Is Jesus Christ in favor of American slavery?  What, according to those laws which make it what it is, is American slavery?  In the Statute-book of South Carolina thus it is written:[1] “Slaves shall be deemed, held, taken, reputed and adjudged in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators and assigns, to all intents, construction and purposes whatever.”  The very root of American slavery consists in the assumption, that law has reduced men to chattels.  But this assumption is, and must be, a gross falsehood.  Men and cattle are separated from each other by the Creator, immutably, eternally, and by an impassable gulf.  To confound or identify men and cattle must be to lie most wantonly, impudently, and maliciously.  And must we prove, that Jesus Christ is not in favor of palpable, monstrous falsehood?

[Footnote 1:  Stroud’s Slave Laws, p. 23.]

Is Jesus Christ in favor of American slavery?  How can a system, built upon a stout and impudent denial of self-evident truth—­a system of treating men like cattle—­operate?  Thomas Jefferson shall answer.  Hear him.  “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other.  The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to his worst passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.  The man must be a prodigy, who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances."[2] Such is the practical operation of a system, which puts men and cattle into the same family and treats them alike.  And must we prove, that Jesus Christ is not in favor of a school where the worst vices in their most hateful forms are systematically and efficiently taught and practiced?  Is Jesus Christ in favor of American slavery?  What, in 1818, did the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church affirm respecting its nature and operation?  “Slavery creates a paradox in the moral system—­it exhibits rational, accountable, and immortal beings, in such circumstances as scarcely to leave them the power of moral action.  It exhibits them as dependent on the will of others, whether they shall receive religious instruction; whether they shall know and worship the true God; whether they shall enjoy the ordinances of the gospel; whether they shall perform the duties and cherish the endearments of husbands and wives, parents and children, neighbors and friends; whether they shall preserve their chastity and purity, or regard the dictates of justice and humanity.  Such are some of the consequences of slavery; consequences not imaginary, but which connect themselves with its very existence.  The evils to which the slave is always exposed, often take place in their very worst degree and form; and where all of them do not take place, still the slave is deprived of his natural rights, degraded as a human being, and exposed to the danger of passing into the hands of a master who may inflict upon him all the hardship and injuries which inhumanity and avarice may suggest."[3] Must we prove, that Jesus Christ is not in favor of such things?