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The RELIGION OF SLAVERY
by CHARLES EDWARD STOWE

Erasmus was once asked, by a mystified statesman, why the theses of that obscure monk, Martin Luther, had made such an ominous commotion in the world. "Because he touched the monks on their bellies and the Pope on his crown," was the aphoristic reply of the caustic oracle.
Something of the same nature may be said of the unusual excitement caused by the publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" sixty-one years ago. The significance given to what would have been otherwise a comparatively obscure effort was that it touched the haughty Slave Power at the time on its belly and on its crown.
Slaves were property, and property protected by the Constitution of the United States and the laws of the country. An attack on any form of property is an assault on the whole basis of civilized society, and therefore revolutionary and dangerous in the highest degree. This was the view not only of the slaveholder of the South, but of some of the best people in conservative New England and the Northern States in general.
That slavery was morally wrong, and a national sin that made the whole American people subject to the divine wrath, was therefore a most discomforting and disquieting suggestion to conservative, orthodox, church-going people both North and South. They felt with regard to it as the old lady did when she first heard the simian origin of the human race hinted at in a sermon. "Perfectly shocking! Why, even if it were true, we ought to try to hush it up somehow!"
So good people tried to hush up the moral wrong of slavery by shifting the responsibility on to God and the Bible. This Mrs. Stowe attacked with pitiless satire, and added insult to injury by putting her attack in the mouth of the slaveholding Southerner St. Clare.
"Suppose," says the garrulous and irresponsible individual, "that something should bring down the price of cotton once and forever, and make the whole slave property a drug in the market, don't you think that we should soon have another version of the scripture doctrine? What a flood of light would pour into the Church at once, and how immediately it would discover that everything in the Bible and in reason went the other way."
It was certainly very shocking in Mrs. Stowe to hint at any possible connection between religion, which we are all bound to believe sky born, and economics, which orthodox people are prone to confess with a groan to be hopeless "earthly, sensual, devilish!" The ruthless Mrs. Stowe not only attacked the property of pious Southerners, but the very religion in which they found a divine sanction for holding that sort of property. This exascerbation of her crime was sure to bring down on her head the pious wrath of good, respectable, orthodox folk both North and South, and it did.
A most interesting confirmation of this is to be found in the files of the New York Observer und the date of September 23, 1852. The editor of that Gibraltar of orthodoxy writes in sad sincerity: "We have read the book and regard it as anti-Christian. WE have marked numerous passages in which religion is spoken of in terms of contempt, and in no case is religion spoken of as making a master more humane, while Mrs. Stowe is careful to present the indulgent and amiable masters as men without religion. This taint pervades the work as it does all the school of modern philanthropy. It is essentially a non-religious if not a non-evangelical school. Mrs. Stowe labors through all her book to render ministers odious and contemptible by attributing to them sentiments unworthy of men or Christians."
The writer of these words was a sincere man, earnest, exigent and conscientious in what he wrote. We can imagine the satisfaction with which the article was read by men like the Rev. Doctor Nehemiah Adams of Boston and 
New Orleans——a New England and and author of that lubricious

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antebellum treatise "the South-side View," which gained him the title of "South-side Adams" among the scoffing and gainsaying Abolitionists. That marked copy of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" with the passages carefully pointed out in which Mrs. Stowe spoke of religion "in terms of contempt" would certainly be exhilarating reading in the light of 
to-day; but we can ourselves easily imagine what and where they were. It is not hard to find them.
Pious old ladies at the South read this editorial, and when, after careful inquiry, they discovered that Mrs. Stowe was received into reputable society at the North felt that they had mournful confirmation of their gloomy suspicious as to the condition of morals and religion in the Free States.
For the Southern slaveholder was very orthodox and pious in the strict theological sense of the word. He believed in the Bible from cover to cover as a book of diving oracles, and found therein abundant confirmation of his doctrine that slavery was a divine institution, and a blessing to both races. It was unavoidable therefore that Mrs. Stowe from his point of view should appear to be a very wicked woman, guilty of attempted robbery and actual blasphemy. And such is the subtle relation between religion and economics.
"The modern school of philanthropy" with which the editor of the Observer somewhat vaguely classified Mrs. Stowe is also an interesting subject for analysis. We can imagine it to ourselves picture to the eye in the manner of Kaulbach's celebrated cartoon of the Reformation. In the background we would arrange the Brook Farmers, and Transcendentalists, and contributor to the Dial. There are Emerson, Ripley, Margaret Fuller and Theodore Parker——Emerson whose "Divinity School Address" had recently scared the enlightened Unitarians and even the young James Russell Lowell half out of their wits; Theodore Parker, who denied the miracles and the divinity of Christ; Margaret Fuller, who had announced in the Dial that Christianity was a prison. 
Then there would be represented as standing about in various attitudes Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, Garrison with his Liberator, Horace Greeley with his Tribune and Henry Ward Beecher with a copy of the Independent. In the foreground, where Von Kaulbach has pictured Martin Luther, is Harriet Beecher Stowe with "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
"See the mighty host advancing, Satan leading on!"
No wonder the editor of the Observer was alarmed. He doubtless sought and found consolation in the doctrines of election and total depravity.
Mr. James Russell Lowell has somewhere reminded us that "Time makes ancient good uncouth." It is easy for us in the light of this modern world in which we live to smile at the ancient wisdom of the Southern slaveholders and their Northern sympathizers; but we must not forget that they were good men and true and had on their side all the conservative and conserving influences of human society, as well as the Constitution and laws of the United States.
The anti-slavery movement must be reckoned with those onward-reaching forces that respect neither conservative traditions, constitutions, laws, churches nor thrones, but tear them all down ruthlessly in the holy name of humanity and of progress. Mrs. Stowe with her "Uncle Tom's Cabin" belonged, like all the rest of the Beechers, to the destructive rather than the constructive forces of the universe. That she should have been recognized as such in her day and generation we can bu acknowledge as inevitable.
Slavery, social inequality and war all have had an important part and place in the evolution of man on this planet. Slavery has gone, and we are asking 
to-day if war and social inequality are to follow.
The lesson of the anti=slavery movement his in brief this: Social traditions, constitutions and laws are often on the side of wrong and injustice. When they are, sooner or later than have to go, even though protected by the sanction of religion. If it is true that might makes right it is truer still that in time right will make might. If economics for a time dominate religion, the day will surely come when religions will rise and dominate economics. It was so yesterday and it will be so to-morrow.
We hear much to-day about the "leopard's spots." They are harmless compared to the "tiger's claws!" The "tiger's claws" seem to be thirsting for the poor leopard's blood, if the leopard forgets that he is an "inferior being" and can never therefore aspire to