Engles ventured an off-hand comment that an essay in the Southern Presbyterian Review was “indiscreet and ill-considered” in its indiscriminate attacks on the north, a reply in the Watchman & Observer complained that the North was becoming increasingly hostile.[14] Another writer pointed out that the laws of Mississippi made it illegal for a dying person to “will, devise, or bequeath,” money “to any Christian charity whatsoever!” Tom Beckbee, “Letter from the South-West,” Presbyterian 29.17 (April 23, 1859) 65. Engles was somewhat taken aback. Who had attacked whom? “It seemed to us that the whole North was placed in the same category with small minority of ultras, and involved in the same condemnation.” Engles reminded his southern readers that the Philadelphia-New York region tended to view the South very kindly. “We are well persuaded that had we drawn a comparison between the North and the South, as much to the disadvantage of the latter, as the article in question is to the former, we should have been charged with the highest kind of indiscretion.” He warned that such local prejudices could only result in evil.[15]

But in the same issue “Charleston” wrote to warn Engles that the SPR article “expresses the sentiments of the great body of Southern Presbyterians, as well as of other Southern people.” These are the “well-considered views of your brethren at the South.” While they granted that “our Old school brethren” disagreed with the northern fanatics who appealed to a higher law to overturn the Fugitive Slave Law, they believed that “Northern Christians generally endorse this Jesuitical morality.” They did not doubt the North’s attachment to the Union, but they did not believe that the North would uphold the Constitution.[16]

Predictably, Presbyterians in the deep south were more antsy than their border states brethren. While the editors of the Southern Presbyterian Review protested against the secession movement in South Carolina in 1850 as premature, they made it clear that they were prepared for that event. Acknowledging that it was possible that the “Southern States shall be driven, in vindication of their rights, their honour and their safety, to organize a distinct Government for themselves,”[17] they warned their readers that the Union could not be divided without “strong convulsions, without dangers and disasters on all sides.”[18] Therefore they urged their fellow southerners to pursue all possible means of maintaining the Union: “As long as our voice can be heard, we shall endeavour to avert calamity--but if what we regard as rash counsels finally prevail, we have made up our minds, as God shall give us grace, to take what comes.”[19]

Washington Baird was less gentle than Gildersleeve to the minority of the Synod of Pittsburgh that protested against the fugitive slave law.[20] Baird, the editor of the Southern Presbyterian went so far as to say that those who opposed the fugitive slave law were “Traitors in heart and tongue, to the Supreme law of this Republic–open enemies to the Union–debased ingrates to the people of those States, who have so long joined with them in the support of common laws and common Institutions, and from whose labors, their immense wealth has been chiefly realized.” His only solace was that the opponents of the law were generally “low in intellect and morality.”[21] While Gildersleeve used a more moderate tone, he warned the north to rein in the abolitionists if it loved the Union. If the abolitionists seized control in the north, he feared that it would result in a battle of northern atheism and anarchy versus southern religion and order.[22]

Charles Hodge had similar concerns. In 1851 he penned a review of Moses Stuart’s Conscience and the Constitution.[23] Stuart had written in the wake of the Compromise of 1850, urging northern Christians to obey the fugitive slave act, arguing that the preservation of the Union depended on it.[24] Hodge concurred with Stuart, recognizing that the new understanding of conscience would destroy the nation. He feared that both sides were elevating relatively trivial matters into the realm of conscience. Southerners were complaining that the admission of California destroyed the equilibrium between slaveholding and non-slaveholding states. When some southerners proposed secession as an answer, Hodge replied: “Men might as well prescribe decapitation for the head-ache, as the destruction of the confederacy as a cure for the present difficulties.”[25] But Hodge admitted that the real trouble came from the abolitionists–and especially those who were promoting open resistance to the fugitive slave law. The Constitution was designed to allow slavery. But what if a man came to believe that the fugitive slave law was unconstitutional and immoral? What was the proper response for the conscientious objector?

Hodge replied by setting forth traditional arguments for the “divine right of government.” Since government is a divine institution, and not merely a social compact, obedience to the laws of the land “is a religious duty.”[26] Whether just or unjust, “the actual existence of any government creates the obligation of obedience,” in its proper sphere.[27] Only if the government commands something outside its proper sphere, may it be disobeyed. If it commands something contrary to the Word of God, then it must be disobeyed. Hodge admitted that conscience alone could decide when the law of the land conflicts with the law of God, or “which is to us the same thing, with our convictions of what that law demands?”[28] The proper response to an unjust law is to seek to have it repealed. Applying the old Reformed view of catholicity, Hodge argued that an executive officer of the state should only resign if he was required to sin. Likewise, private citizens could not obey commands that required them to sin, but they must still submit: “When we are required by the law to do what our conscience pronounces to be sinful, we cannot obey the precept, but we are bound to submit without resistance to the penalty. We are not authorized to abrogate the law; nor forcibly to resist its execution, no matter how great its injustice or cruelty.”[29] Hodge insisted that private individuals do not have the right of resistance. Only in their corporate nature as “the people” does the right of revolution obtain. “There is an obvious difference between these two things, viz: the right of resistance on the part of individuals, and the right of revolution on the part of the people.”[30] The people may change their government if they wish–but that does not give individuals the right to resist the laws of the land. While recognizing the rights of conscience, Hodge wished to retain a strong sense of catholicity–both in the church and in the nation.

The seminaries were also caught up in the sectional rift. A report in the Presbyter in 1859 stated that Danville Seminary in Kentucky (which had ostensibly been formed as a seminary for the whole west) was only drawing about a quarter of its students from the free states, since northwesterners refused to have their students educated on slave soil. And while Princeton had once drawn students from all over the country (in 1851 one in three Princeton Theological Seminary graduates hailed from slave states) by 1856 only one in twenty was of southern birth. As J. G. Monfort concluded, “Princeton stood well in the South under the deliverance of the Repertory on slavery, a quarter of a century ago, and under its approbation of the action of 1845, but since the South have progressed to believe that slavery is not wrong, and that the Church has no right to recommend or promote emancipation, and Dr. Hodge has, in a new commentary, brought out very distinctly the doctrine that the gospel is opposed to slavery, and that its diffusion will bring it to an end, the figures show that Southern students are more and more disposed or advised to study at home.”[31]

Two weeks later, “Lewis” wrote to the Central Presbyterian urging both the North and the South to support Princeton Theological Seminary on the grounds that a common seminary could help avoid sectionalism.[32] The editors replied that Union Theological Seminary in Virginia would be just as good. Besides, Virginia was a “conservative region,” and Union students would not likely encounter any of the “Fourierism, Spiritualism, Higher-lawism, Women's right-ism, Mesmerism, Free-loveism, Free-soilism, to say nothing of Beecherism, Tribuneism and the like.” Southern students did not need to go north. Rather, “let Northern men come South. Let them come to see and learn for themselves.”

But northern students did not wish to come to the south any more than southern students wished to go to the north. The following week the Central Presbyterian noted that the University of Virginia had fewer than a dozen northerners enrolled.[33] Only four of the eighteen students at Union Theological Seminary were northern born, and only one of forty-three at South Carolina’s Columbia Theological Seminary. One writer from the deep south suggested that the reason was that the south had “inferior institutions” with poor endowments and mediocre professors. Few northerners came south, and many southerners who went north for their education wound up as pastors of northern churches. Nonetheless, this southerner feared the results of sectional education. If southerners built up their institutions “by arousing their sectional prejudices, it must injure the true spirit of affection that ought to exist between the two great divisions of our country, in the Church, where, thus far, thank God, there has been no North! No South! But all one in Christ Jesus.” The only way to avoid sectional jealousies was to develop institutions that northern men would wish to attend.[34]

This growing institutional division both represented and encouraged a deepening ideological division between northern and southern Presbyterians. Mitchell Snay, in his study of religion and separatism in the South, has accurately depicted the development of a pro-slavery consensus in the South. As northerners and southerners became increasingly estranged institutionally, they also developed in completely different directions ideologically. In the South, “the biblical justification of human bondage, the portrayal of abolitionism as infidelity, the slaveholding ethic, and the religious mission to the slaves comprised a coherent ideology aimed at sanctifying slavery.”[35]

In this climate, what may have seemed obvious to a northern emancipationist like Hodge was no longer making sense in the South.[36] The pro-slavery movement had gained momentum since James Smylie had articulated the divine warrant for slavery in the 1830s, and by 1850 open dissent was dying out. In the late 1830s, Virginia’s George Baxter (1771-1841)–who was considered “proslavery” in his own day–nonetheless urged slaveowners to find the “quickest and most practicable means” of eliminating slavery,[37] but within a decade even Virginia Presbyterians were becoming increasingly comfortable with Smylie’s biblical defense of slavery as a positive good.[38] While some of the older ministers could still propose emancipation in the late 1840s in the border states, such as Henry Ruffner of Virginia (1789-1861), and Robert J. Breckinridge of Kentucky (1800-1877), the next generation was developing a new model that they hoped would establish a lasting foundation for slavery in the South.

2. The Defense of Slavery

By the middle of the 1830s, southerners had begun to develop a coherent proslavery ideology–led largely by the southern clergy.[39] Their critique of northern infidelity and secularism prompted them to argue that a patriarchal slave society was superior to the northern free soil society.[40] In his essay on James Henley Thornwell, Eugene Genovese has correctly stated that the defense of slavery was constructed from a Christian foundation, including arguments from scripture and economics/sociology (what was then called moral philosophy), particularly rooted in a strict construal of both the Bible and the Constitution. Hence for Thornwell, since the Bible does not condemn slavery, neither can the church. As Genovese notes, Thornwell “recognized that the Bible sanctioned slavery in general. . . not black slavery in particular. For God had ordained slavery among the ancient Israelites without regard to race, as 'race' came to be understood.”[41] Like many southerners, Thornwell objected to the “callous disregard of the human misery inherent in capitalist economic development” and argued that slavery was a more humane system since (at its best) it provided for the well-being of the laborer better than northern factories. Nonetheless, Thornwell, like many of his colleagues, objected to many of the southern slave-laws and demanded that the institution be made to conform to biblical standards.[42]

At the Synod of South Carolina in 1847, a committee was appointed to set forth the “position of Southern Christians” on slavery and seek to gain the confidence of evangelical Christians regarding their stance. Four years later that report, authored by Thornwell, was unanimously adopted by the Synod. In his preface, Thornwell pointed out that the situation had changed dramatically since 1847. Whereas the concern then had been the unity of the Old School in the face of abolitionist pressures, the issue in 1851 was the preservation of the national Union. Thornwell believed that the “position of the Southern, and perhaps he may say, of the whole Presbyterian Church, in relation to Slavery, is the only position which can save the Country from disaster and the Church from schism.”[43]

The proper relation of the church to slavery, in Thornwell’s view, was simply to preach the gospel to masters and slaves. The problems of society produced by sin could not be dealt with directly by the church. Since all church power was “ministerial and declarative,” the church could not go beyond its written Constitution of the Word of God. “The Bible, and the Bible alone, is her rule of faith and practice.”[44] Therefore in a plain rejection of the 1818 General Assembly, he argued that the church had no authority to condemn slavery as a sin, or to declare that emancipation was a Christian duty. Thornwell pointed out that “The Church was formally organized in the family of a slaveholder” [Abraham], and that the apostles taught the mutual duties of masters and slaves without demanding emancipation.[45] Therefore, Thornwell concluded, “If the Church is bound to abide by the authority of the Bible, and that alone, she discharges her whole office in regard to Slavery, when she declares what the Bible teaches, and enforces its laws by her own peculiar sanctions.”[46] While Christians could debate the political expediency of slavery, the moral and religious question was answered unequivocally by scripture that slaveholding was not sinful.

Another author in the Southern Presbyterian Review attempted to explain how slavery did not interfere with human rights. He argued that “the principle of subjection to government” was rooted in the basic doctrine of “submission to the will of God.”[47] Rejecting an idealized “state of nature,” he argued that the supposed doctrine of universal “natural rights” was also fictitious.[48] Every individual had natural rights, but those rights could vary depending upon their station in life. He pointed out that children had different rights than parents, while the rich had different rights than the poor, and slaves had different rights from masters.[49] Referring back to the American Revolution, he argued that “our fathers contended for their lawful franchises, not on abstract principles as the rights of men, but on legal principles as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers.”[50]

What, then, had created the abolitionist movement? In this author’s opinion, there were three basic causes. One was “humanity excited by exaggerated, and in a great degree, false statements,” another was “political self-interest and jugglery,” which played on those misunderstandings. But the third root cause was “the democratic principle. It is the radical doctrine of 'equal rights'--it is the idea that the slave is unjustly deprived or debarred his natural rights--that he is entitled to liberty and prepared for it.”[51] Only at the end of his essay did he acknowledge that American slavery was complicated by another factor: “a difference of race. . . . Will Christianity, that unquestionably makes masters benevolent, ever satisfy us that it is possible for two such dissimilar races to dwell together on equal terms?”[52] This author seemed to acknowledge that Christian social teaching had no place for a racially-based class system, but he could not bring himself to envision what such a society might look like.

The practical outworking of this was that the black members of the southern churches were invariably under the oversight of white elders. At the dedication of the Zion Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1850, a building established for the African Presbyterians in the city (and the largest church building in Charleston), Thornwell restated the southern doctrine of slavery.[53] Speaking to a slaveholding audience, Thornwell insisted that slavery “stands in the same general relations to Christianity as poverty, sickness, disease or death.”[54] He went so far as to declare that “slavery is inconsistent with the spirit of the Gospel, as that spirit is to find its full development in a state of glory,” but quickly added that while it was still consistent with “the spirit of the Gospel, as that spirit operates among rebels and sinners, in a degraded world, and under a dispensation of grace.”[55] But while affirming that slavery was indeed compatible with Christianity, Thornwell insisted that the southern practice of slavery was not yet in conformity to God’s standard for slavery. He called for continued efforts to reform slavery, especially promoting the religious instruction of the slaves.[56]

But as southern Christians attempted to conform slavery to biblical standards, some became convinced that certain religious and social practices might also need to conform to biblical standards. Whereas traditional evangelical piety emphasized personal conversion, the biblical model of covenant placed a heavy emphasis on the household.

Therefore Thornwell and others argued at the Synod of South Carolina in 1847, that if the biblical model of slavery should be accepted, then all slave children should be baptized. Appealing to the patriarchal model, where Abraham had circumcised all the males of his household–slave as well as free–they argued that it is “the duty and privilege of Christian masters to bring their servants, while in infancy, before God, and dedicate them to him in the rite of baptism.”[57] Rejecting the individualistic model of American evangelicalism, they claimed that “The Church of God was thus established in the family; the covenant was made with the head of that family; and all whom he represented in the family relation, not only his children, but his servants also, obtained a membership in the visible kingdom of God, through the faith of Abraham.”[58] Unwilling to follow this logic entirely, they argued that adult servants could only be baptized upon profession of faith, but claimed that the covenantal promise should extend at least to the children of slaves.[59] The Synod was impressed and passed a resolution endorsing the baptism of all the children of slaves.

But not everyone was impressed. A North Carolinian replied that while the Synod of South Carolina should be praised for its attention to the religious instruction of the slaves, the vision of household baptism was going too far. Pointing out that many in the deep South wished to bring all slaves for baptism on the ground of the master’s faith, A North Carolinian winced at the thought of “bringing forward a number of grown, and even old, wicked, and perhaps infidel negroes, and that too by 'compulsion,' to the holy ordinance of Baptism.” But even the less extreme arguments of the Synod of South Carolina were too much for him to handle. It was wrong to step in between slave parents and their children, “thus severing the connexion between those parents and their own children, in one of its most sacred and endearing ties, that of religious dedication.” Revealing his commitment to evangelical conversionist religion and common sense moral reasoning, A North Carolinian declared that “No system of slavery, either Jewish, Roman, or American can so obtain as to place the master, by virtue of his authority as master, between parents and their own offspring in matters pertaining to religion and conscience.” The master cannot be substituted for the parent. “The duty which the master owes to the infant servant of his household is mediate, or through its own natural parents.”[60] South Carolina’s embrace of the organic relations of society was too much even for many of their fellow southerners.

The southwest responded to the new proslavery arguments with mixed voices. When the southern New School Presbyterian, Frederick Ross, published his Slavery Ordained of God insisting that slavery was ordained by God in the same sense as the parental relation, most southwestern Old Schoolers demurred. Kentuckian Lewis Green Barbour (PTS 1851), a teacher in Lexington, pointed out that Ross’s argument was based on an entirely “Paleyan doctrine of expediency” that made right and wrong a matter of “what tends to produce happiness.” Barbour rejected this sort of utilitarianism, insisting that good and evil must be defined in terms of God’s nature.[61]

The True Witness of New Orleans argued that Ross’s book “breathes the spirit of ultraism against which our Church has stood so firm.” Ross’s position resulted in the perpetuity of slavery by divine fiat. If God had established it, “no government has the right to abolish what God has ordained,” yet both southwestern newspapers, the True Witness and the Presbyterian Herald, concurred that the civil power could abolish slavery if it so desired.[62] Even in the late 1850s the southwest had not yet entirely sided with South Carolina.[63]

Therefore, when certain southerners began to advocate the revival of the slave trade in 1856, southern Presbyterians met it with a storm of protest. Governor Adams of South Carolina argued that if slavery was in fact a good thing, then there could be no objection to reopening the African slave trade. The entire southern Presbyterian press responded vehemently against this. George D. Armstrong wrote in the Central Presbyterian that while slaveholding was not sinful, man-stealing was contrary to the Word of God and should be soundly rejected.[64] The Southern Presbyterian warned that the political consequences “would do the work of a fire-brand in our midst, and divide our counsels.”[65]

But the most thorough review of the issue came from John B. Adger in 1858. Adger admitted that some southerners were arguing that “slavery is the best form of society,” and that “therefore it is even impious not to enslave them,” but he emphatically denied that this was the common opinion.[66] Adger believed that the proposal to reopen the African slave trade relinquished the moral high ground that the South had taken simply for the sake of economic gain. The proponents of the trade focused on how the slave trade would provide cheaper labor in order to help the South retain its competitive edge against Europe, but Adger suggested that they had neglected the moral question. The culture of southern slavery had been insulated from fresh African arrivals, and Adger feared that the religious and moral “advances” with the slaves would be lost if new slaves were regularly pouring into the South.[67]

A. The Mission to the Slaves

And by the late 1850s those advances were significant–even if uneven from region to region. For over twenty years Presbyterian newspapers had been filled with exhortations and anecdotes encouraging the “religious instruction of the colored people.”[68] In 1835, the Rev. Charles Colcock Jones established the Liberty County Association for the Religious Instruction of the Negroes, in his native Georgia.[69] This association was frequently held up as the model for how Christian slaveholders should behave toward their slaves, and it prompted greater efforts among Presbyterians to ensure that their slaves received sufficient religious training.[70]

At first, opposition was common. When the Liberty County association attempted to build a church for the slaves, one Georgia correspondent told Benjamin Gildersleeve that the opposition was fierce. Gildersleeve replied “Where Religious Instruction is commenced, and opposition springs up, as it may sometimes do, never mind it: that is, do not feel yourself bound to set to work to argue or preach down your opponent. . . . It is certain he is wrong and you are right.”[71]

I. S. K. Axson urged slaveholders to remember that their slaves were “spiritual beings,” and that the Bible required the master “to be substantially a father to his people, to give a personal attention to their spiritual interests, even as he gives a personal attention to those of his children.” For Axson, a patriarchal view of slavery required masters to treat their slaves “very much after the manner” they treat their children.[72]

The number of ministers who worked at least part-time with the slave population is impossible to ascertain. It is easier to locate those who were identified as missionaries to the slaves. Old School Presbyterians in the South were a distant third behind the Baptists and Methodists, but they reported regular and steady growth in their slave membership.[73] The challenge for the missionary was to teach the slaves while retaining the confidence of the slaveholders. The solution was to ignore discipline (at least when it came to the masters). C. C. Jones urged missionaries to “Hear no tales respecting their owners, or managers, or drivers; and keep within your breast whatever of a private nature may incidentally come to your knowledge.”[74] At the same time that northern churches were withdrawing discipline from the realm of economic sins, divorcing spiritual concerns from economic matters, southern churches were taking a similar route with respect to the abuses of slavery.[75]

Old School Missionaries to the Slaves

Name Born Seminary Served Years

Charles Colcock Jones GA ATS/PTS 1830 GA 1832-1863

Cortlandt Van Rensselaer NY PTS/UTS 1833 VA 1833-1835

Lemuel D. Hatch NC PTS 1819 AL 1833-1866

John B. Van Dyck NY PTS 1829 SC 1835-1840

William McJimsey NY PTS 1823 MD 1837-1841

James Smylie NC Private 1810s MS 1841-1852

Thomas A. Ogden NJ PTS 1826 MS 1841-1865

John K. Doak TN PTS 1841 TN 1844

Samuel P. Helme PA PTS 1837 LA 1846-1847

Colin McKinney KY LaneTS 1836 MS 1846

James Knox NC PTS 1844 AL 1849-1859

Robert W. Hadden AL CTS 1848 SC 1849

Joseph Brown VA PTS 1835 VA 1850-1856

James Wilson Ireland PTS 1850 MS 1850-1856

Edward Wurts NY PTS 1846 LA/MS 1850-1855

John Winn GA Private 1830s GA 1851-1857

Francis R. Morton VA PTS/NATS 1850 MS 1851-1852

William H. Roane AL CTS 1852 LA 1854

William L. McCalla KY Private 1813 LA 1857-1859

While this table is incomplete, it does reflect the growing suspicion toward the north found in the southern newspapers. Of the eight missionaries who began their service prior to 1845, four were northern born, and all but one had attended Princeton Seminary. Princeton only contributed six of the eleven that came after 1845, and of those eleven, only three were not born in a slave state. Not surprisingly, those three all served in Louisiana and Mississippi, the one region that lacked its own seminary and had a stronger connection to the north through the Mississippi River.[76] An 1844 exchange reveals the increasingly sectionalist attitudes in the deep south. The Presbytery of Georgia, under the influence of Charles Colcock Jones, had urged the Board of Domestic Missions to get more involved in missions to the slaves.[77] Harmony Presbytery (in neighboring South Carolina) replied that while the Board might have “honesty of purpose and heart-felt interest in the spiritual welfare of our servants,” the presbytery could not concur with the optimism of their brethren. Because of “the nature of the institution of slavery, and the necessary results of that institution, in its influence upon master and servant,” they declared that “it is inexpedient to employ the agency of any foreign body, as the organ of the Southern church in the religious instruction of our servants.”[78] The patriarchal model of social relations did not comport well with the national vision of the Boards, so most southern Presbyterians preferred to work with other southern churches. Jones’ association in Liberty County, for instance, employed ministers from various denominations to work with the slaves.[79]

In 1847 southern Presbyterians in Charleston began to argue publicly for the establishment of a separate building for their black members. Like most evangelical churches, Presbyterians had traditionally allowed blacks to sit only in the balconies of their churches, but those were full, and more wished to come who could not find a seat. One author in the Southern Presbyterian Review warned slaveholders that they could only claim the moral high ground if they obeyed the directives of scripture aimed at masters. “Our domestic institutions can be maintained against the world if we but allow Christianity to throw its broad shield over them. But if we so act as to array the Bible against our social economy, then our social economy must fall.”[80] Therefore, he argued, the church must provide for the regular instruction of the slaves. But only a few congregations were ever established for the blacks, and those few were led by white ministers and elders. As Thornwell put it, “Of one thing we are satisfied--their religious teachers should never be taken from among themselves. There is too great a proneness to superstition and extravagance among the most enlightened of them, to entrust them with the cure of souls.”[81]

B. The Reform of Slavery

Southern Presbyterians included many reformers such as Charles Colcock Jones who admitted that there were significant problems with the slave codes.[82] Jones was always careful to avoid giving offence to his slaveholding hearers, but he urged them to consider the example of one gentleman “who has educated and instructed a sensible female servant for the purpose of making her the head of his plantation-school for the young; and she daily assembles them, and hears their prayers, instructs them in the catechism , and teaches them to read the Scriptures.” Jones argued that in his extensive experience, plantation-schools “produce the most decided and beneficial changes over the whole plantation. Civilization, intelligence, manners, habits, conversation, are all improved.”[83] Jones was no radical. A practical realist, he hoped to improve conditions in the present.

Likewise, in his final report in 1848, Jones suggested that if slaves were “allowed to plant and raise something for themselves, and if they find their little interests cared for and protected by their owners, and that there is an evident desire and effort on their owner’s part to make them comfortable, and to supply their wants, it will tend to cultivate honesty and industry among them in large measure.”[84] He suggested that the character of the slaves depended greatly “upon the character of their owners and the interests which they take in restraining vice and encouraging virtue.”[85] By comparing slavery to parenthood, Jones and other southern Presbyterians attempted to encourage slaveholders to consider the extent of their responsibility for the well-being of their slaves. The reform of slavery was a part of a coherent pro-slavery ideology designed to conform slavery to what they considered a more biblical form of patriarchy.

But southern attitudes did not change quickly. By the 1850s, one southern Presbyterian expressed concern over the tendency of whites to criticize “the spiritual attainments of our slaves.” Revealing his own bias, he asserted that the “average of piety” was higher among whites, but he asked white southerners to consider whether there was “some poor black in my kitchen, on my farm, on my plantation, who is by all odds, a better man than myself. Is he not more faithful to Christ? Taking our relative condition into consideration, does he not stand higher. . . in the judgment of our common Master, and will he not probably occupy a higher position than myself in the world of glory?” A truly patriarchal relation would be to set an example of holiness and humility before the slaves, which would be profitable for both whites and blacks.[86]

An anonymous 1856 article in the Southern Presbyterian Review defended the institution of slavery as less than ideal, but urged masters to train up their slaves in godliness and righteousness--treating them as they would wish to be treated if the roles were reversed.[87] One author in the Review even suggested that emancipation was desirable,[88] but most focused simply on the need for reform. Such reforms were exemplified by the conference held in 1845 in Charleston, South Carolina, under the leadership of Jones, Thornwell, John Adger, and other prominent Presbyterian pastors and theologians, which produced a movement toward the formation of separate black congregations in which the slaves could worship in their own way. Viewing the slaves as “poor brothers” in Christ, the Presbyterians sought to live up to their duties as Christian masters within the context of the “paternalistic ideal of an ordered and stable society.”[89]

But the patriarchal model could push some southerners even further towards reform. W. F. argued as early as 1837 that not only should slaves be baptized, but also that they should be treated as members of the master’s household in other respects, such as education–including reading. He argued that