McTyeire, H.N.: Sturgis, C.F., and A.T. Holmes:

$2,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

DUTIES OF MASTERS TO SERVANTS: THREE PREMIUM ESSAYS. A collection of three prize essays, all by southern clergymen, on the duties of Christian slaveholders to those they enslave. Faced with mounting criticism from northern abolitionists, antebellum southerners felt compelled to defend their "peculiar institution." Among those who came to slavery's defense were southern ministers from across the denominational spectrum. These proslavery ministers were eager to take part in what historian Mitchell Snay describes as a "clerical effort to sanctify slavery." Citing scripture, these ministers offered a biblical defense of slavery, arguing for, among other things, the mutual obligations between masters and slaves. In 1849, the Baptist State Convention of Alabama offered a prize of $200 for the best "Essay on the Duties of Christian Masters to their Servants," to be chosen by a "committee selected from the leading religious denominations of the Southern and South-western States." The winners were announced in 1850 at the following year's convention, and the three winning essays were published together in the present volume by the Southern Baptist Publication Society in 1851. The first of these essays, entitled "Master and Servant," is by Holland Nimmons McTyeire (1824-89), a Methodist minister from New Orleans who later went on to become a bishop and co-founder of Vanderbilt University. Reassuring White southerners of slavery's legitimacy, McTyeire writes that the Bible's "sanctions"

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.