Still Letting My People Go. Jack R. Davidson

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Still Letting My People Go - Jack R. Davidson

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1865, Caruthers completed a manuscript, over 400 pages in length, based on the text of Exod 10:3, Let my people go that they may serve me. It portrays slavery anywhere as a violation of God’s will because “slaves cannot make that entire surrender of themselves to the Lord which the gospel required and to which renewed nature prompts them.”3 Dated 1862 and entitled, American Slavery and the Immediate Duty of Southern Slaveholders, it was never published and is now in the custody of Special Collections at Duke University.

      The following analysis of American Slavery and the Immediate Duty of Southern Slaveholders augments the current understanding of the American slavery controversy’s significant roots in a biblical debate. Caruthers’s manuscript is unusual for a nineteenth-century document of southern origin because it presents a scripturally based argument against slavery. This book attempts to explicate the manuscript’s arguments and their relationship to the greater slavery debate of nineteenth-century America. The following analysis also seeks to demonstrate the contribution of the manuscript to a larger conversation within which this research should be heard: the continuing historical and theological assessment of the controversy over the biblical sanction for slavery in nineteenth-century America.

      As indicated by the manuscript’s table of contents, a three-part division is used by Caruthers to develop the universal application of Exod 10:3. In this text Caruthers sees a claim, a demand, and a reason that reflect the broader redemptive theme of the Bible. The three-part structure of the manuscript corresponds to each of these points. For clarity each point in the document’s table of contents is emphasized in bold print below.

      I. The claim; My people: founded, On creation and preservation—natural differences among men furnish no justification of slavery. | 9

      1. The deep and long continued degradation of the Africans in their own land—no reason why they should be enslaved. | 13

      The alleged ambiguity of slavery furnishes no justification of this practice. | 29

      Slavery in Egypt | 34

      Slavery, if there was such a thing, in Babylon | 41

      Slavery in Ancient Greece | 45

      Slavery in the Roman Empire | 53

      The orderings of Providence furnish no justification of slavery | 57

      2. The Lord’s claims on the Africans and all other races and portions of mankind is founded on Redemption | 61

      Differences between servants and slaves | 65

      Noah’s prediction | 69

      Servitude during the patriarchal age | 77

      Servitude under the Mosaic dispensation | 87

      Servitude under the Christian dispensation | 103

      The opinions of learned and good men in the favor of slavery is no proof it is right | 125

      Slavery originated in avarice, falsehood and cruelty | 129

      II. The demand: Let my people go

      The demand enforced by Providences | 157

      Human beings cannot be held as property | 197

      III. The reason of the demand or the purpose for which it is made. Their powers can never be developed while in a condition of slavery. | 257

      Slave Code of the South | 261

      According to the present laws and usages of the land, slaves cannot make that entire consecration of themselves to the Lord which the gospel requires and to which the renewed nature prompts them. | 313

      Under the existing laws and in the present state of society slaves cannot have that equality of rights and privileges which in the New Testament accorded to all believers. | 325

      Progress of emancipation | 345

      The influences which the abolition of slavery in these southern states would probably have upon the African Slave trade upon slavery in other parts of the world and upon the future destiny of the whole African race.

      What we should now do for them | 393

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