Chapter 12: The Shame of a Nation
Chapter Twelve
The Shame of a Nation
“My boss is such a slave driver. He reminds me of Dagwood’s boss in the comics, Mr. What’s-his-name. Always yelling, piling on more work, never showing me any appreciation, making me work on weekends and at night.”
“I’ve been slaving away all day, trying to make things nice for you. And you can’t even say thanks?”
“I’m just a slave to the system. The only way to keep up my house, my cars, my kids’ school and soccer and swimming and dance is to put in longer and longer hours.”
All those people are using “slavery” as an exaggeration for hard work. The reality of slavery is a topic we want to avoid in the United States. It is the most painful memory in our national culture. The forced labor of African slaves was a crime against humanity, and a blot on our nation’s honor. We fought a great war over slavery and, when the slaves were freed, we continued to hold them in economic bondage for nearly another century. The indenture of European servants was a form of slavery, and yet a notch above slavery, because at least those servants saw an end to their indenture. “Sweat shops” were, and are, a form of economic slavery. We’d rather not think about those awful parts of our past—and present, in some cases.
But Slavery is a Thing of the Past, Right?
Wrong. Slavery continues to flourish in our world today. People who are hungry, homeless, or otherwise vulnerable are lured into debt slavery because they are promised a better life. Some of them are forced into prostitution. Some are forced laborers. Some are illegal immigrants who pay large fees to an “agent,” who smuggles them into a nation, and then keeps them in virtual slavery because of the debts run up. Some are children sold as jockeys, as prostitutes, as laborers. Some are farm laborers whose parents passed on debts to them and they will, in turn, pass those debts on their children. These represent some of the worst forms of the “company store,” or sharecroppers, who can never get out of debt and can therefore never be free. All these people are desperate, seeking a better life. And this is not a thirdworld phenomenon. By some estimates, there are between 100,000 and 150,000 slaves in the United States today. (National Geographic, September, 2003, p. 23)
So, in spite of our living in the twenty-first century, in a time we consider enlightened, in a kinder, gentler, world, slavery still exists. What did John Wesley have to say about slavery? And what would he say to us?
Slavery In the Eighteenth Century
There were not many African slaves in England itself, but the agricultural economy of England’s colonies in the New World depended heavily on the importation of slave laborers. Sugar in the West Indies, tobacco and cotton on the North American mainland, were labor-intensive crops, and plantation owners depended heavily on the importation of slaves to work their fields.
The English slave trade began in 1562, when Sir John Hawkins took three hundred slaves from Sierra Leone. At first, the slave trade by English slavers was to the Spanish colonies in the New World, but then England began developing its own empire there. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, England had a virtual monopoly on the slave trade. Between 1680 and 1786, 2,130,000 slaves were imported into British colonies, the vast majority for the sugar plantations. The conditions of the slaves were cruel and inhuman, but the primary motive of both plantation owners and slavers was profit, not humanitarianism.
Wesley and Slavery
Into this world came John Wesley. He learned about slavery first-hand during his stay in Georgia. General Oglethorpe did not allow African slaves to be imported into Georgia, but Wesley saw all he needed to see on trips to South Carolina. In Georgia, he supported Oglethorpe’s policy. He also angered some of the leading colonists for attacking white slavery—the indenture system, which was essentially a system of debt slavery.
The young Wesley did not engage in a blanket condemnation of slavery. He opposed inhuman conditions, and was involved in pastoral concern for individual African slaves. In South Carolina, he talked to slaves, arranged preaching services for them, and taught them in the faith. He saw to it that slaves had the opportunity for education (a program that slave owners would soon stop). In his ministry, Wesley did not distinguish between whites and blacks. Slaves were admitted to baptism and Lord’s Supper along with whites.
Wesley’s return to England in 1738, of course, took him away from the heart of slave labor, though not from the heart of the slave trade. The seeds of later struggles against slavery had been planted in him in America, however, and would come to full flower after 1770.
In 1774, Wesley published his “Thoughts upon Slavery.” His arguments against slavery were based not so much on Scripture and theology as on natural law and a sense of justice. In that treatise, he wrote, “I absolutely deny all slave-holding to be consistent with any degree of even natural justice.” (“Thoughts upon Slavery,” quoted in Bready, p. 225) He also attacked the attitude that saw Empire and patriotism only in terms of economics or geographical expansion. When he was reminded of the economic importance of the sugar plantations in the West Indies, he replied, “It is better that all these islands should remain uncultivated forever; yea, it were more desirable that they were all together sunk in the depth of the sea than that they should be cultivated at so high a price as the violation of justice, mercy, and truth.” (“Thoughts upon Slavery,” quoted in Bready, p. 225) He argued that slaveholding could not be brought into harmony with natural law, which left only economic necessity as a rationale. The argument was that black slaves were necessary, because whites could not stand to work in the heat. Wesley scoffed at that argument, saying whites could stand the heat as well as blacks. But his underlying theme was that slavery was a blow to fundamental human rights. Ignoring the rights of blacks degraded them and put them in a less-than-human social and moral position. For this degradation, Wesley argued, slave owners were fully responsible.
Now Wesley was, by birth and inclination, a social and political conservative. But his religious convictions turned him into a radical reformer whenever and wherever conservatism interfered with liberty and human progress. He attacked slaveowners, the captains of slave ships, slave merchants, and even the judges who upheld the legal right to own slaves. “Are there any laws as binding as the eternal laws of justice?” he asked in response to court rulings. Liberty, he argued is “the right of every human creature as soon as he breathes the vital air.” (“Thoughts upon Slavery,” quoted in Bready, p. 226) When he was told that English slave masters were more humane than the French or Dutch, Wesley was ready with the comeback that liberty and justice were not about degrees, but were absolute, and he attacked those who supported slavery for economic gain.
In “A Serious Address to the People of England with regard to the State of the Nation,” written in 1777, he reacted to those who were moaning over the economic losses because the slave trade to the colonies had been stopped. “I would to God that it may never be found more. That we may never more steal and sell our brethren like beasts, never murder them by thousands and tens of thousands!” (Bready, p. 227)
The Conference of 1780 opposed slavery as “contrary to the laws of God, of man, and of nature, and injurious to the Society.” (Marquardt, p. 72). That brief phrase encompasses natural law, the basic concepts of justice, theology, and economics, and finds slavery a wrong in every case. This statement, along with Wesley’s writings, did stir up a protest that eventually led to the prohibition of slavery in England, and, ultimately, an end to the African slave trade.
Six days before his death, John Wesley wrote his last letter. It was to William Wilberforce, the Parliamentary leader in the fight against the slave trade. In that brief letter, he said, “Oh, be not weary in well doing. Go on, in the name of God, and in the power of His might, until even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw the sun, shall vanish away before it.” (Bready, p. 228)
To the last, Wesley was fighting against injustice and evil, in the name of God.
Back to Slavery Today
One wonders, to what extent does the economy of the United States depend on some form of slavery, whether it is debt slavery, sweat shops, or other forms of bondage and injustice? Should we be concerned about child slavery in much of the world? About women forced into prostitution? Or laborers in virtual slavery because of generations of debt? Would Wesley say to us, as he said to Wilberforce, “Go on, in the name of God, and in the power of his might until (every vestige of ) slavery” shall vanish away? What does our Christian faith, our understanding of God and salvation in our Wesleyan heritage, suggest to us about opposition to slavery?
Questions for Reflection
For Further Reading
Manfred Marquardt, John Wesley’s Social Ethics. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992).
Warren Thomas Smith, John Wesley and Slavery (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986).
Andrew Cockburn, “21st-Century Slaves,” and Lynne Warren “Inhuman Profit,” National Geographic (September 2003) pages 2–29.