In Their Own Words – Meridiana

May 12, 2020June 15, 2020

In Their Own Words: A review from 1857 of The American Citizen by John Henry Hopkins

Sewanee Watercolor by John Henry Hopkins. No. 28, View near Bower’s Chalybeate Spring, February 25, 1860.

Why are we giving so much attention in our blog Meridiana to the words and thoughts of the Bishop of Vermont, John Henry Hopkins? Neither the state nor the diocese of Vermont had anything much to do with the founding of the University of the South, and Hopkins himself was not officially a “founder.” The time in the 1850s that he spent in the actual presence of the two bishops most important to the university campaign, Leonidas Polk and Stephen Elliott, can be counted in days instead of weeks. His grand plan of the university’s campus was supplanted in the late 1880s and 1890s by other visions.

May 4, 2020June 15, 2020

In Their Own Words: John Henry Hopkins, The American Citizen (Part 3)

I have defended, frankly and fully, the lawfulness of African slavery, in the Southern States, from the Scriptures, from the principles of true philanthropy, and from the Constitution.
John Henry Hopkins

Bishop John Henry Hopkins begins Chapter IX, the first of two concluding chapters on slavery in The American Citizen (1857), by summarizing his previous entries on bondage in the United States. “I have defended, frankly and fully,” he continues, “the lawfulness of African slavery, in the Southern States, from the Scriptures, from the principles of true philanthropy, and from the Constitution.” But, he adds, “The expediency of its continuance to the interests of the South and of the Union, is a different question.”

April 28, 2020June 15, 2020

In Their Own Words: John Henry Hopkins, The American Citizen (Part 2)

In the first excerpt from The American Citizen (1857) by John Henry Hopkins (1792-1868), the Bishop of Vermont dispensed with the antislavery argument that slavery was “a sin against God, and a crime against humanity.” The Bible, he contended, was mostly silent on the subject of slavery and provided no basis for arguments for the immorality of its practice in the United States.

The following four chapters in his book (VII through X) continued his case for the essential benevolence of slavery and yet the need for its abolition as follows:

April 21, 2020June 15, 2020

In Their Own Words: John Henry Hopkins, The American Citizen (Part 1)

Resolved: That slavery is a sin against God and a crime against man, which no law or usage can make right, and that Christianity, humanity and patriotism alike demand its abolition.
Anti-slavery resolution proposed
at the 1852 national convention of the Free Soil Party

John Henry Hopkins (1792-1868), the Episcopal bishop of Vermont during the period of the University of the South’s founding, always maintained that the end of slavery was his “fervent desire and prayer.” However, this distinction and self-fashioning as an opponent of slavery were overshadowed by the heart of his writings on the subject of bondage. The real force of his words were directed at refuting those who contended that slavery was, to quote the antislavery Free Soil Party, “a sin against God and a crime against man.” But some of his most impassioned arguments outlined the benefits of slavery in the South to the enslaved.

April 14, 2020June 15, 2020

In Their Own Words: An introduction John Henry Hopkins — first Bishop of Vermont, artist and architect, and defender of slavery

Hopkins’ watercolor of the Natural Bridge

For every candid observer agrees that the negro is happier and better as a slave than as a free man, and no individual belonging to the Anglo-Saxon stock would acknowledge that the intellect of the negro is equal to his own.
John Henry Hopkins, 1861

The series of watercolor landscapes that Bishop John Henry Hopkins (1792-1868) of Vermont executed during his brief sojourn in Sewanee in the winter of 1858-1859 are among the most treasured artifacts in the archival collections of the University of the South. Only five of the two dozen or more watercolors survive, and four depict the mountain’s natural charms, such as the “Chalybeate Spring” and the “Natural Bridge” (shown here). Today the originals are locked away in the University’s Special Collections, but excellent reproductions are on public display at the Sewanee Inn.

March 24, 2020June 15, 2020

In Their Own Words: Stephen Elliott, “That the Past May be Vindicated”

*The Burial of Latané* painted by William Dickinson Washington in 1864 shows the solidarity of white women and children and their slaves as they bury and mourn the death of a Confederate cavalry officer. For generations after the war, this depiction of white women’s devotion and the “faithful slave” served white Americans as a history lesson on the “Lost Cause” of the antebellum South. Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

But for [the emancipated slaves] I see no future in this country. Avarice and cupidity and interest will do for their extinction what they have always done for an unprotected inferior race. Poverty, disease, intemperance will follow in their train and do the rest.
Stephen Elliott, May 1866

In February we published (in two parts) an 1862 sermon by the Rt. Rev. Stephen Elliott, bishop of Georgia, that lays out his understanding and defense of slavery as “a divine arrangement.” Elliott placed the godly purpose of slavery at the heart of the Civil War, another historical instrument by which, he believed, the Christian god was advancing his will in the world. God, he explained, “has caused the African race to be planted here under our political protection and under our christian nurture, for his own ultimate designs, and he will keep it here under that culture until the fulness of his own times.”

February 11, 2020June 15, 2020

In Their Own Words: Stephen Elliott, “Our cause in harmony with the purposes of God in Christ Jesus” (Part 2)

Today we publish the second part of the sermon by the Right Rev. Stephen Elliott. Here, in his own words, he defends the institution of slavery as “a sacred trust from God,” the cause the Confederacy was founded to defend and protect, and the cause of the Civil War that had killed more than 200,000 by the time he spoke these words in September 1862. The bracketed numbers in the text here refer to the pages in the published sermon, which may be read in its entirety on this website.