Religious Ideals of Southern Slave Society PDF 1986

The Religious Ideals of Southern Slave Society Author(s): Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Source: The Georgia Historical Quarterly , Spring, 1986, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 1-16 Published by: Georgia Historical Society Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40581464 JSTOR...

The Religious Ideals of Southern Slave Society Author(s): Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Source: The Georgia Historical Quarterly , Spring, 1986, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 1-16 Published by: Georgia Historical Society Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40581464 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Georgia Historical Quarterly This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  The Religious Ideals of Southern Slave Society By Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Southern South shouldconservatives have long be understood primarily as ainsisted that the Old religious soci- ety. From the Twelve Southerners' fiery manifesto, I'll Take My Stand, through Richard Weaver's brilliant The Southern Tradition at Bay, to the recent restatement in Fifteen Southerners, Why the South Will Survive and M.E. Bradford's penetrating historical studies, conservatives have stressed the South's continuity with premodern Europe. They have argued that the fundamental values of southern culture, in contradistinction to those of northern, have been religiously grounded and have established the South as the legitimate heir of Europe's Christian civiliza- tion. In their view, the North, in contrast, has been heir to those European values that have historically represented a rev- olutionary rupture with, and repudiation of, Christian civiliza- tion. In this spirit Allan Täte announced that modern Europe itself had broken faith and that the only genuine Europeans left were to be found in the American South. Hence, conservatives have dismissed slavery as - in Brad- ford's word - a distraction. But they cannot explain how the Mr. Genovese is Distinguished Professor of Arts & Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Rochester. Ms. Fox-Genovese is professor of history at the State University of New York at Binghamton. This paper was presented by Mr. Genovese at the University of Georgia's Bicentennial Symposium, "Two Hundred Years of Georgia and the South," in Athens on October 10, 1985. An earlier version was delivered at a National Humanities Center conference in the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina in April 1985. The generalizations presented here are based on research the authors are doing for a book on southern slaveholders. For those who wish an elaboration of their theoretical framework and documentation citations from some of their other publications include: Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Fruits of Mer- chant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism (New York, 1983); Genovese & Fox-Genovese, "Slavery, Economic Development, and the Law: The Dilemma of Southern Political Economists, 1800-1860," Washington and Lee Law Review, XLI (1984), 1-29; Fox-Genovese, "Antebellum Southern Households: A New Perspective on a Familiar Question," Review [The Fernand Braudel Center, SUNY-Binghamton], VII (1984), 215-253; Fox-Genovese, Southern Women, Black and White (Chapel Hill, forthcoming); Genovese, "Slavery Ordained of God": The Southern Slaveholders' View of Biblical History and Modern Politics (The Fortenbaugh Memorial Lecture, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pa., 1985); Genovese, "The Southern Slaveholders' View of the Middle Ages," to be published in the Proceedings of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies of SUNY-Binghamton. The Georgia Historical Quarterly Vol. LXX, No. 1, Spring 1986 This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 2 Georgia Historical Quarterly European traditions they admire managed to flou South but not in the North, which, after all, also ar the same trans- Atlantic migration as part of the ex expansion of European capitalism's emerging wor as embedded in what Immanuel Wallerstein has called "the world system." And if they point to the South's long and dog- ged commitment to a rural way of life, we must reply that the slave plantation provided the social basis for the durability of that way of life, which has been in steady retreat ever since emancipation and the conquest of the South by the values of the marketplace. Indeed, for the evidence of that retreat dur- ing the twentieth century, one need only turn to the writings of these very conservatives and to such moving testimonials of scions of the old planter aristocracy as William Alexander Percy's Lanterns on the Levee, For if the Old South arose and matured in direct submission to the power of the world market for which it raised vital staples, its plantation system and atten- dant society of extended households guaranteed that the South would develop as a society and culture in, but not of, the larger trans- Atlantic capitalist world. The conservatives' fundamentally sound and heuristically rich thesis of a specifically religious society and culture can only be sustained by lifting it from its philosophically idealist moor- ings and grounding it in the material reality - specifically, the social relations - of a maturing slave society. In particular, only through such a grounding can we avoid the trap into which these conservatives have fallen - that of implicitly severing the high culture of the intellectuals and educated planters from the popular culture of the slaveholders, big and small, as if, for example, the work of the sophisticated theologians had little or no bearing on the work of the humblest of the down-home preachers. The distinctive religious character of antebellum southern society was directly related to slavery as a social system. South- ern "high" culture was intimately linked to the daily beliefs and practices of both slaveholding and nonslaveholding southern- ers. Slavery laid the foundation for a remarkably broad re- gional culture, manifested in an increasingly coherent and religiously grounded world view that united the slaveholders on fundamental values and linked them, if precariously, to the This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  Religious Ideals of Southern Slave Society 3 nonslaveholders. Southern culture, for all its r and class variants, developed in essential respects which religion constituted the warp. If the theolo over time, more articulate and determined in thei slavery, and if they smothered doubts about character, they did not primarily do so under po and in bad faith. The measure of truth in the familiar attribu- tion of weakness and bad faith is outweighed by its mischief. Many of the religious leaders were too devout and too brave to prostitute themselves and the churches to which, often literally, they gave their lives. Their views resulted from their intense participation in a southern community they were shaped by and helped to shape. Southern theologians, especially the Evangelicals, did wres- tle with the egalitarian claims of their faith. The egalitarian promises of Christianity were not new to the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; as many Christians, not merely the members of radical sects, had long insisted, the equality of souls before God constituted one of the key elements of Christianity as a faith. But first the Catholic Church and then the Protes- tant, albeit somewhat more uneasily, had developed a venerable tradition of separating God's concerns from those of Caesar and of ascribing slavery to the latter. The attempt to link the ideological and political opposition to slavery as a form of labor to the concerns of God reflected a new determination to force the world to realize divine standards in its daily business. The history of that complex process provides an indispensible, if insufficiently evoked, context for the development of a distinc- tive southern evangelical Christianity. For southern theologians cannot be understood either as corrupt cynics who capitulated to the material interests of their congregations, or as reac- tionaries who unquestioningly accepted traditional notions of the subordination - including ownership - of laboring people. Rather, the southern theologians as a group figured as serious and soul-searching participants in the heated and intersecting debates of their era: What should be the relation between reli- gion and society? What should be the relation between theology and modern knowledge, from political theory to science? Among antebellum southerners, the slaveholders in par- ticular, religion enjoyed a privileged place as the cornerstone This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 4 Georgia Historical Quarterly of shared beliefs, and from at least 1820 to the Civil Wa erners viewed Christianity as the moral foundation social system. Southerners, led by their theologians, tu the Bible to sanction slavery. And the Bible served them for it did sanction slavery. In regularly turning to and upon the Bible, they vigorously defended slavery as an priate foundation for the good society and an appro model for harmonious social relations, both of whic viewed as necessarily hierarchical. They accepted muc modern world, but they resolutely insisted that it c survive if grounded in the social relations of "free soci The manifold efforts to construct or reconstruct a Christian society entailed new departures. The rhetoric often suggested a project of restoration, but southern religious leaders accepted much of the modern world, which they determined to master through the conversion of both slaveholders and slaves, through the provision of carefully controlled education, and through the reconciliation of religion with modern science. Their religious beliefs represented the social system they in- creasingly defended, but southern religion developed in large part as the world view of a modern slave society enmeshed in an increasingly capitalist Atlantic world. They consciously sought not merely to save individual souls but to build a Chris- tian community. By 1820, thanks to the evangelical movement, the South had been largely re-Christianized, and the slavehold- ing elite was beginning to espouse religion as the anchor of its view of itself and its world. Like southern society itself, the southern theologians' re- claiming of religion as the foundation of social values consti- tuted something new under the sun. For many southern theolo- gians, especially the Evangelicals and among them the Methodists, were troubled by the claims of spiritual equality and their potential consequences for equality of condition in this world. The abolitionist argument against slavery had de- veloped from precisely the same general social conditions as the Evangelical sects themselves. However imbued with Chris- tian ideals and rhetoric, that argument was the child of capitalism and of that attendant ideology of individualism which was making such heavy conquests in all facets of thought This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  Religious Ideals of Southern Slave Society 5 and society. In this respect, its place in the dev distinctive southern culture can be likened to t sonian republicanism; it had embraced a new rhet new values but had not jettisoned a deep commitm ing social relations. In effect, the southern theolo nity seriously entertained the individualistic a claims of new religious currents, but in time it r or at least rejected their extreme challenges. The southern churches boasted able theolo Henley Thornwell of South Carolina, to cite th nent, ranked among the ablest in the United St second to none. They are largely forgotten now, the fate of those who back losing causes in great w causes as offensive as slavery. Yet, in their own d gians were held in high regard and exercised nota In the countryside especially, the head of the hou wife would, from time to time, collect the family ing the house servants, around the fire at night Frequently, the text would be a printed sermon t the Bible, which retained pride of place in the At that, the influence of the theologians canno stood in isolation from that of such social theo Frederick Holmes, George Fitzhugh, and Henry political scientists as John C. Calhoun, Beverley T Bledsoe, and James H. Hammond, or such lega jurists as T. R. R. Cobb, George Sawyer, Thoma John Belton O'Neall. For with only occasional exce ostensibly "secular" social, political, legal, and m carefully grounded their doctrines in Scriptur knew well. Virtually all took for granted that no v would prevail - or deserve to prevail - unless its d could be made evident, for their constituents took tianity seriously. To put it another way: typically, als shared the sensibility of the ordinary slavehol small, and those who did not learned quickly to m tense if they did not wish to spit into the wind. T defense of slavery did not depend upon the fi Arminian or Calvinist doctrine; it offered a br interpretation of society and history. Thus, t This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 6 Georgia Historical Quarterly theology of the Baptist Thornton Stringfellow or the Meth William Smith paralleled in all principal respects that o Presbyterian James Henley Thornwell. Stringfellow, Smith, Thornwell, and others carried proslavery argument to new and higher ground. They vanced from theology to history and to what George Fitzh and Henry Hughes proclaimed in 1854 as "sociology. defense of racial slavery passed into a general defense of s ery - of "slavery in the abstract," as Fitzhugh called it. In during the 1850s the most prominent scriptural defen slavery - those of George Armstrong, William Brown Josiah Priest, Frederick Ross, and the especially influ John Fletcher - as well as the secular defense that inva invoked scriptural authority, advanced, steadily if unevenly ward some variant of the defense of slavery regardless of toward the argument that slavery provided the foundatio a proper, safe, Christian social order for all people. The advance to higher ground had been proceeding several decades. Even T. R. Dew, that erudite admirer of m ernism who doubted that slavery, at least in its southern had a future in a world of inevitable industrialization, saw solution to the "social question" short of some kind of sub tion of the laboring classes, white as well as black. Not southern theorist, religious or secular, thought that chatte ery could or should last forever, but by the 1850s the whelming majority thought that without some form o vitude for those laboring classes civilization would peri that extent Thornwell spoke for the southern intellectual group in 1860: That nonslaveholding states will eventually have to organ labour, and introduce something so like Slavery that it will b impossible to discriminate between them, or else to suffer fro the most violent and disastrous insurrections against the syste which perpetuates their misery, seems to be as certain as tendencies in the laws of capital and population to produce th extremes of poverty and wealth. The ideological consensus that emerged among slaveholders and that linked them to the nonslaveho This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  Religious Ideals of Southern Slave Society 7 yeomen left ample room for serious, even bitter, po ferences between Democrats and Whigs, and e dangerously, between secessionists and unionis hegemony of the slaveholders proved especially frag the war, when a substantial portion of the upcountr defected from the Confederacy. But the unraveling federate war effort, in its own way, demonstrated th of a prior consensus upon which the Confederate thought they could rely. The consensus rested on the acceptance of sl proper social system, but southerners did not rest th of slavery on racial grounds and simply taunt north Englishmen for having their own social problems. T their critique toward the repudiation and condemnat society. As southern intellectuals felt compelled their premises and beliefs, they found themselves le step, to the conclusion that while a racially inferi class might have to submit to chattel slavery, all labo would have to submit to some form of personal serv For antebellum southerners the distinctions turned less upon race and level of wealth than upon relations to farm or plantation households. Or, to put it differently, the nature of the South as a society of households and the special form of the ideology of individualism that southerners developed on the basis of that household structure and the intellectual tra- ditions of early modern republicanism permitted southerners, however uneasily, to encompass the contradictions of their so- cial elitism and their democratic politics. Since the southern farm or plantation household encompassed within itself rela- tions of production as well as reproduction, southerners could, more easily than their northern counterparts, ascribe labor to the governance of the household head. Legitimate labor was contained within the household, in which it was supported and governed according to the principles of dependence. Labor that escaped household governance could plausibly be viewed as anomalous and disruptive. Under these conditions, the wide social and economic gaps between large planters and poor yeomen could be bridged, although not without tensions. In this sense, the South did constitute a "slaveholders' republic" This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 8 Georgia Historical Quarterly in which republican political practice depended heavi its roots in slavery as a social system. No matter th yeomen were not slaveholders. They - especially thos plantation districts - were, by the inescapable so economic logic of their society, potential slaveholders. A potential - or to put it differently, that acceptance of th macy of slaveholding - guaranteed their membership company of male individuals who held responsibility governance of women, children, and labor. The ideo consensus that bound slaveholders to nonslaveholding holders stopped comfortably short of the extreme de slavery in the abstract, but the depth and breadth of the sus expanded in two impressive developments: the e view spread rapidly among the elite, and an admitted ified and disguised reflection of that view spread am small propertyholders. The unraveling of the consensus military needs of the Confederacy pressed unacceptably the upcountry smallholders, forcefully revealed the tions upon which it had rested. The consensus we have called "ideological" was und by its adherents to be quintessentially "moral." S spokesmen - and spokeswomen, too - hailed slavery as c tion's one great bulwark against anarchism, comm socialism, Mormonism, Millerism, bloomerism, and f Christian values and the Christian family were crum throughout free society. Only the South stood firmly all such madness. Only the South remained liberal spi accordance with the modern age but intransigent agains disorder. And the proslavery ideologues were convin the "isms" grew out of infidelity, notwithstanding the h and cant of northern divines who could not see that abolitionism was itself a defiance of God's manifest will. Even the moderate northern antislavery divines, who tried to hold themselves aloof from the abolitionists and who censured their alleged excesses, were inadvertently doing the devil's work. A Channing, a Wayland were undoubtedly honest and well mean- ing, but they were nonetheless trying to dismantle the God- ordained social relations necessary to sustain a Christian com- munity. This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  Religious Ideals of Southern Slave Society 9 The abolitionists may have scored heavily in and among the sophisticates of the seaboard ci they scored in the Burned-Over District, the Wes and the rural hinterland of the Old Northwest, their success depended upon receptivity to their biblical exegesis, flimsy as it might now seem; it depended, that is, upon the ability of their ministers to win an argument politically they could not win intellectually. In the South it was no contest, for the abolitionists inadvertently fell back on the one argument guaranteed to alarm and disgust the country people and even the conservative Episcopalians of Charleston, Savannah, and Natchez. Too often, when pressed hard in biblical exegesis, not only the radical abolitionists but the moderate antislavery men like Channing and Wayland boldly asserted that if the Bible could in fact be shown to condone slavery, it would deserve to be condemned as an immoral book. This heresy removed any last doubt that the abolitionists were thinly veiled atheists, and its assertion by a Baptist minister, college president, and moral philosopher like Wayland led even moderate and conservative southerners to conclude that further discourse with northern- ers was fruitless. The southern rejoinder, as might be expected, was short, harsh, and to the point: if we are Christians, we believe in the divine inspiration of the Bible and in its revealed Truth. God tells us what is moral and what is sinful. We do not presume to tell Him. The southern preachers rarely harangued their congrega- tions on the slavery question - rarely thought it necessary to take the pulpit in defense of slavery at all. They usually re- stricted their occasional sermons on slavery to the reciprocal duties of masters and slaves - "servants," as they preferred to call them. They dutifully and dully preached obedience and submission to the slaves, who normally seized the opportunity to catch up on their sleep. They had something more useful to say to the masters, who normally stayed awake. Slaveownership, they insisted, entailed Christian obligations, to be scorned at the risk of a master's immortal soul. The preachers thereby did their best to Christianize, humanize, soften the attitude of the masters toward their slaves, while they quietly reaffirmed the This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 10 Georgia Historical Quarterly divine sanction for slavery as a social system. In the ev southerners fashioned a view of the world and of social rela- tions that emphasized the legitimacy of slavery and of hierar- chical social relations, including, first and foremost, those be- tween men and women. The churches played an even more important role in the lives of the rural common folk than they did in the lives of town and village elite. In particular, they dominated the schools, which at all levels were grounded in religious principles. The nonslaveholders turned to their churches for a variety of social services and to bolster the social order, including family and sexual order. In this respect, the churches helped to transmit and even to enforce norms of how men should treat women, how husbands should treat wives, and how women should be- have as women. Those norms differed little or not at all from the norms proposed to the slaveholders. In much of the South the churches constituted the only public centers, except for the courthouses and local stores or taverns, and even the courthouses were taken over by the ministers for Sunday preachings. At the very moment north- erners were forging those "voluntary associations" that de Toc- queville identified as the mediations of a democratic and mar- ket society, rural and town southerners were still living in a world composed primarily of households that contained within themselves the basic relations of production and reproduction. This network of households did not readily generate women's associations, libraries, orphanages, and benevolent societies. Southern towns and villages lagged well behind northern coun- terparts. In the rural areas and villages the churches sponsored and encompassed most of the social activities. They assumed responsibility for providing most social services not provided directly through households. Ministers arranged to have families take in orphaned children, and families that took the initiative before being asked were likely to be church-going families. Over time, some independent associations developed, especially, in the towns, but the churches continued to provide decisive impetus for women's organizations and sense of social purpose. And those organizations usually accepted male direc- tion, especially that of ministers. This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  Religious Ideals of Southern Slave Society 1 1 The slaveholding men, but especially the women, ex looked to religion to provide a basic sense of communi did not doubt the salvation of truly Christian slaves o and uneducated whites. But they did know that faith level social distinctions, did suspect that social distincti enced the quality of faith, and often did assume that th ence of station on earth would somehow be reflected in Heaven. They valued the exhilarating enthusiasm of a cam meeting and attended them whenever they could. Even Ep copalians turned out on occasion. And note: In the North t revivals and camp meetings moved westward with the frontie despite intense occasional outbursts in the settled regions, but in the South they remained intrinsic to country and village li everywhere. Yet, for the vast majority of slaveholders, the rea ity of bonds among members of a Christian community neve implied social equality. They became comfortable with the ide of bonds among those who were and should be unequal bonds among the members of a hierarchical society. That w the whole point of their paternal responsibilities towards thei slaves. Their assertion of Christian bonds among those wh were not and should not be considered equal increasingly d tinguished them from northerners, who were emphasizin equality, at least of whites, but were losing that sense of Chr tian bonds and responsibilities which derived from acknow ledged inequality. The camp meetings no doubt provided special and fre quently irresistible social opportunities for rural southerners all classes who did not have ready access to diversion, but t vast majority of those who attended accepted their central re gious purpose. If women came to camp meetings for compan and conversation, they found both in religious idiom. Especial for the Evangelicals, their "sisterhood" and "brotherhood" de- rived from their common experience in Christ, not simply the common experience of the human condition. The camp mee ings underscored the Christian dimension of fellowship in southern society. Although men frequently met in such publi arenas as the courthouse, camp meetings provided the leadin occasions for large groups of families to meet. The number who attended far exceeded the numbers of church member This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 12 Georgia Historical Quarterly but the two groups should probably not be divided too s For the frequenters of camp meetings constituted a larg voir not merely of potential church members, but of church attenders. Those who participated in camp m heard the most concentrated doses of preaching that the ern churches had to offer. The preachers stressed the tance of Christian faith to full membership in southern and stressed the bonds of southern society as the bo Christianity. Thus the camp meetings powerfully dissem the idea of southern society as a Christian communit posed of full and potential members. The widespread southern sense of belonging to a Ch community could not have developed easily, if at all spirit of religious toleration not accompanied it. For c to the assertions of many historians, toleration and C fellowship outweighed denominational bigotry througho South. Of bigotry there was plenty, and if the preach had their way, there might have been much more. B preachers, or the more narrowly sectarian of them, have their way. Their congregations hemmed them in an manded toleration and respect for other denomination contrary to another myth, the countryside - specifically plantation districts - appears to have been even more go rited than the cities. Many churchgoing slaveholders we on Sunday, often to hear, say, a Presbyterian in the m and a Methodist in the afternoon. This interdenominational coexistence in the communities meant that a premier theolo- gian or religious leader like Thornwell, Levi Silliman Ives, or William Smith could expect to preach to large audiences when on the road at a quarterly or synod meeting or for some other purpose. It also meant that college presidents and professors, as well as academy principals and teachers - most of whom were likely to be ministers or active church laymen - were able to reach across denominations and social classes, for their repu- tations as educated and important men preceded them and served them well among those country people so often dispar- aged as yokels in the travel accounts and scholarly literature. Southerners expected their preachers to breathe some fire and show themselves to be moved by the Spirit as well as the Book. This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  Religious Ideals of Southern Slave Society 13 But they also appreciated hearing the Book, whic well, preached at a high level. The interdenominational cooperation of south tians stemmed directly from the rural character of and from the primordial role of the churches common culture and social cohesion. Interdenominational cooperation went hand in glove with passionate attachmen individuals to particular churches and with frequent split churches over questions of discipline and theology. The criminations mattered, sometimes deeply, to committed chu members, but they primarily concerned rivalries among ch members. Vis-à-vis the numerous southern Christians who did not belong to churches, church members and leaders minimized rivalries in favor of strengthening the Christian con- sensus. In the absence of widespread common s churches, through their Sunday schools, provi education that the minimally educated poore received. This quasi-monopoly of education a ability to instill the rudiments of a Christian broad segments of the population. Non-chur quently attended church, and even more atten ings. The cooperation of preachers of differen ensured that the non-church members could broader Christian community. The need to h of their non-members encouraged the preach denominational quarrels or at least to take pain community divisiveness that the sometime might provoke. Men and women drew from religion a model in their world. They went to church principall ing. They listened intently. They regularly no their diaries or correspondence, often commen ity of the sermon and - what was not the sam quality of the preaching, and sometimes rec the sermon, perhaps with a statement of agree The Bible offered a common language through pret their personal and social moral problems. nificant that they did not use the Bible for tell This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 14 Georgia Historical Quarterly they did use Shakespeare. The familiar language of defied the self-conscious quotation marks. And few ev tioned its relevance to daily life, including daily life w slaves. Precious few slaveholders, male or female, invoked religion to question the legitimacy of slavery as a social system. Those who seek to identify some distinctive female perspective on southern society, may point to many women's interest in revi- vals as a tangible expression of shared Christian feeling and may suggest that some women minimized the conflicts inherent in their society. But the women were, if anything, quicker than their men to point to social divisions, to cut arrivistes, and to refuse to know or to understand whites who differed from themselves. Most women, like most men, believed that the Lord intended the social divisions of their world and had not in- structed anyone to change them. Thus, the piety and religious convictions of the women did not move them to become reformers, as was happening in the North, or even move them to significant participation in or- ganized charity. They met their religious obligations through ministering to their own households, understood to include their slaves. Religion had a special meaning for those who lived in a world in which epidemics, childbirth, and personal violence made death omnipresent, regularly claiming the young with the old. There is nothing more poignant in the diaries and letters of both the men and the women than their struggle to accept that most ghastly of human miseries, the death of their children. They berated themselves for having loved their chil- dren more than God, for having loved life itself, and they fought, with astonishing courage, against every temptation to question His will. Men could write of their hopes for their sons and routinely add, "if he outlives me." Premature and sudden death stalked every household and might have driven the sur- vivors mad had they lacked faith in its sanctification. In other respects, too, religion offered both solace and self- control in a world of omnipresent danger from weather and illness - and from other people. The slaveholders knew that their slaves could poison or assault them at any moment, but they did not live as if under a state of siege. They believed in This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  Religious Ideals of Southern Slave Society 15 their fitness, as well as their right and duty, to slaves and to command their labor. Necessarily, believe that they could be loved and revered - o spected - by those on whom they imposed thei preachers and their Bible helped them square th the slaveholder the Christian religion, as it was defined and enforced their gender-specific lives women. It addressed them as Christians but, in the instance, it addressed them discretely as Christ women. Religion offered both men and women con an unmatched source of personal fortitude in the f loss, and the trials of everyday life. Both men and ognized faith as God's grace - as a privilege tha struggled for. Despite the efforts of the more rigid the preachers generally steered a middle course. M God's grace with sufficient ambiguity to avoid minianism or Calvinism. The result was often t messy and often evoked scathing comments in t slaveholders whose understanding of "grace" and "s faith" differed from that of their pastors. But her of toleration and patience - a willingness to leave t swers to God - usually prevailed over all calls for d ity. Politically, institutionally, and ideologically, toleration of error in the more esoteric matters of doctrine strengthened the consensus on morals and social duty. If men were encouraged to assume responsibility for others whom they were also obliged to govern and discipline, women were encouraged to accept governance. Northerners also sharply differentiated gender roles, but emphasized the differences less in religion, perhaps because the feminization of religion had proceeded so far that, however much religion allowed for women's values, it em- phasized gender differences less and less - or it made less and less allowance for distinctive male characteristics within a Chris- tian discourse. The scriptural proslavery argument, like its supposedly sec- ular variant, consisted of a self-conscious defense of par- ticularism as a positive good. While northerners retained their own prejudices about gender and racial relations - even class relations, which they preferred not to mention at all - their This content downloaded from 192.231.40.123 on Thu, 07 Nov 2024 19:30:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 16 Georgia Historical Quarterly intransigent commitment to universalism, understood ity among believers, increasingly exposed their res ticularism as little more than prejudice. Southerner celebrated particularism. In so doing they may hav the inner logic of Protestantism, but they forged a d sensibility that wonderfully reflected the distinctive of their own slave society. Their personal characters reflected the distinctive c of that slave society. Slaveholders were not unique in themselves to face death and bear all earthly sorr Christian fortitude, but that is not the point. Whatev said of others, Southerners' Christianity helped forge an unusually strong people, while it confirmed th legiance to their peculiar institution, and indeed, inst in this world. And, it confirmed their sense of be of a community, a society, a world that was worth dy The war memorial across from the statehouse in Col South Carolina, bears the inscription: "They were w die." As for the slaveholders of 1861, having long s mended their souls to Christ, indeed they were. 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