Presbyterian Attitudes Toward Slavery

Although for two and a half centuries of our American history slavery was a legal institution and for much of that time a significant factor in our life and although throughout that long period there were opponents to it, moral and religious opposition was not strong until a late date. Much of the opposition in the colonial period was from an economic point of view: the returns would not justify the institution; the initial cost of the slaves was great; their labor was unwillingly given; the system promoted the idleness of the rich and robbed the poor of opportunity and prevented the immigration of industrious laborers. Benjamin Franklin thought that slavery retarded population and industry, and Dr. Benjamin Rush observed that small farms with free labor returned greater profits than slave economy. Here there was no question as to whether slavery was morally right or wrong, only “did it pay?” There was also, in this early period, opposition to slavery from a political point of view in that security was endangered. But in all the thirteen colonies slavery existed and everywhere respectable people owned slaves and clergymen of the major churches, if they had the price, owned them as well dressed clergymen today own automobiles. Here and there a lone voice was raised in opposition on moral or religious grounds, but only the Quakers, as a religious group, made slave-keeping a bar to fellowship. John Woolman, their anti-slavery apostle, made it his life work to go about the country and argue against slavery, because it was contrary to Christianity and because “liberty was the right of all men equally.”