Thornwell, J.H.:

$500 · Offered by William Reese Company

THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF MASTERS. A SERMON PREACHED AT THE DEDICATION OF A CHURCH, ERECTED IN CHARLESTON, S.C., FOR THE BENEFIT AND INSTRUCTION OF THE COLOURED ... A religious and scriptural justification of slavery from a widely read South Carolina pastor. James Henley Thornwell was a Presbyterian minister in Columbia, South Carolina who also served as the president of South Carolina College before the Civil War, and edited the "Southern Presyterian Review." Through the use of Christianity to justify slavery, he became known by some as the "Calhoun of the Church," and was one of the more well-known religious defenders of slavery in print. "The conservative, southern, Christian belief system was well represented in the philosophy of James Henley Thornwell. A brilliant scholar, well-loved teacher, and influential churchman, Thornwell became the acknowledged spokesman for his colleagues, producing sermons and essays respected not for the newness of the ideas so much as for the erudition, clarity, and persuasiveness of argument." - Westerkamp. The sermon contained in this pamphlet emphasizes the benevolent nature of the relationship between Christian master and slave, and asserts slavery as a religious necessity: "It is a natural evil which God has visited upon society, because man kept not his first estate, but fell, and, under the Gospel, is turned, like all other natural evils, into the means of an effective spiritual discipline."

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