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They Are Men, and Not Beasts: Religion and Slavery in Colonial New England Monica C

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They Are Men, and Not Beasts: Religion and Slavery in Colonial New England Monica C Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2013 They Are Men, and Not Beasts: Religion and Slavery in Colonial New England Monica C. Reed Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES THEY ARE MEN, AND NOT BEASTS: RELIGION AND SLAVERY IN COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND By MONICA C. REED A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2013 Monica C. Reed defended this dissertation on March 27, 2013. The members of the supervisory committee were: Amanda Porterfield Professor Directing Dissertation Edward Gray University Representative John Corrigan Committee Member John Kelsay Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii In loving memory of my grandparents, John and Eugenia Reed and Charles and Grace Skoog. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am very grateful for my time at Florida State University and am indebted to the professors there with whom I had the opportunity to work. My advisor, Dr. Amanda Porterfield, helped me hone my interests and encouraged me throughout my graduate career. Dr. John Corrigan, Dr. Amy Koehlinger, and Dr. Curtis Evans challenged me to think more deeply about the relationship between race and religion in North America and reminded me of the importance of picking a dissertation topic about which I am passionate. I am also thankful to Dr. John Kelsay and Dr. Edward Gray for agreeing to serve on my committee and for their thoughtful comments on this project. As an undergraduate at the University of Rochester I was also lucky enough to work with Dr. Anthea Butler and Dr. Edward Wierenga, who sparked my interest in the study of religion and encouraged me to continue my studies at Florida State. I am thankful for the great friends and colleagues that I made in Tallahassee. Brooke Sherrard and Cara Burnidge not only helped me work through many of the ideas in this dissertation, but also served as my editing experts whenever I needed them. Shannon Dunn helped me make it through my first years at FSU, and Laura Brock and Tammy Heiss spent countless Sundays writing and revising with me. Joshua Fleer, Shawntel Ensminger, and Dustin Feddon were also great friends and supporters without whom this project would have been far more difficult to complete. I also relied heavily on Jon Bridges and Susan Minnerly during my time at FSU. Without them I would still be trying to figure out how to graduate with a master’s degree. I am fortunate to have an incredible family that has been patient and encouraging during my many years of higher education. I would not have been able to complete this dissertation without the love and support of my parents, Tim and Trinka Reed, and my sisters, Cate, Carly, iv and Lacy. They were there for me from an unforgettable move to Florida to my graduation day, and I cannot thank them enough. I am also grateful for the encouragement of my aunt, Mimi Koral, my cousin, Ginny Cook, and my best friend Lawrence Wooten. You have made my life better in so many ways. Finally, I need to thank my grandparents, John and Eugenia Reed and Charles and Grace Skoog, to whom I dedicate this dissertation. I hope they would be proud of this project. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………………. vii INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………………… 1 1. LITERATURE REVIEW ………………………………………………………………… 8 2. “THE BLACK-SKIN’D AND THE WHITE SKIN’D BELONGING ALL OF THE SAME SPECIES:” THE CENTRALITY OF HUMANITY IN COLONIAL DEBATES ABOUT SLAVERY …………………………………………… 36 3. “THEY LIVED, SAITH LEO, LIKE BEASTS:” POPULAR DEPICTIONS OF AFRICANS IN TRAVEL NARRATIVES ……………………………… 65 4. “I ESSAY’D…TO PREVENT INDIANS AND NEGROS BEING RATED WITH HORSES AND HOGS; BUT COULD NOT PREVAIL:” THE DEHUMANIZATION OF SLAVES THROUGH THE LAW ………………………… 93 5. “GOD IS THE GOVERNOUR OF OUR COMMERCE:” RELIGION, SLAVERY, AND THE EXPASION OF NEW ENGLAND MARKETS ……………………………………………………………………… 125 6. “THEY ARE POLITICALLY NOTHING. AND…WE SUBSCRIBE TO THEIR NONEXISTENCE:” ABOLITIONIST ARGUMENTS IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC ……...……………………. 151 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………………. 193 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH …………………………………………………………………. 206 vi ABSTRACT This dissertation investigates the relationship between religion, slavery, and evolving notions of personhood in eighteenth-century colonial New England. During the seventeenth-century, New Englanders largely conceived of slavery in terms of their communal notion of society, which was characterized by a high degree of collective solidarity, and within this context the humanity of slaves went largely unquestioned. This communalist view of New England was gradually displaced by a more commercial ethos, expedited and then reinforced by commerce, the law, and travel narratives, in which slaves became dehumanized. Religion played a key role in this process as it mediated the shift toward a more individualistic view of Christianity, in which moral virtue and the treatment of slaves became something more associated with the lives of individual Christians rather than the larger society. This project discusses how many eighteenth-century New Englanders came to think about the humanity of African slaves in order to understand the influence that this thought had on their embrace of the institution of slavery. In order to do this, this dissertation investigates how New Englanders’ original religious understanding of Africans as human beings who should be converted and integrating into the society, albeit at a much lower status, conflicted with social traditions that described them as animal-like, a legal system that came to define the majority of blacks in the region as property, and an economic system that encouraged thinking about African slaves as just another form of chattel. Rather than assuming that Christianity and slavery were inherently incompatible, this dissertation looks at how the religious convictions of many colonists changed to allow for the dehumanization of slaves, while others came to reject the institution of slavery instead. vii The first chapter of this project aims to situate its contribution by discussing works on slavery in the colonial period, religion in the colonial Northeast, and studies that focus on the evolution of slavery in the early Republic. Chapter two begins a discussion of eighteenth-century change by investigating how debates about slavery in colonial New England evolved. Both published supporters and opponents of slavery during the colonial period largely agreed that slaves were fully human, but by the time of the American Revolution, claims of their natural inferiority had gained support as people began to print tracts that explicitly questioned Africans’ humanity. Chapter three begins a three-part discussion of how colonial culture functioned to distinguish blacks from whites and how this gradually led many colonists to accept the view that Africans were innately different than Europeans. The third chapter focuses on how Africans were portrayed as animal-like in many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century travel narratives, and chapter four goes on to discuss Massachusetts’ legal codes to explain how the law there changed the status of slaves in New England over time, dehumanizing them by categorized them primarily as property. Chapter five adds to this discussion by explaining the relationship between the changing religious and economic cultures in New England and how these changes led colonists to embrace the dehumanization of slaves and the slave trade. The final chapter investigates how the above-mentioned changes influenced arguments about the validity of slavery in the early Republic. By the time of the Revolution, debates about the right to own slaves focused much more on whether Africans were best understood as humans or as lesser beings. viii INTRODUCTION Slavery was present in New England from the earliest years of colonial settlement. Although some scholars have argued that Africans were enslaved in Massachusetts as early as 1624, it is certain that by 1638 there were black slaves held in the region.1 Within this seventeenth-century context, New Englanders largely conceived of slavery in terms of their communal notion of society, which was characterized by a high degree of collective solidarity. This view of society was supported by the colonial government as well as by religious principles, and within this context the humanity of slaves went largely unquestioned, even if the practice of slavery created some problems. This communalist view of New England was gradually displaced by a more commercial ethos, expedited and then reinforced by commerce, the law, and travel narratives, in which slaves became dehumanized. Religion played a key role in this process as it mediated the shift toward a more individualistic view of Christianity, in which moral virtue and the treatment of slaves became something more associated with the lives of individual Christians rather than the larger society. This dissertation will discuss how many eighteenth-century New Englanders came to think about the humanity of African slaves in order to understand the influence that this thought had on their embrace of the institution. Religious thought and practice were
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