James Henry Hammond, senator of South Carolina, said the following during a speech before the senate in 1858: In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. . . . Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand. A race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes.11 His words are important because American slavery was not rooted in a detached reading of biblical texts. Instead the biblical text was read in light of
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