Suddenly, they never mentioned the God of slavery again. The Great Hush.

     

SHHHHH --- We don't talk about that God anymore.


Can you kill a God?

Yes, oddly, but you have to create it first.    The Southern God of Slavery took nearly 50 years to create -- to entrench into Southern minds, Southern laws, and Southern culture.    

 But you can create your own version of God, and when that God is defeated, you can quietly pretend like He never existed.

THE DUTY TO SPREAD SLAVERY

Southern leaders, from Robert E Lee, to Jefferson Davis, to most of the Confederate cabinet, insisted God ordained not only slavery itself, but the SPREAD of slavery.  

"If slavery is wrong"  shouted Davis, "it is not our wrong, it is ordained of God."   Slavery of blacks by whites was ordained of God, who intended slavery to spread, like the Gospel itself.

Confederate officials said loudly and proudly they were chosen by God to spread "the great moral truth" that blacks not only inferior,  but blacks were being punished by God for their ancestors transgressions.



Thats what happened to the Southern "God of Slavery."   Although  US schools don't teach this aspect of US history, the South grew to be known as the "Bible Belt" because of it's tenacious defense of slavery.

Jefferson Davis himself insisted that "God delivered the Negro unto us" for servitude.   Robert E Lee insisted God not only ordained slavery -- but only God could stop slavery.   Pain, Lee said, was "necessary for their instruction as a race".

The Vice President of the Confederacy insisted that God was punishing blacks for sins in the Garden of Eden, and that the "revealed will" of God was that white men should enslave black men, world wide

Virtually EVERY Southern leader at the time spoke about God's will to spread slavery, it was in essense a "religous duty" to spread slavery of the "inferior" black race, by the "superior white race".



The South became the "bible belt" over time.  Why?  Because their defense of slavery grew so intense, by the start of the Civil War,  the South had become a theocracy, with legislative control of what religions could preach.

According to Confederate leaders -- including the President AND the Vice President,  the  OFFICIAL purpose of the Confederacy  was to spread slavery, per Gods will.

This was not some "historians" trying to make Confederate leaders look like the Taliban -- this was Confederate leaders essentially  bragging that the SPREAD of slavery was their religious duty.

Did they believe it?  Or was this just rhetoric?  You decide.  Slavery was not just "Ordained by God," the Confederate duty to spread it throughout the world! 

______________________________________________________________

If you felt strong against slavery, for whatever reason, you probably left the South, or at least moved away from the parts were slavery was most dominate. 

Virtually all abolitionists, or people who leaned that way,  either left the South, or became insignificant in politics. In other words, the lunatics took over the asylum.

Virtually every Confederate leader was either a slaver owner, or from a slave owning family, and they all defended slavery as "ordained by God Almighty".

 The leading Confederates were so extreme,  they insisted slavery was a "Divine Gift" and their religious duty was to spread slavery - as they defined slavery -- throughout the white world.

This astonishing fact is often ignored today, but it was the underpinning of slavery -- and the South's cultural development. 

Jefferson Davis, fittingly, is the one who claimed slavery was "A Divine Gift.'   If slavery is wrong, he said, "It is not our wrong, for God ordained it" , and we are merely doing God's will.

And that will -- the Divine Will of God -- was to SPREAD slavery. Not just defend slavery.

Again, Jeff Davis aptly is the one who spoke to this.   The "intolerable grievance" that so enraged the South that they went to war against the US, was our "property rights in the territories" -- in other words, the spread of slavery into the territories.    

If you are against the spread of slavery, said a Texas declaration, you are "Against God, and against civilization".

Southern Vice President Stephens boasted in a string of speeches that the Confederacy would lead the world in the newly uncovered "revealed Will of God" that throughout the (white) world, white men should enslave black men in perpetuity, per God's wish to punish the inferior black race for sins in the Garden of Eden.

The "great moral truth" of the Confederacy was the God ordained idea that white men should enslave the back race,  world wide, starting with the Confederacy as an example. Oh, you never heard that?   Yes, it's one of many Confederate leaders speeches so wacky, they have no clue what to do with them.

But at the time -- these were the champions, the leaders, the crowd pleases, and those who had control.


None other than "moderate"  Robert E Lee  himself said that God ordained slavery, and only God could end it, perhaps he would in 2000 years. Lee said pain was "necessary for their   (slaves) instruction as a race".

James Debow, founder of the "Debows Review"  -- the main publication of the South, boasted that "God has silenced all opposition to slavery by His Holy Word".    

   Well, God silenced opposition, with the help of the draconian "anti-incendiary" laws in the South, which set torture and prison for those who spoke out against slavery, INCLUDING preachers. 

So for a generation leading up to the Civil War, the "God of Slavery" was very much the official church of the South. It was not just social pressure -- it was the law. 

Before 1820, ironically, the South had more anti-slavery publications than the North.  As the sheer number of slaves sky-rocketed,  due to slave owners pushing their slaves to produce 8-10-12 slave children,  blacks outnumbered whites in many areas, and  the fear of slave revolts became exceedingly real.

                                           1820.

About 1820, Southern leaders had a choice -- either they could allow free speech  and free  religion, or they could face very real threats  of general uprising by slaves, if slaves were taught anything but obediance.    We assume whites were NOT in danger, but we were not there.  And they felt very threatened.

They decided to squash freedom of speech.

Those against slavery -- regardless if they were abolitionist preachers or radical racists, who hated slavery because they hated blacks generally, had to quit speaking against slavery.  Cassius Clay and Hinton Helper fall into this category.

As Jeff Davis himself said, the "evil serpent" of the abolitionist would "spread the lie of freedom" into the gullible ear of the slave. Almost all Southern leaders thought abolitionist preachers and writers were causing the slave believe the "damnable lie" that all men were created equal  in the eyes of God. 

So that "evil serpent" had to be stopped - for the good of the slave! Lee and Davis both wrote that the slave owner would not need to use torture on the slaves, if the aboliltionist would "leave them alone".   

Lee  and others like him simply couldnt accept that slaves did not want to be slaves.  God ordained slavery -- they thought -- so it had to be "evil ones"  who were causing the trouble.  Jeff Davis, said that "God delivered the Negro unto us, fit only for servitude" and that "slaves have a natural affection for the master"

Probably some slaves showed the slaves "natural affection"  in order to be spared torture and get favored treatment.  Davis, and thousands like him, took grovelling by slaves as prove God ordained slavery!

So slavery became the only game in town.  Ships were search for contraband -- meaning books or pamplets that questioned slavery.  Never mind that 99% of slaves could not read, slave owners did not want the WHITES to see that blasphemy either, less it spread to the slaves by that "evil serpent's tongue".  

So most of the men alive in 1860 South had never heard a sermon against slavery!    This is probably the single most unappreciated fact of the period leading up to the Civil War.  Many people assume there was freedom of speech and religion in the South prior to the Civil War.

No, essentially, there was not.


Religion was the ONLY way to defend slavery.  So slave owners, almost to a man, were  either extremely religious, or knew  how to sound like it.  

Southerners were not allowed to read anti slavery books, but Southern papers did print articles from the Northern papers -- that came across the "internet"  of it's day, the telegraph.   Read the Southern papers yourself, they quote the Northern papers with disdain, in order to show how corrupt the North was. 

 Jefferson  Davis wrote  probably the most absurd statement ever uttered about slavery -- but one that many people in the South believed -- "Slavery is a Divine Gift."  

Now -- they they really "believe" that?   Or was that just something they used as an excuse, and convinced themselves of as time went on.  I think it's the latter.


Vice President Alexander Stephens both predicted that the Confederacy was just "the first nation" to do slavery per the "revealed Will of Almighty God".   God's "revealed will?

Perpetual slavery of the inferior black race, because blacks were being punished by God.    This was not some lunatic saying this, this was the foremost intellectual of the South -- or considered so, Alexander Stephens.      The US Founding fathers "were wrong"  said Stephens. All men are NOT created equal. 

And the new Confederacy would blaze the trail, lead the world, in a new understanding of God's will for whites to enslave blacks -- WORLD WIDE.

The defense of slavery had reached it's absurd extreme limit.    And men like Davis, Stephens, even Robert E Lee, spoke in that vein.

We do not teach these harsh truths, because it would probably undermine many people's view of religion.  And properly SO!!

But how did that change? 

 LEE'S SURRENDER CHANGED EVERYTHING

Even during the Civil War, many people insisted God's will to enslave blacks, to spread slavery, was being done.   When Lee surrendered to Grant, all that changed.

ALmost overnight.  We can not find a SINGLE reference to that God of slavery, after Lee's surrender. Not in anything Lee, or Davis, or Debow, or Stephens -- or anyone else wrote.

Lincoln essentially  Lincoln killed the Southern God.  Not on purpose, not by design.   Rather like Dorothy killed the Wizard of OZ -- by exposing it's impotence and fakery.

No more sermons about God ordaining slavery, no more books, no more speeches.  And not even any personal letters, that we have seen.

Notice this -- racism and efforts to desegregate would continue for 100  years.   That the South did believe -- blacks were inferior, and whites should rule, because they were white.

So that white -superiority belief persisted -- unstopped.     Only the nonsense about God ordaining slavery stopped, about God's will for slaves to be tortured -- all those things that were said SO often, and SO loudly and proudly, suddenly stopped.





Do you really change your feelings in ONE day? 

   Lincoln, nor anyone in the North,  officially or unofficially, even suggested that anyone in the South had to change their belief that  God ordained slavery.  

No one said such sermons were forbidden. If  Southern preachers would have gone on teaching that God ordained slavery, and the torture of slaves, no one had any plans to stop that.   

Southern folks were free to express any religious belief they wanted after the war  -- including that slavery was God's  will.

We argue that the only rational  explanation is that the Southern leaders, Lee, Davis, etc, never believed the nonsense about God ordaining slavery in the first place.   

They kept preaching and advocating politically white superiority, discrimination,  violently and otherwise.  But they DID NOT preach about this God of slavery. 

Really a stunning sea-change. Epic change, overnight, immediate.   We know of no other change that fast, that absolute.

 Slavery was very much a religiously based enterprise, and could not  possibly have thrived in the Southern US without it.  God not only ordained slavery, God intended slavery to be painful to slaves, said Southern leaders from Robert E Lee, to the local preachers. 

"Torture of slaves sanctioned by God" 



That's right, God not only intended white men to enslave blacks, but the TORTURE of slaves, including young slaves, and young female slaves, was ordained by God.


That was preached in the South, Lee, Davis, and many others refered to this aspect of slavery -- Lee in his letter to his wife.   The Vice President of the Confederacy repeated the standard meme of the time -- God was punishing the blacks for sins committed in Garden of Eden.


Oh, we don't learn about that history, but the South knew it very well, it was the essential defense of slavery. 

You could not have slavery without violence and torture -- and the  promise of it. Torture and even death were the consequence of escape. 

  Even women where hung if they dared fight back--  Lee's father had a woman hung when she violently resisted the sexual advances of a white overseer -- she knocked him down.  Per the law, they hung her.  Lee decided NOT to let her first give birth, as she was 8 months pregnant.  He had her hung right away.  Again -- the crime was her knocking a white man down.

Again, the justification was God's word. In fact, when you learn of particulars about the torture of blacks -- especially torture of black women, its often mentioned that the person inflicting the torture FIRST spoke about God's will.  Robert E Lee would mention God's will when he had a woman whipped, for example. 

Frederick Douglass tells about his owner whipping a black woman, and that torturer spoke of the bible's supposed approval of torture.


Southern women are probably not given enough credit for their role in defeating slavery.   Again and again Southern women would ASK their husbands about the pain they inflicted on slaves.   Robert E Lee's wife apparently did.  And  the husbands had to come up with some explanation -- naturally, they chose to justify it by the bible.

Lee's famous letter to his wife was to explain exactly that --- she had grown up with these slaves, she was fond of them, yet Lee did not hesistate to have them tortured.  How did Lee defend this to his wife?

By claiming it was the will of God.  This was not just Lee's way of  justifying it, it was how the entire Southern slave owning class justified slavery and torture.

  You can not just torture people, including young women, and not justify it in your head.   Humans are not that cruel, unless they can justify it. 

 So Lee was rationalizing it himself,  no doubt, as  he was trying to convince his wife.   The explaination Lee and others gave was ALWAYS based on "God's will".

After 1820, South states passed laws spelling out what could and count not be preached -- government took control of religion, and press.  See the recent book "War on Words" about the South's control of  what people -- including preachers -- could say and write regarding slavery.

So if a preacher was brave enough to preach differently, he was breaking the law. One of the biggest untold stories in US history is the expulsion of Southern men and women who disagreed with the in effect official religion of the South -- the God of slavery.

The period of slavery in the US coincided exactly with the mix of state and religion, a notion so shameful we don't even teach our kids about it.

In fact, the "Bible Belt"  got its start, ironically, from this fierce religious defense of slavery.    As Debow (of Debow's review) said in 1843,  "God  has completely silenced all opposition to slavery by His Holy Word."

Well, God silenced opposition -- with the help of the draconian  "anti incendiary" laws, which set torture as the punishment for those who wrote openly, or even owned books, that questioned slavery.   In fact, Southern newspapers -- bragging about it, not shamefully admitting it -- told of white men arrested and punished by tar and feather and banishment, for simply QUESTIONING slavery as God's will.   

Those preachers and people who were against slavery, faced physical torture and jail if they spoke out against slavery.   

 The president and vice-president of the Confederacy both said slavery was the cornerstone of their nation.   Many people are aware that the VICE president said they based their new nation on GODS will to enslave blacks, but Jefferson Davis said it as well.

Protecting slavery had very little to do with the South's attack on Fort Sumter.  The Southern leaders demanded the SPREAD of slavery -- per the word of GOD.  

Their wars, their economy, their religion,  was based on this idea that God that ordained slavery -- and that slavery must spread, like the gospel itself.   

Robert   E Lee himself wrote that abolitionist "are trying to destroy the American Church."  That's right - CHURCH.  Lee equated religion with slavery. 

 Objections to slavery were met with the same basic response -- slavery is "of God".     Lee said only God could end slavery, because He ordained it.  Many people today believe Lee was against slavery, based on a letter he wrote to his wife. Actually, read in totality, the letter is an astonishing defense of slavery -- and the torture used to enforce slavery. 

Lee claimed WHITES were the victims of slavery, and blacks were the beneficiary of it, because slavery brought the " African heathens" into a world where the bible was taught, and they could be saved.  

By that logic, any religion can invade other countries, bring back the "heathens" and enslave them, to teach them about "faith".    That is how bat shit crazy Lee's argument was.   But people ignore the overwhelming meaning of Lee's writings, and more, ignore his cruel treatment of slaves.

Please don't get me wrong -- there were many great and kind people in the South.  But slavery was a vile, evil enterprise.   As slave owner George Mason said, slave owners were, in effect, made insane by the power of slavery.   They looked and acted like gentleman, only to cover up the vileness and cruelty of their culture.

In fact, George Mason predicted the insanity that infected slave owners would cause a horribly destructive war.

How did the insanity of slavery prosper? By their use of "GOD" -- without exception, slave owners used the bible to justify slavery.  In fact, the more effusive and extreme the cruelty of slavery, the more extreme the defense of it.   All based on "God's will".

So how did this God die?  Clue -- He did not die easily, but did die completely.

If you grew up, as they were raised,  you would of course believe much like they did.  Lee and men like him, never heard a legal sermon against slavery, never read a legal book that contradicted slavery as being from God.    We seem to forget that now.

 We all know, and would agree, that power corrupts.  Well, slavery was an astonishing power, and it corrupted the entire system of government and religion.   

Books against slavery were banned, of course, ships were searched regularly for "contraband" -- meaning books and pamphlets against slavery.  Preachers could not even own books against slavery -- or they too were subject to not only arrest -- but torture as well. 

Stopping free religious speech corrupted everything. With religion unable to fill it's moral role,  unable to challenge evil,  there was no power to stop slavery.  Religion turned to be SUPPORTIVE of not just slavery, but even supported the torture of slaves.

The Southern best seller was  "Slavery is Ordained of God." by Pastor Ross. 

The bible, it said, condoned not only slavery, but the  torture of slaves.  You can beat a slave woman to death -- as long as she doesn't die the same day you beat her. If she lives a day or two, and then dies from her injures, that's fine. 

The bible also implies that slave women must submit to the master's sexual demands.  This is another scripture widely known at the time -- but never mentioned now.

And remember, no one could preach otherwise.  There were very strong scriptural arguments against slavery -- but such arguments were outlawed. 

It was not always that way. Up to 1820, there were more anti slavery publications in the South, than in the North!    But as slavery grew, so did the threat of rebellion and the dangers of run away slaves.     So slave owners, who took virtual control of all Southern government, and most of the federal government, passed laws outlawing speech and writing against slavery.

 If you preached to blacks, you had to have a special license, from the government, and  you had to agree ONLY to preach obedience.

So slave owners were eager to "give the slave religion"   because the only religion slaves could legally hear about, was for total and absolute obedience, even to the violent,  sadistic, and sexually perverse slave owners.  

When you hear of Lee or Jackson giving their slaves "religious education" -- as if it were out of the goodness of the master's heart -- this is what they were teaching.

So the power of religion was only used one way -- to enforce slavery.  It was not legal or possible for it to be used to oppose slavery.


Most of us in the 21st century assume that our ancestors had freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of press, in the South.  Not so.   From 1820 on, slave owners enacted very strong laws AGAINST free speech, and free religion.   See the book "The Other South"  by Carl Degler.

Lee thought God would never have allowed slavery to prosper if it was not the will of God.  Therefore, because it exists, and because slave owners were the wealthy class,  it must be of God.  That is all he was taught, from a child on. What else could he believe?

To Southern leaders, the proof  of God's  wish for slavery was not only in the bible, it was also in their  own wealth, and the rapid increase of slaves.  As the governor of Florida wrote, that slave's "rapid increase in numbers  is the highest testimony of the humanity of the the owners."

 If you were against slavery, you were "against God and civilization", said the Texas Declaration of Causes.

 Lee said God intended slavery to be painful and cruel to slaves -- that is how you teach slaves, Lee wrote.   Pain was "necessary for their instruction as a race" wrote Lee.


 Davis said slavery was a  "Divine Gift of God"  and that "God delivered the Negro unto us."  

Slavery was "sealed by the blood of Christ." . The "great moral truth" that "God ordained slavery"  was the very basis of the the Confederacy said the Vice President, Stephens. 


 If slavery is wrong, Davis shouted,  it is not our wrong!  God ordained it. It is not for man to even question it.   


 The Confederacy was essentially a government by the religious leaders,  for the religious leaders.  There was no distinction between the government and God, very much like radical Islam.    Robert E Lee accused those who spoke against slavery as "trying to bring down the American Church".

 Just one little problem ---- Southern leaders never explained why they enslaved BLACKS.   Why not enslave each other? 

Why not enslave short people, or left handed people, or people with bad teeth? Enslave stupid people or Catholics, or people couldn't sing on key? Enslave losers in war -- like the South after the Civil War.

SPREADING THE GOOD NEWS OF SLAVERY! 

Vice President of Confederate States.

Vice President Stephens said the Confederacy  will be the first nation on earth, he boasted,  to do slavery right, like God wants! 

 " Our system commits no violation of nature's laws. All of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by  [God's] curse against Canaan, is fitted for slavery"



Yet for all this religious emphasis, virtually none of this is taught in our schools.  Why ?   Too embarrassing perhaps?
HAPPY SLAVES IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN





"Most contended laborers on earth"

  Jefferson Davis said African Slaves "are the most contented laborers on earth" until "the evil serpent" slithered into the Garden of Eden (the South)  and "whispered the lie of freedom"  into the slave's ear.

HOW DO WE TEACH THE SAVAGE?     

Painful correction,  Lee said, was the way God intended the white man to teach slaves.   This he said in one of his famous letters to his wife.  Incredibly, many people will use one sentence in Lee's letter to show he was against slavery -- yet the letter overall is one of the most amazing defenses of slavery, and the torture used in slavery.  Lee admits slavery is painful and cruel, but God intends it.   Pain is necessary for their instruction. 

Most people are stunned to learn Lee used pain on his own slaves, including young girls, but that is another story.

If  the slave listened to that evil serpent, the one spreading "the lie of freedom"  slaves will run away, resist slavery, and rebel.

 (See "Reading The Man"  By Elizabeth Pryor.)

In fact, Lee and other slave owners thought they were KIND to their slaves.   They only tortured them when there was cause to -- like if they ran away.    Didn't they give the slaves their old clothes?  Didn't they sometimes let them see their children before they sold them?  Didn't they teach them about Jesus?  So when those slaves ran away, men like Lee were geniuenly mistified, they honestly did  not understand why slaves ran away.

Lee used the typical excuse to justify slavery--  slaves were learning about Jesus, and they were not in the jungles of Africa.   In 2,000 years, Lee said, God might teach the negro how to be free. 

SPREADING THE GOOD NEWS OF SLAVERY

Vice President Stephens said the Confederate States of America was "just the first" nation to enslave blacks according to the word of God.   



 Stephens  predicted the entire white world would  adopt this truth of God, like the entire world had accepted Galileo's truth about the planets orbiting the Sun.  +   The SPREAD of slavery was a central issue in the Southern Ultimatums, in fact of the five Southern Ultimatums, all five were about the SPREAD of slavery.  http://fivedemands.blogspot.com/

Galileo's Truths

Great truths, he said, can take a while to be recognized around the world.  The South was simply ahead of the rest of the world, in slavery of one race (whites) over another (blacks).  

AFTER THE ASS KICKING --  A DIFFERENT GOD

Notice, however, that once Lincoln, Sherman, Grant, and the Union Army won --  not one Southern leader ever said such nonsense again.

Not Lee, not Davis, not Bedford Forrest. Not Debow. Not any preacher, not any civil war veteran.

Not the most extreme, not the most timid.  In fact, even private citizens, Southern newspapers, Southern books, thereafter NEVER  said God told them to enslave blacks or anyone else.

One day their entire lives, their status, their reason for doing EVERYTHING  -- was God telling them to enslave blacks.  But then Lee surrenders, and they never mention that God again.

Even in their private letters, there was a drastic change.  No more mention of this God that ordained slavery.  No more insistance that they were doing the work of the Lord to spread slavery.  Yet this filled their private correspondance before the war.  


No one said they had to give up their God of Slavery.    The only condition to end the war, was for the South to stop fighting it, and recognize the government.  

But Southerners en masse, without communication,  dumped this God of Slavery. Totally, instantly, and forever.

It's as if a light switch was flipped, and suddenly, no more God of slavery.  What they screamed from the rooftops before, they did not even whisper in private, after Lee surrenered.

Why not?

Your guess is as good as mine. I have never heard historians even try to explain this.  But it was a drastic and total change.  Yet the scriptures were the same as before.  The races were the same colors as before.  Nothing changed, except the war ended.

So why the drastic change? 


The truth is --Lee, Davis, Stephens, Toombs, Jackson, Debow  -- all knew the God of Slavery didn't exist, any  more than the Tooth Fairy did.   They didn't believe that shit in the first place, to be blunt.  But saying so sure came in handy.

Being able to say God ordained slavery seemed to WORK.  It pacified their wives.  It quieted their own conscious.  It validated their wealth.  It made horrible tortures and cruelty acceptable, and even noble.

Lee, Davis, and most others thought blacks were inferior -- they continued to say that.  They thought white men should make all the decisions -- they continued to say that.   So why did they never again say" God ordained slavery" ?

Because their God just got His ass kicked, and they all knew it.     


LINCOLN'S LASTING IMPACT

 Lincoln's lasting effect is not just the 13th Amendment,  not just keeping government of the people, by the people.  

His lasting effect was forever exposing the God of Slavery as a fake and cowardly bastard.  It's unthinkable that anyone anywhere will use the Christian faith to justify slavery.   Yet that Christian faith was the biggest - in fact only -- defense of slavery in the US before 1865.

All other things may change -- we may see the US fall into disunion, we may see all kinds of havoc and discord.  Lincoln's efforts to keep the US together may only last 100 or 200 years.

But his efforts to discredit the God of slavery will very likely be unending.

If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property.
Exodus 21:20-21