Religious Pro-Slavery Argument in the Ante-Bellum South

Research Project

Project/Area Number	07610394
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	History of Europe and America
Research Institution	Kobe Jogakuin College
Principal Investigator	SHIMIZU Tadashige Kobe Jogakuin College Faculty of Literature Professor, 文学部, 教授 (20025076)
Project Period (FY)	1995 – 1996
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 1996)
Budget Amount *help	¥2,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,100,000) Fiscal Year 1996: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000) Fiscal Year 1995: ¥1,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,500,000)
Keywords	Pro-slavery arguments / "positive good" / colonization of Afro-Americans / "servia natura" / 聖書 / キリスト教 / 人間本性論 / 奴隷制度 / 黒人奴隷制 / 人種差別 / 独立宣言
Research Abstract	There were three types of pro-slavery arguments in the ante-bellum South. This paper deals with two of them, that is religious type and sociological one. The former tries to stress the absolute authority of God and after that assertion insists that right or wrong was ordained by God' law for the first time and that sin was not existed before that law. Under these logics, many southern clergymen collected the Bible sentences that seemed to approve slavery. On the other hand, the latter type tries to praise the Southern warm paternalistic society, especialy the relationship between the master and the slave, pointing out the selfish and cold relationship of Northern free society. This type of assertion was completed by George Fitzhu, who justified the master-slave relationship by making use of Aristotle's old theory of servi a natura and, using socialist's up-to-date theory, asserted that Southern plantation was an ideal form of communism.