1. All of the articles are about a controversial topic in American History.

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Each student will submit two separate article reviews.  Each review is worth 120 points.  The articles you have to choose from are below.

1. All of the articles are about a controversial topic in American History.  The article will present two sides of the issue.

2. The review should havefour elements/paragraphs:

. Write a one paragraph overview of the issue.  Be sure to include the title and author of the article you are reviewing. (26.4 points)

. Write a one paragraph summary of one the arguments.  Include two examples. (26.4 points)

. Write a one paragraph summary of the other argument. Include two examples. (26.4 points)

. In your final paragraph, select which argument you believe is more convincing and explain why. (26.4 points)

. Writing mechanics (14.4 points)

· The review should meet the following format guidelines:

. Double-space your paper.

. The margins should be set at one inch (top, bottom, left, right).

. The font style should be Times New Roman.

. The font size should be 12 point.

. Avoid contractions in formal writing.  (For example:  Would not instead of wouldn’t;  cannot instead of can’t)

. Indent your paragraphs.

. Be sure to include an individual’s first name the first time you mention them.  You can use just just the last name thereafter.

. Type your name in the upper left hand corner of the paper.

. Only use the article and no other sources to complete this assignment.

. Since you are only using the article and no other sources, a “Works Cited” page is not necessary.

. If you use any quotes from the article, provide the page number.  For example, if you quote from page 5, put “(p. 5)” after the quote.

· Grades:  This is not a collaborative activity.  Though several students may choose to review the same article, they should refrain from working together on their written reviews.  Your assignment will be checked by SafeAssign to ensure no plagiarism takes place.

. Failure to follow the format guidelines will result in substantial loss of points.

. Poor spelling and grammar/punctuation will also result in a loss of points.

· Academic Honesty:  When submitting written work, students are on their honor. Any student found to have engaged in plagiarism will be subject to disciplinary action per college policy. Students should review the College’s statement on plagiarism on the course menu.

ARTICLE IS BELOW

Slavery and Religion

Was the Bible Proslavery?

By Jeff Forret

The Issue

Both proslavery clerics and antislavery clerics used the story of Moses in the Old Testament of the Bible to support their arguments. Proslavery clerics argued that the law of Moses offered clear instructions governing the keeping of slaves. Antislavery clerics argued that when God’s chosen people were held in slavery in Egypt, God appointed Moses to deliver them to freedom.

Illustrators of the 1897 Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us by Charles Foster

The issue: As the debate over slavery intensified in the mid-19th century, both supporters and opponents of the institution invoked religion to defend their positions. Was the Bible proslavery or antislavery?

· Arguments that the Bible was proslavery: Many theologians in the South as well as in the North believed that the Bible provided divine sanction for the institution of American slavery. In their view, the curse of Ham (or Canaan) condemned Africans and their descendants to slavery. The biblical patriarchs of the Old Testament owned slaves and nevertheless held favor with God, and the law of Moses offered clear instructions governing the keeping of slaves. In the New Testament, Jesus remained silent on the issue of slavery, never explicitly condemning the institution. Instead, the New Testament is filled with passages imploring slaves to obey their masters. One letter of the apostle Paul also ordered the runaway slave Onesimus to return to his owner. Looking at these passages collectively suggested to many clergymen and southern slaveholders that the Bible justified slavery.

· Arguments that the Bible was antislavery: Abolitionist ministers in the North found ample condemnations of slavery in the Bible. They pointed out that the forms of bondage practiced in biblical times differed markedly from the institution of southern slavery. Slavery was permitted in the Old Testament, but that did not make holding slaves morally right. Like slavery, polygamy and divorce occurred in the Bible, and theologians now denounced them. Slavery, too, had become morally repugnant over time and should be outlawed. Indeed, when God’s chosen people were held in slavery in Egypt, God appointed Moses to deliver them to freedom. In the New Testament, Jesus never attacked the institution of slavery directly, but neither did he identify many sins by name. They were nonetheless wrong. Jesus’ teachings—to love one another, to treat others as you would want to be treated—condemned slavery implicitly. Slavery, in short, violated the entire spirit of the Bible, with its emphasis on freedom from oppression, equality, and love.

Background

In the late 1820s and 1830s, a radical abolitionist movement took shape in the North. In 1829, the free black David Walker published in Boston his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, a pamphlet that endorsed violence as means to end slavery.

David Walker, a black man who was born free in North Carolina, published Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World in 1829. This militant antislavery tract urged bondpeople to resist slavery and approved the use of violence against masters.

Library of Congress

The blossoming of radical abolitionism continued in 1831 with the publication of William Lloyd Garrison’s weekly newspaper, the Liberator. Although small in numbers and confined mainly to the New England states and the Northeast, abolitionists proved exceptionally vocal in their denunciations of slavery as sinful, a great moral evil to be eradicated. In a departure from previous antislavery efforts, they called not for the gradual abolition of slavery but rather for the slaves’ immediate emancipation. To achieve their goal, they organized antislavery societies, launched a mass mailing of abolitionist materials into the South, and deluged Congress with abolitionist petitions. Their efforts consistently emphasized the immorality of bondage in the American South and provided biblical evidence of the sinfulness of slavery.

In Slavery: Its Origin, Nature, and History (1861), Thornton Stringfellow argued that the Bible supported the idea that blacks were unsuited to rule and were fitting objects of subordination.

Open Library

Surprised by the new vehemence of antislavery forces, proslavery theologians gathered biblical evidence of their own in justification of slavery. By the early 1840s, Thornton Stringfellow and other proslavery ministers both South and North unfurled a list of proslavery arguments culled from the Bible. They attributed slavery to the curse Noah placed on Canaan, which condemned his descendants to bondage. They pointed out that even though Abraham and other great patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament owned slaves, God did not smite them but bestowed his grace upon them. Moreover, Mosaic law codified the rules governing slaveholding in ancient times. Turning to the New Testament, proslavery forces observed Jesus’ failure to condemn slavery as evil. To the contrary, the New Testament repeatedly entreats slaves to comply with their masters’ wishes. The Bible furthermore beseeches fugitive slaves to return to their masters. Proslavery forces made the Bible central to the intellectual defense of slavery.

Abolitionists had drawn upon the Good Book even earlier than their proslavery foes and arrived at the opposite conclusion. For them, the Bible offered no rationale for the continuation of slavery in the American South. A vast gulf separated American slavery from the more benevolent varieties of bondage of the Old Testament. Old Testament slavery existed side by side with polygamy and divorce, two practices widely condemned in mainstream 19th-century Christian churches. If polygamy and divorce had begun to be recognized as wrong over time, slavery merited a similar moral judgment. In the Old Testament itself, Moses had redeemed the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. Surely, the abolitionists figured, God wanted the same for enslaved black Americans. That Jesus in the New Testament failed to censure slavery by name did not make the practice of slaveholding any less sinful. His instructions to love one another and to follow the Golden Rule betrayed the broad antislavery spirit contained within the pages of the Bible.

From “Necessary Evil” to “Positive Good”

Eighteen thirty-one proved a pivotal year in the development of the abolitionist movement as well as of proslavery thought. William Lloyd Garrison published the first issue of his abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator, in Boston on January 1. In it, he rejected gradual emancipation schemes in favor of the immediate liberation of American slaves. Many southerners believed it no coincidence that Nat Turner launched the bloody Southampton insurrection late in the summer of the same year. Although contemporaries in the South linked Garrison to the massacre, Turner had probably never heard of the northern abolitionist. Furthermore, Garrison, despite his antislavery invective, was a pacifist opposed to the utilization of violence. Nevertheless, the Turner rebellion sparked debate in the Virginia legislature over the future of slavery in the Old Dominion and whether or not to abolish the institution. Proslavery forces emerged from the contest victorious, inspiring Thomas Roderick Dew’s seminal proslavery essay “Abolition of Negro Slavery,” a work that dismissed plans to colonize blacks abroad and enumerated the horrific consequences of emancipation.

William Lloyd Garrison’s weekly newspaper the Liberator, first published in 1831, was the leading antislavery journal of the mid-19th century.