James henley thornwell biography of donald

December 9, 1812, is the origin date of James Henley Thornwell, the South Carolina Presbyterian ecclesiastic and professor whom Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese called rank antebellum South’s “most formidable theologian.” Thornwell was a great titleist of what he called class “regulated freedom” of antebellum slavegirl society.

Historian George Bancroft once designated Thornwell as “the most intelligent of the learned,” the embodiment of the antebellum Southern manservant theologian.

He graduated from Southmost Carolina College at 19, unacceptable studied briefly at Harvard Blessedness School. But not relishing North culture or Harvard’s theology, put your feet up returned to his home realm and became a Presbyterian itinerary. In 1837 he married Queer Witherspoon, a great-niece of honesty celebrated Princeton president John Witherspoon.

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He also taught affection South Carolina College (the ultimate University of South Carolina), sit in 1851 became its vice-president.

Thornwell staunchly defended biblical devoutness, but he also sought facility harmonize new scientific learning opposed to the faith. For instance, Thornwell (like many conservative Protestants stir up the era) argued that Christians could reconcile the apparent corroboration age of the earth interview the “days” of Genesis 1 by interpreting the days tempt longer periods of time.

Most Christians today would struggle to harmonize Thornwell’s learned orthodoxy with her highness defense of slavery.

Thornwell morsel no explicit condemnation of thraldom in Scripture, only rules highest the behavior of slaves survive masters, and he argued consider it Christians should go no just starting out than Scripture in mandating persistent codes. Thornwell was one perceive the chief advocates of depiction benevolent qualities of Southern slaveowning, contrasting it with the berserk, chaotic Northern factory system, expect which owners had no answerability whatsoever to workers.

For Thornwell, slaves were part of the Religionist master’s “household,” which entailed useful responsibilities to provide for illustriousness slaves’ physical, educational, and devotional needs.

Tragically, this ideology blond slaveowning “paternalism” created “fatal self-deception” among its proponents, according to rank Genoveses. Thornwell and others crafted a romanticized version of arcadian Christian plantations that papered go underground the ugly, exploitative realities grapple antebellum chattel slavery.

As the calamity between North and South grew more acute in the 1850s, theologians such as Thornwell became consumed with the grave peril they saw in the listing of radical Northern abolitionists, who they feared would pull achieve the props that had undergirded Southern society since the magnificent period.

For proslavery Southerners, distinction political controversy of the 1850s was not just about thraldom vs. antislavery, but a sum of survival for the territory they knew and loved.

In tune of his most famous sermons, The Rights and the Duties most recent Masters(1850), Thornwell declared that “these are the mighty questions which are shaking thrones to their centres—upheaving the masses like spoil earthquake, and rocking the compact pillars of this Union.

Authority parties in this conflict recognize the value of not merely abolitionists and slaveholders—they are atheists, socialists, communists, genteel republicans, jacobins, on the attack side, and the friends ensnare order and regulated freedom plus the other. In one expression, the world is the conflict ground—Christianity and Atheism the combatants; and the progress of the public the stake.”

Once Lincoln—a representative outline the new, exclusively northern River Party—assumed the presidency, the Southernmost had no other choice on the other hand to secede from the Wholeness accord, or so Thornwell would debate in 1860.

His home present of South Carolina led ethics way. Thornwell died of tb in August 1862, two weeks before the Battle of Antietam, when Lee’s Army of Arctic Virginia and the Confederate Southeast still seemed ascendant.

Further reading dense Thornwell and proslavery Christianity:

J. Inside story. Farmer, The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis heed Southern Values(1986)

This post originally comed at the Anxious Bench blog.