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(Part 2 of 7)
HISTORIOGRAPHY
OF LELAND'S VIEWS ON SLAVERY
Held up as a foremost advocate of religious
liberty among post-Revolutionary-era Baptists, Leland's writings on
the subject of slavery have long claimed much less attention among
scholars. When referenced, historians have tended to point only to
Leland's early views on slavery.
Leland lived against the backdrop of changing
evangelical views concerning slavery. In recent decades, historians
have sought to interpret the evangelical transition from antislavery
sentiment to proslavery views following the Revolutionary era. In In
His Image, But ...: Racism in Southern Religion, 1780-1910, H. Shelton
Smith argued that late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century
evangelical views of slavery were ultimately framed in light of
underlying white supremacist views. (4) James D. Essig, in The Bonds
of Wickedness: American Evangelicals Against Slavery, 1770-1808,
concluded that marginalized, ascetic, Revolutionary-era evangelicals
opposed slavery on grounds that it inhibited righteousness, whereas
worldly success, the 1808 prohibition of slave trade, and the Second
Great Awakening blunted opposition to slavery. (5) In Southern Cross:
The Beginnings of the Bible Belt, Christine Heyrman argued that
Baptists and Methodists embraced southern proslavery views as a means
of establishing a viable presence in the South. (6) John R Daly, in
When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the
Causes of the Civil War, concluded that both proslavery and
antislavery evangelical views stemmed from biblical morality informed
by individualism and the free market economy. (7)
Despite widespread acknowledgement of changing
Baptist views on slavery, John Leland's evolving position on slavery
has gone virtually unnoticed. Bill J. Leonard's recently published
denominational history, Baptist Ways: A History, followed this
pattern, briefly noting Leland's opposition to slavery as stated in
his early years. (8) Likewise, Robert G. Torbet's A History of the
Baptists referred only to Leland's early views on slavery. (9) Leon
McBeth's The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness made
no mention of Leland's slavery sentiments. (10) The 1958 Encyclopedia
of Southern Baptists noted that Leland was concerned about the
"humanitarian aspects of slavery and manumission," (11) while
Leonard's 1994 Dictionary of Baptists in America was silent on the
subject. (12) Essig argued that the early Leland was a leading
antislavery Baptist. (13) Smith briefly mentioned the early Leland's
antislavery views. (14) Heyrman made note of Leland's suspicion of the
ecstatic nature of the African-American religious experience, (15)
while Daly failed to mention Leland altogether. Mechal Sobel, in his
seminal Trabelin' On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith,
referred to Leland's early antislavery influence as "extensive," yet
failed to explore Leland's later views on slavery. (16)
In the end, one must turn to Brad Creed's
dissertation, John Leland: American Prophet of Religious
Individualism, in order to engage Leland's larger views on slavery.
Creed concluded that individualism, a product of the Great Awakening
and the Enlightenment, was the defining, overarching framework in
which Leland's religious and political beliefs must be understood.
Within this context, Creed did not find a substantial change in
Leland's views of slavery, as he asserted that Leland consistently
hoped for abolition, yet steadfastly refused to be an abolitionist.
Noting that Leland's political views of slavery changed over time,
Creed argued that the change was the result of "extreme
individualism," and did not negate Leland's lifetime opposition to
slavery. (17) In short, Leland's views on slavery are both
underappreciated and underdeveloped among historians.
Continue to
The Strident Anti-Slavery Leland
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