Posts from 1850’s southern arguments part 01

This week I am at the diocesan conference. So, I am going to publish some excerpts from a book in the public domain. I do not agree with the arguments in the book. If I can, I will make some comments, but, mainly, I want you to see the exegetical arguments used, and see if they resemble anything in use today. Again, let me repeat, I do not agree with the arguments in the book. You are likely to see more words in red in future posts from this book.

The book is Slavery Ordained of God by Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D. It may surprise you to know that the book is a compilation of letters and lectures by Dr. Ross. Furthermore, it may surprise you to find out that Dr. Ross delivered some of these lectures at the Presbyterian national conventions in Detroit and New York in the 1850’s. He was not a ranting and raving extremist but was an apt and scholarly representative of a “cultured” Southern viewpoint of that time.

Do you say, The slave is held to involuntary service? So is the wife. Her relation to her husband, in the immense majority of cases, is made for her, and not by her. And when she makes it for herself, how often, and how soon, does it become involuntary! How often, and how soon, would she throw off the yoke if she could! O ye wives, I know how superior you are to your husbands in many respects,–not only in personal attraction, (although in that particular, comparison is out of place,) in grace, in refined thought, in passive fortitude, in enduring love, and in a heart to be filled with the spirit of heaven. Oh, I know all this. Nay, I know you may surpass him in his own sphere of boasted prudence and worldly wisdom about dollars and cents. Nevertheless, he has authority, from God, to rule over you. You are under service to him. You are bound to obey him in all things. Your service is very, very, very often involuntary from the first, and, if voluntary at first, becomes hopeless necessity afterwards. I know God has laid upon the husband to love you as Christ loved the church, and in that sublime obligation has placed you in the light and under the shadow of a love infinitely higher, and purer, and holier than all talked about in the romances of chivalry. But the husband may not so love you. He may rule you with the rod of iron. What can you do? Be divorced? God forbids it, save for crime. Will you say that you are free,–that you will go where you please, do as you please? Why, ye dear wives, your husbands may forbid. And listen, you cannot leave New York, nor your palaces, any more than your shanties. No; you cannot leave your parlor, nor your bedchamber, nor your couch, if your husband commands you to stay there! What can you do? Will you run away, with your stick and your bundle? He can advertise you!! What can you do? You can, and I fear some of you do, wish him, from the bottom of your hearts, at the bottom of the Hudson. Or, in your self-will, you will do just as you please. (Great laughter.)

[A word on the subject of divorce. One of your standing denunciations on the South is the terrible laxity of the marriage vow among the slaves. Well, sir, what does your Boston Dr. Nehemiah Adams say? He says, after giving eighty, sixty, and the like number of applications for divorce, and nearly all granted at individual quarterly courts in New England,–he says he is not sure but that the marriage relation is as enduring among the slaves in the South as it is among white people in New England. I only give what Dr. Adams says. I would fain vindicate the marriage relation from this rebuke. But one thing I will say: you seldom hear of a divorce in Virginia or South Carolina.]

But to proceed:–

Do you say the slave is sold and bought?So is the wife the world over. Everywhere, always, and now as the general fact, however done away or modified by Christianity. The savage buys her. The barbarian buys her. The Turk buys her. The Jew buys her. The Christian buys her,–Greek, Armenian, Nestorian, Roman Catholic, Protestant. The Portuguese, the Spaniard, the Italian, the German, the Russian, the Frenchman, the Englishman, the New England man, the New Yorker,–especially the upper ten,–buy the wife–in many, very many cases. She is seldom bought in the South, and never among the slaves themselves; for they always marry for love. (Continued laughter.) Sir, I say the wife is bought in the highest circles, too often, as really as the slave is bought. Oh, she is not sold and purchased in the public market. But come, sir, with me, and let us take the privilege of spirits out of the body to glide into that gilded saloon, or into that richly comfortable family room, of cabinets, and pictures, and statuary: see the parties, there, to sell and buy that human body and soul, and make her a chattel! See how they sit, and bend towards each other, in earnest colloquy, on sofa of rosewood and satin,–Turkey carpet (how befitting!) under feet, sunlight over head, softened through stained windows: or it is night, and the gas is turned nearly off, and the burners gleam like stars through the shadow from which the whisper is heard, in which that old ugly brute, with gray goatee–how fragrant!–bids one, two, five, ten hundred thousand dollars, and she is knocked off to him,–that beautiful young girl asleep up there, amid flowers, and innocent that she is sold and bought. Sir, that young girl would as soon permit a baboon to embrace her, as that old, ignorant, gross, disgusting wretch to approach her. Ah, has she not been sold and bought for money? But–But what? But, you say, she freely, and without parental authority, accepted him. Then she sold herself for money, and was guilty of that which is nothing better than legal prostitution. I know what I say; you know what I say. Up there in the gallery you know: you nod to one another. Ah! you know the parties. Yes, you say: All true, true, true. (Laughter.)

OK, now assuming you made it this far without putting your fist through the computer or other equally violent reaction, were any of the arguments similar to some of what you have heard nowadays? The key question is, how does one differentiate a bad argument from a good argument? I will leave you to puzzle that out as I get in my car and head off to Mississippi with one final postscript. Dr. Ross was a Bible-believing Christian and, in fact, argued for the authority of the Bible. As part of his argument, he speaks of the King James version, in particular. In fact, he argues that those who try to claim that the Hebrew or Greek says something different are wrong. The man knew his Hebrew and Greek.

I never yet produced this Bible, in its plain unanswerable authority, for the relation of master and slave, but the anti-slavery man ran away into the fog of his Hebrew or Greek, (laughter,) or he jabbered the nonsense that God permitted the sinof slaveholding among the Jews, but that he don’t do it now! Sir, God sanctioned slavery then, and sanctions it now. He made it right, they know, then and now. Having thus taken the last puff of wind out of the sails of the anti-slavery phantom ship, turn to the twenty-first chapter of Exodus, vs. 2-5. God, in these verses, gave the Israelites his command how they should buy and hold the Hebrew servant,–how, under certain conditions, he went free,–how, under other circumstances, he might be held to service forever, with his wife and her children. There it is. Don’t run into the Hebrew. (Laughter.)

Finally, let me repeat again. I do not agree with him. But, he claims to be a Bible-believing Christian. So, think about it, how do you counter him when he claims that nowhere in the Bible is slavery forbidden? Use it as an intellectual exercise that tests your ability to defend the faith. And, try to stop gagging as you read these posts.