We Americans believe that slavery is wrong, and we’re appalled that anyone ever believed otherwise. We’re even inclined to tell ourselves that, if we lived a couple centuries ago, we would have been abolitionists. Yet as historian Jay Case writes, we shouldn’t be so smug:
You and I believe that slavery is wrong, but neither of us came to this conclusion on our own. We did not reach this conviction by wrestling with complicated ethical, economic, political and theological issues. . . . Neither of us have ever been confronted with the reality that we would lose a large proportion of our wealth, should our society decide that slavery were wrong.
Instead, we grew up in a culture where we did not see legalized slavery around us anywhere. We were raised in a society that told us in thousands of ways, explicitly and implicitly, that freedom was good and this system was wrong. We accepted this great truth without thinking about it. It cost us nothing.
He reflects further on the abolition of slavery on his blog.
Historian Chris Gehrz (The Pietist Schoolman) happened to read Case’s post two days before lecturing his Bethel College students on European imperialism and the transatlantic slave trade. Gehrz hopes to teach his students to avoid the “I wouldn’t have [owned slaves, condoned slavery, committed some historical injustice]” temptation,
first, because they don’t understand all the experiences, ideas, and assumptions that shaped those who participated in such systematic injustice; and second, because, if they’re perfectly honest with themselves, they would acknowledge that they — as much as the Spanish of the 16th century or the British of the 18th or any people at any time since the Fall — are tempted by greed, power, and cruelty, or at least prone to ignore the stirrings of their conscience when acting on it would bring risk or inconvenience.
He continues:
I [also] worry . . . that our students will hear these stories, feel some sadness, but then insulate themselves with thoughts like “But that was the Spanish, and I’m American,” or “They were Catholics, and I’m Protestant,” or “That was five hundred years ago, and this is a new day.” That’s a bit better in the sense that it starts with a recognition of difference . . . but it’s a problem for a history class taught at a Christian college. Like it or not, the story of slavery is part of the story of Christianity — for the most part, the slavers (and a good number of the slaves) share the name of Christ with us. Which should do still more to strip away our own self-righteousness.
A sobering reminder that we, too, are capable of grave injustice, and that we should not assume that our own age is incapable of such sins.
November 30th, 2012 | 12:45 pm
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/83/130/case.html
“The Supreme Court of Illinois having refused to grant to a woman a license to practice law in the courts of that state, on the ground that females are not eligible under the laws of that state. Held that such a decision violates no provision of the federal Constitution… The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.”
November 30th, 2012 | 1:24 pm
Interesting point. When I read about history whether our own or another countrys’; Germany for example. I sometimes get this uncomfortable feeling that I also may have believed in “inferior races “or that owning slaves was not an evil thing.
Christian values on many occasions track secular values even though we would wish it otherwise. It seems that the church is now at a place where its values and societies values are on a serious collision course. It must be… for all the ridicule that the church suffers tody. The tracks are divurging, issues seem to be clearer pertaining to Jerusalem as opposed to Athens.
This is a fearful time, there are many churches (mainline) that seem to have adopted the Athens approach hook line and sinker.
The orthodox creedal churches appear to be holding the theological line in holding on to the basic tennants of the christian faith on which our own salvation depends.
November 30th, 2012 | 2:07 pm
A useful post that deserves reselling. I am currently reading “Japan’s War” by Edwin P. Hoyt. An otherwise excellent read, it’s peppered with pius condemnations on imperialism in the nineteenth century and racial insensitivity in the first half of the twentieth.
November 30th, 2012 | 2:35 pm
I’ve always loved to point out that for the development of civilization, slavery was as important as fire and agriculture. It allowed a class to develop that had the time to think, and that the only reason it is considered evil is an accident of history, the South lost the war.
That always gets peoples’ heads spinning.
November 30th, 2012 | 3:06 pm
I always try to flip negative observations about other times and places firmly standing in today’s values. “Look how badly our parent’s generation treated _x_!” I answer, “It makes me wonder what we’re getting wrong and can’t see.” It’s not quite as direct as Chuck’s approach, but I am still amazed at how many people it stops cold.
November 30th, 2012 | 3:13 pm
Chuck, slavery was an improvement over the old war practice of ‘kill everyone’. And in some senses it did allow for some leisure classes. But it was also self-limiting, in that a slavery culture is stagnant and for its own security can’t foster much practical experimentation.
E.g. the Greeks had everything they needed to invent the steam engine but never regarded it as more than a curiosity, never dared to consider its practical possibilities.
In a similar way, astronomy probably had to develop through astrology, and likewise the development from alchemy to chemistry was probably inevitable.
But that doesn’t mean that slavery – or astrology, or alchemy – wasn’t wrong.
November 30th, 2012 | 3:18 pm
I hope there is a time in the future when everyone thinks back to our era and assumes they would of course have been pro-life.
November 30th, 2012 | 8:47 pm
I sometimes amuse myself by making a list of things we do now that future generations will find offensive or inexplicable. Abortion is at the top of my list. I also wonder about our treatment of animals—not just the fact that we eat them, but also the fact that we own them as pets (AKA “companion animals” to the exquisite). We leash them up, put collars on them, pay dog taxes. We shampoo them and put bows on their heads. Well, some people do.
I am not saying I approve of the future condemnation that might transpire. I love my pet dog, after all. I also am a lax vegetarian.
November 30th, 2012 | 10:47 pm
Sometimes it seems that the so-called progressive way is to see the future and let it guide the present. It’s not only impossible to do that, it’s foolish to try.
We are all men and women of our times. Even peg’s predictions are projections from our times. We cannot live by future historians’ opinions of ourselves. If we are wrong we are wrong—and in at least some things we will be—yet we must make our best decisions based on who we are and what we know now. It’s what we have to work with.
C.S. Lewis famously recommended that we read old books, to learn from the past and (somewhat) correct ourselves in the present. It’s not a perfect answer, but it’s markedly more practical than learning from the future.
We only get one shot at life. We can make it up as we can go along, or we can look to a good example as our guide to making the most of it. The best such example in history, without a doubt, is Jesus Christ. It doesn’t require believing in his divinity to see that about him.
There is only one way into the future: to live in the present in light of the past.
As for what we get wrong, maybe future generations will learn from that, too; but that is for them, and not for us. For us, it is to do as well as we can do—and to seek God’s forgiveness in Christ for all the ways in which we will inevitably fail.
December 1st, 2012 | 4:15 am
If you put a structural gun to a person’s head, so that they must work in conditions that are equal to what many slaves experienced, and have no other choice, you cannot claim this person is free. There may be slight legal or formal differences, but the core experience and the suffering is the same.
Many Americans today buy products which were manufactured or produced using people (including children) in ways that mirror slavery.
Many of these Americans may not do it intentionally – since production conditions and networks are often obfuscated, especially in a global system. But many Americans wouldn’t lift a finger to find out who is being severely exploited in their work conditions, even if it entails horrible abuse, unless the information is dropped onto their laps. And a good PR firm usually takes care of easing any concerns of work-related abuse overseas (or internally), even when nothing changes for those being exploited.
And yet, all of these Americans will feel this smugness of having overcome their ancestors’ enthusiastic appreciation of slavery, while taking part in and benefiting all the same from its modern version.
December 1st, 2012 | 8:20 am
The observation that “the past is a foreign country…they do things differently there” is a useful check to knee-jerk judgmentalism when we encounter some of the wackier things from the Olden Days.
I am doing some research at the Library of Congress that entails reading 1930s documents of the Communist Party of the USA. Over several hours of this, one gets a picture of the times—the suffering caused by the Depression, the frightening rise of fascism, social and economic inequalities and injustice, etc. The CP took up the causes of legal immigrants who were jailed and then sentenced with deportation for, in effect, protesting their inhumane working conditions.
The communists also were actively seeking to join in the civil rights struggles of African Americans and women. There is more than a whiff of political opportunism and expediency in their support of these progressive causes—I kept thinking of Nixon and LBJ and their similarly complicated motives for pushing civil rights legislation. However, the CP of the ’30s was aware of racism (“white chauvinism”) in its ranks and sought to quash it.
I said to my mother last night that given the times, I might have been a communist! At least, I could see why people joined in the 1930s. She said, however, that her father and uncle (liberal democrats who were officials in the Carpenters Union) always regarded communism as a threat. I will have to pick her brains on why this was so….it gets curiouser and curiouser…
December 5th, 2012 | 11:50 am
@Ray: The Greeks were not Geeks. They never had a chance on that steam engine for two reasons (among many others, I suppose).
First, one word: metallurgy. A friend is working on an alternate history in which the industrial revolution occurs right after the War of 1812, and he had a devil of a time trying to justify metallurgical art to fabricate high pressure steam boilers. Heiron of Alexandria made a spinning ball, but it could never have done any work in the engineering sense.
Second (and more important): They did not have a vision of history as a linear progression toward an end. They did not forbear from “practical experimentation” and fail to consider the “practical possibilities” of Heiron’s toy for their own “security” for the very simple reason that they did not consider experimentation at all and had not thought to our modern good of technological innovation. Theirs was a cyclical view of the World. Everything went in cycles: the sun, the moon, the stars, and so naturally all of history. Every Great Year, history would reset and Socrates would again be accused and drink the hemlock.
The stars and such were “alive, divine, and influential in human affairs.” The solar and lunar cycles had obvious impacts. When Sirius rose in the spring, the Nile would flood. Astrology was not a previous version of astronomy. Astrology was an application of astronomy. The other application was calendar-making. Other than that (and, later, navigation) there was no adult reason to stare at the stars at all. Things only began to change in the Christian era when, influenced by the Book of Wisdom, some philosophers began to study the natural world for its own sake.
Some comments can be found here: http://thonyc.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/the-astrology-wars-and-abandoned-scientific-research-programmes/
and here: http://thonyc.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/humanitys-interest-in-the-so-called-pseudo-sciences-has-not-always-been-bad-for-science/
December 5th, 2012 | 3:51 pm
I’m not suggesting the Greeks were ready to set up a trans-European railroad with locomotives. Pumps, on the other hand, make mining and irrigation far more practical.
<blockquote They did not forbear from “practical experimentation” and fail to consider the “practical possibilities” of Heiron’s toy for their own “security” for the very simple reason that they did not consider experimentation at all and had not thought to our modern good of technological innovation.
And have you noticed how stagnant slave societies are? The Confederacy had no shortage of clever people, but ‘innovative’ isn’t an adjective that leaps to mind when describing it – except in military tactics, I suppose.
I suggest there’s causation there, not simply correlation.
A I’ve put it before, astrology begat astronomy. That doesn’t make astrology right, any more than contributing to the creation of a leisure class, which led to the creation of a still smaller intellectual class, made slavery right.
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