What They Didn't Teach You In School - Owning Negro Slaves Is What God Wants In The Bible - Good Christians Own Black People

[Mr. Black]

The Southern Argument for Slavery

Southern slaveholders often used biblical passages to justify slavery.Those
who defended slavery rose to the challenge set forth by the Abolitionists.
The defenders of slavery included economics, history, religion, legality,
social good, and even humanitarianism, to further their arguments.

Defenders of slavery argued that the sudden end to the slave economy would
have had a profound and killing economic impact in the South where reliance
on slave labor was the foundation of their economy. The cotton economy would
collapse. The tobacco crop would dry in the fields. Rice would cease being
profitable.

Defenders of slavery argued that if all the slaves were freed, there would be
widespread unemployment and chaos. This would lead to uprisings, bloodshed,
and anarchy. They pointed to the mob's "rule of terror" during the French
Revolution and argued for the continuation of the status quo, which was
providing for affluence and stability for the slaveholding class and for all
free people who enjoyed the bounty of the slave society.


Some slaveholders believed that African Americans were biologically inferior
to their masters. During the 1800s, this arguement was taken quite seriously,
even in scientific circles.Defenders of slavery argued that slavery had
existed throughout history and was the natural state of mankind. The Greeks
had slaves, the Romans had slaves, and the English had slavery until very
recently.

Defenders of slavery noted that in the Bible, Abraham had slaves. They point
to the Ten Commandments, noting that "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's
house, ... nor his manservant, nor his maidservant." In the New Testament,
Paul returned a runaway slave, Philemon, to his master, and, although slavery
was widespread throughout the Roman world, Jesus never spoke out against it.

Defenders of slavery turned to the courts, who had ruled, with the Dred Scott
Decision, that all blacks — not just slaves — had no legal standing as
persons in our courts — they were property, and the Constitution protected
slave-holders' rights to their property.

Defenders of slavery argued that the institution was divine, and that it
brought Christianity to the heathen from across the ocean. Slavery was,
according to this argument, a good thing for the enslaved. John C. Calhoun
said, "Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of
history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so
improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually."

Defenders of slavery argued that by comparison with the poor of Europe and
the workers in the Northern states, that slaves were better cared for. They
said that their owners would protect and assist them when they were sick and
aged, unlike those who, once fired from their work, were left to fend
helplessly for themselves.

James Thornwell, a minister, wrote in 1860, "The parties in this conflict are
not merely Abolitionists and slaveholders, they are Atheists, Socialists,
Communists, Red Republicans, Jacobins on the one side and the friends of
order and regulated freedom on the other."