The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1408: The Road to Civil War Pt. 19 - Abolitionists and Reaction - w/ George Bagby

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

71 MinutesSafe for WorkGeorge Bagby is a content creator and publisher of long-forgotten books. George joins Pete to continue a series detailing the long lead up to America's Civil War.George's "Buy Me a Coffee"George's Twitter AccountGeorge's Pinned Tweet w/ Links George's YouTube ChannelPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignano show. George Bagby is back. How are you doing tonight, George? I am weary, but I'm here, and I've been looking. forward to this show. We tried to record last week, but I was having connectivity problems. So I apologize for my absence. No worries at all. No worries at all. What are we going to talk about tonight, sir? We're going to be talking about the rise of the abolitionist movement, the radical new movement to affect immediate abolition of slavery in the United States.

a major departure from all talk of emancipation before this time and born out of a new moral imperative that recognized the particular, the very strange and unique evil of slavery, and was born out of a serious sense of indignation against its presence under a common law in the United States. States. Obviously, this is a much celebrated movement these days and does correspond with practically all discussion of the institution of slavery in modern times. So they've been kind of elevated in importance in a very serious way. We must reckon with the abolitionists. And we will also be talking about the reaction of the Southerners to this particular development. We had been talking in our recent shows about the Second Great Awakening. And I just had a fascinating interaction. A week or two ago, I was chatting with this lady.

I just met and she was from the Midwest. I really like Midwesterners. They seem to have such a trusting kind of disposition. Maybe it's because they're part of the country is so homogenous or something. I'm not sure why it is. They have this kind of characteristic, but I hear someone is from Nebraska or something. I know immediately I'm going to like them very well. So I was chatting with this lady and I found out that she was a Campbellite.

And I don't recall ever meeting one of these. So she was a member of the Christian church, which is kind of classified as one of the old line Protestant denominations. It was formerly very large. It is now maybe the most quickly declining of the mainline Protestant denominations. That's, I think, now I am no specialist on this group at all. I couldn't tell you very much about what they believed. But I think this is a misnomer. They are restorationists, and so they take exception to Protestant theology.

to make a short deal of it. A restorationist is someone who believes that the Church of Christ and the Apostles, the Church of the first century, ceased to exist at a point in history. This is not the traditional Protestant position. This is not what Martin Luther believed. This was not what John Calvin believed. This was not what Zwingli believed. This is not a classical kind of Protestant ecclesiology.

It's a very radical ecclesiology. So the Campbellites, they do emerge during the Second Great Awakening. I never thought them terribly remarkable as far as radical, radical tenants and such. from the Restorationist position, the Restorationist position is a radical ecclesiology, more akin to Mormonism or the Jehovah's Witnesses, that kind of thing, kind of breaking with doctrine and a more broad ecclesiology that is much more common to most other Christians. But anyway, the Camelites, I understand there are Trinitarians, by tradition and such. I started asking this lady about the tenets of her belief. I said,

well, this is remarkable. I've never talked with a member of the Christian church before. She says, oh, well, you know, there were so many of them. And we had colleges strewn across the country. She named some college, a Christian church college that she had attended. And she lamented that their attendance was down all over the place and that the college she had attended. has since closed. And I said, well, tell me, what do you believe? What makes you a community of believers? And I said, so you practice baptism, right? And she said, well, we don't have to be baptized. And I said, you can be a member of your church and not be baptized. And she said, no, no, you have to to feel some calling, some conviction that you must be baptized.

It's all a very individual thing. And I found that shocking. And I said, OK, so what about your rights and rituals then? So you take exception to baptism and say, this is not an essential element of Christian life and practice, nor a necessary initiation. And she said, well, we think that. that the Lord's table is extremely important. And I said, okay, well, tell me about that. And I said, is it sacramental? Are you, do you believe that it communicates grace in any way? And she said, oh, no, no, it's just a symbol. And I said, well, do you have to partake in it? And she said,

no, no, you only do this when you feel like that you're supposed to. And I found that also quite remarkable. And then she communicated an anecdote to me about how her children were alienated from the faith. She said her daughter had gone to Sunday school and had a particularly fervent sort of teacher who was asked about some belief of Muslims in Sunday school and dismissed it And said, no, this has this actually has nothing to do with Christian theology. This is not what Christians believe. And she used this as an example of the bigotry of the old organization in her church, which she took exception to and blamed for her daughter's alienation from the church.

And she said, well, the Muslims, they know just as much as we do. do about the nature of God and they are probably more right on these things than we are. And I said, okay, well, why do you go to church? And she said, well, we go to church so that we get to know our neighbors and people with similar backgrounds to ourselves. And I said, well, it's this necessary, like in any sense for someone of your belief to attend church? And she said, no, no, it's purely a social organization.

And I found that such a shocking sort of thing. In addition to this, she, just in the matter of conversation, I said, well, you do believe in the resurrection of the dead, right? This is something that you proclaim as one of your beliefs. And she said, oh, no, no, we don't get our bodies back. The whole point of death is to be liberated from the flesh permanently. And I said, well, don't you believe that Jesus came back from the dead? And she said, well, that's what it says, but that's not what it means. They saw him, you know.

And she said, and it was him in a spiritual sense. But no, no one comes back from the dead. And I just found it fascinating to meet someone who claimed to be a true believer in the tenets of Christianity, and this is obviously a part of her identity, and denied the basic tenets of Christian belief. And thought this was the most normal thing in the world. she didn't think that she was being radical. This is just what her church evidently taught her, though it certainly was not what Mr. William Campbell of Kentucky

had initially proclaimed so far as I understand it. I never encountered that and anything that I read about the Christian church. Another associated group that's split from the Christian church proper, the Church of Christ. kind of famous for their beautiful choral music and their rejection of instruments in their worship. It's really the only thing about them that I can remember. But I just found that experience quite apropos in relation to our conversation about degeneration of belief. The Campbellites certainly didn't go out denying the resurrection of Jesus.

Christ reducing church ritual to something that people only feel cold to participate in? They feel any kind of emotion related to them. Maybe they'll participate in these things like baptism, for instance. I seriously doubt that's what Campbell was after. It would have figured in the literature, I think, if it was. I didn't have time to look into it in particular here. I'm not sure she was representing the actual declared tenants of her group, but I didn't want to mention that just at the start as a rejoinder to the Second Great Awakening materials. But it really is a very sad thing to see institutions that were built up by many generations, really very American institutions, some of these groups and denominations that.

were started during the period. These people founded institutions, they built towns, they built churches all across the country, and now they're all falling away into nonsense, not really giving their young people anything to incite them to sacrifice for these institutions. So they dwindle and they disappear. And that in itself is essentially a sad thing.

And that's the fate of a great many of the groups that we've been talking about. A great many of them did not have much time in these communities. But we did talk about some of the secular sorts of organizations, and abolitionism is kind of a mixture of both of these. The abolitionists were linked to the isms of the period. In the 1840s and 1850s, there are all these isms that branch out in all directions, vegetarianism, feminism, all of these notions, so-called by the Southerners. reform reforming instincts, social causes that get a religious sort of of blessing or tinge.

The abolitionists always had a very religious kind of fervor to them, as I mentioned. It was born out of a sense of moral indignation, kind of a moral imperative. that was frequently dressed up with religious language. In religious circles, the Unitarians were most famous for their abolitionist sympathies, as they were famous for many other political kinds of reform movements. rather as the Quakers, for instance, were very famous early for sponsoring the preaching and spiritual leadership of women and even children, which were patronized by the Quakers. The Quakers were always found to be remarkable and that they would let children get up in front of the Quaker meeting to make a sermon to their elders. of full kind of equality of all the members of the community realized in a religious context.

The Unitarians are also notable for that kind of thing, but it was Unitarian ministers that had made a name for themselves more than any other ministers of the time for advocating for abolitionism. What makes abolitionism quite distinct from what came before is the abolitionists demanded an immediate and uncompensated emancipation of the slaves, that it were overwhelmingly in the South. Abolitionism was a sectional movement, and we should always qualify them with the term radical. Because Making the pitch that the economy of a certain area of the country, the social organization of a certain area of the country is immoral on its face is quite radical to say that that system must be abolished without compensation is quite a case. to telling people who live in traditional families, like with a Christian marriage who do not

recognize divorce, to say, your social arrangements offend me. And we must attack those social arrangements in law and abolish them. and you have moral guilt for participating in that organization. This is a very radical kind of stance, and it would have been taken as personally as people today would take such a stance against a Christian family, a Christian kind of recognition of marriage an aversion to divorce, a preference for having children born inside of the marriage tie,

to children born outside of it, which is just a normal kind of moral social order. This was what the abolitionists, this is how the abolitionists approach, the issue in the Southern section. And it was also why the Southern section did not tolerate. the presence of these people among them. Indeed, even in the North, the abolitionists were famous for their unpopularity. They were often driven away by riots. Abolitionist newspapers were attacked by angry mobs. The presses destroyed and burned in the streets. This happened all over the north for the very understandable reason that the abolitionists were famous for decrying

the union of the states. They understood, well, their understanding was that the economic organization of slavery in the southern states was so intolerable and offensive to them. These people who had mostly never seen it, seen the institution, had never traveled to the southern section of the country, witnessed the institution of slavery. Many of the abolitionists would go to places like Washington, D.C., which had slavery. They would see it in an urban context more often than not. They were very interested in literature related to slavery, famously Uncle Tom's Cabin, the famous novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, a New England writer who had never been to the South, had never seen any of the things that she describes in Uncle Tom's Cabin, nevertheless creating these famous archetypes that we still use to this day. the cooperative slave, the slave who is not rebellious,

whom Harriet Pieter Stowe actually likes, we should note, she thinks that he is saintly, that this is the best example that she could imagine of an African American in such a situation. of the Uncle Tom of diatribes and such, the cooperative, an interesting example of how the literary image gets perverted through political rhetoric. The famous abolitionists possibly best represented through the likes of William Lloyd Garrison, the publisher of The Liberator, a Boston-based radical abolitionist newspaper, the most famous of all these newspapers, which had a second life after the Civil War. After the Civil War, it becomes the leftist magazine, The Nation, which is still with us. So it kind of rebrands. William Lloyd Garrison gives a famous, speech on the founding of the Liberator and publishes his rhetoric in the first issue of the

Liberator. He says that he had formerly advocated gradual schemes of emancipation, and yet he's come around to the radical view about the question of slavery and frames it in the most outrageous his terms, saying that it's akin to telling a man whose wife is being ravished that he must gradually extricate her from the situation, to tell a woman whose house is on fire to gradually save her children from the fire, and so on. Kind of illustrating better than any other ready example, the position of the radicals. William Lloyd Garrison went on to describe the Constitution as a covenant with death and hell to emphasize his point that to live in the union of the states under the Constitution,

made the non-slaveholding states complicit in the institution of slavery, which was morally intolerable. So this is a very important development, and it deserves contrast with the dying gradualist movement of its time. There were a great many abolition societies that predominated in the South, actually, in the early 19th century, most of the organizations political and fraternal to organize the gradual abolition of slavery, kind of corresponding with the stagnation of agriculture and the decline of agriculture in the old eastern seaboard states, we can well understand why this was a growing political concern because the old estates have this naturally growing population of slaves and less and less for them to do as tobacco and cotton exhaust the soil in the tidewater areas of Virginia,

North Carolina, Maryland, South Carolina. And there's nothing else for them to go into. Now, this is solved by westward expansion into the Mississippi Valley and also the creation of new varieties of cotton, which put a huge new lease on life on the institution of slavery. There is still much to be said about the long-term survivability of the institution of slavery because of the natural limits of the environment and also the practice of most American farmers to over farm their plots of land rather than sustainably farm them exhausting even the soil of the Mississippi Valley as a consequence. But that's a point that will come up later. The gradual abolition societies in places like Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee. They face a lot of backlash as the abolitionist movement grows in places like Ohio and New England.

Now, in New England, the abolitionists are led mostly by the Unitarians. In Ohio, they have lots of ties to the new and growing interests of the evangelicals. sectarians. Oberlin College, founded by Charles Finney, the famous evangelist and revivalist of his day, becomes especially associated with radical abolitionist sorts of writers, speakers, agitators. And so they speak to rather different crowds. There are great many factions in the abolitionists. For instance, people like Susan B. Anthony, a famous feminist writer from upstate New York, constantly agitating for the political enfranchisement of women and for easy divorce to liberalize divorce laws, a number of things. She was advocating for all kinds of reformist movements. She becomes an outspoken abolitionist,

but also notably says, we need to emancipate the women so we can have radical abolitionism. That's the only way we can get abolitionism. We must first enfranchise the women. So the abolitionists are connected with lots of other groups. They are strongly associated with the prohibitionist groups. You have people like Frederick Douglass, for instance, who is brought in by the radical abolitionists of the North, sent on endless speaking tours. They popularize his memoir from his boyhood in slavery in Maryland.

Frederick Douglass even says on one occasion, the real way to abolish slavery is to eliminate liquor. If we first eliminate legal alcohol, it's manufacturer, it's transport, its sale, then we won't immediately get rid of slavery. On that particular occasion, it's kind of an unusual example of Frederick Douglass. I'm not sure he was consistent on that point. Nevertheless, we can kind of see how these things get wound up at the time.

There are great many churches related to the second. Great Awakening emphasis on emotional conviction and putting great deal of religious stock in strong emotions of all sorts. That popularize radical abolitionist political reforms, they are known in the literature as anti-slavery churches, which kind of make the radical abolitionist platform, one of their major teachings is one of their major public stances. This is especially prominent in upstate New York, the famous burned over district because of the frequent revivalist movements that went through the area. something Joseph Smith talked about in relation to that. Lots of people with new ideas about Christian living, about salvation, about what Christians

should do, what Christians should believe, a tremendous amount of innovation going on in the area. And the anti-slavery churches, churches that were known to preach and publicly present on the immediate urgency of radical abolitionism as a political reform proliferate in this area. The exact same area where Joseph Smith, indeed, began his ministry, the same area where Reverend Miller, and the Adventist movement springs into being. This is not just a coincidence. These kinds of religious innovations, the emphasis on emotional conviction, the authority of the individual to decide

about what a Christian ought to do, what's most important in Christian life or Christian practice. These are all elements that get intertwined there. Over in New England, it's much more of the province of the intelligentsia. Over in upstate New York, northern Ohio, places like that, it's much more of a populist sort of concern, which is a very interesting contrast. However, because of the very radical nature of the abolitionist demands, this is not something with political currency. Just as abolishing the traditional family as a morally reprehensible thing to approach your political opponents and say, you are morally reprehensible.

I get to take what is important to you. Be thankful I'm not punishing you personally. This is not a starting place for any kind of political dialogue. There is no room for compromise on the question. It is something that pits people against one another at a very essential kind of level. So the abolitionists are, they are taught. They're talking politically. They're talking about a political reform, they say. But as it were, these are fighting words. The gradual abolition societies oldest in the organization in the Middle South go away. They disband. They become very unpopular because of a association with the radical abolition.

They've also rather shot their bolt, as it were. They have established Liberia. That's their major accomplishment. Liberia is not a success. It's a miserable place, partly because of strange sectarians that get sent to Liberia to meet their doom. The Quakers have always been very involved in Liberia. They send lots of Quaker freemen to Liberia, and they all get eaten by the cannibals. And so that doesn't have any staying power in the wilds of West Africa.

It's notoriously a terrible place to try to eke out any sort of living. And the freemen that do go to Liberia, they have a special term, a demographic term used in Liberia. I'm forgetting it's like the Americo Liberians or something like that. I'm probably getting that wrong. Several thousand of them do go. They do get a lot of support from the American government. officially and lots of private support in America, thanks to these gradual abolition societies. But focus wanes.

It's still a political interest in America. Eventually, we'll get to the point. We'll talk about Abraham Lincoln's opinions on these things. The gradual abolition societies in the South fade away because the propaganda of the abolitionists is so outrageous and becomes a very serious matter of self-preservation for the Southerners. The Southerners are thinking about Nat Turner by the 1830s. Nat Turner, who had actually inaugurated one of the largest slave rebellions in North America, killing a couple dozen people and evidently establishing a kind of conspiracy to murder white civilians,

women and children with their throats cut in their own beds and the like. Some of the practical results of the alarm that spreads across the South, it's the end of talk about colonization, gradualist reforms for emancipation, state-based, law-based plans for gradual manumission as the northern states had accomplished in the years following the War of Independence. This was obviously a much bigger kind of political project, say, in Virginia, where a large number of the population of Virginia are actually slaves is a far bigger challenge than it ever was in New York from Massachusetts. The abolitionist literature is one of the key concerns at this time. Funny enough, Nat Turner himself testified that.

He had been called individually by God himself to wage his campaign of revolt and terror. It was an individual conviction, as it were, that justified radical action, not so far removed from what was quite current at about the same time up in the burned door. district. The abolitionists produce all kinds of interesting literature, the newspapers and the political platform speeches. Those are what they're most famous for. But they also produce educational literature. They produce all manner of propaganda. There is a book to teach the ABCs produced by an abolitionist. This is for use in the earliest forms of education, a product of New England. Here's a sampling from an abolitionist speller for grammar school. A is for abolitionist, a man who wants to free the wretched slave and give to all an equal liberty. B is a brother with a son.

skin of somewhat darker hue, but in our heavenly father's sight, he is as dear as you. C is for the cotton field to which this injured brothers driven, whereas the white man's slave he toils from early morn till even. D is the driver, cold and stern, who follows whip in hand to punish the those who dare to rest or disobey command. So this is the kind of stuff they're distributing. The radical sorts are also producing literature encouraging the slaves to rebel.

They're encouraging revolution in the South. They're encouraging race war in the South. This combined with the, the long-running paranoia following Nat Turner's rebellion and Denmark Vassie in South Carolina, who evidently had come up with some kind of conspiracy akin to Nat Turner's, but it was also allegedly discovered before it was actually executed. These things result in the notorious laws in many southern states, not all, forbidding slaves to learn to read. The fear of insurrection was so strong it had this effect.

The fact that the abolitionists were actually producing literature to get that effect is something often overlooked. when we are examining this certain aspect late arising. You know, this is happening just in the decades before the Civil War, born out of fear and paranoia because of the outspoken goals of the abolitionists themselves. So we come finally here to the growth of their reactionaries in the South. This is a very interesting development. One William Dodd, a statesman of the mid-20th century and also a very interesting historian. He wrote a biography of Jefferson Davis, among others.

I believe he was ambassador in Europe for Franklin Roosevelt as well. So he has a very interesting career Democrat, a Southern Democrat from Virginia. Dodd wrote a book about Southern statesmen and their growth from rather radical enlightenment sorts of stance to a much more reactionary sort of political stance. And if we contrast like Dodd did Thomas Jefferson with John C. Calhoun or Jefferson Davis, we see that growth or that transformation from a very radical kind of view of politics and human liberation. Thomas Jefferson has fair amount in common with radicals like Thomas Payne. Thomas Jefferson, of course, with his famous remark carved in stone at the Jefferson Memorial, that he trembles for his country when he thinks about slavery and says that there's nothing more firmly established than

his conviction that the slaves will one day be free and so on. Now, we can read further into Thomas Jefferson and discover his vision of those things is quite different from any modern persons. But we can also read Thomas Payne and find a very radical sort of stance built on ideas of individual sovereignty and enlightenment ideas of liberty. Thomas Payne, the atheist propagandist. We remember that Jefferson was quite unorthodox in his theology. Thomas Payne wrote,

A good government should injustice set the slaves free and punish those who held them in slavery. This is what Thomas Payne, the Jacobin, is writing at the time of the American Revolution. We should remember Thomas Payne was a very close friend of none other than President James Monroe. He's very well integrated into the Virginia elites of his time, though they were not known to mouth his opinions, especially about religion. They knew that that would not, in the least be top.

in the South, but the change from the, from that radical kind of political route that we see coming out of colonial days, a free thinker sort of position that we see with the likes of Jefferson say. It's rather contrary to the organic organization of the South. There is a time when Southern schools of higher education, the University of South Carolina, the University of Virginia,

would tolerate dissenters from religion. This becomes an interesting conflict after the founders die off, and they become much more reactionary, requiring, for instance, all the professors at the universities to espouse regular Christian dogmas, to be Trinitarian, to be indeed theists, whereas Thomas Jefferson rather imagined that a free thinker like himself would be able to teach at UVA. The Southern cultural attitude based in hierarchy, based in manners, which always recognizes hierarchy, an essential quality of good manners is to know your relationship to everyone you meet.

You treat a stranger differently than you do a friend. You treat one of your fellow citizens different than you do a foreigner. And yet this is all good manners. It's not equalitarian. This is something that's a deep-seeded practice in the South, which has always maintained a kind of economic hierarchy. In addition to the institution of slavery, there is a clear preference for the owner, for the responsible man who has property, who takes good care of it. There is a great deal of status that's built into that. And this is political status as well.

In frontier areas from the colonial days to the War of 1812 and the expanded frontier westward to the Louisiana purchase, the settlement of the Mississippi Valley, all of these exposed frontier areas put an awful lot of stock into military abilities. This is one of the reasons why the Southern aristocracy was so enamored of military titles. The planter wanted to be called a colonel, even if he never actually took the field, because of that legacy of political or martial virtues elevated in Southern society. It's another aspect of the hierarchical organization in society. This is rather organically antagonistic to radical enlightenment liberalism, the idea of the equality of all in a community. Southerners didn't actually live that way. And so they found it, especially after that first generation from the founding, shuffles off their mortal coil, they find that contrary to their actual convictions.

And when they find themselves challenged in the, this external threat of unorthodox religion and profession, you see coming out of the second great awakening and the direct existential threat of abolitionist propaganda and attack on their character. their character as a people, the Southerners have a remarkable intellectual response to this. And this we may term the reactionary development of the southern elites. They notice in particular the natural differences between the Anglo-Americans and and the African Americans. And I do think they really do deserve that term. We need to use the term African American, not for any political reason,

not because we're afraid that we're gonna be called names if we use the wrong term. But just to emphasize that this demographic group has become American in some mysterious way, they aren't Africans in any. anymore. They have been Christianized, notwithstanding anomalies like the Nation of Islam. The Nation of Islam, which is built on resentment against the Christianization of African Americans, is more or less an essential element in the ideological foundations of the nation of Islam and

its leadership. They're resentful of their Americanization as they are resentful of their Christianization. This is why Malcolm X chooses X as his last name, because he's rejecting the surname of his father, who was a Christian, who had some relationship with Anglo-American civilization. I'm not one to quote Martin Luther King, but Robert Penn Warren went out and wrote a an excellent book that's well worth time in investment. Who Speaks for the Negro. It's the name of Warren's book. Warren went out with a list of questions and kind of conducted an oral history project

with African-American leaders in his day. This is in the early 60s. He interviews James Baldwin. He interviews Malcolm X. He interviews Martin Luther King. He asks them all the same series of questions. Martin Luther King says many very interesting things. It's stunning to see Warren talking to him and getting the responses that he gets.

It's all very interesting. One of Warren's main points is that they all have different ideas. They don't speak with one voice. Who is their real leader? What reform are they all in favor of exactly in the 1960s? He finds tremendous variance on opinion. Now, this is very dangerous to note, by the way. I made a very important enemy by emphasizing this on occasion.

In private conversation, it wasn't that the student was complaining about me or anything. And on that instance, it was because I was talking to a faculty member about the book and about the fact that Warren got very different answers from the people that he interviewed. But Martin Luther King, he says, we are not Africans. We don't belong in Africa. We have many American characteristics because of our long experience. here. That's very interesting. But the Southerners in the decades leading up to the Civil War, they're noticing intractable, unchangeable differences, and they are writing about them. They do not imagine that everyone can become the same. They believe that they have extended,

and this is also an important point, it's not that the Southerners are utterly illiberal. Americans like to be humane. Americans historically have had extraordinary interest in the well-being of outsiders to their political, enfranchisement, people that were not citizens of the United States, that most never imagined could be members of the United States, citizens of the United States, extended the franchise,

become political participants. And yet Americans have always been very interested, and this is the predominance of the American experience. We've been interested in the well-being of the Native Americans. Our leadership classes have all been very interested in this. Everyone from Mad Anthony Wayne to William Henry Harrison to Andrew Jackson, people that are usually highlighted for their supposed bigotry against Native Americans, every one of them is on the record saying that they want a liberal and humane policy. Andrew Jackson even used the word liberal. In his remarks about the Indians to Congress,

in support of the Indian Removal Act, no less, similarly, Southerners believed they had extended the blessings of civilization and religion to the African slaves, that this had changed them as a people group, that this was a kind of ethnogenesis for them, and yet they remain distinct. Yet they have basic differences with the predominant population, the white population of the South. A senator from South Carolina, Senator Smith, on the floor of Congress, remarks in debate. it's a realistic statement of observable fact that demonstrates an actual inequality of nature

in reference to the African Americans. He says no persons are apt more to remonstrate against the crying sin of slavery than such as has just, sold off their stock of Negroes and vested the price in bank stocks. He is blaming the Tidewater elites for their desire to rid the south of slavery. This is more in reference to the gradualists. These men were never radical abolitionists. They're certain. exceptions there, I should note. The Grim Keys, for instance, of Charleston, moved to New England,

become radical abolitionists. They were formerly South Carolina elites. William Harper of South Carolina in 1837, he says about Thomas Jefferson, no less, this is a very famous line. is it not palpably nearer the truth to say that no man was ever born free and no two men were ever born equal? Now this is hard-headed realism from Southerners showing that they are responding to the challenge of radical abolitionist movement growth in the North. and they are becoming quite reactionary in response. Now, this is a widespread movement, and we see it in law and religion, the two great accomplishments of the Annabelle himself, producing really remarkable Protestant theologians and clergymen.

I will tip my hat to the Presbyterians on this. James Thornwell and Robert Dabney, Dabney, who served as Stonewall Jackson's chief of staff and wrote a memoir of Stonewall Jackson later. These were amazing reactionary clergymen. And my Presbyterian friends tend to be very fond of them. And they deserve attention. It doesn't matter if you're not Presbyterian.

It's worth acquainting yourself with the literature produced by these worthy divines. We'll have much more to save them anon. Thomas Dew of Virginia, a scholar from William and Mary, He produced a report for the Commonwealth of Virginia on request. He had a number of very interesting things to say about the prospect of gradual emancipation and possible integration of the slave population in Virginia. He said that colonization was needless cruelty. he looked at examples from Liberia.

He said that American-born, American-reared Negroes were not fit for the harsh conditions in Africa, in West African. That it was almost the same as sending them all to starve to death. and that if they remained in the United States, in a free from all the fetters of slavery, he said, freedom would not alter their condition. By this, he means, their natural condition. They would still be virtually slaves, talent, habit, and wealth. would make the white the master still. Now, in this sense, he's talking about character.

He's not talking about legal status. They would not legally be slaves. But as Aristotle makes a point of in the politics, Aristotle says the origins of slavery are in character. not in legal status. Legal status is in Aristotle's view, a mere recognition of the limits of responsibility, not just in individuals, but in larger communities. Aristotle talks a lot about this in the first book of the politics, the slavish disposition of a particular individual, that that person will always be beholden to a responsible person who can keep them alive, more or less,

by organizing their lives for them because they seem incapable of doing it themselves. This is not something unknown in the least in the countries of the world that have formally abolished slavery and do not permit it. in any legal sense at all. It is partially punished if it is discovered. The servile character has not gone away. Now, Do is making an explicit racial remark about this, saying this is associated strongly with that demographic. It says the white would be the, or Doe says,

the white would be the master still. The emancipation would only have, the tendency to deprive him of those sympathies and kind feelings for the Black, which now characterize him. Liberty has been the heaviest curse to the slave when given too soon. Now, here we see toying with liberal notions about time, development, education, equalizing in its tendency. This is associated with people like Thomas Jefferson, for instance. Let's see. Do emphasizes the responsibility of the slave owner being a social tie of a constructive nature,

that this is something that greatly ameliorates tensions between the races, the fact that most of the slave owners, there are always exceptions to this, have a personal vested interest in the well-being of their slaves. They want them to thrive. They want them to improve. They want to teach them useful arts. They want them to be increasingly self-sufficient.

All of those things are of great value to anyone that actually owns slaves. In a social organization in which they would not own slaves anymore, have no responsibility of one community to the other. The slaves no longer having any obligation to the white community on any level. The whites having no responsibility for the African American community because they were responsible for them. they were slaves.

This, he says, is the origins of a great social breakdown, the cohesion necessary. Once again, I do not know that that due of Virginia was a student of Aristotle, who was certainly acquainted with the classics being a professor at William and Mary. It seems to me that he is using classical political thought in his statements here, making this a very respectable reactionary kind of position, emphasizing responsibility. And this is, moreover, the basic social organization, economic organization of the South. It is overwhelmingly agricultural. The population is spread across the land. Most white southerners actually own their land or actually working the soil.

It sets the tone for the entire section. It is the most aspired to way of life in the South. Southerners do not crowd into cities, do not work in factories, look down on the merchant class, I think that's a rather disrespect, not a respectable role in their community. There's talk among Southerners in politics about the political privileges or regulations necessary for the merchant class. There's social stigma attached to it, things like that. Very interesting qualities of a very antique character,

we've talked of before in our series. But it seems to me that Thomas Doe in his report to the Commonwealth is illustrating ideas that should be familiar from Aristotle's politics. His emphasis on economic responsibilities connecting people to one another who would otherwise have no connections to one another. Responsibilities for property. We care about property. We want our property to be healthy.

We want it to be productive. Be it your cattle, be it your garden, be it your slave. So this is something that connects these very different populations to one another. And he worries about the social impacts of emancipation, that it's going to divide these people from each other, as they have never been divided before. And I think this is quite applicable when we're discussing matters related to reconstruction. It comes out very strongly there.

And perhaps we will have another series someday where we'll talk about reconstruction in detail. So I see I've come to the end of my time. I have plenty more on this note. We will revisit this in our. next meeting. All right. That was fantastic. Remind people where they can support your work and buy your books.

Indeed. I've got a happy announcement this afternoon. My biography of John Taylor of Caroline has come online. So I've got The Life of John Taylor of Caroline by Henry Sims. that is now available from Tallman Books. It is not yet on my website. I'm going to have to organize all the books I put in print since my last update and get this on my website. But you can find Sims' biography of John Taylor of Caroline, which we've talked about in this series on the Pekinionez show.

You can find that on my Twitter. So if you go to at Tallman Books, you will find a link where you can. buy it for less than you can get it on Amazon. I doubt it's on Amazon yet, but you can get it there. Go and find my Twitter handle and you can buy Sims. All right, Mr. Bagby, I will make sure to link to it. Until the next time. Thank you very much. Thank you.