The Churches and the "Worst Kind of Slavery"
Despite continued denials and whitewashings by some today, one of the most upsetting aspects of American slavery was the tremendous support it found in churches and pulpits. Most churches, ministers, and conservative Christians in the South either actively or passively supported the system and rarely did anything to curtail its widespread abuses, even when those abuses sometimes surfaced among members of their own congregations. It is important that we acknowledge these truths as a baseline going forward.
This acknowledgment is especially desired when even leaders among Christian communities today are among those perpetuating falsehoods, suggesting that while some abuses did occur, they were rare, and that the Christian masters especially never did so. We know Doug Wilson perpetuates claims of this nature; Kenneth L. Talbot of Whitefield Seminary also teaches this view, both repeating what is a distilled version of Lost Cause propaganda, which itself had originated in the specious and in some cases outright dishonest claims of Southern minister Robert L. Dabney.
What follows below is a brief excerpt from my The Problem of Slavery in Christian America which demonstrates the opposite view. Believe me, there is far more than this on nearly every score, but this excerpt shows church involvement in a particularly dark aspect of southern slavery—institutional slavery. There is much more to say, but here is a good starting point, sufficient to bust the myth that Christians and churches were somehow exemplary moral leaders on the slavery issue. They were not, and trying to whitewash their story today is sloppy and harmful to many people.
The Worst Kind of Slavery
Churches not only changed their message to accommodate slavery, not only defended the system, and not only neglected to discipline offending members in their ranks, but the churches as churches engaged in what even contemporaries called “the worst kind of slavery”—institutional slave holding. This practice, engaged in by schools, colleges, businesses, and even churches as well, involved the holding of slaves by the corporate entity as an investment. The slaves in some cases would serve the institution in various capacities, but would also be leased out yearly to plantations purely for the income. Churches did the latter almost exclusively, using the revenue to pay their ministers and have some left over for maintenance and other expenses. “In many cases the slaves were the only endowment the congregation required. This freed members from the necessity of making financial contributions to their church—a substantial benefit.” 1
Presbyterian minister William Hill had spent part of his pastoral career at one such church that practiced institutional slavery: Briery Presbyterian Church in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Looking back upon his service there in the 1830s, he related in his autobiography how the congregation supported him “by a fund which consisted of Slaves, who were hired out from year to year, to the highest bidder, which I considered the worst kind of slavery.”
It was truly among the worst forms because it bereaved the slaves of the last remaining vestige of care that could have derived from the self-interest of an owner. As Fanny Kemble explained in her now-famous diaries,
This hiring out of negroes is a horrid aggravation of the miseries of their condition; for if, on the plantations, and under the masters to whom they belong, their labor is severe and their food inadequate, think what it must be when they are hired out for a stipulated sum to a temporary employer, who has not even the interest which it is pretended an owner may feel in the welfare of his slaves, but whose chief aim it must necessarily be to get as much out of them, and expend as little on them, as possible.
If this was the reality for rented-out slaves in general, imagine the life of those whose lot was to be rented out every year to the highest bidder, with little concern but to maximize profit each year. 2
While this kind of slavery may have been worse in general, certain aspects in particular stand out. First, it separated family members on a routine basis. We know that slave sales, the domestic trade, and planter migrations all forced the separation of slave families, usually permanently. Institutional slavery did this as well, usually separating children from parents or spouses from each other to different renters each year. In some cases, slaves found wives on one plantation only to be removed and never see them again. Some church records make clear that a minority in the slaveholding churches realized they were leading slaves into temptation to sexual sins in various such circumstances. The majority overruled them and maintained the practice.
Second, child mortality rates skyrocketed under this system of slavery. Without even the basic level of medical care slaves would normally receive from an owner, rented slaves suffered even more greatly. This was especially true during a pregnancy. With the exception of some rice and sugar plantations, masters did not expect much work if any from a pregnant female slave. Seeing the baby as a return on investment, most masters would provide some maternal health care and rest to protect it. A renter, however, would not have that attachment, and would furthermore expect some work to be done by even a pregnant slave he rented for the season. Further, when children were born, renters did not provide for the needs and nursing of the children as they would have for slaves they owned; yet, the mother was demanded back to the fields as early as possible. The babies were thus weaned very early, or simply neglected, with consequences for their nutrition and immunity. As a result overall, pregnant mothers and young children often suffered from lack of the special care and rest they required. What samples we have of child mortality rates under such conditions reflect this reality. Whereas in a comparable time and place, the rates were around 16 percent—high as it was—the records available from Reverend Hill’s Briery church show that six out of fourteen children born to their slaves 1842–1846 died before age three—a devastating 43 percent. 3
Yet another aspect reveals a peculiar hypocrisy on the part of these slaveholding churches: the neglect to instruct their own slaves in Christianity. During a time when local Presbyterians were demanding the masters and owners provide for the instruction of their slaves in the Christian faith, Rev. Hill’s church itself had very little if any provision for the slaves it let out to random renters yearly. 4
Further, the church did not seem to be particular about who rented its slaves either. The highest bidder always won, but the highest bidder may have been a particularly cruel master. In the case of Briery, records indicate that some slaves ended up under one of the cruelest men in the county, Hilery Richardson. After flailing one of his own slaves to the point of severe abrasions, broken teeth, and eyes swollen nearly shut, Richardson suffered a fatal counterattack. The slave, William, was tried for murder, but Hilery’s reputation was detailed at trial. Doctors testified of William’s injuries, and multiple slaves were allowed the rare privilege of testifying of abuses against them, including savage beatings and the pulling of healthy teeth as punishment. The court was so horrified that it only found William guilty of second-degree murder and had him exiled from the state, rather than executed as would certainly have been both normal and quick in most cases. Nevertheless, “Despite Richardson’s terrible reputation for abusing his slaves, when he came to the Briery slave auction with a pocketful of money, he was permitted to carry three of the congregation’s slaves home with him.” 5
These specific infractions exacerbated by institutional slavery doubly magnified the exposure of the hypocrisy of the southern slave system, particularly with the churches’ involvement in it. It was impossible to maintain the myth of “paternalism” among slave owners when the section’s most prominent moral leaders and institutions were the worst offenders in tearing apart families, neglecting pregnant mothers and young children, failing to instruct their own slaves in the Christian faith, and selling out the very lives and safety of their slaves even to the cruelest elements in the system for a ready buck.
Yet this practice not only occurred, it was common. Multiple churches practiced it and depend upon it for revenue, and schools and colleges did as well. One student wrote of his time at Hampden-Sydney College near Richmond, “The worst kind of slavery is jobbing slavery, that is, the hiring out of slaves from year to year. What shocked me more than anything was that the church engaged in this business. The college church which I attended ... held slaves enough to pay their pastor ... $1,000 a year. . . . There were four other churches near the college that supported the pastor, in whole or in part, in the same way.” Both Hampden-Sydney and the University of Virginia engaged in this practice, and both were alma maters of ministers like Robert L. Dabney, who would have known of the worst kind of slavery while benefitting from it as well. 6
Bonus
In view of Black History Month, Problem of Slavery is on as steep a discounted sale as Amazon will allow. You can get the Kindle edition for only $2.99.
You can download the PDF edition FREE on my Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/posts/problem-of-in-33663208)
Notes
- Jennifer Oast, “‘The Worst Kind of Slavery’: Slave-Owning Presbyterian Churches in Prince Edward County, Virginia,” The Journal of Southern History 76, No. 4 (November 2010): 868 [↩]
- Oast, 867, 879. [↩]
- Oast, 890–894. [↩]
- Oast, 872. [↩]
- Oast, 8987–898. [↩]
- Oast, 876, 881–882. [↩]