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Southerner Justification Of Slavery

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The justification of Southerners came from a literal interpretation of the Bible, and many Biblical tales were utilized to justify slavery. For instance, according to Frederick Dalcho, a Southern Carolina Episcopal clergyman, Noah’s curse of the whole of Canaan was what enslaved the Africans. In the Biblical text, one story of Noah goes on to say that he slept naked after being drunk, and Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers. After Noah woke up and realized what his son had done to him (presumably an act of homosexuality, rape, or humiliation), Noah said, “Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers” (Gen. 9:25). The descendants of Canaan—the Africans—were therefore bound to be the “servants of servants,” or “the lowest state of …show more content…

Furthermore, drawing conclusions from the New Testament, Southerners restricted the social mobility of slaves: in Saint Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, one quote reads, “Let every man abide in the same calling, wherein he was called.” This essentially means that a human being should remain in the position that he or she was called to by God—for slaves this meant remaining in bondage. This lack of social mobility, in a larger context, can relate to the lack of social mobility that the untouchables—who adhered to the caste system, often unwillingly—faced in India, prior to the abolishing of untouchability through the Untouchability Offences Act, in 1955. Untouchability, although not similar to slavery, involved human beings who were considered inferior to the upper caste members in Indian society.

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Northern and Southern opinions on slavery differed greatly and caused a major divide. While the South fully supported slavery, the Northern citizens were abolitionists set on dissolving the act. Northern Whigs were major abolitionists before and during the Civil War. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 forced all African-Americans in the US to become slaves if they were found by any slave owner, even if he was not their own. This law applied to the entirety of the country, thus making free African-Americans subject to slavery and inhibiting the Whigs from legally protecting any remaining Northern African-Americans (Document M).

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David Walker says, “whites have always been an unjust...set of  beings, always seeking power and authority,” to call for slaves to revolt against their masters. Angelina Grimke builds upon Walker’s position, saying “the opposition of slavery has done its deadliest work in the hearts of our citizens,” to illustrate how slavery has caused nothing positive to the nation and is only diverting the country apart. The Northerners also had the interpretation of “holding slaves is morally wrong...upon precepts taught in the bible, and takes (the bible) as the standard of morality and religion” (Slavery and the Bible,1850) to further question the justification of holding slaves and how the morals of Christians in the North aided by the rise of the abolition movement during the Second Great Awakening. The morality of slavery was being questioned in the United States during the nineteenth century because of the denial of happiness and human rights among those under the rule of southern plantation owners. Reformers expressed their point of views, and many northerners began to join the abolition movement, however their attempts couldn’t influence the southerners and slavery continued on plantations in the southern

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Known as the “peculiar institution” in the South, slavery was perhaps the most divisive issue America faced during its early days. Rapid westward expansion encouraged by the American idea of manifest destiny highlighted the issues that came with protecting the institution of slavery, resulting in various compromises drawn up by the government in an effort to qualm the intensifying division in the country. Moreover, movements like the Second Great Awakening revitalized America’s moral conscience, revealing the ugly injustice and dehumanization hidden in the institution of slavery. In the decades leading up to the civil war, economic and moral arguments were what fueled the growing opposition to slavery. Analyzing the differences between the

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Slaves were warned to obey their masters, “As to the Lord and not to men.” However, their masters were also held to this same standard. Masters were expected to treat their slaves well and even to treat them as brothers, as God is the master of all people, including

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The nature of the Old South depended on a firmly structured society where plantation owners, or a small white body of southerners, existed as the elites of society, “crackers,” who were sometimes depicted as poor whites but, in this case, refer to those whites in the south who represented a culture which drew from its Celtic origins, and, most importantly, African American slaves who were firmly regimented in state of inferiority to both crackers and planters. In terms of ethics and economics, the nature of the Old South created for itself a unique civilization where, ethically, southerners possessed a high degree of honor and were in a constant state of fear of humiliation, and, economically, southern society was unique for its reliance on

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Aren’t they the children of god as others? Aren’t they sharing the same blood of human being? So, why should they be a slave, why not a respectful human? In fact, Douglass employs the rhetorical appeals of logos and pathos mostly and sometimes ethos also effectively. Even if Douglass incorporated mostly persuasive logical claims through the use of true facts of reality matched with emotional situation, his audience may find him aggressive because of his heated and distressful word choice.

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Nevertheless, slaves were forced by their owners to practice Christianity as a means to exemplify civilization. Churches

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It is a common argument for Christian slaveholders to make “…that God cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is right…” (5). this argument exposes their hypocrisy as it conveys how they attempt to stretch small pieces of scripture to justify the violence of the American slavery. Douglass thus asks if it is humane to use a small piece of writing to damn an entire race to hardship and subhuman treatment. This case of blasphemy is amplified by the observation that Douglass makes of one of his slave masters, Mr. Covey, in that “he seemed to think himself equal to deceiving the almighty” (61).

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Evangelical preachers, in keeping with their social doctrine that targeted the disadvantaged in society, attempted to convert slaves and Native Americans. Prior to the Awakening no one had made a serious effort at their conversion for fear that Christianity was “a step towards freedom” (357). Slaves attended evangelical sermons en masse, wary of the Anglican ministers who supported their masters. Evangelical Christianity offered moments of release and equality from the perpetual suffering of a slave’s life. This did not mean, however, that the evangelists actively opposed slavery.

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Slave owners felt that it was their responsibility and duty to dominate the “less fortunate and the less

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This introduced the principle that slavery was a sin and an abomination. Ministers in the North preached about the horrors of slavery, especially the slave trade, and that God would seek vengeance on any nation that committed such cruelties. In New York during the year 1810, Reverend William Miller gave a sermon on the abolition of the slave trade stating, “ According to the basis of the christian religion, we are bound to love God with all our soul, and our neighbor as ourselves: but this sacred injunction does not reach the heart of the oppressors of Africans” (Miller 11). This was the very premise for most of the Abolition Movement: thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

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Some say that the Bible's slavery was beneficial for both slave and master and thus morally advantageous system, while others that all slavery is immoral and thus the bible is as well. The slavery in the bible is morally advantageous for two main reasons. It rehabilitated the slaves, and there were laws protecting the slaves.

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As a result of the caste system, lower class people face much more obstacles than people living in the higher class. Some obstacles include, famine, poverty, and segregation. Untouchables are people born into a group that is considered so unclean that if fell outside the caste system altogether. Ashok Khade, a boy who was born an untouchable has faced some of these obstacles. Authors Polgreen and Kumar states, “At school, he sat on the floor in a part of the classroom that was built a step lower than the rest.

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Have you ever wondered how life was for the slaves in the South? Slaves in the South suffered through many consequences. For example, they suffered through many whippings with cow skin if they didn't obey their master, they also got separated from their family mostly the fathers, so, they can be sold to a very mean slave owner. Even if they were living a miserable life on the farms, they had their own culture and they managed to even get married in the farmland or where they worked. Not only did the slaves live on the farm.

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Religion and its relationship to slavery is a contradictive subject, whether it was forced upon slaves or was a form of hope and freedom is still commonly debated about to this day. However, these individuals were devoted Christians in the abolitionist movement who all

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