The Problem of Slavery in Christian America: An Ethical-Judicial History of American Slavery and Racism

by Joel McDurmon

The capstone of oblivion for this address came in its final notes, and also stands as representative of the entire culture of anti-black racism, North and South. Virtually the entirety of America united in the belief that blacks were an inferior race, not only degraded and uncivilized, but incapable of becoming civilized. This argument lay at the bedrock of subjugation from the earliest Portuguese enslavements, through all the southern justifications of continued slavery, right up to the highest political proclamations of Abraham Lincoln himself and even many of the Quakers and abolitionists. Yet here, from his own mouth, giving lip service to the need for evangelizing slaves, Pinckney undercut the whole charade by invoking the power of the Gospel. He delivers the following anecdote “from unquestionable sources”: The people [slaves] of an Absentee’s plantation, were proverbially bad, from the abuse and mismanagement of an Overseer; (the Proprietor resided in England, and the Attornies in Carolina.) The latter dismissed the Overseer as soon as his misconduct was discovered, and employed another, who was a pious man: he not only instructed the negroes himself to the best of his abilities, but accompanied them every Sunday to a Methodist Church in the neighbourhood. At the end of five years their character was completely changed, and has so continued ever since. After nearly fifteen years more, the surviving Attorney is now in treaty for the purchase of these very negroes, wh...