Was Anti-Slavery Egalitarianism Based on Envy and Contempt?

Here is an amazing volume giving authoritative, contemporary primary source documentary proof that persons of the period when the work was published could be anti-slavery on an abstract moral/religious basis but totally hostile or unsympathetic to the humanitarian welfare of the enslaved persons.

This book, Letters on American Slavery Addressed to Mr. Thomas Rankin, Merchant at Middlebrook, Augusta Co,. VA. by John Rankin, Pastor of the Presbyterian Churches of Ripley and Strait-Creek, Brown County, Ohio, was published in 1833 by the famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison in Boston.

The shallow system of egalitarianism put forth in these collected letters is based on the same hollow, hackneyed premise as that of the racist Lincoln and the “proposition nation” neocons and progressives of today — “all men are created equal” — from the Declaration of Independence. Yet undergirding this faux egalitarianism is envy and contempt, and masks their arrogant quest for power, dominance, and hegemony.

In particular, view the letter beginning at page 72-73 (page 66 in the book’s text) describing how slavery fosters immorality and other vices and is detrimental to both the master and his family as well as to the enslaved persons.

Share

8:07 pm on July 11, 2020