Abolition, the Church, and White America…

November 11, 2020

The year was 1830, and the 25 states that made up America was being led by a man who was called “The Great Commoner”, President Andrew Jackson. Her people were enjoying peace after two wars for independence, the American Revolution and the War of 1812. There was optimism in the air and a sense of pride of how far we had come and distanced ourselves from England. We had shed our shackles…or had we?

This image was often used by Abolitionists.

All the things mentioned above were true for the white man. However, for the black man and his family; none of this was normal. No, unfortunately, there was trouble for you if you were black. It did not matter if you were physically free because the country and her people did not view you that way. On the backbone of The Great Awakening and the two wars mentioned above came a promise of new-found pride for this great country. There was a sense that anyone could do anything so long as they were willing to learn and lead. However, for the black man and his family, these things were often not possible.

Then arose a man who had the wisdom and fortitude to take on the popular philosophy of the time that white men were divinely endowed the right to enslave their common man and neighbor all because of the color of their skin. This man took it upon himself to step out and call to action not only his people, but all people who believed that it was unjust and cruel of his
country to enslave men, women, and children. He spoke out against the church and her leaders who brazenly felt emboldened by their “divine right” on the one hand to send missionaries to countries to create converts only to enslave them on the other hand. This man was David Walker.

Walker had a great task ahead of him. America was still stirred by the echoes of men like George Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards, whom during The Great Awakening had convinced scores of individuals that America was the chosen land, the chosen people, that God would usher in the millennium, and fulfill His judgment on all who did not believe. This sentiment of being “chosen” created an atmosphere of narcissism that permeated the very fabric of the souls of American Christians who claimed that it was their duty to care for slaves because God had ordained them to create this “peculiar institution.”

David Walker was a man who was free because his mother was free, even though his father was not. Even though Walker was free, he could not stand the idea of his fellow man being enslaved. His outrage is demonstrated in this quote,

“I will not live long…I cannot remain where I must hear slaves’ chains continually and where I must encounter the insults of their
hypocritical enslavers.”

Encouraged by his fellow American Methodist Episcopal activist friends and this sentiment, Walker stepped up and stepped out.

However, it is this eerie quote from his “Appeal” that seems to resonate through the ages,

“Unless you speedily alter your course, you and your Country are gone!!!!!! For God Almighty will tear up the very face of the earth!!!”

Little did he know that 31 years later America would come face to face with itself and this prediction would come to fruition. On April 12th, 1861; secessionists attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina and thus began a domino effect that ravaged this country and threw us into a civil war. It would be a long and bloody war that would pit brother against brother, father against son and wouldn’t end until April 9th, 1865 when General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate forces to General Ulysses S. Grant at the courthouse in Appomattox, VA.

Thus began the Reconstruction era of America. We laid down our arms against each other, but the negative sentiment toward blacks had not changed. Even though in 1863 President Abraham Lincoln had written and proclaimed all slaves were now free with the Emancipation Proclamation, it wasn’t until February of 1865 that the 13th Amendment made this act official. Though reconstruction had begun, blacks were still treated poorly. It would take men with character, dignity, and position to help usher in change. One such man was Robert Ingersoll.

Ingersoll, dubbed “The Great Agnostic,” was a lawyer, writer, and great orator during the time proceeding the Civil War. His father, who was a Congregationalist minister, had liberal ideas and thoughts around theology and society, thus pitting him against many parishioners. This had a negative effect on young Robert. Subsequently, he grew up not knowing if he
believed in God and focusing more on his career and helping others. Because of his experience with religion, he was an advocate for people to seriously think through ideas rather than blindly believing what others say. As Attorney General for the state of Illinois, he actively participated in politics as a staunch Republican.

In 1867, he wrote and delivered an address in Galesburg, Illinois, entitled, “An Address to the Colored People.” In this address, his disdain for Christianity is seen as he states,

“Backed and supported by such Christian and humane arguments slavery was planted upon our soil in 1620, and from that day to this it has been the cause of all our woes, of all the bloodshed — of all the heart-burnings — hatred and horrors of more than two hundred years, and yet we hated to part with the beloved institution.”

During this time the south is being reconstructed, and blacks are given rights that they have never had before. They are now allowed to vote in all states and as Ingersoll puts it,

“In reconstructing the Southern States, we could either take our choice, either give the ballot to the negro, or allow rebels to rule. We preferred loyal blacks to disloyal whites, because we believed liberty safer in the hands of its friends than in those of its foes. We must be for freedom everywhere. Freedom is progress – slavery is desolation, cruelty and want.”

Here we see proof that blacks have now been given certain rights. However, it still begs the question of how Ingersoll sees their treatment. While he states in his address that they do not owe any white man “a great debt of gratitude,” he still believes that blacks are much happier than they were before and that they are now being treated more equally than ever before. However, this is an illusion as it would take almost one hundred more years before all blacks would receive the same liberty to vote with the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1965.

Both Walker and Ingersoll are arguing for the rights of blacks and former slaves. While there are 37 years of difference between the two, with a bloody civil war in between, their sentiments are the same. In reviewing both men’s lives and writings, one would come to believe that the biggest fiend in substantiating slavery in America is the church and her followers. Slave owners and those who are proponents of slavery use scriptures from the Bible such as Ephesians 6:5-7 where it states,

“Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; not with eye – service, as men-pleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.”

Christian slave owners loved to use not only the verse above but also the argument that Jesus never really condemned slavery. They also would use the story of Philemon as a point that slaves should be obedient to their masters as well. Bishop William Meade of Virginia even justified undue abuse by saying,

“is it not possible you may have done some other bad thing which was never discovered and that Almighty God, who saw you doing it, would not let you escape without punishment one time or another? And ought you not in such a case to give glory to Him, and be thankful that He would rather punish you in this life for your wickedness than destroy your souls for it in the next life? But suppose that even this was not the case—a case hardly to be imagined—and that you have by no means, known or unknown, deserved the correction you suffered; there is this great comfort in it, that if you bear it patiently, and leave your cause in the hands of God, He will reward you for it in heaven, and the punishment you suffer unjustly here shall turn to your exceeding great glory hereafter.”

While both men are speaking against such tyranny, herein lies a problem; the distance in years and the context of their culture. While David Walker was free, he was still a black man. While Robert Ingersoll was an agnostic and considered a blasphemer by many, he was still a white man. Though Ingersoll used his color and position to help those who were hurting, he seemingly was disillusioned that everything would be okay for the black man and his family because they now have freedom and liberty.

History does not agree.

While both men articulate an argument against the poor treatment of blacks in the hands of American Christians, it is Walker’s prophetic claims that seemingly alarm the most. As some would say, his “Appeal” was the book that “spooked the south.” Ingersoll, while using his position, argues that the blacks are to be treated equally despite how Christians have treated them here in America, his speech lacks, in my opinion, the voice and power that Walker could give to his. Ingersoll can only have a taste of the experience that Walker and other blacks lived. Both men were treated unequally by society; Walker for being a free black man and Ingersoll for being an agnostic. However, it is Walker that makes the better argument as his life justifies his experience.

Confused and terrified are terms that come to mind when I think about where our country was as a society in 1830 and 1867. Changes had come, and with independence, we had to come to terms with not only our victories but also our moral defeats. As a society, universally, we had placed ourselves in the dredges of the human condition by placing a monetary value on human life.

The Reverend Robert Walsh, aboard a naval interceptor, boarded a slave ship on May 22nd, 1829 and described its conditions as follows,

“But the circumstance which struck us most forcibly was how it was possible for such a number of human beings to exist, packed up and wedged together as tight as they could cram, in low cells three feet high, the greater part of which, except that immediately under the grated hatchways, was shut out from light or air, and this when the thermometer, exposed to the open sky, was standing in the shade, on our deck, at 89′. The space between decks was divided into two compartments 3 feet 3 inches high; the size of one was 16 feet by 18 and of the other 40 by 21; into the first were crammed the women and girls, into the second the men and boys: 226 fellow creatures were thus thrust into one space 288 feet square and 336 into another space 800 feet square, giving to the whole an average Of 23 inches and to each of the women not more than 13 inches.”

This is the degree to which our society had sunk to, that we would be willing to enslave another person for money and place them in these conditions.

You would think that by 1867 society would have changed. In many ways it had. Many blacks were now free in southern states. They now had the right to vote. However, while slave masters were “let off the hook” in many respects, all that was given to the former slave was their freedom, which God had already given them. They received no reparations for what had been done to them. The sentiment at the time, as well, was that as a white person you owed nothing to the black man or his family. There were many congratulations given to those who were white that finally relented and did what was morally right. However, congratulating these people is like congratulating a child for doing their chores.

The American church in both these eras did very little to help the black man and his family. The best example we have of churches doing anything remotely close to helping would be The American Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers. However, it wasn’t here in America where they found most of their success, but in England. In American church society many Quakers, like Zephaniah Kingsley, were pro-slavery even going so far as to promote that “peculiar institution” in his “A Treatise on the Patriarchal or Co-operative System of Society as it Exists in some Governments and Colonies in America, and in the United States, under the Name of Slavery, with its Necessity and Advantages”. In there he states,

“Slavery is a necessary state of control from which no condition of society can be perfectly free. The term applies to and fits all grades and conditions in almost every point of view, whether moral, physical, or political.”

On the other hand, you have gentlemen like Elias Hicks, a Quaker himself writing in his “Observations on the Slavery of the Africans” that individuals and families should boycott any and all items that are made from the hands of slaves. While Hicks caused a schism within the Quaker tradition, he also caused a schism within society urging people to push back against
slavery.

All of this can be traced back to The Great Awakening with sermons preached that led Americans to believe that this land and all that was under their control was theirs for the taking. This sense of entitlement can also be seen in manifest destiny. The historian Fredrick Merk said of manifest destiny that it gave Americans,

“a sense of mission to redeem the Old World by high example … generated by the potentialities of a new earth for building a new heaven”.

This idea of American exceptionalism pervaded both times when Walker and Ingersoll were living. Whether it was land or people, Americans felt that they were ordained by God to be the rulers of this land and keepers of this earth.

Today is no different. We see American exceptionalism in the very fabric of all that is America. From the White House to our houses, every day there is a message that is carried that white America is the only America. There is fear that identity will be lost and with it America. The slogan “Make America Great Again” is a misnomer. As we look throughout the history of our country we can take pride in the excellence we have had in many areas, but it is overshadowed and darkened by the fact that America has never been great.

While we do enjoy freedoms that other countries do not, those very freedoms were won on the backs of people who were forced to fight and work at the hands of white slave owners who believed it was their God-given and ordained right to own a human being. The American church today has strived to make amends and to help, but for many, they too have fallen prey to exceptionalism. In many ways, American Christianity is the organized state religion of this country. Evangelicalism is now a popular term that when said either strikes a smile of those exceptionalists or weighs a heavy heart on those that know Gods word was never intended to be used this way.

The message that Walker left us and also parts of Ingersoll’s address can and should spur us on to be better than we have been. However, we must remember, as Fredrick Douglas shared in his famous speech on July 5th, 1852,

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”

He also states,

“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”

To make America great, we must do more. Churches must do more. We must stand beside each other no matter the color of our skin and love each other as our creator compels us to do. However, it is not enough to love, but also white Christians must stand and apologize for what they allowed to happen so long ago. We must admit our ignorance and sin. We must ask God for forgiveness and carry the burden of the consequence for the sin of slavery. We also must pass on to the new generations love and understanding that freedom is not truly free for all people. Our hope is that grace will be practiced, freely given and freely accepted.

Sources:

Douglass, Fredrick. The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro. n.d. http://www.pbs.org.

Hicks, Elias. Observations on the Slavery of Africans. Quaker Press, 1814

Hinks, Peter P. To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.

Ingersoll, Robert G. An Address of the Colored People. n.d. http://infidels.org.

May, Phillip S. “Zephaniah Kingsley, Non-Conformist.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, January 1945.

Merks, Fredrick. Manifest Destiny and the Mission in American History. Havard University Press, 1963.

“New International Version Bible.” Ephesians 6:5-7. InterVarsity Press, n.d

Powell, William S. Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Rae, Noel. The Great Stain: Witnessing American Slavery. New York: Overlook Press, 2018.

Walker, David. Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America. Boston, 1829.

Walsh, Robert. Aboard a Slave Ship. 2000. http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com.

Wilson, Rufus R. “A Sketch of the Life of America’s Most Noted Agnostic.” The Elmira Telegram, 1890.