If evil communications corrupt good manners, the intimate intercourse of the whites with these people must be depraving: nor can the exercise of despotic power by the masters, their wives and children be otherwise than unfavorable to the…
Lewis Tappan
The Public Record
Lewis Tappan was an American abolitionist who in 1841 helped to secure freedom for the enslaved Africans aboard the Amistad. He was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, into a Calvinist household.
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It is with pain we are compelled to add, that the conduct and avowed sentiments of the Southern clergy in relation to Slavery, necessarily exert an unhappy influence.
Most of the clergy are themselves slaveholders, and are thus personally interested in the system, and are consequently bold and active in justifying it from Scripture, representing it as an institution enjoying the divine sanction.
Its cloven hoof has ascended the pulpits of the churches--professors of colleges teach it as a lesson of morals--ministers of the Gospel seek and profess to find sanctions for it in the Word of God.
Now, of all the large benevolent societies professing to promote the welfare of the whole country, and asking and receiving contributions from all parts of it, we recollect but one that had its origin in the slave region, and the business…
And is it possible that the literary and religious destitution you are suffering, together with the vicious habits of your colored population, should have no effect on the moral character of the whites?
Christianity, by controlling the malignant passions of our nature, and exciting its benevolent affections, gives a sacredness to the rights of others, and especially does it guard human life.
But where her blessed influence is withdrawn, or greatly impaired, the passions resume their sway, and violence and cruelty become the characteristics of every community in which the civil authority is too feeble to afford protection.
No society is free from vices and crime, and we well know that human depravity springs from another source than slavery.
Atrocities occur in the best regulated and most virtuous States, but in such they excite indignation and are visited with punishment; while in vicious communities they are treated with levity and impunity.
In a country where suffrage is universal, the representatives will but reflect the general character of their constituents.
If we are permitted to apply this rule in testing the moral condition of the South, the result will not be favorable.