In the history of the Atlantic antislavery movement, two events were of great importance: the Great Awakening and the American Revolution. In the 1730s and 1740s, many evangelicals stimulated by the religious revival, travelled to the opposite side of the Atlantic, preached the gospel, and published a number of books that contained their evangelical faith and ideals. Through these activities many evangelicals in Anglo-American communities shared common interests, faith, and ideology, and some found a channel of transatlantic communication in which they were able to debate the slavery issue.Footnote ¹ The American Revolution also contributed to creating an atmosphere of tension in the 1770s, in which antislavery sentiment became transformed into moral conviction. The development of this ideology can be explained by the spread of antipathy toward slavery in the Atlantic world before the Revolution. This essay focuses on the change in the evangelical mindset between these two religio-political events, asking: how did the antislavery sentiment spread through the transatlantic evangelical network from the 1740s into the 1770s?

Until now, antislavery sentiment between the 1740s and 1760s has not been the subject of intense investigation. A number of historians have dealt with this aspect of slavery, but have not attempted to trace the development of antislavery ideals, mainly for two key reasons. First, there was no public self-identifying antislavery movement, even in religious communities. We can find an exception in the expulsion of slaveholders from Quaker Societies of Friends, but this movement did not influence the rise of antislavery sentiment in the evangelical community until the 1770s. Second, few voices in opposition to slavery were heard in this period. With the exception of Samuel Sewall, an American Puritan who published the antislavery tract, Selling of Joseph in 1700, and several Quaker moralists, including William Edmundson and John Woolman, who asserted a conflict between slavery and their fundamental principles in the late 1750s, most Christians in the early eighteenth century seemed to accept slavery as a fact of life.

Therefore, many scholars have not dealt with this period in their research on the antislavery movement. For example, in The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, Roger Anstey starts his accounts of British abolition from historical events in the 1760s and David Brion Davis only deals with the years from 1770 onward in The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution.Footnote ² Christopher Leslie Brown explains the history of early antislavery activities but he too leaves out the years between the case of the George Trusts in the 1730s and the early Quaker antislavery movement in the late 1750s.Footnote ³ Seymour Drescher's Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery, a comparative study on slavery in Britain, North American colonies, Franco-American colonies and Latin America, only focuses on the period after the 1770s and does not show the transformative process in the evangelical mind toward an antislavery position in the mid-eighteenth century.Footnote ⁴ In Bury the Chains, Adam Hochschild attempts to create an imaginative bridge between political activities for the abolition of the slave trade and modern human rights campaigns.Footnote ⁵ In line with this, his engrossing narrative of the British antislavery movement mainly focuses on historical events after the British abolitionist movement started in the late eighteenth century.

There are a number of researchers who treat this period as part of the history of proslavery ideas in the eighteenth century. In Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, Larry E. Tise traces the origins of proslavery ideas in America to this era.Footnote ⁶ Jeffrey Robert Young published an anthology of proslavery texts that showed the development of proslavery thought in the colonial and early national South. Although he deals with tracts, lectures, sermons, and petitions relevant to the slavery issue in the 1740s and 1750s, Young, as shown in his introduction, analyzes these proslavery discourses in line with the development of proslavery perspectives only.Footnote ⁷ Charles F. Irons' recent monograph on proslavery Christianity persuasively explains the contribution of free and enslaved Africans' conversion to the justification of the institution of slavery.Footnote ⁸ It may be a riveting narrative as a historiography of proslavery thoughts, but it downplays fledgling antislavery sentiment that appeared below the surface of proslavery discourse. In this way, the above-mentioned researchers do not show an interest in this period or depict it as “proslavery” dominant years. In these studies, the process how the British abolitionist movement developed from sentiments that had accumulated in the Atlantic world before the 1770s was not clearly shown. To understand how attitudes toward slavery altered in the evangelical network during the years between the Great Awakening and the American Revolution, a comprehensive reassessment which links these two important events to each other is required.

Before analyzing proslavery literatures, the term “proslavery” needs to be defined. In this study, “proslavery” evangelicals in the mid-eighteenth century were different from proslavery ideologists in the Antebellum America, like Nehemiah Adams (1806–1876), a pastor in Boston, John Henry Hopkins (1792–1868), Episcopal bishop of Vermont, Moses Stuart (1780–1852) American biblical scholar at Andover Seminary, Massachusetts, Rufus William Bailey (1793–1863) in South Carolina and Theodore Clapp (1792–1866), a Congregational, in New Orleans.Footnote ⁹ “Proslavery” evangelicals in this period lived in a society where slavery was taken for granted but this does not mean that they became active supporters of the institution either. In contrast, antebellum Americans actively defended the institution with proslavery writings in response to growing Northern abolitionism after the United States acted to abolish its African slave trade in 1807. In this essay, “pro”-slavery evangelicals means those who passively accepted slavery as a fact of life but admitted the necessity of amelioration of hardships in plantation system. Within these evangelicals, a wide spectrum of views on slavery existed; while some emphasized the preservation of the institution, others placed a higher importance on “amelioration” of slavery.

In order to understand the transformation of evangelical attitudes toward slavery, proslavery literature needs to be analyzed. A close scrutiny of proslavery articles makes it possible to trace changes in the attitudes of evangelicals toward slavery during the years between the Great Awakening and the American Revolution. For many evangelicals these tracts, sermons, and epistles were the main ways to express their opinions on slavery. Furthermore, the analysis of proslavery discourses offers a new perspective on the rise of the antislavery movement. Recent studies, particularly Brown's Moral Capital, emphasize the seemingly sudden appearance of the abolitionist movement in the 1780s.Footnote ¹⁰ This approach depicts earlier internal conflict in the evangelical network over slavery as less important and overemphasizes the role of the Revolution. Yet a fuller examination of proslavery tracts helps to correct this view and gives due importance to the antislavery development of the pre-revolutionary era; common antislavery elements were found in articles in the pre- and post-revolutionary years suggesting that the antislavery development of the post-revolutionary era was, at least in part, caused by changes in the evangelical community before the Revolution.

This essay proceeds in four sections. First, it provides an overview of the increase in antislavery opinion within “proslavery” society. Second, it examines whether there were antislavery factors inherent in evangelicalism. Third, it explains how antislavery sentiment spread before the American Revolution within the evangelical network. Fourth, it presents evidence of the transformation of evangelical attitudes toward an antislavery stance.

I. Increase of “low Level” Antislavery Opinion in Proslavery Society

In the 1740s and the 1760s, proslavery discourse seemed to be prospering, but below the surface a number of evangelicals made recommendations toward alleviating slaves' suffering in the plantation system. Although many of them did not realize the effect of their humanitarian remarks, the process of undermining the institution of slavery had begun. These two conflicting processes can be identified in the puritan network even before the eighteenth century. A few religious people perceived a potential conflict between their religious principles and the inhumanity inherent in slavery. This uncomfortable feeling developed in the form of the view of the plantation society as an organic whole. Many Anglican ministers at the time had an ideal vision of the plantation system in which planters treated their bondservants as their brothers and sisters, while slaves obeyed their masters as they did their Lord in heaven. Although the puritan community failed to speak with univocal voice on slavery, the “organic Master-Slave relationship” led those who shared this view to raise doubts as to whether the institution could be justified.

As early as the 1660s, puritan minister Richard Baxter in England blamed British slaveholders for maltreatment of their slaves, expounding “paternalistic” proslavery principles, whereby masters played the role of parents while slaves figured as childlike dependants.Footnote ¹¹ In his view, slavery did not entitle slaveholders to abuse their slaves but rather required them to look after slaves' spiritual welfare. Morgan Godwyn, an Anglican minister who served in both Virginia and Barbados, also assumed a certain role for the slaveholders, saying that sincere Christians were asked to lead their bondservants to the Lord. Here an organic view of the plantation system was found again: “we must then fall to consider of the People amongst whom we are to take our lot, and thereto to have an especial regard: As, whether they be Slaves, subject to the English, such as most of the Negro's there are; or free People living of themselves, either amongst, or distant from the English; such as most of the Indians on the Continent (in Virginia, & c.) are.”Footnote ¹² Godwyn, however, still thought that the scripture supported the authority of masters, over slaves, “requiring service with singleness of heart, as unto the Lord, and not unto Men.”Footnote ¹³ In this sense, he touched on the ambiguous Christian morality of the institution.

The Moravians also undermine the assumption about near-universal approval for slavery in the mid-eighteenth century. The Moravians, one of “the most open and inclusive” Protestant denominations originating from Bohemia and Moravia, pursued the establishment of Christian fellowship beyond the barriers of gender, age and race, and they initiated the discourse on Christian instruction to slaves as part of efforts to prove their beliefs.Footnote ¹⁴ The first Moravian missionaries were a potter, Leonard Dober, and a carpenter, David Nitschmann, who arrived in the West Indies in 1732. Moravians distinguished themselves from other established ministers by including slaves in multiracial communities as equals in the West Indies and on the North American mainland. Even interracial marriage was accepted in their community, as shown in the case of the Moravian missionary Matthaus Freundlich and Rebecca, a mulatto woman.Footnote ¹⁵ The Moravian message of universal fellowship had a “compelling power” to weaken racial prejudice against the enslaved Africans.Footnote ¹⁶ They had an ideal of Christian fellowship “in love united,” in spite of “differences of intellect and intelligence, of thought, opinion, taste and outlook”; this fellowship meant “not only a bridging of theological differences but also of social differences.”Footnote ¹⁷ They attempted to prove their belief through practical actions of benevolence, like “visiting slaves in their cabins and sharing their food and clothing,” and “greeting them with a warm handshake . . . as if they were equals.”Footnote ¹⁸

For the Moravians, Christian instruction to slaves was a natural consequence of their religious principles; they tried to propagate Christianity to slave “brothers and sisters” in their community. They developed a unique system for the Christian education of slaves. Most slaves were illiterate and there were language barriers between masters, missionaries, and slaves. Because of these difficulties, the first Moravian missionaries were largely dependent on freed slaves who understood Creole and spoke missionairies' language. In 1738, Moravians organized “national helpers” from different ethnic groups. This form of organization usually consisted of groups of four men and one woman who were charged with the religious instruction of small groups of five to ten persons according to gender.Footnote ¹⁹ The success of the system even occasionally created a situation where slave converts were appointed as church officials. For example, Abraham, an African convert, who was an eloquent speaker in Creole and had a broad knowledge of the “superstitions, customs, and practices of his fellow Blacks,” played a significant role in Moravian missionary works. Black preachers were particularly conducive to increasing the number of African converts in these areas.Footnote ²⁰ Many evangelicals in the 1730s, particularly Methodists, learned the importance of religious instruction for enslaved Africans from the Moravian case. These Moravian actions were wholly different to common practice at the time.

These Moravian activities were raising a question about the institution simultaneously. Slaveholders were nervous about the possibility of a slave rebellion, and some of them already perceived that it would be hard to ignore the issue of spiritual equality when blacks were included in their church community. Thus, in the mid-eighteenth century, attempts to Christianize enslaved people frequently met with slaveholders' hostility and suspicion.Footnote ²¹ Many religious people who had puritan or Moravian backgrounds, supported Christian instruction to slaves and their correspondence enhanced it to a certain extent. However, these challenges to convention did not exhibit a coherent antislavery position at this time. Their interchange was neither a “transatlantic” nor an “interdenominational” one, and thus claims for the religious education of enslaved Africans were simply just potential threats to planters.

However, as the religious revival in the 1730s stimulated transatlantic exchanges of evangelicals beyond regional and denominational barriers, planters felt increasingly threatened. The Great Awakening influenced the development of antislavery ideas in the period for two main reasons. First, it enhanced the religiosity of religious people in the Atlantic world, and thus people were much more likely to recognize the inconsistency between evangelical doctrines and slavery. Second, as a result, it increased conflicts among evangelicals over slaves' humanity, equality of souls, and the necessity of Christian instruction. The cases of John Wesley and George Whitefield reflect the changed atmosphere in the Atlantic world after the Great Awakening. Under the influence of Wesley and Whitefield, antislavery enthusiasm spread further into the Atlantic world.

The Moravians affected Wesley's early antislavery sentiment in many respects. In particular they inspired him to think seriously about the propagation of the gospel among slaves. Wesley first encountered Moravians en route to North America in 1735, when he was deeply impressed by their peaceful outlook during a storm. In 1738, he visited Herrnhut, the Moravian headquarters in Germany, to study their religious principles. Wesleyan Methodism was clearly influenced by Moravian Pietism during this time. In the process, more importantly, Wesley adopted Moravian views on slavery. Wesley and his followers adopted the Moravian method of proselytizing slaves and accepted their concept of the equality of souls across racial divides.Footnote ²² Long before the publication of his first antislavery tract, Thoughts upon Slavery, in 1774, Wesley's antislavery ideology was formed under Moravian influence.Footnote ²³ In April 1736, shortly after arriving in the colonies, Wesley organized a Savannah Society along Moravian lines. As part of the society's missionary activities, Wesley regularly visited small settlements preaching not only to white colonials but also to enslaved Africans in South Carolina.Footnote ²⁴

George Whitefield stimulated the development of the antislavery cause into an Atlantic debate. Through Whitefield's missionary activities, the criticism of planters and doubts about the legitimacy of slavery became important themes of a debate on a transatlantic scale. After a request from John Wesley, Whitefield began to travel to North America and from 1738 to 1770, making journeys to the colonies seven times. His visits stimulated the Great Awakening, as well as the transatlantic debate on slavery. As one of the leading evangelicals of his period, Whitefield was eager to make Africans into professing Christians, believing that the inferiority of African souls was not supported by biblical principles. Whitefield thought that slaves had the same “sinful nature” as white men; if both were born and grew up in the same condition, then they were both “naturally capable of the same Improvement,”Footnote ²⁵ so Christian instruction would be effective for both of them. If the slaveholders' argument that Christianity made slaves rebellious and proud was true, he wondered, “why are [slaveholders] generally desirous of having [their] children taught?”Footnote ²⁶ In the orphanage in Georgia managed by Whitefield, young African boys were baptized and taught to read many divinity books including Phillip Doddridge's The Rise and Progress, Bishop Hall's Contemplations, and Jonathan Edwards' sermons.Footnote ²⁷

When the first Great Awakening finished in the late 1740s, the atmosphere of the Atlantic world had greatly altered. In terms of antislavery sentiment, the evangelical claim for Christian education became stronger, stirring up resistance from evangelicals who clung to the plantation system. This situation seems different from existing narratives which emphasize the indifference of evangelicals to the slavery issue in the mid-eighteenth century. In fact, the humanity of enslaved Africans and inconsistency between slavery and evangelical principles, like justice and benevolence, became subjects of considerable debate among evangelicals.

II. Antislavery Factors in Proslavery Articles: The Whitefield-Garden Debate

The debate between Whitefield and Alexander Garden started over the religious controversy of the new phenomenon of religious revival in the 1730s. Garden, who was appointed as Commissary for the Carolinas by Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London, in 1728, confronted Whitefield regarding his revival theology. Garden published six letters challenging Whitefield's religious authority, calling Whitefield “wholly ignorant” about the important theological concept of the Covenant.Footnote ²⁸ In his sixth letter to Whitefield, Garden criticized Whitefield's views on the plantation system as well as the religious revival. Considering Whitefield's transatlantic influence, it was hard for many evangelicals to ignore his opinion on Christian instruction to slaves and its potential threat to the institution of slavery. Thus, Garden's challenge to Whitefield's insistence seems a pre-emptive attack; after all, Whitefield had never denied the justification of slavery in the abstract. Although this debate comprised only a relatively small part of the totality of Garden's letters, the debate on slavery was important in two respects. First, it reflected an increasing awareness among those strongly in favor of slavery that antislavery sentiments were forming, even at an embryonic level, in the evangelical community. Second, and more importantly, this debate showed the existence of “low level” antislavery elements that even these evangelicals who put much emphasis on preservation of slavery could not help but acknowledge as long as they adhered to Christian principles.

Their opinions seemed to diverge on several issues concerning slavery. First of all, Garden answered negatively to the Christian instruction of slaves. The ostensible reason was theological: he was suspicious of the effect of “Christianizing-MADE through Christians.” Citing Corinthians 3:6, “Paul may plant, and Apollos may water, but God Alone can give the Encrese.” While downplaying man-made effort for the propagation of the gospel, he presented some revivalists' claim for Christian instruction as not being based upon biblical principles. “Men may teach [slaves] true Christianity,” he asserted, but none can “MAKE [them] a true Christian” by earthly methods.Footnote ²⁹ However, Garden perceived the potential threats of the embryonic antislavery factors below the surface of Whitefield's assertion on the religious education. This was why Garden showed outrageous overreaction to discourse of those in favour of amelioration of the institution, like Whitefield who never denied the justification of slavery. Garden strongly rebutted Whitefield's representation of inhumane treatment by slaveholders to their bondservants, insisting that Whitefield's views on plantations were incorrect: “there must be a due Discipline, or Rod of Correction exercis'd among Children,” and this may be, and often was “misrepresented for Cruelty and bad Usage.”Footnote ³⁰ Garden emphasized how slaveholders treated their slaves with all due humanity, “whether in respect of Work, of Food, or Raiment” and thus slaves' lives in general were “more happy and more comfortable in all temporal Respects” than the lives of most hired white farming workers.Footnote ³¹ To undermine his British debater's argument, Garden measured the circumstance of plantation to that of day labourers in the British Isles; they “not only labour harder, and fare worse,” but also “have moreover the Care and Concern on their Minds of how to provide for their families,” while slaves were entirely exempted from these things, as their children were all provided “for at the Owner's Charge.”Footnote ³² In this way, Garden and other evangelicals who strongly favored the preservation of slavery, felt the necessity of defending the plantation system because of a deep sense of dissemination of antislavery sentiment through a number of “proslavery” tracts.

However, the importance of this debate lies in the similarities rather than the differences between each position. As Jeffrey Robert Young states, the irony of these tracts was that their authors were attacking a man, “who actually harboured almost identical views about Christianity and slavery.”Footnote ³³ The layers of meaning in this similarity need to be analyzed more thoroughly. Basically, both religious men attempted to Christianize the plantation system rather than abolish it and in that sense, these religious people ultimately belonged in the same proslavery category.Footnote ³⁴ However, they also shared “low level” antislavery factors in their proslavery discourse; Garden seemed more supportive of slavery than Whitefield, but there were some antislavery factors which even he could not deny after the Great Awakening.

Outwardly, Whitefield insisted on better treatment for slaves while Garden opposed it. However, what Garden denied was not the humanity of slaves, but Whitefield's claims that planters ill-treated their bondservants. While Garden stressed the necessity of discipline and correction toward their slaves, he also insisted that this should not be used in a cruel way.Footnote ³⁵ Although Garden thought that Whitefield's stance was too aggressive and immensely harmful to planters' interests, they actually agreed on more than the tone of their debate might suggest. Their debate showed that the humanity of enslaved Africans tended to be accepted more readily after the start of the Great Awakening. Whitefield showed a resolute opinion on this, asking whether “[planters] are any way better by Nature than the poor Negroes? . . . NO, in no wise. Blacks are just as much, and no more, conceived and born in Sin, as White Men are.”Footnote ³⁶ As Whitefield's humanistic discourse appeared as part of attacks on slaveholders' maltreatment of their bondservants, Garden chose to present supporting evidence of planters' generous treatment of enslaved Africans rather than to deny the slaves humanity. He did not defend any case of planters' cruelty but frequently used words such as “good Usage,” “generality,” and “all due humanity,” when he depicted the situation of plantations. These remarks were based upon a common premise that slaves did have humanity.

Garden also perceived clearly that the objection to Christian instruction would be an impractical demand as well. When Whitefield blamed planters for “on Purpose” keeping their “Negroes ignorant of Christianity,”Footnote ³⁷ Garden did not reject the necessity of Christian education but made an excuse for the planters, saying “I believe the Reason of their being so kept, is the want of one certain uniform Method of teaching them, and which I hope will soon be established with Success.”Footnote ³⁸ He ultimately did not oppose the propagation of Christianity itself; indeed he agreed that “the Objection to teaching them Christianity, viz, that it would tend to make them less governable, or worse Slaves, is wild and extravagant.”Footnote ³⁹ Over the next fourteen years, Garden managed a school in Charleston which educated local slaves. In this sense, the Whitefield-Garden debate highlighted the antislavery elements at an embryonic level among the mid-eighteenth-century evangelicals. Their debate manifested that similar paradoxical discourse that was shared among the religious people in the 1740s: that within a framework of a near-total acceptance of the legitimacy of slavery, the seeds of antislavery were already being sown.

III. The Correlation Between Becoming an Evangelical and Feeling Uncomfortable with Slavery

The “low level” or fledgling antislavery element which was revealed in the debate between the two proslavery religious men in the post-revival period raises a subsequent question about the existence of innate factors in evangelicalism that made its members feel uncomfortable with slavery. In this post revival period, a large number of people in the Atlantic world were introduced to evangelical discourse and through conversion experiences many became more sensitive to their religion. If there were antislavery factors in evangelicalism, it would obviously affect evangelical attitudes toward slavery. Were there factors that reinforced antislavery sentiment in evangelical theology? Did these elements influence the process of evangelicals becoming abolitionists?

Roger Anstey's magnum opus, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, gives important clues to this subject. He analyzes the interrelation between evangelical theology and the rise of the abolitionist movement.Footnote ⁴⁰ Anstey argues that for those who experienced “spiritual rebirth,” the institution of slavery became problematic. Many evangelicals who underwent a sort of “redemption from sin” were also interested in liberty from social bondage and they came to have “a greater sense of the horror of evil” because they had found the enormities of the slave trade in themselves.Footnote ⁴¹ Moreover, the assurance that “their sin was forgiven and could be overcome by the grace of God” led evangelicals to “the consequential assurance” that they could remove the sin of other men by “that same grace.”Footnote ⁴² Thus, the emphasis on “divine grace” stimulated evangelicals' efforts to liberate enslaved Africans from physical bondage, as it was the most noticeable vice in the British Atlantic world. These enthusiastic activities to remove the physical slavery of the “captive” can also be considered as an expression of thankfulness for redemption which had been shown to them through “the atonement of Christ on the cross.” For these reasons, Anstey concludes that “Evangelical theology, by reason of the very elements which composed it, had to mark down slavery,” and the heightened sense of antislavery factors inherent in its theology came to be focused on the slave trade as the object of attack.Footnote ⁴³

A number of researchers have criticized this attempt to find the causes of the abolitionist movement solely in religious developments for mainly two reasons. First of all, non-religious factors should be considered as causal to the antislavery movement. Davis warns that presenting the Church's role in abolition as a “saving event within the context of salvation history” would be an overestimation of the role of religious motivation.Footnote ⁴⁴ Adam Hochschild emphasizes the importance of a humanistic ethos in the success of the abolition of the slave trade, rebutting the Anstey thesis: “the abolitionists placed their hope not in sacred texts, but in human empathy.”Footnote ⁴⁵ He posits that the abolition of the slave trade was “the first flowerings” of a modern belief that “the way to stir men and women to action is not by biblical argument, but through the vivid, unforgettable description of acts of great injustice done to their fellow human beings.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Socioeconomic historians like Selwyn Carrington and Walter Minchinton still support the “Decline Theory” highlighting contribution of the economic factors of the British Empire to the success of the abolitionist movement.Footnote ⁴⁷ Brown highlights in Moral Capital that non-religious factors including the politically critical situation caused by political events, such as the Seven Years' War, the War of American Independence, and slave rebellions in the Caribbean, were important to stimulate people's concern about the institution and the expression of antislavery opinion toward the end of the eighteenth century.Footnote ⁴⁸

Furthermore, some aspects of the social background of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world seem to disprove Anstey's argument. First of all, the difficulty of this thesis, as Brown points out, lies with “the varied reactions to slavery among Evangelicals in the Americas.”Footnote ⁴⁹ If evangelicals' core beliefs against slavery had been a constant, it is easy to imagine an equivalence between becoming an evangelical and an abolitionist. However, in reality, most evangelicals seemed to be indifferent to the slavery issue or supported the institution and only started activities toward abolition during the critical moments of the Revolution; the members of the transatlantic evangelical network were not unanimously in favor of antislavery. The second, and more important point, is that theological beliefs are not sufficient to explain why evangelicals took such a long time to start an antislavery movement on both sides of the Atlantic.Footnote ⁵⁰ Anstey's explanation of evangelicals' core beliefs against slavery does not answer the question of why Anglo-American evangelicals were silent on the issue until the 1770s. For many researchers, as Brown states, indifference among British evangelicals to the enslavement of Africans was manifest during the first half century of the revival, from the 1730s into the 1770s.Footnote ⁵¹

However, Anstey's whole argument does not hang on a single thread. It would be incorrect to describe the relationship between evangelical belief and the rise of the antislavery movement as “cause and effect” and due importance should be given to other non-religious factors. However, this does not mean that the religious motivation of evangelical abolitionists can be disregarded. As will be shown in the later part of this study, many evangelicals perceived the inconsistency between slavery and factors that reinforced antislavery sentiment in evangelical theology. Anstey offers partial information but points out that due attention should be given to a theme which has been under-recognized: the correlation between religion and the antislavery movement. As Davis acknowledged, many researchers on the antislavery movement “have uncritically tended to assume that anti-slavery can be understood as part of an irreversible process of secularization.” This means that they “have assumed that Christianity was somehow diluted and secularized as religious men and women became preoccupied with social problems.” However, Davis warns, such assumptions lead people easily to “a crude reductionism,” in which explicit religious motivation of evangelical abolitionists is explained “in terms of various secular ‘interests.”Footnote ⁵² There is no reason to believe that evangelical abolitionists campaigned with a motivation that was separate from their religiosity. On the contrary, the most striking feature of the antislavery movement was that it was initiated and led by religious enthusiasm. The slave trade has been criticized by the new moral philosophers of the Enlightenment as well as religious people, but the British abolitionist movement, was led by those who were “noted for their conspicuous godliness.”Footnote ⁵³ Although antislavery elements inherent in evangelical theology were not sufficient, they were necessary to raise questions about slavery and to make it a topic for transatlantic debate.

As evangelicals' diverse response to slavery in this early period suggests, becoming an evangelical did not in and of itself make that person an abolitionist. Rather, it would mean that if someone had developed antislavery sentiment, and this antipathy was intertwined with evangelical faith, they were much more likely to become an antislavery activist.Footnote ⁵⁴ Why all evangelicals did not follow the antislavery principles in evangelical theology, if these factors exist in evangelicalism has been asked. However, in practice, becoming an evangelical is different from following evangelical teachings in daily life. Even after becoming an evangelical convert, appreciating the antislavery elements in evangelicalism and to do something actively for abolition are still a matter of choice. Thus, we can find diverse responses from evangelicals toward slavery; some ignored the issue; some were ambiguous; some became antislavery activists. However, those who started antislavery campaigns found a rationale for their activities in these evangelical antislavery elements. As James Stephen said, “a large proportion of those who are most zealous for the abolition of the slave trade, are men of religious feelings; and who regard this traffic as a most heinous offence, not only against man, but against God.”Footnote ⁵⁵

Here it would be worth reinterpreting the case of John Newton, writer of the famous hymn “Amazing Grace.” The existing view on him as a representative example of the evangelical indifference on the slavery issue in the pre-revolutionary era is well known. However, his case has two sides; in one sense, as many researchers insisted, he showed that a conversion experience did not necessarily lead that person to an antislavery stance. In his antislavery tract, Thoughts on the Slave Trade, which was published in 1788, John Newton gave answers which “may be applicable to the nation at large” to the question of why he spoke out against slavery too late, saying “the Slave Trade was always unjustifiable; inattention and interest prevented, for a time, the evil from being perceived.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Newton, in fact, served the trade as the captain of the slave ships, Duke of Argyle (1750) and the African (1752–54) for five years after his conversion of 1749.

However, a closer examination of Newton's narrative also indicated that his later engagement with the antislavery movement was closely intertwined with evangelical faith. Contrary to public myth, he raised doubts about the lawfulness of the slave trade as early as the 1750s, not only in the 1780s.Footnote ⁵⁷ After the third voyage in 1754, he experienced a sort of “true conversion,” a reaffirmation of evangelical theology; through communication with a “captain of a ship from London,” a recent convert, he received “an increase of knowledge” of evangelical principles and his conceptions “became clearer and more evangelical.”Footnote ⁵⁸ In his autobiography, he traced the origin of his journey to become an abolitionist to this point, when he was more exposed to evangelical principles and decided to follow these teachings. In the 1750s, after this second conversion, he became “shocked with an employment that was perpetually conversant with chains, bolts, and shackles,” and started petitioning in his prayers, “that the Lord . . . would be pleased to fix me in a more humane calling.”Footnote ⁵⁹ When he decided to be an abolitionist activist, he found the foundation of his abolitionism in his religious belief, like many other evangelicals. Many historians focus on the fact that Newton took thirty-four years to publish his antislavery tract Thoughts on the Slave Trade in 1788, and exemplify his long silence as evidence of the irrelevance of evangelical conversion. However, Newton's case clearly shows that his antislavery sentiment developed in tandem with his enhanced evangelical conviction before then.

Lastly, we should reconsider the existing view that evangelicals had been indifferent to the slavery issue before the 1770s. Brown persuasively explains that antislavery sentiment can be transformed into antislavery ideology courtesy of external stimuli like the Revolution in the 1770s, He also presumes that the evangelical community was silent until then.Footnote ⁶⁰ However, Brown overlooks that “low level” antislavery factors were shared among evangelicals to some extent, although the premise of his theory was the spread of antipathy toward slavery into the Atlantic world before the Revolution. John Newton is only one example of evangelicals who adopted an antislavery stance considerably in advance of any official condemnation after the Revolution. Granville Sharp started his antislavery campaign in the courts in 1767; Arthur Lee, an American abolitionist, also published an antislavery tract based upon the inconsistency between slavery and Christianity in the 1760s;Footnote ⁶¹ as will be shown, even evangelicals who supported the institution did not feel comfortable due to the existence of these theological antislavery elements before the 1770s. This suggests that antislavery factors in evangelicalism made evangelicals uneasy about slavery. This process was taking place in the Atlantic world even during the seemingly “dark” years of the antislavery movement. The Revolution only created the social atmosphere in which this sentiment developed into a political campaign with an antislavery ideology.

IV. Transformation of Evangelical Attitudes Toward Antislavery

Although evangelicals did not reach agreement over the issue of slavery, they found some common antislavery factors in this period. A true evangelical who experienced conversion within the transatlantic networks of evangelicals was more likely to respond to antislavery elements inherent in evangelicalism. Analysis of these “low level” antislavery factors in proslavery discourse will offer evidence for a transitional process of evangelical attitudes toward slavery. Several key themes reflecting inconsistency between slavery and Christian principles increasingly appeared in evangelical discourse toward the late-eighteenth century: inhumanity, benevolence, and justice. It is of importance that the raw form of these concerns was already found in proslavery literature in the period between the Great Awakening in the 1730s and the American Revolution.

A number of proslavery sermons, tracts, and epistles demonstrate that most evangelicals acknowledged slaves' humanity in the mid-eighteenth century. Their conviction was based upon the universal characteristics of evangelicalism; few could totally exclude enslaved Africans from candidacy for evangelical redemption, and they repeatedly criticized slaveholder claims that slaves did not have souls. As shown in the Whitefield-Garden debate, the humanity of enslaved Africans tended to be accepted more readily after the start of the Great Awakening. Samuel Davies, a leading New Light who fought for the evangelical wing in the Presbyterian Church in Virginia, supported spiritual equality based on the immortality of slaves' souls as well as those of their masters.Footnote ⁶² This was a considerable challenge to the justification of slavery, although he did not claim social equality between whites and blacks at that point. Davies believed that Christ's atonement on the cross was “for Africans, as well as Britons: it was for the contemptible Negroes, as well as White: it was for poor Slaves, as well as for their Masters.”Footnote ⁶³ If Christ thought it “worth his while to shed the blood of his heart” for slaves, then they, like their masters, could be candidates for heaven.Footnote ⁶⁴ Evidently, these arguments are entirely premised on the humanity of slaves. Davies believed that there was “but one common Christian Religion for them all, by which they can please God, and obtain Salvation.”Footnote ⁶⁵ Both white masters and black slaves were equal in as much as that they belonged to the same family of Christianity.

Davies' effort to Christianize slaves evoked responses from Anglican ministers, including Thomas Bacon in Maryland. Bacon exhibited ambivalent attitudes toward slavery—while supporting the preservation of institution, he could not ignore the concept of slaves' humanity.Footnote ⁶⁶ Following Garden's example, Bacon attempted to open a school for enslaved Africans, although his project failed to get support from Maryland residents.Footnote ⁶⁷ In his Four Sermons, first published in 1743, Bacon clearly advocated the humanity of enslaved Africans, saying, “some People among us talk very idly, as if they did not believe the Blacks or Negro's to be of the same Species with themselves, or that they have human Souls.”Footnote ⁶⁸ Bacon's zeal for slave conversion led him to oppose planters' attempt “to mark the precise Criterion . . . in the Scale of Beings . . . where the human Species ends, and the Brute begins.” He was afraid that a consequence of such a discourse would be the denial of the “human souls” of slaves, developing into the negation of “a possibility of Salvation.”Footnote ⁶⁹ Therefore, Bacon reached two conclusions: “That Negro's being of the human Species, have souls as well as us, and are equally capable of Salvation. Christian Charity therefore would require of us to endeavour their conversion, and labour for the Good of their Souls,” and “that Negro's, being of the human Species, ought to be considered as such in all their Necessities, Labours, Chastisements, & c.—and not to be treated like Brutes, or mere Beasts of Burden.”Footnote ⁷⁰ In this sense, Bacon opened a possibility that the call for spiritual humanity; conversion, and religious tuition would develop into a call for social humanity like proper treatment and as part of humanity.

Like many late eighteenth century evangelicals, early evangelicals also perceived the slave trade and slaveholding to be inconsistent with “God's Love or disinterested benevolence.”Footnote ⁷¹ In the late 1740s, Jonathan Edwards Sr. wrote The Nature of True Virtue which would be published posthumously in 1765. Here Edwards equated benevolence with God's love; “it may signify nothing diverse from that good disposition in [God's] nature to communicate of his own fullness in general.”Footnote ⁷² Edwards developed this into essential Christian virtue; he said, “VIRTUE . . . is placed in public affection or general benevolence”Footnote ⁷³ This virtue is naturally developed into “love to [God's] creatures,” as the divine love has the “general tendency and effect in the creature's well-being.”Footnote ⁷⁴ Edwards emphasized, “universal benevolence” is the same thing with “benevolence to the divine Being.”Footnote ⁷⁵ Here, the link between this Christian virtue and general love to mankind was created. “The most beneficence that can be in men,” he said, “is doing good, not from a confined selfishness, but from a disposition to general benevolence, or love to beings in general.”Footnote ⁷⁶ This evolved into a key evangelical principle with the efforts of Samuel Hopkins in the post-revolutionary era,Footnote ⁷⁷ Hopkins would eventually present the institution of slavery as a representative example of a failure to honor this essential principle of evangelicalism. In line with this, he saw the necessity of taking practical action to remove this source of social vice.Footnote ⁷⁸ Broadly speaking, evangelicals in the period between the Great Awakening and the American Revolution had similarly begun to perceive this inconsistency.

In the mid-eighteenth century, evangelical benevolence was frequently expressed with biblical terms like “mercy,” “brotherly love,” or “charity.” Evangelicals started linking this Christian virtue with the slavery issue. Anne Dutton, wife of a Baptist minister and close associate of George Whitefield, wrote a letter to recently converted slaves to explain the spiritual lives of enslaved people. In this document, while still clinging to the preservation of the institution, she welcomed enslaved Africans with a benevolent heart, emphasising universal love to “brethren” in the same religion; “[Christ] hath joined us all into one Fold, and himself our one Shepherd, is Lord over us; so that from henceforth, there is neither few nor Greek, barbarian nor Scythian, Bond nor Free, but we are all one in Christ.”Footnote ⁷⁹ Davies highlighted “how awful and important a Trust, then, is the Care of a Soul,” with brotherly love, particularly, “the Soul even of a poor Negroe Slave!”Footnote ⁸⁰ Bacon rhetorically asked those who downplayed benevolence for slaves: “can we imagine, that any Work of Mercy which was required,” by the covenant in the Old testament, “is void and cancelled” by other laws in the scripture, “whose Foundation is laid in unspeakable Mercy, and its Fabrick perfected by universal Charity and Love towards all Mankind?” He answered, presenting this undifferentiated benevolence as the essence of evangelicalism: “No, my Brethren; this is undoubtedly one Branch of that eternal Law which our Blessed Saviour came not to destroy, but to fulfil.”Footnote ⁸¹ Pre-revolutionary evangelicals already recognized that persistence of the institution weakened evangelical benevolence. In the 1760s, Jonathan Boucher, a famous Anglican preacher and loyalist, said, “I own, however, that I dislike slavery,” because, “among other reasons . . . it has pernicious effects on the social state.” In Boucher's view, slavery violated benevolence as some planters showed “extreme, deliberate, and systematic inattention to all mental improvement” of enslaved Africans.Footnote ⁸² Many evangelicals in this period believed that, in the words of Bacon, planters had “certain Duties of Benevolence and Charity which carry no visible earthly Advantages with them, but rather the contrary; and yet are necessary for the general benefit of Society.”Footnote ⁸³

Finally, traces of evangelical consideration of the inconsistency between the Christian concept of justice and the institution of slavery were found in proslavery tracts before antislavery sentiment was actually expressed in the 1770s–80s. Many evangelicals lamented that “the plain Rules of Justice and Equity are too often forgot.”Footnote ⁸⁴ Bacon doubted that a society where “Masters have all the Authority, Servants none” matched the biblical value “to whom much is given, of him shall much be required.”Footnote ⁸⁵ He pointed to a contradictory situation, asking “If our Servants neglect or refuse to give us that which is just and equal, the Law hath given us Power to correct and force them to do it,” but “if we refuse them that which is just and equal, where is their Remedy?”Footnote ⁸⁶ In 1764, James Grainger, a Scottish doctor and poet, wrote the well-known poem Sugar-Cane based upon his service as a military surgeon in the West Indies. He doubted whether the “fierce, wanton, cruel” working conditions on sugar plantations and the wealth built upon “the lurking evil from the blood” could be justified.Footnote ⁸⁷ Lee also asked British officials, who held “Sword of Justice” about the justification of “barbarous Deaths of unhappy Africans without Trial, or due Proof,” which occasionally happened in the West Indies. If they overlooked it, they must “account to God for the use they have made of it.”Footnote ⁸⁸

Such evangelicals feared that their obstruction of justice might bring “God's wrath.” Their fear was expressed with terms like “crime,” “lawfulness,” and “justice.” In his Authentic Narrative, Newton had already raised a question about the “lawfulness” of the slave trade and saw it as “Providence,” which forbade his voyage to the West Indies and eventually protected him from divine judgement as shown through the calamitous consequences of that voyage.Footnote ⁸⁹ Whitefield expressed his fear of “God's wrath,” saying, “I think God has Quarrel with you for your Abuse of Cruelty to the poor Negroes.”Footnote ⁹⁰ Davies warned planters, that “the supreme Judge of the Universe, with whom there is no respect of Person” would reward “our Faithfulness,” but also punish “our Negligence . . . to the Ruin of an immortal Soul.”Footnote ⁹¹ Grainger reminded planters of divine justice, saying “Are ye free from crimes?” and asked them to “let mercy soften the decrees of rigid justice, with her lenient hand” by letting “humanity prevail.”Footnote ⁹² “What a terrible Sight must it be,” Bacon deplored, “to see a Number of these unhappy Creatures drawn up against us in Judgement, witnessing that the Loss of their poor Souls was owing to our Want of Care and Charity for them, calling aloud for the Justice of Heaven.”Footnote ⁹³ The theme of justice was invoked not only to illustrate an obligation of humane fairness toward slaves, but also in a punitive sense: as the manifestation of God's retribution at the inhumanity of slavery.

In this way, the rise of proslavery discourse in the eighteenth century produced two implications. First, the proslavery tracts, sermons, and letters above indicated that the first half century of the revival, from the 1730s into the 1770s, was not a “dark age” for the antislavery movement as generally accepted until now.Footnote ⁹⁴ While proslavery discourse seemed to be the dominant opinion among evangelicals between the 1740s and the 1760s, and antislavery opinion appeared only after the 1770s, its emergence was a longer and more complicated process. Although these evangelicals still supported the institution of slavery, below the surface of proslavery opinions many evangelicals perceived the inconsistency between evangelical principles and the nature of slavery, which made the institution a controversial issue even before the American Revolution. This discomfort did not yet lead evangelicals into an actual antislavery movement, but it was enough to foster doubts about the justification of the institution of slavery.

Secondly, some proslavery writers unintentionally opened the door for the moral condemnation of slavery by antislavery writers in the late eighteenth century. We need to pay attention to the fact that “low level” antislavery sentiment was expressed through literature that still supported the preservation of the institution in this period. Although proslavery writers drew different conclusions than abolitionists, some of them were already incorporating antislavery factors into their own writing. Many proslavery evangelicals in North America used a humanistic ethos and recognition of spiritual equality to neutralize antislavery attacks, and with these tools they were able to present themselves as stewards and patrons for their bondservants, and to represent slavery as a civilizing institution.Footnote ⁹⁵ However, these factors bridged the gap between unapologetic proslavery views that seemed predominant during this period and antislavery opinions which would be actively expressed in the late eighteenth century. Therefore, these seemingly proslavery articles in the mid-eighteenth century indicated a transformative process in an evangelical mentality, toward antislavery ideas.

V. Indicators of the Transformation of Evangelical Attitudes to an Antislavery Stance

Here we can find several indicators of the transformative process of attitude toward slavery in the evangelical community. The overreaction from planters and their advocates reflected the seriousness of this threat from “low level” antislavery ideas. Appearance of religious groups which showed antislavery tendency was also the product of this transformative process of the evangelical mind. We can find the manifest antislavery tract like Thoughts upon Slavery by Wesley, right before the American Revolution.