New Guest Series!

Last September my mom returned to school to study history and now she has agreed to write a series of guest posts for my blog, using material from her course in American history. The series will consider the attitudes toward slave-owning of famous Americans in the couple of generations before the American Revolution. Stay tuned for blog posts focusing on men like George Whitefield, Samuel Davies, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and John Adams.

Today we begin with “Colonial Views of Slavery: Jonathan Edwards” by Lori Ferguson.

Jonathan Edwards’ View of Slavery

In 17^th and 18^th century Colonial America, it was normal to own slaves. This was true not only on the great plantations of the South, but also for the urban middle class of the North, and yeoman farmers everywhere. It’s surprising that slave-ownership was typical regardless of whether one was a Christian knowing that before God “there is neither bond nor free”, or a libertarian believing that “all men are created equal” and have a right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. It’s interesting to look at case studies to better understand the minds of people at the time.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) was a Massachusetts Congregationalist minister who became famous for his preaching during the time of the Great Awakening revival. Sometime between 1738 and 1742 he jotted down some notes on the backs of three envelopes, preparatory to writing a letter to an unknown recipient. The letter itself has not come down to us, but the notes were recently discovered in the mid-1990s. They, together with other archival material, show us some of his thoughts and actions concerning slave-owning.

In the early 1730s as the Great Awakening was just getting under way, Jonathan Edwards was the first minister in his town of Northampton, Massachusetts to baptize blacks and admit them into full church membership. In his preaching and writing he drew no difference between white and black people; however the “liberty” to which he warmly welcomed them was spiritual and not social. Edwards, like almost all his contemporaries, emphasised the religious benefits that slaves could enjoy, as long as they had conscientious and charitable masters. People thought that there was a proper and an improper sort of slave owning; one could treat them humanely and teach them the gospel, or one could brutalize them for profit. Edwards also cited Bible verses to distinguish between what he considered to be the legitimate purchase of a slave and selling a free person into slavery.

Edwards was owner of several slaves. This fact figures among a number of resentments and issues that characterize his dealings with his and other nearby congregations. The revival seemed to have caused people to be sensitive to slave-owning, but Edwards thought objections to it went beyond what the Bible required. This issue combined with numerous others such as ministerial salary, the “half-way covenant”, immoral behavior among young people, paternity cases, qualifications for admission to communion, and disputes about Arminianism, all amounted to constant conflict for Edwards. He complained that his town was beset with “party spirit”. In 1744 he was scolded for his family’s indulgence in jewelry, chocolate, Boston-made clothing, children’s toys, and slaves. When an associate pastor was also chided by his parishioners for being a slave-owner, Edwards took it as yet another excuse for his critics to be contentious. He then sat down to draft the letter that was mentioned above.

Edwards said the complainers showed a hypocritical spirit to judge others for slave-owning when they themselves indirectly profited from the institution whenever they bought the products of slave labour. The major one of such products was sugar for the daily tea. Edwards said the overseas slave trade was “a far more cruel savagery” than New England slave-ownership. Thus he was one of the first to take a position against the trans-Atlantic traffic in slaves, while rationalizing the American ownership of them. This was notable in a time when the slave-trade was very profitable in the ports of Massachusetts (home of the Puritans).

The Edwards family did not give up slave-owning. Receipts discovered in Massachusetts archives show that they made purchases in 1731, 1746, 1754, and 1757. When Mrs. Edwards died in 1758 six months after her husband, her will did not manumit their slaves but divided them among her children. Thus we can see that Jonathan Edwards did not find slavery to be an issue he needed to campaign against. The issue would have to wait until the next generation.

References

Minkema, Kenneth P. “Jonathan Edwards’s Defense of Slavery” Massachusetts Historical Review, Vol. 4 (2002), 23-59. 

—–. “Jonathan Edwards on Slavery and the Slave Trade”. The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 4 (1997), 823-834. 

If you have any questions for Lori, please leave them in the comments.