Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 64

3. Report of the Committee of Correspondence with Southern Ecclesiastical Bodies on Slavery; to the General Association of Massachusetts (Salem, MA: John P. Jewett & Co., 1844). (23 p.)

Report from a committee charged by the Presbyterian Church with surveying presbyteries in South regarding their views on slavery. Despite warnings from Southern Presbyterians that immediate emancipation would endanger the lives of the white population and that abolitionist assaults on slavery had solidified resistance in the South, the committee condemns slavery in the strongest language. “We are agreed, that, [slavery] as a system, a system of principles and influences, affecting all classes and all interests, the sun, in the whole width of his circuit and the length of his years, has seldom looked down upon one more wretched; upon a heavier calamity to mankind, a more flagrant crime against the individual, a bolder offence against God!”