Hawk1981
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- Apr 1, 2020
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The United States Congress passed a revised Fugitive Slave Act as part of the Compromise of 1850. This group of bills quieted the early calls for Southern secession that had resulted from the debates about what to do with the territories won from Mexico in the recent war. The new slave law compelled citizens to assist in the capture of runaway slaves. It also denied slaves the right to a jury trial and increased the penalty for interfering with the legal acts of slave catchers.
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. - Romans 13:1-2
The Fugitive Slave Act placed control of individual cases in the hands of federal commissioners who were paid more for returning a suspected slave than for freeing them. This apparent bias led many to argue that the law favored Southern slaveholders. The act was met with impassioned criticism and more resistance than the earlier slave laws and was met with some Northern states passing laws to bypass and even nullify the act. Abolitionists increased their efforts to assist runaway slaves.
The biblical defense of slavery was always strong in the United States. It was a principle of American public thought in the 19th century that free people should read, think, and reason for themselves. America was a place where democratic, anti-traditional, and individualistic religion was strong, and among this Bible reading populace, the pro-slavery biblical case had a wealth of persuasive resources.
Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be defamed. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brethren; rather they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their service are believers and beloved. - 1 Timothy 6:1-2
Passage of the Fugitive Slave Act gave teeth to a provision in the Constitution by requiring that state officials and even “all good citizens” aid in returning people who had escaped slavery. Slavery's defenders dismissed abolitionist arguments that the act was "opposed to the Divine Law." Articles published in Southern newspapers such as the Richmond Daily Dispatch was sure that there were “hundreds” of “passages from Scripture proving the slavery has the divine sanction." The Weekly North Carolina Standard paper proclaimed that “these Christians in the free States set up their judgments against that of the Almighty, and blindly strike against all law, order, and right!” The newspaper demanded cooperation with the return of fugitive slaves and called down Paul’s threat of “damnation” as “Divine vengeance upon their evil deeds” in subverting the law.
The letter from Paul to Philemon was frequently cited in a defense of the Fugitive Slave Act. In this letter, Paul explains that Philemon's slave, Onesimus, had run away to seek refuge in Rome. While there, Onesimus hears Paul speak and asks to be baptized. After learning where he came from, Paul tells Onesimus that he must return to his master. Onesimus, being newly converted, complies because he knows it is the right thing to do. The passage shows that even though the slave is converted, he is still a slave, and since Paul, a man of God, sends the slave back to his master, then the Fugitive Slave Act must be moral too.
To some extent the debates in the 1850s over whether the Bible supported slavery or abolition fractured the Bible's authority among some Americans just as the debates over slavery fractured American government itself. With calls to commit civil disobedience rather than “commit the crime” of helping to re-enslave a person, or the call from a Vermont author who argued that the United States, “with its enslavement of the Africans and its extermination of the Indians,” stood outside Paul’s command to obedience. The most extreme abolitionists came to reject the Bible altogether because they believed the Bible did justify slavery. The biblical defense of slavery persisted among some Southern Christians after the Civil War, but the biblical argument to support slavery as the law of the land, at least, had ended.
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. - Romans 13:1-2
The Fugitive Slave Act placed control of individual cases in the hands of federal commissioners who were paid more for returning a suspected slave than for freeing them. This apparent bias led many to argue that the law favored Southern slaveholders. The act was met with impassioned criticism and more resistance than the earlier slave laws and was met with some Northern states passing laws to bypass and even nullify the act. Abolitionists increased their efforts to assist runaway slaves.
The biblical defense of slavery was always strong in the United States. It was a principle of American public thought in the 19th century that free people should read, think, and reason for themselves. America was a place where democratic, anti-traditional, and individualistic religion was strong, and among this Bible reading populace, the pro-slavery biblical case had a wealth of persuasive resources.
Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be defamed. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brethren; rather they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their service are believers and beloved. - 1 Timothy 6:1-2
Passage of the Fugitive Slave Act gave teeth to a provision in the Constitution by requiring that state officials and even “all good citizens” aid in returning people who had escaped slavery. Slavery's defenders dismissed abolitionist arguments that the act was "opposed to the Divine Law." Articles published in Southern newspapers such as the Richmond Daily Dispatch was sure that there were “hundreds” of “passages from Scripture proving the slavery has the divine sanction." The Weekly North Carolina Standard paper proclaimed that “these Christians in the free States set up their judgments against that of the Almighty, and blindly strike against all law, order, and right!” The newspaper demanded cooperation with the return of fugitive slaves and called down Paul’s threat of “damnation” as “Divine vengeance upon their evil deeds” in subverting the law.
The letter from Paul to Philemon was frequently cited in a defense of the Fugitive Slave Act. In this letter, Paul explains that Philemon's slave, Onesimus, had run away to seek refuge in Rome. While there, Onesimus hears Paul speak and asks to be baptized. After learning where he came from, Paul tells Onesimus that he must return to his master. Onesimus, being newly converted, complies because he knows it is the right thing to do. The passage shows that even though the slave is converted, he is still a slave, and since Paul, a man of God, sends the slave back to his master, then the Fugitive Slave Act must be moral too.
To some extent the debates in the 1850s over whether the Bible supported slavery or abolition fractured the Bible's authority among some Americans just as the debates over slavery fractured American government itself. With calls to commit civil disobedience rather than “commit the crime” of helping to re-enslave a person, or the call from a Vermont author who argued that the United States, “with its enslavement of the Africans and its extermination of the Indians,” stood outside Paul’s command to obedience. The most extreme abolitionists came to reject the Bible altogether because they believed the Bible did justify slavery. The biblical defense of slavery persisted among some Southern Christians after the Civil War, but the biblical argument to support slavery as the law of the land, at least, had ended.
