To deliver what could be called a "jet-fuel can't melt steel beams"-esque revelation, it was mentioned today in class that Benjamin M. Palmer, the namesake of Rhodes College's own Palmer hall, was a staunch proponent for slavery - even many years after it had been abolished. In our discussion about David Walker's Appeal in relation to the Nat Turner rebellion, religion became a focal point of the argument. I believe Claire asked a question along the lines of whether or not there could be a Christian ideology that would have directly refuted David Walker's "heresy" in this case. This efficiently titled website has a transcript of Benjamin M. Palmer's Thanksgiving Address, a sermon widely believed to be one among many http://civilwarcauses.org/palmer.htm. One paragraph that stuck out to me reads as such:
This duty is bound upon us again as the constituted guardians of the slaves themselves. Our lot is not more implicated in theirs, than their lot in ours; in our mutual relations we survive or perish together. The worst foes of the black race are those who have intemeddled on their behalf. We know better than others that every attribute of their character fits them for dependence and servitude. By nature the most affectionate and loyal of all races beneath the sun, they are also the most helpless; and no calamity can befall them greater than the loss of that protection they enjoy under this patriarchal system. Indeed, the experiment has been grandly tried of precipitating them upon freedom which they know not how to enjoy; and the dismal results are before us in statistics that astonish the world. With the fairest portions of the earth in their possession and with the advantage of a long discipline as cultivators of the soil, their constitutional indolence has converted the most beautiful islands of the sea into a howling waste. It is not too much to say that if the South should, at this moment, surrender every slave, the wisdom of the entire world, united in solemn council, could not solve the question of their disposal. Their transportation to Africa, even if it were feasible, would be but the most refined cruelty; they must perish with starvation before they could have time to relapse into their primitive barbarism. Their residence here, in the presence of the vigorous Saxon race, would be but the signal for their rapid extermination before they had time to waste away through listlessness, filth and vice. Freedom would be their doom; and equally from both they call upon us, their providential guardians, to be protected. I know this argument will be scoffed abroad as the hypocritical cover thrown over our own cupidity and selfishness; but every Southern master knows its truth and feels its power. My servant, whether born in my house or bought with my money, stands to me in the relation of a child. Though providentially owing me service, which, providentially, I am bound to exact, he is, nevertheless, my brother and my friend, and I am to him a guardian and a father. He leans upon me for protection, for counsel, and for blessing; and so long as the relation continues, no power but the power of Almighty God shall come between him and me. Were there no argument but this, it binds upon us the providential duty of preserving the relation that we may save him from a doom worse than death.
Now that's just icky. So yes, I believe there was an ideological Christianity that fought directly against the kind of liberation theology that someone like David Walker professed. If this is the birth of a new attempt by whites to further justify their divined superiority, one need only look a few decades later in 1887 to Thomas Nelson Page's "Marse Chan." The short story (which you should read), in essence, in extremely dialectical prose (an innovation of its time), is the tale of a poor, old, bregrudgingly-freed slave who gladly tells a complete stranger the heartbreaking tale of how his beloved master died. Sam, without his master, is lost in the world, and the narrator, presumably an extension of Page himself, drives right on by in his carriage and six happy to have just so happened to hear such a badass story just in the off chance. In the end, the moral of the story seems to be that one should drive through the country because it's beautiful and romantic and everybody loves each other. This sentiment, which I think shows pretty direct correlations to the ideological preachings of Palmer, proves to be just that: romance and denial.
This analysis of the "happy slave/peasant" ideology of the time is really interesting to consider, and my first thought is to apply it to art, especially art portraying servants! Specifically in Europe during the 17th century Baroque Dutch "genre" paintings, there's a longstanding tradition of the "pleasant peasant" - people who serve their "superiors" happily and benefit from some kind of pseudo-feudal protection that Palmer almost references in this passage. I mean, his "providential" excuse for the relationship between slaves and slave owners is closer to a "man's best friend" comparison, but it is interesting to consider these kinds of paintings portraying those who work for a nation in a happy light when their work was grueling and endless. (A good example is Pieter Bruegel's "Peasant Dance" c. 1568). A better example of this "providential" slave/master relationship is in the Dutch painter Jan Verkolje's portrait "Johan de la Faille" (1674) because his obviously-African slave stands next to not one, but two dogs (symbols of fidelity and loyalty) as if to imply that their relationship is normal and even familial, but with the understanding that his slave is still his servant (because we see him bowing and holding his master's two dogs).
ReplyDeleteNot sure if anyone else will find this interesting, but I had fun thinking about it!
It is extremely interesting to see Palmer's ideas here as a kind of precursor to the "scientific" racism that would becoming so predominant throughout America and Europe in the late 1800's. The pervasive scientific thought was that only the northern european whites could be counted as the "true" whites - a thought that served to justify colonization of Africa and Asia as well as explain the economic differences between Northern and Southern Europe in the late 1800's. In particular, Palmer's mention of southern whites as the "vigorous Saxon race" drew me to this comparison because European scholars who touted racism in science often drew on the "germanic" peoples of ancient Europe (saxon, frankish, etc.) as the most pure of any race and therefore entitled to rule over all the other races. Obviously this served as a convenient justification for imperialism and all the brutality that came along with it, but it is extremely interesting to see the sentiments of scientific racism in Palmer's thanksgiving address - it did not occur to me that southern racism was based on the ideals of only particular whites being entitled to ownership, though this makes sense given that the vast majority of southern whites were not slave owners.
ReplyDeletePalmer's sermon is a classic argument for the plantation mentality, that whites have the best interest of blacks in mind and ought to control their behavior accordingly. We have been learning about the need whites have had to maintain social control over blacks throughout history. It might be easy to point to Palmer as a sickening example of white paternalism, but this mentality is prevalent today in many aspects.
ReplyDeleteOften developers subconsciously subscribe to this way of thinking. Redevelopments in low-income communities of color are often conjured up without ever consulting the residents that live in the neighborhood about what they want or don't want to happen in their community. Development looks good from one perspective, "We are raising the value of the area!" But as we know, gentrification displaces low-income people of color, devastating communities. But developers often believe they are doing residents of the neighborhood a service (or don't factor their needs/opinions at all).