In September 1865 John Young, the United States consul in Belfast, informed Secretary of State William H. Seward that “[t]he Covenanting Synod in the U.S. deputed three ministers . . . to visit their churches in this country and collect money and clothing for the freedmen.”Footnote 1 Young's comment indicates that the Reformed Presbyterians (Covenanters) in Ireland took a deep interest in the cause of the slaves' emancipation in America. The historian Kerby Miller, however, has complained that the “prophetic traditions” of the Covenanters “have scarcely been examined in terms of their socio-economic, cultural, or political implications in the New World.”Footnote 2 In relation to slavery it is especially important to remember that the Covenanters were a “transatlantic phenomenon,” an aspect of their character which Joseph Moore and Jane McGaughey claim has not received sufficient historiographical attention.Footnote 3 The present essay seeks to partially fill this gap in the historiography by considering the Irish Covenanters' critique of the peculiar institution. Accordingly, this article examines the role that Reformed Presbyterians in Ireland played in the battle against slavery in the United States between 1830 and the end of the American Civil War.
Since the Covenanters were relatively small in number, the question of why they were opposed to slavery might appear superfluous. It is fallacious, however, to assume that because a group is numerically small its influence is inconsequential. Mark Noll reminds us that Reformed Presbyterians had a public influence in Scotland far out of proportion to their numbers. The same is also true of the Covenanters in Ulster.Footnote 4 Gerald Hall's research into their influence on political liberalism in Ulster confirmed this thesis more recently.Footnote 5 There are, moreover, several reasons why their contribution is worthy of consideration. First, Covenanter antislavery helps to correct the myth, propagated by southern apologists and sometimes by Neo-Confederates, that all those who advocated abolition were Jacobins and infidels.Footnote 6 Far from being heterodox, Reformed Presbyterians were very committed to the theology of the Westminster Confession. Indeed, they even made their lay members fully adhere to it prior to admission to communion.Footnote 7 Second, the study of Covenanter abolitionism also adds nuance to the conclusion of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene Genovese that “abolitionists, more often than not, preached less from the Bible on slavery than from the Declaration of Independence and the secular ideology of the Enlightenment.”Footnote 8 Although it would be naïve to think that Reformed Presbyterians were not influenced by other factors, the efforts of Covenanters to refute proslavery exegesis is clear evidence of their commitment to biblical authority.Footnote 9 Furthermore, in terms of the Irish Covenanters' scriptural arguments, it is imperative to remember that, during this period, they were deeply divided over questions surrounding the civil magistrate and the Mosaic civil law. This culminated in the New Light faction leaving the Synod in 1840, subsequently constituting themselves as the Eastern Reformed Presbyterian Church.Footnote 10 As we shall see, such disputes even spilled over into their antislavery polemics. This also raises a broader point concerning changing attitudes to Old Testament judicial law among the Reformed in the nineteenth century.
The abolitionists did not regard the contribution of Reformed Presbyterians to the antislavery crusade as an insignificant one. As John McKivigan's research has demonstrated, the Garrisonians praised them as strong advocates of the principle of refusing both political union and ecclesiastical fellowship with slaveholders.Footnote 11 The same is also true with respect to abolitionist groups in Ireland. At various meetings of the Belfast Anti-Slavery Society, the Covenanters were regularly acclaimed for their position on slavery. In September 1840 Captain Charles Stewart observed that blacks were discriminated against in virtually all New York churches, “except the Covenanter, the Quaker, and Roman Catholic Churches.”Footnote 12 When the radical abolitionist Henry C. Wright visited Ulster in 1844–1845, the Belfast Eastern Reformed Presbytery passed a resolution thanking him for his “tremendous exposure of the evils of the slave trade.” Wright responded by assuring them that their opinion would be extensively published and widely circulated in America.Footnote 13 Although it is not always easy to distinguish between rhetoric and reality when analyzing such statements, Wright's comment does at least show us that visiting abolitionists valued Reformed Presbyterians' support. Moreover, in November 1848, James Standfield, one of the society's secretaries and an Anglican layman, was pleased to report that Christian fellowship with slaveholders was a notion rejected by the Covenanters.Footnote 14
The covenanting tradition's most famous abolitionist figures were also well received in Belfast. For instance, the American New Light Covenanter, Samuel Brown Wylie, visited the town in 1845. The Reverend Isaac Nelson and Counselor James Gibson, prominent figures within the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (hereafter, PCI), spoke at a soiree in his honor. They praised Wylie and the Reformed Presbyterian Church for banishing slaveholders from communion, and viewed this as strengthening the cause of abolition.Footnote 15 One of the most senior figures in the PCI, Dr. James Morgan, praised the Covenanters for their abolitionism at a meeting on the evangelization of emancipated slaves in October 1864. Morgan noted that the speaker on that occasion, the Reverend J. L. McCartney, “was not one of your milk-and-water Presbyterians, but that he belonged to the old stock—the good old Covenanters . . . who had ever raised their voice against slavery.”Footnote 16 It is also worth remembering that Reformed Presbyterians themselves considered antislavery to be a crucial component of their covenanting identity. In Tekel (1858), a blistering attack on the PCI, Reverend James Kennedy of Limavady conceded that they had embraced, at least, the Covenanter view of the rights of man in opposition to slavery.Footnote 17 Thus in order to understand the nature of nineteenth-century Reformed Presbyterianism, it is necessary to reflect upon their commitment to emancipation.
In light of these considerations, the opposition of the Irish Covenanters to slavery in the United States demands the attention of historians of religion and abolitionism. Consequently, this article will consider the transatlantic nature of the covenanting movement and its relevance to slavery, the Irish Covenanters' opposition to British slavery and how it is germane to comprehending their views on American abolition, the ideological divergence between Irish Old and New Light Covenanters' opposition to slavery, as well as Reformed Presbyterians' concerns over slavery and the US Constitution, their comments on important public events in antebellum America, and their outlook on the American Civil War. The sources for this article consist primarily of the manuscript correspondence between the Irish and American Synods, the printed minutes of the Irish Synod, and articles in the Covenanter and the Monitor and Missionary Chronicle periodicals. Thomas Houston, the leader of the Old Light party, edited the former magazine from its inception in 1830 until 1866. In Stephen Steele's opinion, the articles in the Covenanter largely represented Houston's views.Footnote 18 Regretfully, it ceased publication in 1843 and did not recommence until 1857.Footnote 19 The Monitor came into existence in 1847, only to fold in 1855.Footnote 20 As a result of the non-existence of a periodical from 1844–1846, Irish Covenanters' reaction to the controversies over fellowship with slaveholders in the Free Church of Scotland and the Evangelical Alliance has, for the most part, not been recorded.Footnote 21 Such a gap in the sources also explains why this article will primarily focus on the views of Old Light Covenanters, although some attention is paid to the Eastern Reformed Presbyterians as well.Footnote 22
Statistics concerning the membership of Covenanters are limited for the period under review. Toward the end of the era, however, their numbers appear to have been on the increase. According to the official statistics of the Irish Old Light Covenanter Synod there were 3,976 communicant members in 1857. Over the next few years their numbers gradually increased, so that in 1865 there were 4,600 members within the bounds of their thirty-nine congregations.Footnote 23 Meanwhile, the 1863 statistics of the Eastern Reformed Presbyterian Synod reveal that they had just over 1,100 communicant members within their nine congregations,Footnote 24 although these figures probably did not fully reflect the total number of people connected with the Synods. Several years earlier the Monitor and Missionary claimed that around 16,000 people were under the spiritual care of the Old Light Synod. The discrepancy between these figures arose because only one in four people connected with the church were communicant members as a result of the Covenanters' extensive terms of communion.Footnote 25
I. American Links and British Emancipation
At a prima facie level it might appear strange that Irish Reformed Presbyterians were so deeply interested in a social evil on the other side of the world. Yet the Covenanters in Ireland and Scotland watched the struggle against American slavery with intense concern.Footnote 26 There were two major factors which help to explain this interest. First, the close links between the Covenanters in Ireland and their brethren in America.Footnote 27 David M. Carson argued that the American Covenanters developed almost entirely from the “Ulster Cameronians.”Footnote 28 Moreover, Ian McBride has observed that one of the more unusual products of the United Irish agitation in the 1790s was the strengthening of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States.Footnote 29 Although a Reformed Presbytery had been established in 1774, this collapsed when nearly all its ministers united with the Seceders to form the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in 1782.Footnote 30 The Reverend William Martin, the first Reformed Presbyterian minister to be ordained in Ireland, had been laboring in South Carolina since 1773. Martin's reputation for intemperance, however, meant that he lost the confidence of the people.Footnote 31 In order to minister to the covenanting remnant, Scottish and Irish Reformed Presbyterians, such as James McGarragh and William King, were sent to conduct itinerant missions.Footnote 32
James McKinney, who had been forced to flee Ireland subsequent to publishing an allegedly treasonable sermon, joined them in 1793.Footnote 33 A year earlier, McKinney had drawn up the causes for fasting, which was to be observed by the Reformed Presbytery in Ireland. In this, the Irish Covenanters longed for the “Abolition of Tyranny and oppression, from the whole Earth; and especially from the Lands of our Nativity, that have long groaned, in common with the rest of their Fellow Slaves, under the unrelenting Jaws of Cruel Despots.”Footnote 34 This reflected the rhetoric of other patriotic radicals about the condition of Ireland, but was possibly indicative of sympathy with black slaves as well.Footnote 35 Indeed, McKinney is thought to have been the author of similar causes for American Covenanters fasting in 1795, condemning African slavery as that “abominable species of murder, even enslaving thousands of fellow creatures for life and their posterity without end, and degrading them below the brutes.”Footnote 36
As the United Irish excitement increased, more Covenanters fled across the Atlantic. Samuel B. Wylie, then a probationer, explained that in the autumn of 1797 Covenanters were faced with the choice of swearing allegiance to a tyrannical government, suffering military execution, or going into exile. Along with the Reverend William Gibson and John Black (a fellow probationer), Wylie fled to the United States.Footnote 37 At Philadelphia in the spring of 1798, these exiles, along with McKinney and King, established the Reformed Presbytery of the United States of North America.Footnote 38 Although there was some disquiet concerning the absence of prior consultation with the Irish Presbytery prior to the formation of this court, the American Covenanters desired to closely align themselves with their Scottish and Irish brethren. In 1802 Wylie was commissioned to visit Reformed Presbyteries in Scotland and Ireland, who recognized the American Presbytery and established friendly correspondence with it.Footnote 39 This continued occasionally, with the Irish Synod giving thanks in 1821 for their links with those in America “joined with us in the same covenant, contending for the same faith.”Footnote 40
In 1827 it was proposed that stated correspondence be commenced between the respective Covenanter Synods in order to keep each other informed about matters of common interest.Footnote 41 And so by 1830 regular correspondence was established between the Irish and American Synods.Footnote 42 Alexander McLeod visited Ireland that year and preached before the Synod on Jeremiah 50:5, a locus classicus of social covenanting.Footnote 43 In this he probably expressed his desire that there would be covenanted uniformity between Reformed Presbyterians of America, Ireland and Scotland.Footnote 44 Owing to the fact that he was an outspoken opponent of slavery, it is highly plausible that McLeod's visit further influenced the Irish Covenanters to take a keen interest in efforts for American emancipation.
The great challenge facing the American Reformed Presbyterians was maintaining unity and uniformity among their own numbers. The Covenanters had long been critical of the US Constitution; contrary to the Scottish covenants, it had failed to acknowledge Christ's kingship, uphold biblical qualifications for civil office, or adopt biblical law as the basis for federal or state legislation.Footnote 45 In 1803, Samuel B. Wylie's book The Two Sons of Oil gave definite expression as to why they rejected the American government as immoral.Footnote 46 A dispute arose among them on the question of the propriety of voting and jury service, which culminated in the schism of 1833.Footnote 47 These things had been censurable offences owing to the perception that they recognized the US government as the ordinance of God.Footnote 48 Emily Robinson described this split as “between those who had assimilated into the mainstream American ecclesiastical and political culture, and those who remained committed to strict Covenanter theology.”Footnote 49 The Old Lights, who maintained the strict Covenanter position, were led by James Renwick Willson. Reverend Nathan Robinson Johnston later portrayed Wilson as “a genuine Covenanter and zealous abolitionist,” comparable to Garrison, John Brown of Harpers Ferry, and Wendell Phillips.Footnote 50 For our present purposes, it is interesting that Willson opposed jury service partly owing to the implicit support such service (under federal and state constitutions) gave to “regulating the transfer of slaves; trafficking in the souls and bodies of men.”Footnote 51 Gilbert McMaster and Wylie, who had repudiated his earlier views, led the New Lights.Footnote 52
In terms of their respective memberships, the different covenanting groups in America were initially a little more evenly divided than in Ireland. Robert Baird's Religion in America (1844) claimed that there were approximately 6,500 Old Light Covenanters and 4,000 New Light Covenanters in the United States.Footnote 53 By the time of the Civil War the Old Lights had six presbyteries, fifty-nine ministers, seventy-eight congregations, and approximately 6,650 communicants. They were mostly situated in the states of New York, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, the New Lights had seven presbyteries, fifty-six ministers serving ninety-one congregations and twenty-five preaching stations, with an estimated 10,000 communicant members. Their congregations were mostly concentrated in the same states as those of the Old Light Synod.Footnote 54
The reaction of the Irish Synod to the split was ambivalent, but essentially in favor of the Old Lights. They adopted the Scottish Synod's position that incorporation with American civil institutions amounted to a relinquishment of the Covenanter testimony, which was a vindication of Willson's position (if not in so many words).Footnote 55 Although the decision to adopt the Scottish report was seconded by John Alexander, who sided with John Paul in the schism of 1840, it would appear that the Irish New Lights generally favored the American New Lights, while the Irish Old Lights supported the American Old Lights. This is demonstrated by the fact that prominent Old Lights wrote to Thomas Houston.Footnote 56 Conversely, McMaster wrote to Clarke Houston, an Irish New Light, complaining that the split was the fault of the Old Lights.Footnote 57 After the secession of Paul's faction from the Irish Synod, things became even clearer with the Irish New Lights entering into correspondence with Wylie and praising his faction for “the noble stand that they as a Church, have made against the abominable slave-trade.”Footnote 58 In September 1847, Paul and Clarke Houston wrote to their American New Light brethren expressing support for the stance they had taken in 1833.Footnote 59 For their part, the American New Lights openly expressed their esteem for the Eastern Reformed Presbyterians in Ireland.Footnote 60 Conversely, when Thomas Houston visited the United States in 1856, the Old Lights thankfully remembered that he “was enabled to stem the tide of defection when it was coming in like a flood among you.”Footnote 61 Hence we discern the close bond between the different sects of Covenanters on both sides of the Atlantic, and thus it is not surprising that the antislavery preoccupations of the Americans had an effect on their Irish brethren.
A second major factor behind the Irish Covenanters interest in American abolitionism was their opposition to British slavery. Material on their reaction toward William Wilberforce's campaign for the abolition of the slave trade is scarce. Although the 1807 causes of fasting, drawn up by John Paul, did express thanks for “the abolition of the slave trade in various quarters.”Footnote 62 In 1815 Paul wrote on behalf of the Irish Covenanters to the Scottish Synod, and asserted that the progressive abolition of the slave trade was a sign “that the period is not far distant when the knowledge & glory of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters do the sea.”Footnote 63 Thomas Houston later claimed that the abolition of the slave trade was effected by the “vigorous and persevering efforts of noble-minded philanthropists . . . establishing what humanity and justice demanded.”Footnote 64 Furthermore, the Reverend Samuel Simms of Loughbrickland argued in 1878 that Wilberforce and the abolitionists were inspired by the spirit of Richard Cameron and the Covenanter martyrs; while the proslavery faction resembled their persecutors (the fact that Wilberforce was an Anglican apparently had no bearing on the subject).Footnote 65
There is, however, more material on their attitude toward the campaign for West Indian emancipation. In its early issues, the Covenanter published several articles on British slavery, maintaining their “most sincere and hearty detestation” of West Indian slavery and claimed that Reformed Presbyterians were “the advocates of immediate and unrestricted abolition.”Footnote 66 Since emancipation was not a matter of expedience, but of sin and duty, delaying abolition was not an option. Indeed, they warned the planters that to delay was to “implicate yourself more and more deeply in robbery and murder.”Footnote 67 Quoting the antislavery resolutions of the Scottish Covenanter Synod of April 1831 with approval, the Covenanter judged British slavery to be a violation of the law of God. It was also condemned for its accompanying immoralities, such as Sabbath-breaking, adultery, family break-up, and its negative effect on education and mission.Footnote 68 In light of the wickedness of slavery, the Covenanter concluded that “[n]ever till the shackles of every bondsman in the British Colonies are burst asunder, will the national sin in this matter be done away, and Divine judgments on account of it be arrested,” a comment which reflected the standard British abolitionist commitment to providentialism.Footnote 69 This was not merely Houston's view, because in July 1831 resolutions were passed “expressive of the Synod's abhorrence of West Indian Slavery” making it official ecclesiastical policy.Footnote 70
Unsurprisingly, any suggestion of compensated emancipation was emphatically rejected. In response to rumors that the planters sought £120 million in compensation, the Covenanter argued that recompense was due to the slaves, not their oppressors.Footnote 71 They recognized that the notion of compensation was interwoven deeply with commercial subtleties and that immediate abolition was contrary to cherished British notions of property-rights.Footnote 72 When the parliamentary act for emancipation came into effect on August 1, 1834, the abolitionists had to settle for compensated emancipation costing £20 million and an apprenticeship system that was to last until 1840 (although it ended in 1838). It should be noted that Antigua and Bermuda rejected apprenticeship and conferred immediate freedom on the slaves.Footnote 73 The Covenanter and James Renwick Willson welcomed this, the latter using it as a model for American emancipation.Footnote 74 Notwithstanding reservations concerning apprenticeship and compensation, which reflected the views of more radical British abolitionists in general, the Covenanter rejoiced that slavery no longer legally existed in the West Indies and wished that the same could be said for the United States.Footnote 75 The hope for abolition of American slavery was viewed as the completion of the work begun with British emancipation.
II. Antislavery Ideology
In terms of ideological opposition to chattel slavery, there was a divergence of opinion between the Old and New Lights in Ireland as to precisely why slavery was wrong. Basically, the Houston faction accepted the arguments set forth by Alexander McLeod at the start of the nineteenth century and those subsequently held by the American Old Lights. Colin Kidd rightly identified McLeod as an “uncompromising opponent of slavery.”Footnote 76 The issue of slavery among the American Covenanters came to the fore in the fall of 1800 when McLeod demurred a call to the pastoral charge of the New York and Coldenham congregations owing to the presence of slaveholders. Consequently, in February 1801 the Reformed Presbytery excluded slave owners from communion and McLeod was later ordained in July.Footnote 77
William Roulston has pointed out that other Covenanter ministers had been outspoken opponents of slavery prior to this enactment.Footnote 78 The significance of McLeod's call for ecclesiastical censure, nevertheless, should not be diminished. This was probably a major factor in keeping Reformed Presbyterians uncontaminated from proslavery sentiments. In fact, William Martin was censured shortly afterwards for selling a slave in defiance of “the determination of the courts to which he belonged had marked African enslavement with the strongest degree of abhorrence.”Footnote 79 Although it was not unusual for a Presbyterian denomination to condemn slavery in the abstract, Reformed Presbyterians' application of discipline to slaveholders was very significant. The mainstream Presbyterian Church in the United States had condemned slavery as “utterly inconsistent with the law of God” at its General Assembly in 1818.Footnote 80 John McKivigan, however, observed that the reluctance to discipline slaveholders effectively nullified such pronouncements.Footnote 81 There was little danger of the Covenanters falling into the same trap, as the Reformed Presbytery appointed McKinney and Wylie to ensure slavery was abolished among the Covenanters of South Carolina.Footnote 82 Most southern Covenanters emigrated north during the late 1820s and 1830s as a result of the prevalence of slavery in the region. Although there had at one time been 500 Covenanters in South Carolina, opposition to slavery meant that the denomination was largely extinct in the South by the end of the 1840s as most Reformed Presbyterians moved to Ohio.Footnote 83
The Irish Reformed Presbyterians firmly supported the policy of censuring slaveholders. In 1831 an article entitled, “Scriptural discipline destructive of slavery,” the Covenanter commented that the excommunication of slaveholders represented the triumph of Christian principles over self-interest. Reflecting the traditional Reformed Presbyterian emphasis on close communion, it maintained that it was inconsistent for churches to condemn slavery, but retain slaveholders in fellowship. Instead, if scriptural discipline was applied “towards all the abettors and supporters of slavery . . . the accursed system would be speedily at an end . . . Let the Churches fearlessly do their duty, and slavery is no more.” This was perhaps wishful thinking, especially in a Voluntaryist context such as the United States where people were not constrained by church establishments. Moreover, the article confessed that the Covenanters had largely died out in the southern states owing to their abolitionism.Footnote 84 It nonetheless reflected the radical abolitionist viewpoint that the churches acted as the bulwarks of slavery.Footnote 85 Subsequent to the schism, the Eastern Reformed Presbyterians also supported the stance of the American Covenanters. At their Synod in 1845 they praised their brethren for banishing slavery from their midst, but lamented that other Christian churches continued to tolerate traffickers in human flesh.Footnote 86
The position of the American Covenanters radicalized as the century progressed. Randolph Roth has argued that the Reverend James Milligan of Vermont had demanded immediate abolition and the integration of African slaves into American society as early as 1819.Footnote 87 However, most Reformed Presbyterians in the United States initially supported the work of the American Colonization Society in assisting freed blacks to migrate to Liberia and the Synod gave the colonization scheme official endorsement in 1828.Footnote 88 Colonization was eventually judged to be a misguided policy, however. Writing in the Monitor in 1849, James McLeod Willson claimed that Reformed Presbyterians had been naïve in initially supporting colonization, as many of its advocates used it “to rivet the chains of the enslaved.”Footnote 89 In 1836 the Covenanters officially adopted Milligan's viewpoint and supported William Lloyd Garrison's demand for immediate emancipation, unaccompanied by colonization.Footnote 90 Hence the Garrisonians generally exempted Reformed Presbyterians from their sweeping condemnations of the churches.Footnote 91
Houston's Covenanter also concurred with the decision to withdraw support for colonization. It reprinted the American Synod's resolutions on the subject which had denounced colonization for making expatriation a condition of emancipation and thus increasing racial prejudice against black people, a view which was shared by the prominent Scottish abolitionist, Zachary Macaulay.Footnote 92 In response to the policy change, Houston expressed “satisfaction in witnessing . . . the faithfulness by which true Covenanters in America have always been distinguished, as the honest and uncompromising friends of the oppressed.”Footnote 93
Alexander McLeod's influence reached beyond his own ecclesiastical circles after he published a pamphlet in 1802 entitled, Negro Slavery Unjustifiable, which argued that American slavery was anti-biblical.Footnote 94 Wylie later claimed that this pamphlet was appreciated by Thomas Jefferson, and suggested that Jefferson entered into correspondence with McLeod subsequent to reading it.Footnote 95 Although the evidence for such extensive correspondence is lacking, Jefferson's correspondent Peter Wendover recommended McLeod's writings. He said “I esteem [McLeod] as one of the best friends of mankind; a zealous advocate for the Liberties of the United States; and a firm supporter of Republican Institutions—he is acknowledged to be a man of sound mind and great abilities.”Footnote 96 Since Jefferson considered McLeod a “highly respected and able preacher” and defender of republican institutions, he rendered “deserved honor to [M]r McLeod for the piety and patriotism of his discourses.”Footnote 97
Thomas Houston's Covenanter welcomed the publication of McLeod's tract at Glasgow in 1831, regarding this as a boon to the cause of West Indian emancipation. Houston accepted McLeod's arguments that slavery was contrary to the rights of man, a violation of four precepts of the Decalogue, and opposed to the benevolent spirit of the gospel. McLeod's rebuttals of racialist assumptions and proslavery exegetical claims were heartily endorsed, with the Covenanter agreeing that Old Testament servitude provided no basis for American slavery and that arguments based on the silence of Christ and the apostles toward Roman slavery were fallacious. Houston's endorsement could hardly have been more emphatic: “we can cordially recommend this valuable discourse, assuring our readers, that seldom have we met with so much masterly argumentation, and happy illustration, in so small a compass.”Footnote 98
One factor that probably endeared Houston to McLeod's position was the latter's commitment to the Old Testament civil penalties, although this is not mentioned in the review. A major part of McLeod's argument was that American slavery was a form of man stealing, which violated the biblical prohibition of Exodus 21:16. Reflecting the traditional Covenanter commitment to the Mosaic judicial laws of common equity, McLeod asserted: “The divine law declares this a crime, and prescribes the punishment. He who stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death. This law was given to the Hebrews as a body politic; but it proceeds on a moral ground, and is, consequently, obligatory still on every subject of moral government.”Footnote 99
This position would have pleased Houston, who believed the penal sanctions that guarded the Decalogue constituted “the penal code of heaven,” which remained valid in the New Testament as it had not been repealed.Footnote 100 Although the dispute between Houston and John Paul was primarily about the broader issue of the civil magistrate's power circa sacra, their respective views regarding the Old Testament penalties were a crucial component in the divergence between them. Paul was of the opinion that Houston's position reeked of Judaism, as he sought “to force upon us the penal code of the judicial law, in reference to the punishment of heresy and idolatry.”Footnote 101 While this may appear tangential, it is crucial to understanding why Paul's critique of slavery was markedly different from that of the Old Lights.
Paul was willing to use antislavery polemics in order to oppose Houston's view of the Old Testament law when he made a speech at Ballymoney in 1844 on Persecution and the Slave-Trade.Footnote 102 This led, however, to a position that was both innovative and confusing. Paul was convinced that although the Old Testament had authorized the punishment of idolaters and the slave trade, both these things had been gradually repealed in the New Testament. Whereas McLeod had argued that slavery was wrong precisely because it violated the Old Testament law, Paul argued that the law authorizing the Israelites to hold the heathen as unpaid bondservants in Leviticus 25:44 did, in fact, sanction the slave trade.Footnote 103 McLeod had been keen to stress that this form of servitude was entirely different from the African slave trade, as it was a state of voluntary servitude that only applied to the Canaanite remnant in the Promised Land. Furthermore, the inclusion of the Gentiles in the church meant that this was to be understood as a law of particular right to Israel and was thus not among the judicial laws of common right which bind all nations.Footnote 104 Paul expressed his admiration for McLeod and Wylie's antislavery labors, but appeared oblivious to methodological differences between himself and McLeod.Footnote 105 Moreover, he overlooked the fact that Wylie, at the time when he was promoting emancipation in the South, had adhered to Houston's view that the penal sanctions against heretics and idolaters were still valid and rejected Paul's cherished notion that the infliction of the penalties amounted to persecution.Footnote 106
In a footnote later added to the printed edition of the speech, Paul did appear to recognize a discrepancy in his argument. Here he was forced to concede that the permission to hold the Canaanites as bondservants was a positive law, not one founded on the principle of general equity. Nonetheless, he continued to poison the well by arguing that the laws against idolaters were of a similar nature.Footnote 107 This was opposed to McLeod's concept that the Old Testament made a distinction between laws which specifically applied to how the Israelites were to treat the Canaanites, and laws which were common to both the Israelites and the heathen nations (Leviticus 24:22).Footnote 108 Hence Old Light Covenanters, on both sides of the Atlantic, opposed Paul's attempt to categorize the penal laws against idolatry in Deuteronomy 13 with the judicial laws of particular right.Footnote 109 Nevertheless, despite their differences in hermeneutics, both Old and New Light Reformed Presbyterians opposed slavery as unbiblical. In both cases, neither of these groups felt the need to abandon the authority of the Bible in order to justify their abolitionism.Footnote 110 Neither side would have concurred with Duncan Rice's conclusion that, however much “later abolitionists might wriggle to pervert its meaning, the Bible is manifestly a pro-slavery document.”Footnote 111 In light of the complex arguments set forth by Old and New Light Reformed Presbyterians, such an assumption is too bold.
III. The Covenanters and the Covenant with Death and Hell
Because of its proslavery provisions, Hugh Brogan has concluded that “[i]t really is no wonder that a nineteenth-century abolitionist called the Constitution a covenant with hell.”Footnote 112 No group was more persuaded of the pernicious nature of the American Constitution than the Covenanters. As Colin Kidd put it, “in the new United States the Reformed Presbyterians acted . . . as a radical conscience, criticizing a constitution that legitimized slavery.”Footnote 113 Using Garrison's phrase, N. R. Johnston later said that the Old Light Covenanters “had refused to make a “Covenant with Death,” and with Hell they never made an agreement.”Footnote 114 Their problems with this document, however, were deeper than mere opposition to slavery. American Old Lights wrote to their Irish brethren to complain of the evils of the US government safe in the knowledge that they concurred with their reasons of dissent from the Constitution.Footnote 115
The Irish Covenanters viewed the Constitution as an impious, infidel, and atheistic document owing to what they perceived as its failure to acknowledge God, to submit to the kingship of Christ, or to recognize the Bible as the nation's law-book.Footnote 116 Writing to the American Synod in 1863, the Reverend John Newel lamented that, notwithstanding the many advantages the American Founding Fathers enjoyed when framing their Constitution, “the supreme authority of the Divine Law was almost entirely overlooked, and the claims of Messiah the Prince, who is the governor of the nations and Prince of the kings of the earth, ignored.”Footnote 117 Such was the Irish Old Lights' opposition to the American Constitution that in 1841 Houston reproached the Reverend William Henry and John Paul for their equivocation at the 1835 Synod on the question of whether or not the Constitution was an atheistic document.Footnote 118
The infidelity of the Constitution was also useful to the Old Lights on both sides of the Atlantic in their polemics against Voluntaryism. They pointed to the American Voluntaries as being in league with a government that rejected biblical law as evidence of Voluntaryism's ethical poverty.Footnote 119 Since the United States refused to embrace the establishment principle by conferring official protection and favor upon the church of Christ, its government was judged to be fundamentally anti-covenanting and opposed to Second Reformation principles.Footnote 120 Further evidence to substantiate this was provided in January 1855 when the Monitor reprinted extracts from the Reformed Presbyterian Catechism by the American Covenanter, Dr. William L. Roberts.Footnote 121 He claimed that Jews, Deists, and atheists could all hold office as a result of the Constitution's failure to impose religious tests. Roberts also cited the Treaty with Tripoli (1796), which asserted, “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion” and was in no way hostile to Islam.Footnote 122 The supreme law of the United States was the will of “we the people,” which was deemed to be further evidence of its practical atheism. Covenanters reasoned that in such a nation there could be no concept of transcendental justice. This was because any idea of justice that they would establish would not be founded on the attribute of God, but upon whatever “we the people” determined to be just.
Consequently, it was not surprising that the Constitution had established a system of robbery when it made provision for slavery.Footnote 123 The Covenanter argued in 1861 that although figures such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams personally detested slavery, the Constitution was undeniably a proslavery document.Footnote 124 As proof of this, it referred to the three-fifths of a person clause in Article 1, Section 2 and to the fact that it guaranteed the continuance of the slave trade until 1808.Footnote 125 They would have agreed with Peter Kolchin's conclusion that the Constitution effectively reinforced slavery by granting it the federal government's protection.Footnote 126 Abolitionist politicians who worked under the Constitution were deemed to be inconsistent, as the Constitution bound them to maintain slavery where it already existed, a conclusion which pleased the Garrisonians.Footnote 127 Since Independence, the existence of emancipation in the northern states did not absolve them from continued guilt in the matter, because the Constitution bound them to return fugitive slaves to their southern masters (Article 4, Sections 2 and 3).Footnote 128 The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was thus judged to be the logical outworking of the constitutional principle, albeit one that was condemned as unbiblical. It was, nevertheless, hoped that this “iniquitous measure” would incite disgust against slavery in America and cause many to dissent from the Constitution in favor of the “‘Higher Law’ of God's Word.”Footnote 129 Covenanters also believed that the Constitution regarded slaves as mere chattels, comparable to a man's cattle or tools. Evidence of this could be seen in the Dred Scott decision of 1857, when it was decided that Africans had no rights as citizens.Footnote 130
The Covenanter observed that Washington's hope that slavery would gradually die out had not been fulfilled. Instead, slavery had rapidly expanded as a result of slave breeding and covert imports from the West Indies. The massive expansion of cotton imports, moreover, had greatly boosted the institution and hugely increased the value of slave property.Footnote 131 Steven Deyle has basically agreed with their economic assessment; he points out that the monetary value of the slaves exceeded the combined worth of all the banks, railroads, and factories in America.Footnote 132 Regardless of its constitutional validity, the Irish Covenanters would have concurred with John Crozier that slavery “is a sin against God and . . . that no constitutional guarantees in its defense have any validity.”Footnote 133 In light of the protection that it had given to slavery, and other evils, Reformed Presbyterians in both Ireland and America maintained that the only consistent path was that of unqualified dissent from the Constitution.Footnote 134 Indeed, it was the rejection of the Constitution that not only rendered them immediate abolitionists, but radical abolitionists as well.Footnote 135
IV. Proslavery Revivalism and the American Civil War
Irish and American Covenanters had long feared that slavery and other national sins would provoke the wrath of God against America.Footnote 136 James Renwick Willson's Tokens of the Divine Displeasure (1836) interpreted riots, cholera, and various agricultural and commercial disasters, as the judgment of heaven for the infidel proceedings of the New York legislature, slavery, and President Andrew Jackson's irreligious and anti-abolitionist policies.Footnote 137 In its review, the Covenanter said, “it is to be wondered at, that God should take vengeance upon a people for such tremendous crime, thus perpetuated and upheld under the highest legislative authority.”Footnote 138 The Irish Reformed Presbyterians paid close attention to events that seemed to indicate God's anger against the United States. They were fearful of anti-abolitionist violence, and bewailed the murder of Elijah Lovejoy by a proslavery mob at Illinois in 1837.Footnote 139 The Covenanters also regarded slavery as a source of discord among the churches. As early as 1834, Moses Roney and Thomas Sproull wrote to Houston arguing that ecclesiastical strife was evidence of Divine judgment upon unrighteous institutions.Footnote 140 Their prediction of schism was accurate, with the Old School-New School split among the Presbyterians occurring in 1837–1838—a division partly (albeit relatively marginally) motivated by slavery.Footnote 141 Moreover, in 1845 Houston received correspondence concerning recent splits among Methodists and Baptists over slavery.Footnote 142 The Irish Covenanters interpreted this as evidence that Reformed Presbyterians were influencing some other Christians to embrace antislavery sentiments.Footnote 143 By 1858 the American New Lights told the Eastern Reformed Presbyterians that “we are gradually, but surely, approaching the period when a correct public opinion will prevail on this subject throughout our land.”Footnote 144 Nevertheless, the Irish Old Lights remained unimpressed with the religious condition of many northern churches. In January 1861, the Covenanter deprecated the reprobation of abolitionists by northern churchmen and accused New Light Covenanters of attending meetings in which abolitionism was condemned.Footnote 145
They were also displeased with the New Lights participation in revival meetings, which reflected deeper concerns about the American Revival of 1857–1858. Initially, the Covenanter was quite favorable to the American Awakening, and argued that agitation surrounding “Bleeding Kansas” and the recent commercial crisis had served to alert people to the judgment awaiting the nation if it did not repent.Footnote 146 Reformed Presbyterians, therefore, did not go as far as Isaac Nelson in totally condemning the American Revival.Footnote 147 Nonetheless, Old Light Covenanters on both sides of the Atlantic had grave misgivings concerning an Awakening conducted by those “deeply implicated in the crime of slavery” and which had not led to the forsaking of that sin.Footnote 148 In fact, unity was often maintained during the Revival by proscribing discussion of “controverted points” such as slavery.Footnote 149 By 1861 the American Synod wrote to their Irish brethren to confirm that, though some good had come out of the Awakening in the United States, “we cannot in view of its results regard it as worthy of a place among the true revivals with which the church has been largely blessed.”Footnote 150 The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 probably confirmed the suspicion that 1857–1858 was largely spurious.
Although they had been abolitionists for a generation, the Irish Covenanters did not become pro-northern partisans when the Civil War broke out.Footnote 151 Proslavery sentiments were viewed as being so deeply entrenched, even in the North, that the Covenanter predicted in 1838 that dissolution of the Union would be the cost of emancipation.Footnote 152 This does not mean, however, that their position lends any weight to the Neo-Confederate myth that the conflict was not about slavery. It may not have been fought for emancipation, but any suggestion that the conflict had no relation to slavery is to be dismissed as ahistorical.Footnote 153 In January 1861, the Covenanter recognized that the southern states were infuriated at the election of a moderate antislavery President, Abraham Lincoln. This had led to the secession of various states in the lower South, but, it observed, the secessionists would find it more difficult to convince the slave breeding states in the upper South.Footnote 154 This was owing to fears that South Carolina would reopen the slave trade and thus ruin the border states' property in slaves. Although the Covenanter believed that Lincoln showed “little evidence of practical religion,” his election was preferable to that of an overtly proslavery candidate.Footnote 155 The Covenanter discerned that the Confederates wanted to protect and extend slavery, whereas Lincoln sought to stop the peculiar institution from expanding. This reflected what Lincoln had said to Alexander Stephens in December 1860 when explaining how the northern Republican position diverged from that of the southern apologists for slavery. At this stage, however, Lincoln had no intention of interfering with slavery where it already existed.Footnote 156 Little wonder that the Irish Covenanters feared that he would make concessions to appease the South. Hence they were of the opinion that dissolution of the union might be the best means of abolishing slavery, hoping that secession would lead to the South's economic downfall as foreign nations would refuse to receive their exports or that a slave insurrection would effectively end the system.Footnote 157
When hostilities eventually did break out in April 1861 the Irish Reformed Presbyterian Synod condemned the “unprincipled and unnatural civil war in America, so fiercely waged by the Slave-holding States against those of the North in defense of a most unrighteous and intolerable system of slavery.” Evidently they believed the Confederates to be the aggressors, whose chief end in waging war was the protection of slavery. At the same time, however, they also viewed it as a cause for thanksgiving that the struggle had the potential to result in abolition.Footnote 158 It is worth noting that they were careful to avoid crude patriotism when in November 1861 they denounced Britain as “the principal support of slavery, by being the chief purchaser of cotton in the Slave States, and she may now, through the dearth of cotton, be punished for this”—a prophecy that was basically fulfilled by the effects of the Cotton Famine in Britain and Ulster.Footnote 159 Moreover, in 1862 they acknowledged that the Civil War had negative effects upon British trade and that this was also a judgment from God.Footnote 160 Nor were they uncritical of everything that had been written by fellow Reformed Presbyterians in relation to the political situation in the United States, as even the works of highly respected figures were subjected to scrutiny. The Covenanter took the opportunity to correct Alexander McLeod's view that America would largely escape the judgments spoken of in the book of Revelation that were to be poured out on anti-Christian Europe (although he did say that America would be severely judged for its own sins).Footnote 161 McLeod assumed that the lack of persecution in America meant that its crimes were small compared with other civilized nations, a conclusion which the Covenanter found completely untenable in light of the wrongs inflicted upon blacks and the churches participation in such evil.Footnote 162
The Covenanter maintained that the sympathies of British Christians were with the northern states, notwithstanding the claims of political journals to the contrary. Although it recognized that some questioned the expediency of coercing the South back into the Union, nevertheless, since the Confederate States regarded slavery as fundamental to its existence the Covenanter thought that the Confederates deserved no sympathy from British Christians.Footnote 163 In this respect, Reformed Presbyterians differed from some other British abolitionists, including Isaac Nelson and George Gilfillan of Dundee, who highly opposed the Federal cause.Footnote 164 They reasoned that the Confederacy was “pledged to uphold the most infamous system of oppression and villainy on the face of the earth” having “set at naught all rights Divine and human.”Footnote 165 The Civil War was also seen as the vindication of the American Covenanters' stance on slavery, and so the Irish Synod wrote to the American Synod in 1861 congratulating them on how “God has vindicated in his own time, the righteousness of your views, and the propriety of your position.”Footnote 166
However, the Irish Covenanters fell short of calling upon their American brethren to take up arms in defense of the Union. Instead they reminded Reformed Presbyterians in the United States that, in their opinion, covenanting principles precluded them from fighting for either side. This was because the Federal government continued to ignore Christ's kingship and had not made abolition a war aim, thus no consistent abolitionist could fight in order to restore a proslavery Union. Covenanters could only stand aloof from the conflict, using the weapons of faith and prayer lest they surrender their testimony against the evils of the US Government.Footnote 167 This was to become even more of an issue after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation came into effect in January 1863 (issued in preliminary form the previous September). The Covenanter was less than enthusiastic about the proclamation, regarding it as a “partial measure.” Nonetheless, it did indicate that the Civil War was likely to bring about the “doom of slavery.”Footnote 168 Irish Covenanters increasingly feared that the Americans would be tempted to compromise their principles due to the extenuating circumstances; the Synod made this a cause for fasting.Footnote 169 On behalf of the Irish Synod, John Newel reminded the Americans that even if the war should result in the total abolition of slavery, something that Lincoln's proclamation had not done, grave defects still remained in the Constitution.Footnote 170
The criticism from Ireland about the federal government irritated the American Covenanters. There had been some early tensions when the Belfast Covenanter annoyed its contemporary in Philadelphia during the infamous Trent affair in November 1861. Irish Covenanters complained about the manner in which Captain Charles Wilkes, a Union naval officer, removed Confederate commissioners from the British vessel. They believed this to be a violation of international law and feared that this could provoke war between Britain and the United States; and so they demanded an apology from the federal government. The Americans responded with incredulity that Reformed Presbyterians could express such sentiments, which they believed would not have been out of place in The Times and other Tory periodicals.Footnote 171 Richard Blackett has concluded that the Trent affair helped to raise “nationalist hackles” and left a residue of bitterness notwithstanding an apology being issued by the federal government in December.Footnote 172 It would appear that, despite their respective criticisms of the British and American systems, Covenanters in America and Ireland occasionally succumbed to such sentiments. American Reformed Presbyterians thought that their Irish brethren did not carefully distinguish between loyalty to their country and support for an immoral constitution. They argued that while Covenanters should dissent from immoral constitutions, support for the welfare of their country was congruous with covenanting principles.Footnote 173
Tension between the Covenanters on both sides of the Atlantic was further provoked in March 1864 when the Belfast Covenanter published an account of a meeting between President Lincoln and an American Synod committee on constitutional amendments. While favorable to the call for constitutional recognition of God, Christ, biblical law, and the abolition of slavery, Houston questioned the expediency of Covenanters addressing a ruler of an immoral system and took exception to the assertion that the Constitution was “excellent and unrivalled . . . in many respects.”Footnote 174 In response to such pettiness, James McLeod Willson defended the Americans' conduct and alleged that the Irish Synod had sent deputations to the British Parliament about various issues. Moreover, in reply to Houston's complaint about northern racism, Willson praised the federal government for clothing and educating former slaves.Footnote 175 Houston responded by highlighting the fictitious nature of Willson's claims about Irish deputations and reminded him that American Reformed Presbyterians had often used much stronger language against the Constitution. Furthermore, he warned that it is inconsistent for Covenanters to give material aid in support of a war that is fought in order to restore a Union based on a constitution they condemned. Houston continued to reject the notion that the Civil War was fought for abolition and said “[h]ow often do our brethren need to be told that the present American conflict is not for the extinction of slavery.” Notwithstanding Lincoln's proclamation, the war had not been fought for emancipation, as demonstrated by the president's public declarations, the continued racism of northern officers and citizens, and the on-going protection of slavery in the border states. Houston also condemned acts of Erastian interference in ecclesiastical affairs perpetrated by military officers, who required members of church courts to take oaths of allegiance to the Constitution before conducting business.Footnote 176
As if to demonstrate the ostensible righteousness of the northern cause, the American Synod wrote to the Irish Covenanters claiming that Lincoln had laid their views before the Congress and judged that this was evidence of improved public morals.Footnote 177 When a US deputation, consisting of the Reverends J. L. McCartney and H. H. George, visited Ireland in 1864, Professor James Dick praised them for continuing to dissent from the Constitution. Nonetheless, it was obvious that McCartney and George were deeply patriotic; they were keen to stress that British Christians should sympathize with the North.Footnote 178 Such sentiments were also expressed at a subsequent meeting on the Civil War in Newtownards Reformed Presbyterian meeting house.Footnote 179 It is interesting to note that the main speaker on this occasion was not a Covenanter minister, but the Reverend George Hay Shanks of Boardmills.Footnote 180 Shanks had been an outspoken supporter of the North and he was critical of others in the PCI, such as Isaac Nelson and the Banner of Ulster, whom he judged to be too lenient toward the Confederacy.Footnote 181 According to historian Richard Carwardine, however, Reformed Presbyterians' hopes for constitutional amendment were dashed. This was owing to a combination of opposition from anti-theocratic evangelicals, non-Christians, and northerners' battlefield success.Footnote 182 Hence American Covenanters could not endorse the Republican Party's “Christless and Godless platform” and refused to vote for Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election.Footnote 183
As the war progressed, the American Covenanters were divided on the question of the propriety of fighting for the Union. W. Melancthon Glasgow argued that those Covenanters who took up arms against the Confederacy did so on the basis that they dissented from the immoralities of the US government.Footnote 184 In 1863, the American Synod authorized an oath to the country, but not to the Constitution. A substantial minority believed that the distinction between the country and the Constitution was not valid in their particular circumstances.Footnote 185 The Irish Reformed Presbyterians remained cautious, with the Covenanter expressing sympathy with the views of the minority while recognizing the complexity of Americans' predicament.Footnote 186 Later the Irish Covenanters exhorted those who thought participation was justified to demonstrate that the federal government's war aims and the oaths required of soldiers involved no surrender of covenanting principles. It appeared that the Irish were anxious not to do anything that would lead to a repeat of the schism in 1833. Thus they warned the Americans against rashly accusing each other of either defection or of a lack of patriotism; and they exhorted differing brethren to be willing to forgive one another and to heal their divisions. They seemed acutely aware that the Irish church needed to act with great prudence in this matter, especially in a time of such public excitement, while generally disapproving of active participation in the war.Footnote 187
Notwithstanding their criticism of Lincoln, the Irish Covenanters joined in the outpouring of sorrow following his assassination in April 1865, which they claimed had “sent a thrill of horror through all ranks and classes in these lands.”Footnote 188 They regretted it had taken place in a theatre, yet viewed his murder as an occasion for “bitter lamentation.” Irish Covenanters praised Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, which refused to claim the moral high ground exclusively for the North and was marked with humility and a lack of malice, for its “full recognition of Divine Providence in the judgments sent upon the American nation.”Footnote 189 Lincoln recognized that the war was God's judgment against both North and South for “American slavery,” a conclusion with which Covenanters concurred.Footnote 190 This was remarkable coming from a man who never joined a church and who had been a religious skeptic. Interestingly, historian Eric Foner argues that Lincoln underwent a spiritual awakening toward the end of his life. His address contrasted favorably with the self-righteous triumphalism of many northern clergy, and thus Foner concludes that if the Second Inaugural was a sermon, “it was quite different from those that northerners had grown accustomed to hearing during the Civil War.”Footnote 191 The Covenanter viewed the assassination as a cause for deep humiliation by the increasingly frivolous and dissipated northern people, and believed that the providential removal of Lincoln further demonstrated God's displeasure at the wickedness of America's atheistic constitution.Footnote 192
In spite of their disdain for triumphalism, the Irish Synod recognized the end of the Civil War and the emancipation of four million slaves as causes of thanksgiving in 1865 and 1866.Footnote 193 Houston and Willson evidently had gotten over their earlier rift by June 1865, as Willson and the Reverend John Stott addressed the Irish Synod. In response, Houston moved and Josias Chancellor seconded a motion recording their sympathy with the American brethren and support for their efforts to extend religious instruction and scriptural education to the liberated slaves through the mission to the freedmen.Footnote 194 Such efforts were appreciated beyond the bounds of Reformed Presbyterianism, as Willson narrated their work among former slaves before the General Assembly of the PCI.Footnote 195 Willson claimed that prominent PCI clergy, such as John Edgar, John Rogers, and Henry Cooke appreciated these endeavors.Footnote 196 It is vital, however, to emphasize the lack of gloating among Irish Reformed Presbyterians over the Confederate defeat or emancipation. In 1861 they had warned that there “is every reason to apprehend that the present dire scourge is only the beginning of sorrows.”Footnote 197 Viewed in light of America's long history of racial conflict and discrimination, not to mention the role of Christians in extenuating it, such modesty was appropriate.Footnote 198
V. Conclusion
A pertinent question is what influenced the Irish Covenanters to oppose American slavery so vehemently. Although it is a mistake to reduce their antislavery sentiments simply to questions of biblical interpretation alone, there is no doubt that scripture's prohibition on man stealing was a major factor behind their opposition to chattel slavery. This is especially true in the case of Old Lights such as Houston, whose view of the Old Testament would have led him to regard man stealing as a capital crime. The theory of monogenesis was a major influence, as it logically entailed belief in the unity and equality of the human race. Any assertion of polygenesis would have been viewed as contrary to the doctrines of original sin and the atonement, as these dogmas were contingent upon a belief that all races were descended from Adam. If Adam was not the federal head of the whole human race, then his sin could not have been imputed to all mankind. Likewise, if there was not ultimately one human race then the work of the second Adam (Christ) would have been ineffectual for the redemption of men from all kinds of racial backgrounds.Footnote 199 Evidence of this influencing the Covenanters can be seen in a review of Thomas Smyth's Unity of the Human Races.Footnote 200 This work was praised in the Monitor as a corrective to “infidel objections” against monogenesis, yet the irony is that Smyth was an anti-abolitionist from South Carolina.Footnote 201 Notwithstanding this, in a letter to Thomas Chalmers in 1846 Houston referred to Smyth as “[m]y esteemed friend.”Footnote 202 It is possible that some Reformed Presbyterians knew Smyth when he was at the Belfast Academical Institution as a youth. This may explain the inconsistency of holding Smyth in such high esteem despite the fact he was opposed to abolitionism.Footnote 203
The Covenanter notion of resistance to tyranny and absolutism was a factor in their antislavery ideology. In the classic works of covenanting political theology, Lex, Rex (1644) and A Hind Let Loose (1687), Samuel Rutherford and Alexander Shields recognized that slavery was an evil contrary to nature.Footnote 204 Another factor that may have influenced them was the enslavement of some early Scottish Covenanters during the seventeenth-century persecution.Footnote 205 Since their spiritual ancestors had suffered enslavement, it is possible that this made Reformed Presbyterians sympathetic to others in bondage. The influence of anti-popery sentiments must also be taken into account; Thomas Houston explicitly linked the fall of slavery with the demise of Rome's spiritual oppression: “as slavery is doomed of God, and abhorred of man, so the Papacy, its inseparable ally, must with it be speedily swept from the earth.”Footnote 206
At a more philosophical level, the influence of Common Sense Realism should not be discounted. Early nineteenth-century evangelicals in Britain, Canada, and the United States absorbed this philosophy.Footnote 207 Andrew Holmes maintains that the education pupils received at the Belfast Institution involved a “significant dose” of Scottish Common Sense Philosophy, a point which may be relevant to understanding the outlook of former Belfast Institution students such as Houston.Footnote 208 Indeed, the fact that the Irish Reformed Presbyterians, with the possible exception of John Paul, did not feel any need to extensively develop the arguments of McLeod and others indicated the influences of Common Sense upon their thinking. On the other hand, since Ray Wilcox claimed that McLeod “presents practically every argument against slavery that was to appear in abolition papers during the next half century” perhaps there was no need to expand on his findings.Footnote 209
Although the Genoveses overstate the case in relation to abolitionists and the US Declaration of Independence, it cannot be denied that its emphasis upon the rights of man influenced the Covenanters. Reformed Presbyterians in America, Scotland, and Ireland partly condemned slavery because it was a violation of man's God given right to liberty.Footnote 210 Such sentiments were given official expression when the American Civil War was deemed by the Irish Synod in 1862 to be Divine judgment against “systematic and persevering disregard of the rights of God and man.”Footnote 211
It is also probable that the antislavery sentiments of British evangelicals were an influence upon the Irish Covenanters.Footnote 212 Evangelicalism in the nineteenth century highly influenced the denomination, so it would be naïve to think that they were not following more general trends.Footnote 213 On the other hand, the overtly theocratic emphasis of the Old Light Reformed Presbyterians rendered their basis for opposing American slavery somewhat unique from that of other evangelicals. It even distinguished them from other orthodox Presbyterians in Ireland who had apparently largely abandoned the idea of a covenanted state that upheld the first table of the law.Footnote 214
Antislavery also appears to have been part of a broader desire for social reform among Covenanters. Both Old and New Lights yoked it alongside the promotion of poor relief, care for the weak, and the condemnation of sinful amusements.Footnote 215 In relation to this, it is interesting to observe that Thomas Houston described Francis Calder, a leading figure in the Belfast Anti-Slavery Society and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, as “an esteemed friend.”Footnote 216 John Paul's Eastern Presbytery, furthermore, also viewed West Indian emancipation as a practical outworking of the British Parliament's Reform Act of 1832.Footnote 217 The above factors, which combine an aversion to tyranny, arbitrary power, and the promotion of benevolence, would appear to reflect the influence of Enlightenment sensibilities.Footnote 218 Although this would have chimed well with certain traditional Covenanter preoccupations, it may also reflect the continuing influence of some United Irish ideas among Reformed Presbyterians.Footnote 219
In light of these considerations, the antislavery views of Reformed Presbyterians cannot be explained in mono-causal terms. A more difficult question, however, is what persuaded them to embrace a radical as opposed to a gradualist approach. It would appear that the Irish Covenanters had embraced immediate abolition, without colonization, prior to their American brethren. This may have been owing to geographical differences. There were no slaves in the United Kingdom itself, which meant that they did not have to worry about the practical consequences of having a large population of former slaves living in their midst. Alexander McLeod, on the other hand, feared that emancipated blacks would suffer at the hands of whites if they continued to live in the United States.Footnote 220 Also, they may have been influenced by the clarion call for immediate emancipation issued by the Scottish evangelical Andrew Thomson in 1830.Footnote 221 Whatever may have been the strengths or weaknesses of their arguments at certain points, we can only speculate as to what would have happened in the United States had all Christian churches embraced the Covenanters' call for immediate emancipation. It may be wishful thinking to assume that this would have led to abolition, yet it would at least have removed ecclesiastical approval of slavery. Regretfully, America would have to pass through the fiery trial of Civil War before the peculiar institution was abolished.
In conclusion, the opposition to antebellum slavery by the Covenanters in Ireland, Scotland, and America is proof that theological conservatism cannot be equated with conservatism toward the peculiar institution. On the contrary, as the Reverends A. M. Milligan and J. Renwick W. Sloane told Lincoln, they were “an antislavery church of the most radical school.”Footnote 222 This demonstrates that it is a non-sequitor to assume that theological and political conservatism are always inextricably linked. Furthermore, Mark Noll has observed that the religion of African American Christians in the Civil Rights movement displayed a capacity to link conservative theology with progressive social action.Footnote 223 Reformed Presbyterians could perhaps be seen as forerunners of later groupings which married theological conservatism with political radicalism. Indeed, the position of the Covenanters is best described as one of radical orthodoxy, which combined rigid confessional theology with immediate emancipation. Garrison recognized this when he privately acknowledged they were “comparatively radical on the subject of slavery,” while complaining that their orthodoxy meant “they think more of sect than of the slave.”Footnote 224 Covenanters likewise also praised Garrison and Wendell Phillips for their zeal for the rights of man, but desired that they would pay more attention to rights of God and the royal prerogatives of Jesus Christ.Footnote 225
What made Old Light Covenanters' approach distinctive among Irish Protestant abolitionists was that it was part of a broader critique of the US Constitution and an outgrowth of their views concerning dissent from immoral political systems, which transcended the specific issue of slavery. The divergence of opinion among the Old and New Lights in Ireland concerning the ideological basis for opposing slavery reveals important differences as to how the Mosaic Law should be interpreted and applied. Paul's attempt to yoke antislavery and toleration together was a clever polemic device, and one which reflected evolving views of the Old Testament judicial law among nineteenth-century Reformed divines.Footnote 226 Nevertheless, it would be an oversimplification to assume that Paul's approach was progressive, while Thomas Houston's was reactionary. Both sides were firmly convinced that chattel slavery was wrong, and Houston's Covenanter clearly advocated immediate abolition and opposed racial prejudice against black Americans.
Further evidence of the radical orthodoxy of the Old Light Covenanters is seen in their rejection of the US Constitution as an antichristian document. Although slavery was not the only factor behind this antagonism, it was, nonetheless, a major reason as to why Reformed Presbyterians viewed the US Constitution as a covenant with death and hell. The Covenanters feared that the legal protection given to slavery in the US Constitution would provoke Divine vengeance against the United States, as is revealed by the frequent comments Reformed Presbyterians made upon sectional tension prior to the American Civil War. The refusal of the Irish Covenanters to become uncritical apologists for the North alerts us to the difficult situation that many abolitionists found themselves in during the conflict and the complexity of British responses to it. Indeed, the tensions between Irish and American Old Lights shed light on the complications of maintaining a position of dissent from immoral political institutions in times of great chaos. It may also alert us to the fact that political dissent and its application were more nuanced than we might be tempted to think.Footnote 227 Furthermore, the refusal of the Irish Covenanters to gloat at the end of the conflict appears to have indicated sound judgment on their part, as the abolition of slavery was not the end of America's racial troubles.
