The Almighty, forseeing the total degredation of the Negro race, ordained them to servitude or slavery under the descendants of Shem and Japheth, doubtless because he judged it to be their fittest condition.

I might fill the balance of this volume with citations from defenses of the “peculiar institution” in the name of Jesus Christ—­and not only from the South, but from the North.  For it must be understood that leading families of Massachusetts and New York owed their power to Slavery; their fathers had brought molasses from New Orleans and made it into rum, and taken it to the coast of Africa to be exchanged for slaves for the Southern planters.  And after this trade was outlawed, the slave-grown cotton had still to be shipped to the North and spun; so the traders of the North must have divine sanction for the Fugitive Slave law.  Here is the Bishop of Vermont declaring:  “The slavery of the negro race appears to me to be fully authorized both in the Old and New Testaments.”  Here in the “True Presbyterian”, of New York, giving the decision of a clerical man of the world:  “There is no debasement in it.  It might have existed in Paradise, and it may continue through the Millenium.”

And when the slave-holding oligarchy of the South rose in arms against those who presumed to interfere with this divine institution, the men of God of the South called down blessings upon their armies in words which, with the proper change of names, might have been spoken in Berlin in August, 1914.  Thus Dr. Thornwell, one of the leading Presbyterian divines of the South:  “The triumph of Lincoln’s principles is the death-knell of slavery....  Let us crush the serpent in the egg.”  And the Reverend Dr. Smythe of Charleston:  “The war is a war against slavery, and is therefore treasonable rebellion against the Word, Providence and Government of God.”  I read in the papers, as I am writing, how the clergy of Germany are thundering against President Wilson’s declaration that that country must become democratic.  Here is a manifesto of the German Evangelical League, made public on the four hundredth anniversary of the Reformation: 

We especially warn against the heresy, promulgated from America, that Christianity enjoins democratic institutions, and that they are an essential condition of the kingdom of God on earth.

In exactly the same way the religious bodies of the entire South united in an address to Christians throughout the world, early in the year 1863: 

The recent proclamation of the President of the United States, seeking the emancipation of the slaves of the South, is in our judgment occasion of solemn protest on the part of the people of God.

#Witches and Women#