ry churches were still in the majority. While this debate raged on, economic conditions would finally force a peaceful consensus among the churches concerning slavery, which the South had wanted all along. By the early 19th century, the southern churches were almost completely pro-slavery.After Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1792, the South became more economically dependant on slave labor; to compete, more preachers became slaveholders themselves, and more slaveholders became preachers. David Barrow, an anti-slavery Baptist preacher from Portsmouth, Virginia, decided to move his family to the North; Barrow complained that he could no longer compete with other Baptists if he did not own slaves himself. (Mathews, 1980). There were still a few Southern preachers who opposed slavery, but by the turn of the century most had become pro-slavery, or they emigrated North as Barrow had done. The South finally had their peaceful consensus on slavery: They were pro-slavery. The North at this time was going through the process of gradual emancipation, which began through the anti-slavery sentiment of the church. This goes to prove again that slavery could not have been sustained had it not been for the power of the church. With the North becoming more ant!i-slavery and the South becoming more pro- slavery, the great conflict over slavery began, with the South relying heavily on the church for moral justification concerning the ownership of slaves.Frederick Douglass believed that slavery took refuge in the churches of the United States. (Ritchie, 1968). William Andrew Smith, a Southern Methodist minister and president of Randolph-Macon College, defined slavery as "submission or subjection to control by the will of another human being." (Lewis, 1973, p. 31). Smith felt that all men were slaves, with both the government and the family containing elements of slavery. Smith thus felt that slavery could be identified with good ord...
