Slaves Waiting for Sale in Richmond, Virginia. Painting in 1861 by Eyre Crowe.
The US Congress in 1787 and 1789 would pass the Northwest Ordinance, which outlawed slavery in any newly created state of the Union. The federal government would also ban the export of slaves from any state within the Union in 1794. Intentions show that in this generation, the eventual abolishment of slavery was their main intention.
The intention was to show the world how a Christian nation would attempt to deal with such a heavy-laden problem. Britain finally outlawed slavery in 1834, and this was primarily due to the efforts of evangelical Christians. But the United States failed to address the issue of slavery fully. Slavery is a national sin, and one reason for this enabled failure is greed.
Profit and greed
The famous inventor of the cotton gin, Mr. Eli Whitney, made his contraption well renowned in 1783. This machine would end up making slavery much, much, much more profitable. The resulting effects of this new profit would give rise to a new generation of Americans with much less conviction on the matters of slavery than their fathers.
The rest of the nation, instead of dealing with the issue head-on, attempted to compromise. The trend of abolition came to a screeching halt in the South. And even churches began to (for the first-time ever) justify slavery by 1810. By then, all slave trading had been banned, yet slave owning, became more ingrained. [1]
As an example, Mount Tabor Baptist Church of Kentucky suffered a fracture in 1808. The church body fractured over the idea of slavery, as “in April 1808 when John Murphy, clerk of the church, rose from his seat and ‘declared non-fellowship with the church on account of slavery.’ Following Murphy's lead, Elijah Davidson then rose and withdrew from the church because it tolerated slave-holding among its members. In the following five months, two men and four women left the church for the same reasons.”
“Far from a singular event, this rupture was repeated in churches across the state and was the culmination to a decades-long debate within Baptist churches in the Upper South over the issue of slave-holding. Before the crisis was settled, Baptists would be forced to rethink their doctrines, worldview, and relationship to the new republic."
"As Baptists began to evangelize the Upper South, they addressed the complicated issue of slaves and slavery. Slaves were part of the early audiences for Baptist itinerants in the 1760s and 1770s, and, after the War for Independence, slaves began to join churches in increasing numbers. This phenomenon forced Baptists into the quagmire of slavery as they constructed a coherent theology and a network of churches in a revolutionary age.
The churches they built were biracial with white and black members. White and black evangelicals together faced the contradictions between their theology, which emphasized the equality of souls, and the institution of slavery, which reified inequality. Churches became the arenas in which southerners debated what slavery meant in an evangelical society and what religion meant in a slave society.”[2]
It was the national sin of slavery that would cause the evangelical movement to seek to reform American society in the Civil War era and well into today. A combination of dumbed-down education, misinformation, and poor leadership has weakened America has meant American continues to need great reform.
You can read a selection of Daniel’s past articles on: California in the US Civil War (here), Spanish Colonial Influence on Native Americans in Northern California (here), the collapse of the Spanish Armada in 1588 (here), early Christianity in Britain (here), the First Anglo-Dutch War (here), the 1918 Spanish Influenza outbreak (here), and an early European expedition to America (here).
Finally, Daniel Smith writes at complexamerica.org.
