Catastrophe, Part 2: Moral Blindness

In my previous post–”Living On the Edge of Catastrophe”—we observed the Joneses of Georgia and their inability to see that their entire way of life was about to be destroyed in the Civil War. Despite dire political circumstances, they couldn’t believe that the worst would come. They shrugged it off and talked themselves into believing that catastrophe couldn’t happen. Like them, I tend to be optimistic and patriotic, thinking that somehow common sense will prevail in America. It ain’t necessarily so!

Now I’d like the consider the moral blindness afflicting the Joneses.

Slaveholders as depicted in the movies are obviously evil. They delight in tormenting black people. If they claim to be Christians, they are transparently hypocritical. Cruelty is their true religion.

The Joneses don’t fit that picture. In almost every way, they show themselves to be kind to their neighbors and principled in their business dealings. They are people of sincere faith, and it pervades their view of life. They rarely come off as sanctimonious. Perhaps the one theme that suggests sanctimony is the constant urging of both parents toward their son Charles to make a public confession of faith and be baptized. They bring it up again and again, and most particularly when his first wife and young daughter die in quick succession of an infection in childbirth and of scarlet fever. His parents are deeply grieved, sympathizing with their son in every way that parents can, but they cannot help themselves from urging that he, too, could die and fail to be reunited with his loved ones in heaven. Again, when Charles becomes a lieutenant in the confederacy, his parents are full of fear that he could die unbaptized in battle. They urge him to make a profession of faith and gain the ease, the comfort of assurance. Their concern seems completely authentic, genuinely and deeply concerned for his eternal welfare, but it’s insistent in a way that would be way over the top in any family I know. Except, Charles doesn’t seem to resent it. He knows they are expressing their care for him, and he believes as they do—it’s just that he can’t bring himself to the point of public profession.

Are they genuine in their faith? I think so.

Regarding their slaves, it’s hard to read exactly how kind the Joneses are, because they rarely detail their interactions. They seem to like their house servants, often referring to them by name and nearly always closing their letters with “howdy to the servants!” I am sure the Joneses would have claimed vociferously to have positive relationships with their slaves, and they certainly saw themselves as their protectors and benefactors. However, the relationships seem superficial, and—at emancipation—would prove to be.

Slavery, the Joneses believed, was a benefit to both black and white. They perceived their servants as simple, occasionally charming, but always in need of the superior discipline and order white people could provide. The servants let them think so. How much corporal punishment was required to keep “order,” and how close acrimony came to the surface between slave and master, is hard to tell from the letters. Such issues rarely appear. Since the Joneses seem to share freely about all kinds of issues in their daily lives, I have to conclude that the system worked smoothly. It was easy for the Joneses to conclude that “smoothly” equaled “well.”

Only one case mars this picture of harmony. An 18-year-old slave woman escapes—her name is Jane–and is discovered working under another name as a free black in Savannah. Caught, she is imprisoned, and Reverend Jones decides to sell her entire family. Evidently this family has been difficult for some time, and he is weary with the continual hassle of trying to bring them in line. Rev. Jones tries to live by his precepts. He makes up his mind to sell the family as a unit, even though he could get more for selling the pieces separately. Determining to find a new owner who he thinks will treat them responsibly, he consoles himself with the thought that a new start is best for everybody.

The cold-blooded reality, however, comes when Reverend Jones lists the family members for sale, including their estimated prices: A father and mother, in their forties; five children between the ages of 20 and 12, and a 29-year-old man who is for some reason attached to the family. Their prices range from a high of $1,000 to a low of $600. They are inventoried like pieces of farm equipment. It’s business. Reverend Jones wants a good master for them, but he also wants the highest price he can get.

I can’t tell whether the question ever occurs to him or his offspring: who gave you the right to own these people? The whole Jones family evidently believes, as indeed almost the whole South believed, that because the system ran smoothly (most of the time) it had to be right and just. No one asked the slaves, of course—but since they were simple people, unable to really care for themselves, their opinion did not matter.

It is a monstrous conception, utterly at odds with the image of God in humankind. Slavery’s pervasiveness throughout history and in biblical times says nothing to temper that judgment. Murder and theft were pervasive too.

Abolitionists from the North (and the South too, before they were driven out) could have taught them a different view. But the Jones family knew that abolitionists were fanatical infidels, godless and devoid of Christian morality. “And what will appear most remarkable to the sober, pious mind,” writes son Charles from Boston, where (while a student) he has attended the trial of Anthony Burns, a captured runaway slave being returned to the South, “is that [anti-slavery opinions] all come as emanations from the respective pulpits of this vicinity—promulgated, moreover, upon a day which the Lord has consecrated for His especial service. Strange and enormous must be the stupefying fanaticism of that man who, professing to be called of God for the revelation of holy things unto men, can so far forget his sacred office, and the solemnities of the season, as to indulge openly in vituperations against his country and fellow man, not only unbecoming a minister but unworthy a sensible person upon a secular occasion. It is really surprising to what an extent a person becomes an actual fool who, possessed of one prejudice, one misconceived idea, surrenders himself a total slave to its miserable influence.” (44)

That might be the wound-up, over-the-top rhetoric of a young man who has attended a life-and-death trial and heard vehement speeches. But in the 1,400 pages of Jones letters, there are really no other opinions. Abolitionists who speak for the slave are fools, infidels and knaves. They seek to destroy the South. Not once is there a hint of humility, of the thought that, “I might be wrong.” Not even, “I realize there are other ways of seeing this.” Nor, “It would be a terrible thing to be born a slave.”

It’s not that they aren’t good people. They are. But they are stupefyingly blind. They have grown up with slavery, prospered from slavery, and dealt with it (successfully) every day of their lives. It has taken away their ability to see.

I am not sure I would have been any different, if I grew up in the same place. And what, I wonder, could be my moral blindness today?

One thing I know: the words “walk humbly” should never be left out of our moral mandates. We must consider every day the possibility that we could be wrong. That in itself will not keep us from moral blindness, but at least it will open us to the possibility of learning something new.