(December 19, 2020). During the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s radical abolitionism incited the defenders of slavery to respond in two ways: the development of an apologetics of slavery and repression. The Civil War was about slavery, but it wasn’t “just about slavery”. "Moral Debates on Slavery Voices of the American Past: Documents in U.S. History, 4th ed. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Douglas thought about how every state should decide on whether they want slavery or not. If people are getting their morality from the law, then they are not thinking well. Slavery Slavery can broadly be described as the ownership, buying and selling of human beings for the purpose of forced and unpaid labour. Gale Library of Daily Life: Slavery in America. Top Tag’s. As noted earlier in this article, southerners responded to the abolitionists' attacks with repressive actions as well as with arguments. The Morality of Slavery . In some countries the ending of slavery did great damage to particular industries, demonstrating that slavery had kept prices artificially low and giving a clear early warning that the pressure on global prices could have a bad effect on human rights. Gale Library of Daily Life: Slavery in America. And, especially after the invention of cotton gin, as slavery grew more and the dependence of slaves was so great, the economy was very unhealthy because all laborers were African American slaves. For centuries, many nonwhite peoples were viewed as inhuman and born to be slaves, not fit for equal treatment. Railroad. For instance, when the proslavery advocate read the word slave in a particular verse, the abolitionist insisted on the word servant. The advantage that the southern apologists had over the abolitionists in using Scripture is that while slavery is mentioned numerous times in the Bible, the references do not censure the institution. moral issue of slavery. The definition of slavery is ownership of one human being by another. The appeal of the theory to some southerners was that it assigns blacks to be genetically inferior to whites. Slavery is considered by the modern church to be the worst of evils and the most severe of sins. In practical, everyday terms pro-slavery theorists believed that, in contrast to conditions of the industrial laborer in the North, the slave in the South had security. The slavery issues were more political and ? BBC © 2014 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Slavery As Moral Problem: In Early Church and Today by Jennifer A. Glancy "Slavery As Moral Problem" is the insightful, brief book about the issue of slavery from early Christianity to today. New York: Pearson and Longman, 2007. The abolitionists meant a home based on the four cardinal virtues of the "cult of true womanhood." Hyser, Raymond M., and J. Chris Arndt, eds. Slavery cannot be moral because it disregards the impartial consideration of interests of others through rationalization, or made-up good reasons. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. Slavery can broadly be described as the ownership, buying and selling of human beings. . The moral debate over slavery between the North and the South was initiated by the appearance of William Lloyd Garrison 's (1805–1879) Liberator in 1831, the same year as Nat Turner 's (1800–1831) revolt, and was concluded by the events of the Civil War, in particular the Emancipation Proclamation and the decisive Union victories in the second half of the Civil War. In the latter passage Joshua and the Israelites turn the Gibeonites into their slaves. The Liberator's editor was not the only voice among the abolitionists, and many others in the movement spoke as resolutely or nearly as inexorably as Garrison did. INTRODUCTION . https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/moral-debates-slavery, "Moral Debates on Slavery Fox immediately appealed for better treatment. Search Categories . Abolition's moral victory was laboriously slow and religion was not always an ally in that fight (U.S. Catholic clergy sometimes willfully misrepresented Papal pronouncements in defense of pro-slavery positions). Quakers from the outset believed that each person had an element of the Divine (“that of God”) within him or her. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). ? The Moral Issue of Slavery. Horace Greeley Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so. In the long term these actions were counterproductive because the abolitionists were able to use them as examples of the threat posed to a liberal democratic society by what they called the slaveocracy. JAMES BUCHANAN was neither exciting nor charismatic, but the power of his office and his character, principles, belie…, Morais Barros, Prudente José de (1841–1902), Moraine Valley Community College: Tabular Data, Moraine Valley Community College: Narrative Description, Moraine Park Technical College: Tabular Data, Moraine Park Technical College: Narrative Description. In the former passage, God, speaking through Moses, authorizes the chosen people of Israel to make slaves of strangers in their promised land. Lincoln wasn’t an abolitionist. In fact, the moral debate over slavery was sometimes shaped by the political context of the times. 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