History/Religion 345 – RELIGION IN AMERICA – October 17, 2005  

SLAVERY AND AMERICAN RELIGION  

TERMS TO KNOW:  

Be sure you know the main points from our EIGHT Mathison readings!  

1. “A View of the Exertions Lately Made for the Purpose of Colonizing the Free People of Color” (1817).
2. Bishop England, “A Catholic Defense of Slavery” (1840)
3. C. Elliot, “Slavery & Methodist Schism” (1843)
4. Willie Lee Rose, “Slave Religion” (1849).
5. James Hammond, “Letters on Slavery” (1852)
6. “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” (1852)
7. Presbyterian General Assembly, “Slavery and Southern Presbyterian Secession” (1861)
8. Slave Songs & Spirituals (1867)

QUESTIONS:  

Please be prepared to answer the following question in class:  

The United States was a slave-society for over two centuries, from 1619, when the first enslaves Africans arrived in the colonies, until 1865. when the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution banned human slavery.  For all those years, slavery was not only legal, but in much of the country, quite accepted.  Many of the first presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, Jackson, were slave owners.  But what has slavery to do with religion? How did slavery and religion affect each other -- and the nation at large?

Queens University of Charlotte  1900 Selwyn Avenue  Charlotte, NC  28274
Modified by:  H.  Kamerling