Straight From the Horse's Mouth

A DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

This is part of a longer essay by a Protestent church pastor just as southern states were seceding from the Union.  The full text can be found by checking out Rudepundit@blobspot.com. It strips away all rationalization and shatters any romantic illusion or pasting over of the truth of what was on the minds of some people as a driving force as to why the Southern states left the Union.

Right wing response: What’s more, every true follower of Christ condemns the acts of barbarism committed under the mask of religion -- in medieval or American history. The teachings of Christianity do not call for, nor do they condone, brutality or bigotry. Can the same be said of Islam? Are Muslims around the world denouncing the ruthless and inhumane actions of ISIS?

One of the many bonds between the North and the South that was broken by the
Civil War was religious unity. On May 16, 1861, the Presbyterian Assembly met in Philadelphia. Only a minority of Southern presbyteries was represented. When a Northern clergyman called for an oath of allegiance to the Federal government, the Southern clergymen defected. On December 4, Presbyterian clergymen of the
South met at Augusta, Georgia, to establish the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America. The Assembly adopted a statement drafted by James Henry Thornwell, a prominent South Carolina Presbyterian clergyman, the purpose of which was to justify the church’s secession from the parent church. A political moderate and opponent of the church’s participation in secular affairs such as the slavery issue prior to 1860, Thornwell became a champion of the Confederacy and one of the strongest advocates of slavery in the South. The part of the Address dealing with the slavery question is reprinted here.

We cannot prosecute the argument in detail, but we have said enough, we think, to vindicate the position of the Southern church. We have assumed no new attitude. We stand exactly where the Church of God has always stood from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to Christ, from Christ to the reformers, and from the reformers to ourselves. We stand upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles. Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. Shall we be excluded from the fellowship of our brethren in other lands because we dare not depart from the charter of our faith? Shall we be branded with the stigma of reproach because we cannot consent to corrupt the word of God to suit the intentions of an infidel philosophy? Shall our names be case out as evil and the finger of scorn pointed at use because we utterly refuse to break our communion with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with Moses, David and Isaiah, with apostles, prophets, and martyrs, with all who have gone to glory from slaveholding countries and from a slaveholding church, without ever having dreamed that they were living in mortal sin by conniving at slavery in the midst of them? If so, we shall take consolation in the cheering consciousness that the Master has accepted us. We may be denounced, despised, and cast out of the synagogues of our brethren. But while they are wrangling about the distinctions of men according to the flesh, we shall go forward in our divine work and confidently anticipate that, in the great day, as the consequence of our humble labors, we shall meet millions of glorified spirits who have come up from the bondage of earth to a nobler freedom than human philosophy ever dreamed of. Others, if they please, may spend their time in declaiming on the tyranny of earthly masters; it will be our aim to resist the real tyrants which oppress the soul sin and Satan. These are the foes against whom we shall find it employment enough to wage a successful war. And to this holy war is the purpose of our church to devote itself with redoubled energy. We feel that the souls of our slaves are a solemn trust, and we shall strive to present them faultless and complete before the presence of God. Indeed, as we contemplate their condition in the Southern states, and contrast it with that of their fathers before them and that of their brethren in the present day in their native land, we cannot but accept it as a gracious providence that they have been brought in such numbers to our shores and redeemed from the bondage of barbarism and sin. Slavery to them has certainly been overruled for the greatest good. It has been a link in the wondrous chain of providence, through which many sons and daughters have been made heirs of the heavenly inheritance. The providential result is, of course, no justification if the thing is intrinsically wrong; but it is certainly a matter of devout thanksgiving, and no obscure intimation of the will and purpose of God and of the consequent duty of the church. We cannot forbear to say, however, that the general operation of the system is kindly and benevolent; it is a real and effective discipline, and, without it, we are profoundly persuaded that the African race in the midst of us can never be elevated in the scale of being. As long as that race, in its comparative degradation, coexists, side by side with the white, bondage is its normal condition. As to the endless declamation about human rights, we have only to say that human rights are not a fixed but fluctuating quantity. Their sum is not the same in any two nations on the globe. The rights of Englishmen are one thing, the rights of Frenchmen, another. There is a minimum without which a man cannot be responsible; there is a maximum which expresses the highest degree of civilization and of Christian culture. The education of the species consists in its ascent along this line. As you go up, the number of rights increases, but the number of individuals who possess them diminishes. As you come down the line, rights are diminished, but the individuals are multiplied. It is just the opposite of the predicamental scale of the logicians. There, comprehension diminishes as you ascend and extension increases, and comprehension increases as you descend and extension diminishes.