The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

by Jemar Tisby

If anyone today still doubts whether the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery, they need only to read the declarations issued by the Confederate states upon their secession from the Union. With Lincoln’s election in 1860, seven states quickly seceded from the Union with South Carolina leading the way. South Carolina’s leaders clearly explained their reasons for withdrawing: “Those [non-slaveholding] States have assume[d] the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution.” South Carolina and the other states that withdrew from the United States considered slavery a matter of personal property ownership, and citing Article IV, they saw slavery as an institution explicitly protected by the Constitution. Yet slavery was more than simply a legal issue; it was a moral and spiritual concern for the South as well. South Carolina’s leaders lamented that northern states “denounced as sinful the institution of slavery.”9 Mississippi was the second state to separate from the Union, and they made their position on slavery even more explicit. The legislators explained, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world.” Yet again, the chattel principle came into play as Mississippi’s leaders used financial arguments to support slavery. In addition, they posited that the biology of bl...