By: Jonathan Wanzer ORCiD 0009-0004-9275-7410
Submitted on: April 5, 2025
Submitted to: Dr. Schultz – Liberty University
Course: HIST 701 Historical Professions
Chicago Citation:
Wanzer, Jonathan. “Slavery in America: A Sampling.” Historical Interpretations. Jonathan Wanzer, April 5, 2025. http://wanzer.org/2025/04/slavery-in-america-a-sampling/.
Preface
The topic of slavery in America is a topic charged with emotions, regardless of the perspective from which you view it. As an older guy, a descendant of Northern and Western European ancestry, I find this a complex topic to approach. However, it is a topic I have been paying more attention to in recent years. In a class on the Civil War a book by Charles B. Dew came to my attention, Apostles of Disunion.1 Dew’s book fanned the flames of inquiry urging me to look below the surface when researching subjects that have racial or ethnic discriminatory elements, be it aboriginal peoples, the enslaved, or any other opposing people groups. This post, aside from being a class assignment,2 addresses an important topic that should be better understood by every American, slavery in the American context. This post is only one narrow look at a complex topic.
Methodist Episcopal Church,
New Hampshire Conference 1844-45
The Minutes of the New Hampshire Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church for the year of 1844-45 provides a lot of information about the church at this time in a short 22 pages. It addresses topics from membership to finances, appointments, and obituaries. It also contains two position papers with resolutions on topics that would become very important to the country in the coming decades. The minutes contain position papers on Temperance and Slavery.
Division over the topic of slavery has been a part of political discourse in America since the debate over independence in the Second Continental Congress. Despite participation in the slave trade and many of the founding fathers owning slaves themselves, the north-south division on the subject has manifested in many ways ever since. One has been through the publishing of position papers, often by civic groups including those specifically focused on abolition, and in position papers and resolutions published by organizations in their charters and minutes from various organization-wide meetings, conventions, congresses, and conferences.
The Methodist Episcopal Church had, according to its 1844-45 Conference minutes, a Committee on Slavery that had “for several successive years past presented” their sentiments on slavery as “the great evil and sin of American Slavery.” Having restated their position several times already, but recognizing the importance of the matter they felt “duty bound” to again address slavery and make sure the church and world knew that “the slave in his bonds and deprivations has not lost our sympathy.”3 Following this with a commitment to abolishing the practice.
New Hampshire Methodists were not alone in this sentiment finding slavery a moral evil, offensive to God, and ruinous “to the best interests of the church and nation.” They further pronounced that the destiny of slavery was fixed, that the practice must die. Acknowledging that a schism was forming within the larger church, they were sure that Providence was on their side. The committee also predicted that a change was coming, that they would be “free from all connection” with the practice of slavery. To further state their position and to address the succession of southern churches they concluded the committee report with nine resolutions summarized here:
The committee resolved that the practice of slavery was a great evil. Traveling lecturers should denounce the practice of defending slavery through the pretext that it benefitted the slave. Through the secession of dissenting churches, they would be “ecclesiastically free from connection with this great evil.” If southern churches chose slavery over their alienation from the greater church, they should be pitied rather than deplored. Those in dissenting churches not holding slaves should join the northern churches in “spreading scriptural holiness.” The resolutions also included thanks to leadership supporting abolition and rebuking those dissenting and in favor of secession.
Conclusion
This division in the Methodist church over slavery took place a full fifteen years before the Secession Commissioners 4 took to the meetinghouses of the south and west to sow the seeds of secession in America. Slavery has been a part of American history since its inception. While the buying and selling of people is no longer legal, the underpinning concepts that allowed slavery to flourish are still with us. The concepts of us v. them and fear of the other, the dehumanization of the other, to refer to them as inferior, to justify abhorrent actions and inhumane treatment. This is evil.
- Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War, Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2016. ↩︎
- Liberty University, HIST 701 Historical Professions: Module 3: Blog: American Christianity. ↩︎
- Methodist Episcopal Church, New Hampshire Conference, Minutes of the New Hampshire Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Vol. 1844-45, Boston, MA: D.H. Ela, 1845. Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926. Accessed April 5, 2025. 11-13. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0109925437/SABN?u=vic_liberty&sid=bookmark-SABN&xid=8aaaa08f&pg=1. ↩︎
- Dew, 2016. ↩︎