So with the pulpit. It was extensively occupied by men identified socially and pecuniarily with the slave system. These men, with the awful dignity of ambassadors of Christ-vicegerents
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| W. G. Brownlow. |
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The former was widely controlled by politicians of the small ruling class in the Slave-labor States, and was almost everywhere subservient to their will in the promulgation of false teachings.
There were exceptions, however — noble exceptions; and there were those among influential newspaper conductors, like the heroic “Parson Brownlow,” of Knoxville, East Tennessee, now (1865) Governor of that State, who could never be brought to bend the knee a single line to Baal nor to Moloch; but stood bravely erect until consumed, as it were, at the stake of martyrdom.1
of the Almighty — declared Slavery to be a “divine institution,” and that the fanatics of the Free-labor States who denounced it as wrong and sinful were infidels, and deserved the fate of heretics.
They joined their potential voices with those of the politicians, in the cry for resistance to expected wrong and oppression ;2 and thousands upon thousands of men and women, regarding them as oracles of wisdom and truth, followed them reverentially in the broad highway of open treason.3
1 For an account of Dr. Brownlow's sufferings at the beginning of the war, see his work, entitled, Sketches of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Secession ; wit a Narrative of Personal Adventures among the Rebels. G. W. Childs. 1862.
2 See The Church and, the Rebellion, by R. L. Stanton, D. D., of Kentucky.
3 The change in the sentiments of the clergy in the Slave-labor States, during the twenty-five years preceding the war, was most remarkable. We will notice only two or three instances in a single religious body, namely, the Presbyterians. In 1835, the representatives of that denomination in South Carolina and Georgia, in Convention assembled, made an official report against the perpetuation of the system of Slavery. “We cannot go into detail,” they said; “it is unnecessary. We make our appeal to universal experience. We are chained to a putrid carcass. It sickens and destroys us. We have a millstone about the neck of our society to sink us deep in the sea of vice. Our children are corrupted from their infancy, nor can we prevent it,” &c.
In November. 1860, one of the most eminent Doctors of Divinity in the Presbyterian Church said, in his pulpit in New Orleans, after speaking of the character of the South:--“The particular trust assigned to such a people becomes the pledge of the Divine protection, and their fidelity to it determines the fate by which it is finally overtaken. What that trust is, must be ascertained from the necessities of their position, the institutions which are the outgrowth of their principles, and the conflicts through which they preserve their identity and independence. If then the South is such a people, what, at this juncture, is their providential trust? I answer, that it is to conserve and to perpetuate the institution of domestic Slavery as now existing.” Again: “I simply say, that for us, as now situated, the duty is plain of conserving and transmitting the system of Slavery, with the freest scope for its natural development and extension.” Again: “Need I pause to show how this system is interwoven with our entire social fabric? That these slaves form parts of our households, even as our children; and that, too, through a relationship recognized and sanctioned in the Scriptures of God, even as the other? Must I pause to show how it has fashioned our modes of life, and determined all our habits of thought and feeling, and molded the very type of our civilization? How then can the hand of violence be laid upon it, without involving our existence?” --The South, her Peril and her Duty : a Thanksgiving Discourse, Nov. 29, 1860, by Rev. B. M. Palmer, D. D.
Ten or fifteen years before the war, an eminent Doctor of Divinity of the Presbyterian Church, in Charles. ton, South Carolina, put forth two pamphlets, in which he sought to claim for that denomination the glory of the authorship of the Declaration of Independence, alleging that its form and substance were fashioned after the bands and covenants of the church in Scotland. “Presbyterianism,” he says exultingly, in praising the Declaration of Independence as almost divine in origin and character, “has proved itself to be the pillar and ground of truth, amid error and defection. It has formed empires, in the spirit of Freedom and Liberty, and has given birth to declarations and achievements which are the wonder of the present, and will be the admiration of every future age.” On the 21st of November, 1860, the same Doctor of Divinity said, from the pulpit of the Second Presbyterian Church in Charleston, after stating that he stood there “in God's name and stead, to point out the cause of His anger:” --“Now, to me, pondering long and profoundly upon the course of events, the evil and bitter root of all our evils is to be found in the infidel, atheistic, French Revolution, Red Republican principle, embodied as an axiomatic seminal principle — not in the Constitution, but in the Declaration of Independence. That seminal principle is this:--‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ ” --The Sin and the Cure, by Rev. Thomas Smyth, D. D.
Doctor James H. Thornwell, President of a Theological Seminary at Columbia, S. C., one of the most eminent scholars and theologians in the South, and who was known in that State as “The Calhoun of the Church,” was ever foremost in the defense of Slavery as a divine institution. He even went so far as to assert his conviction thatthe horrible African Slave-trade was “the most worthy of all Missionary Societies.” Clergymen of every religious denomination in the Slave-labor States were involved in the crime of rebellion, for the sake of perpetuating human Slavery. Their speeches, and sermons, and recorded acts are full of evidence that the Cihurch, in the broad meaning of that term, had become horribly corrupted by the Slave system, and made a willing instrument of the conspirators. It is related by the Rev. Dr. Stanton (The Church and the Rebellion, p. 163), that Robert Toombs, of Georgia, an arch-conspirator, went early to New Orleans, to stir up the people to revolt. The Union sentiment was too strong for him, and he was about to leave, when it was suggested that the Rev. Dr. Palmer might be induced to preach a new gospel, whose chief tenet should be the righteousness of Slavery. He seems to have been very ready to do so, and the Fast-day Sermon of Dr. Palmer, above alluded to, with all its terrible results, was a part of the fruits of the mission of Toombs to New Orleans, in the autumn of 1860.
Dr. Palmer's discourse was seditious throughout. It was printed, and circulated by thousands all over the Slave-labor States, with direful effect. In the summer of 1865, after the war was ended, Dr. Palmer entered the same pulpit, and “frankly told his people,” says a New Orleans correspondent of the Boston Post, “that they had all been wrong, and he ‘ the chief of sinners;’ that they had been proud and haughty, disobedient, rebellious; that he himself had been humbled before God, and received merited chastisement; that they had all been taught a good lesson of obedience to civil authority, and he hoped it would be filially received by them as the children of Christ, and laid up in their heart of hearts.”
For a complete history of the change in the sentiments of Christians of all denominations in the Slavelabor States, and the relations of the clergy to the conspirators, see a volume entitled The Church and the Rebellion, by R. L. Stanton, D. D., of Kentucky.
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