The Southern Theologians Futile Answer to the Manstealing Problem

I recently received a question about the antebellum southern theologians’ persistent defense of slavery despite their acknowledgement of Scripture’s prohibition on manstealing, or kidnapping, and the fact that this had been the basis of American slavery. The gentleman asked me to provide sources for my claims. I will not only happily do that, I think that the details of it warrant our attention even today.

This is a good opportunity not only to answer that request with the quotations and sources, but also to highlight for many others to see what is today a nearly incredible fact: those who saw themselves as the most committed of Bible believers and defenders of the inspiration and authority of Scripture were yet also the most dogmatic defenders of the slave system, even to the point of finding justifications that would mitigate or neutralize the reality of the manstealing and brutal Transatlantic slave trade at the root of it all, as well as the kidnapping and destruction of families at the root of the domestic slave trade within the continental U.S. after 1808. In a word, they looked the fact of kidnapping in the eye and argued, “It’s OK anyway.”

For a quick background, my comment came on a thread regarding the futility of the proslavery or pro-southern crowd appealing to Philemon and Onesimus when, even if that case were granted as kind of general permission, the case of manstealing at the root of it all were enough to condemn it all.

I responded with the tweet:

Indeed! Whole thread is great. Unconscionably, the Southern theologians KNEW this was the case and defended the institution anyway, arguing that they weren't responsible for how the Africans CAME TO BE property, but were legit property once they had traded hands enough times.

It was for this claim I was asked to provide sources.

The sources for this are already conveniently detailed in my The Problem of Slavery in Christian America, pages 390–395. Here is the excerpt covering it, highlighting Robert L. Dabney and James H. Thornwell, the two most prominent southern Presbyterian defenders of the system. I think this answers the gentleman’s request more than adequately:

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Not Complicit in Man-stealing?

Another frequently repeated criticism of American slavery was one of those highlighted from Quaker George Keith [the earliest published critic of American slavery, 1693]: the kidnap­ping at the root of it. Biblical law condemned this in the strongest terms, in the older translations as “manstealing,” and assigned for it the death penalty (Ex. 21:16). Dabney openly acknowl­edged this as most defenders of slavery did. Yet he also vigorously defended the institution anyway. He responded:

We fully admit, then, that the title of the original slave catcher to the captured African was most unrighteous. But few can be ignorant of the principle, that a ti­tle, originally bad, may be replaced by a good one, by transmission from hand to hand, and by lapse of time. When the property has been acquired, by the latest holder, fairly and honestly; when, in the later transfers, a fair equivalent was paid for it, and the last possessor is innocent of fraud in intention and in the actual mode of his acquisition of it. . . . Common sense says, that whatever may have been the original title, a new and valid one has arisen out of the circumstances of the case.[1]

Dabney goes on to repeat a common argument based upon this foundation. “If this principle be denied, half the property of the civilized world will be divorced from its present owners,” because land in America, Europe, Britain, and many other places had long since been obtained “by fraud or violence” against natives or other nations. Shall Americans give up their property and homes to Indi­ans in light of this?

The issue of the incipient manstealing of course brings up the distinction between the slave trade and the institution, although both were intimately linked, and both equally reprehensible in western culture. It is sometimes rebutted that since Muslims had driven slaves for centuries already in Africa, we should not hold Europeans or Americans responsible for starting it; and if we blame whites, we ought just as strongly to blame the African chieftains. While Islam was responsible, however, it was largely in the east­ern and northern parts of the continent, whereas the vast majority of slaves for the Americas came from western and central Africa. Likewise, although chieftains bear responsibility, they played only a facilitative role once the Portuguese started the trade. The west­ern demand for slaves soon stimulated raids in areas with little or no Islamic influence, and it grew and thrived with little or no help from Islam. This new demand was a “new force” which affected areas of Africa in new ways. Prior to western involvement, slav­ery within these parts of Africa was largely a parochial form of social dependency. Slaves may have been taken in tribal warfare, or may have been subjected for economic reasons. With increased demand from foreign traders, however, slaves immediately became a valuable commodity. Warlords, sometimes armed with weapons they obtained in the trade, led raids for the express purpose of enslaving individuals for sale to Europeans. The vast majority of victims were enslaved through slave raids, kidnapping, or legal manipulations. Some substantial cases used religious deception and trickery with local oracles, but the end result was kidnapping nonetheless. The Atlantic slave trade in effect led to the creation of a vast political and social institution in Africa that was devoted to producing slaves for western consumption, which decimated entire populations, and which had not existed as such before.[2]

It was no subtle shift, but rather a “radical break in the history of Africa.” Slave exports rose drastically in the 1600s, then exploded in the 1700s, totaling about 6.5 million souls in that century alone. By the time the Atlantic slave trade was finally ended, it had exported 12.8 million victims. Another 12 million newly enslaved victims never left Africa: they either died during the enslavement processes, or were simply never sold. These atroc­ities, after 1700, were for the most part not the result of natu­ral native wars, but of a phenomenon that would not have taken place without the demand from the West.[3]

It is hard to deny that westerners bear strong culpability, therefore, even for the very creation of the slave trade and the initial enslavements of most of the African slaves. Had there not been demand for such millions, along with western complicity in arms, resources, finances, and more, the chieftains would hardly have engaged in most of the wars and raids which produced the supply. This complicity was knowledgeable, willing, purposeful, and sustained for well over three centuries by all the major sea powers of the western world. The American slave traders and buyers knew exactly what was going on, and they approved of it—kidnapping and all.

Even had this not been the case, even if the slaves had simply fallen “innocently” into American slaveholders’ accounts, Dabney’s analogy to land titles reveals the deep flaw in what was an oft-repeated defense of slaveholding in light of its indefensible origins. With land disputes, we are discussing that which is already indisputably property and can be nothing else. With the slaves, the discussion is nothing of the sort. Instead, the discussion is of that which should never have been property to begin with. Justice in this case is not a discussion of property, but life and liberty. This is not a discussion of property disputes. It is a question of mansteal­ing. Justice is not restored by monetary values or sums; it requires, according to God’s law, the death penalty and the release of the wrongfully enslaved person.

John H. Thornwell seemed more sensitive than Dabney to this question, so he took a little different angle. How could anyone justify a system that only perpetuated a grievous injustice? Thorn­well retreated into the mystery of God’s providential ordering of affairs:

The answer turns upon the distinction between the wrong itself and the effects of the wrong. The criminal act, whatever it may have been, by which a man was reduced to the condition of bondage, can never cease to be otherwise than criminal, but the relations to which that act gave rise may, themselves, be consistent with the will of God, and the foundation of new and im­portant duties. The relations of a man to his natural offspring, though wickedly formed, give rise to duties which would be ill-discharged by the destruction of the child. No doubt the principle upon which Slavery has been most largely engrafted into society as an integral element of its complex constitution—the principle, that captivity in war gives a right to the life of a prison­er for which his bondage is accepted in exchange, is not consistent with the truth of the case. But it was recognized as true for ages and generations; it was a step in the moral development of nations, and has laid the foundation of institutions and usages, which can­not now be disturbed with impunity, and in regard to which our conduct must be regulated by the fact of their existence, and not by speculation upon the moral­ity of their origin.[4]

By this argument, Thornwell succeeds in doing nothing but confessing that the slave system was founded in wickedness. Beyond that, his only objection to doing anything about it was that it had been tolerated for so long it had become an institu­tion. In other words, it had been tolerated so long that it should be tolerated still. Or, that it had become so tolerated that most people (not enslaved by it) would be opposed to not tolerating it. The argument turns providence into fatalism. Each “step in the moral development of nations” takes place under the hand of God; but each step within the control of Christian individuals and Christian societies occurs with God’s express commands to us how to act in relation to each other. When we come across a falsely imprisoned or wrongfully enslaved person, we set him or her free if we can. If we cannot, we fight for justice in his or her case. Even if all we can do is preach justice, we should do it. Dabney and Thornwell each had one of the most prominent voices and pulpits in the South, yet they neglected to preach justice and instead appealed to God’s inscrutable handling of history as a reason to perpetuate the injustice.

Unlike questions of simple property, justice for manstealing and holding the stolen person in slavery has no statute of limita­tions. The only form of slavery left today by which we could relate is the prison system. If an innocent man were wrongly imprisoned, would we deny him freedom on the argument that he had already been moved from prison to prison enough times to turn a bad court conviction to a good one? Would we deny him freedom on the argument that he had already been in so long? What if the prison company, crew, guards, etc., all had a deep financial stake in keeping him imprisoned, and it was profitable; would we deny his freedom?

Even if we granted a form of slave society in which people could be acknowledged as property before the law; would a kidnapped man’s case receive justice by an appeal to the wrong­ful property claim layered on top the crime of manstealing? Can any changing of hands after those subsequent titles make them good? Absolutely not. That is the end of Dabney’s rebuttal. The South stands guilty of accomplice to manstealing, and aggravated manstealing, of millions of souls. It defied God’s law and engaged in the sins of Babylon.

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Joel McDurmon is the author of many books, including The Problem of Slavery in Christian America, also available in Kindle for only $0.99.

Notes:

[1] Robert L. Dabney, Defense of Virginia, 288–289.

[2] Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, 2nd Ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 18, 22, 23, 82–83.

[3] Lovejoy, 18, 64–65, 74.

[4] John Henley Thornwell, “The Christian Doctrine of Slavery,” in The Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell, Volume 4—Ecclesiastical, ed. by John B. Adger and John L. Girardeau (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1986 [1873]), 431.