Slavery Justification Quotes

Slavery was a faith-based institution. It was supported by the churches and their ministers who provided a religious and moral justification of the institution.

Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several just titles of slavery and these are referred to by approved theologians and commentators of the sacred canons.  It is not contrary to the natural and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or given.  The purchaser should carefully examine whether the slave who is put up for sale has been justly or unjustly deprived of his liberty, and that the vendor should do nothing which might endanger the life, virtue or Catholic faith of the slave.

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

Would any one believe that I am master of slaves by my own purchase? I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them.

Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several just titles of slavery and these are referred to by approved theologians and commentators of the sacred canons.... It is not contrary to the natural and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or given

I grew up in North Carolina being told that the Bible approves slavery and segregation, that it was the will of God.

Over the centuries, and even today, the Bible and Christian theology have helped justify the Crusades, slavery, violence against gays, and the murder of doctors who perform abortions. The words themselves are latent, inert, harmless - until they aren't.

The great evil of American slavery was involuntary servitude or forced labor. I really believe that the true evil of American slavery was the narrative of racial difference that we created to justify it.

For more than fifty years the question of slavery has been more or less a subject of discord and contention; and, more recently, in some shape or other, it has been continually coming up in the councils of the nation, in the State Legislatures of the non-slaveholding States, before the people of the North, as an issue in elections, local and federal, and before the people of the South as an offset to its agitation at the North, to be considered with reference to its vindication as one of the essential elements of our society, its maintenance as an institution for the public good, and the protection of our rights, originating in it and under it, as the great God-given guaranty of the freedom of the white man through the thralldom of the black -- the accomplishment of the destiny of the African and Anglo-Saxon races by an observance and enforcement of the relations between them designed and decreed by divinity.

Slavery's crime against humanity did not begin when one people defeated and enslaved its enemies (though of course this was bad enough), but when slavery became an institution in which some men were 'born' free and others slave, when it was forgotten that it was man who had deprived his fellow-men of freedom, and when the sanction for the crime was attributed to nature.

Wherever we've gone around the world, we've found quite significant gaps: the holy texts, no matter which one you turn to, has ambiguity in it around slavery. That, we knew, was being used as justification by slavers all over the world.

The confederacy’s foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not the equal of the white man and slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and moral condition. This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth.

I take higher ground. I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good—a positive good. . . . I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other.

Slavery was regarded by Aristotle as an ordinance of nature, and so probably was it by the slaves themselves in olden time.

When we turn to the New Testament, we find not one single passage at all calculated to disturb the conscience of an honest slaveholder.

I endorse without reserve the much-abused sentiment of Gov. M'Duffie, that "slavery is the corner stone of our Republican edifice;" while I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much-lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that "all men are born equal.

The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example.

Let the gentleman go to Revelation to learn the decree of God - let him go to the Bible. . . . I said that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, authorized, regulated, and recognized from Genesis to Revelation. . . . Slavery existed then in the earliest ages, and among the chosen people of God; and in Revelation we are told that it shall exist till the end of time shall come. You find it in the Old and New Testaments - in the prophecies, psalms, and the epistles of Paul; you find it recognized - sanctioned everywhere.

If this trade --- slavery --- admits of a moral or a rational justification, every crime, even the most atrocious, may be justified.

The Dred Scott decision was a partisan political decision, the purpose of which was to establish ... for all time to come the legality, the rightfulness and even the piety of slavery ... The comment made upon that great wrongful judicial decision is to be seen in the dreadful war through which we have just passed

However, I am willing to hear what you can produce from Scripture in favor of any kind of slavery.

The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.

It was argued that the Negro was inferior by nature because of Noah's curse upon the children of Ham.... The greatest blasphemy of the whole ugly process was that the white man ended up making God his partner in the exploitation of the Negro.

Slavery is not a national evil; on the contrary, it is a national benefit. Involuntary slavery has the advantage, since all who enjoy political liberty are then in fact free. Wealth gives no influence at the polls [in the South]; it does where white men perform the menial services which slaves do here.

If slavery be a sin, it is not yours. It does not rest on your action for its origin, on your consent for its existence. It is a common law right to property in the service of man; its origin was Divine decree.