Jonathan Edwards's Defense of Slavery Author(s): Kenneth P. Minkema Source: Massachusetts Historical Review, Vol. 4, Race & Slavery (2002), pp. 23-59 Published by: Massachusetts Historical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25081170 . Accessed: 12/09/2013 05:14 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Massachusetts Historical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Massachusetts Historical Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 130.132.173.29 on Thu, 12 Sep 2013 05:14:28 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Edwards's Defense of Jonathan Slavery KENNETH P. MINKEMA On June 7, 1731, four men gathered around a table in a southern New England seaport, possibly at a tavern, to transact some busi ness. Three of them?one of advanced middle age, the other two about a decade younger, wearing fashionable suits and having by them on the table, or balanced on a crossed knee, fine hats?had the look of experi enced sailors. Beneath the coats of at least two of them could be seen what might, in the low light, have been the glint off of a sword hilt or the lock plate a of pistol.1 The fourth was an apparently fragile man in his late twenties, so thin as to look "emaciated, and impair'd in his Health."2 He was dressed in the wig, black suit, and Geneva tabs that he always made a point of wearing see in public. To this fourth man, with all the distinguishing marks of a cler gyman, in such company must have struck onlookers as odd, and perhaps the other three men covertly shared bemused looks over the serious, thin lipped minister as he watched one of his companions take up a quill, dip it into a well, and fill out a bill of sale?a receipt for a slave, "a Negro Girle named Venus," whom this man of God was buying. Jonathan Edwards, whose scarecrow appearance belied colonial America's most prominent religious thinker, later became the father of the American evangelical tradition. In 1734 and 1735, as the minister of Northampton, Massachusetts, his preaching instigated a spate of awakenings up and down the Connecticut River Valley, securing him international fame and establish as ing him the major American apologist for revivalism during the so-called "Great Awakening" that began in 1740. Edwards was also a slave owner. Fo on cusing two episodes in Edwards's life, this study identifies specific charac Kenneth P. Minkema is executive editor of The Works of Jonathan Edwards and lecturer in American Church History at Yale University. This content downloaded from 130.132.173.29 on Thu, 12 Sep 2013 05:14:28 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL REVIEW ters and circumstances regarding slavery and antislavery attitudes in early eighteenth-century New England, primarily western Massachusetts. Very lit tle has been written on the specifically local development of opposition to slavery in the American colonies before the mid eighteenth century. Typically, scholars studying antislavery thought during this time have limited their at tention to the important work of the Quakers and to the publications of Samuel Sewall.3 In other regions, a few figures emerge here and there to act briefly on behalf of a beleaguered slave or to make a statement against slav ery, only to recede quickly into anonymity.4 Lacking detailed investigations of their circumstances, we cannot plumb the motivations of these individuals or discover possible connections between their seemingly disparate acts. Simi larly, Edwards's involvement in slavery has been acknowledged but not fully explored. I hope to offer an antidote here, describing events that illuminate how the debate over slavery developed during the colonial period and the role Edwards played in that debate. In his childhood and youth, Edwards must have met with many men of rank who owned slaves. His first exposure to slavery came in his parents' home. His father, the Reverend Timothy Edwards of East Windsor, Connecticut, owned at least one slave during his lifetime, a man named Ansars.5 In 1729, when Jonathan became sole pastor of Northampton, Massachusetts, follow ing the death of his grandfather Solomon Stoddard, the community offered more examples of slaveholding. While there is no record that Stoddard him self owned slaves, several prominent merchants, politicians, and militia offi cers in Northampton, including Stoddard's son John, Maj. Ebenezer Pomeroy, and Col. Timothy Dwight, did.6 Following these leads, Edwards must have deemed it right and proper for a person of his station to acquire a slave. Besides, he now had a growing family, and the presence of a house ser vant to work under the direction of his wife, Sarah Pierpont Edwards, would help ease her burden and mark her social status. Through his life, in fact, Ed wards owned a succession of slaves, beginning with Venus. Edwards's first experience in buying a slave took him out of his local web of familiar and familial connections?the ministers of the Hampshire County Association and the merchant and magisterial "River Gods," as they were called?and into unfamiliar environs. In late May or early June of 1731, Ed wards had departed for the seaport that, even this early in its history, was known for its market in slaves: Newport, Rhode Island. This was the very place, some four decades later, where Edwards's disciple Samuel Hopkins, 24 This content downloaded from 130.132.173.29 on Thu, 12 Sep 2013 05:14:28 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Jonathan Edwards's Defense of Slavery Jonathan Edwards. By Joseph Badger, courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery, bequest of Eugene P. Edwards, 1937. *5 This content downloaded from 130.132.173.29 on Thu, 12 Sep 2013 05:14:28 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL REVIEW horrified by the spectacle of slave auctions, would begin his campaign against slavery. By 1731, Rhode Island was well on its way to controlling a large ma jority of the North American trade in African slaves, with Newport as the hub.7 Most of the individuals taken from Africa were sold in the Caribbean for molasses that was used to produce rum, the liquor that drove Rhode Is land's economy. Some Africans, however, landed inNew England among car goes for sale in the region.8 Edwards's visit to Newport may have reminded him of his brief pastorate in New York City during 1722 and 1723, where for the first time he stepped out of the New England Congregational culture in which he moved with ease and authority and was exposed to individuals from many lands and of many faiths. In that center of world commerce, Edwards also saw more slaves, slave owners, and slave trading than he had seen inNew England.9 But had he ever transacted business with the likes of the three men in Newport on that June day? What arrangements went into the purchase of Edwards's first slave we do not know. Nor do we know if Venus had been described to him and the purchase arranged beforehand; if he came to Newport and, working through an agent, bought her on the spot; or if he bid on her at an auction. We have only a copy of that bill of sale, transferring (for the price of eighty pounds) the ownership of Venus from one Richard Perkins?the man we left with quill in hand?to Edwards and, as the bill stated, to "his heirs Executors &CAssigns and to his and their own proper Use &c behoof for Ever."10 The document is also signed by two witnesses, John Cranston and James Martin.11 These three individuals were soldiers, privateers, and slave traders who circulated in the larger British imperial system, a world less familiar with the names of hu manitarian writers such as Baron Montesquieu, Philip Spener, or Francis Hutcheson than those of buccaneers such as William Kidd, Edward Teach, and Richard Barrick.12 In 1726, Richard Perkins, "mariner," had bought a house inNewport from a local rum distiller?a place to stay between voyages.13 Although the term "mariner" referred to seamen of many ranks, this one commanded a slave a on an ship.14 InNovember 1731, Perkins would set out at the helm of sloop other expedition to Africa. The following April, while off the African coast, his human cargo revolted, resulting in the deaths of "several" Africans and one crew member, who, in a bit of poetic justice, may have been Perkins him self, since he died around that time.15 Venus may have been the last slave he ever sold. Facing page: Edwards's receipt for "Negro Girle named Venus,'9 June 7,1731. Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. 26 This content downloaded from 130.132.173.29 on Thu, 12 Sep 2013 05:14:28 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Jonathan Edwards's Defense of Slavery &r~*?. ? ^^ /* U<~?, ?*<*~7 ^> rfs*3 <y % <&* *f \t%fii?~f ?*Z-?^^e,r/c.y " y%tf-%.