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Slavery And The Evangelical Enlightenment From "Religion And The Antebellum Debate Over Slavery (Univ. Of Georgia Press)", Robert P. Forbes
Slavery And The Evangelical Enlightenment From "Religion And The Antebellum Debate Over Slavery (Univ. Of Georgia Press)", Robert P. Forbes
Robert P Forbes
This essay shows how Scottish Common-Sense rationalism and evangelical religion conjoined in the later eighteenth century to create a powerful, mutually-reinforcing “Evangelical Enlightenment” with powerful antislavery implications. The defeat of Napoleon in 1815 cleared the way for an unprecedented wave of socially-progressive, religiously-undergirded American nationalism. This threat stimulated slaveholders and their allies to defend the institution through strategies designed to preclude the alliance of a powerful national state with the sanction of religion—the only combination powerful enough to overthrow slavery in a free republic.