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"If God Is For Us Who Can Be Against Us?": Southerners, Abolitionists, Slavery, And The Quest For God's Approval In Pre-Civil War America, Carson Cope

Graduate Theses

In assessing antebellum, Southern attitudes towards slavery, no assessment is complete without examining Christianity’s influence on southerners. Nearly every document southerners put forward that supported slavery made a reference to a biblical sanction of slavery. In studying the Southern use of the Bible to sanction slavery, many historians such as Hector Avalos and Molly Oshatz have argued that southerners were within their rights to use the Bible to sanction slavery. At the same time, they have castigated abolitionist efforts to argue that the Bible did not sanction slavery. In assessing this debate, this thesis will argue in contrast to these …