Opposition to slavery, as a tenet of Congregationalism, began with Samuel Hopkins. Hopkins (1721-1803) graduated from Yale College in 1741. As a senior, he was attracted to the revivalism of the Great Awakening, a movement led by the Congregational clergyman Jonathan Edwards. Edwards (1703-1758) was also a graduate of Yale. He reconciled Calvinism with Enlightenment ideals. At Hopkins’ graduation, Edwards gave the commencement address, The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God. Hopkins was impressed. Later that year he moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, where Edwards lead a congregation. Hopkins prepared for his ministry under the guidance of Edwards. In 1743 Hopkins was ordained as a minister of a Congregational Church in Great Barrington Massachusetts. As he matured, he became the leader of a conservative Calvinist movement in New England Congregationalism. His movement became known as the New Divinity. He moved to Newport, Rhode Island in 1770, and published A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans in 1776. He characterized slavery as sinful. He argued that America’s revolutionary cause would not gain God’s favor until slaves were freed.[1]
As Hopkins’ ideas were incorporated into Congregationalism, beginning in the 1780s a cadre of Federalists campaigned to abolish both the slave trade and slavery itself. Jedidiah Morse, a Congregational clergyman renowned for his book on geography critical of Southerners, was one of them.[2]
Federalist clergymen Jedediah Morse and Timothy Dwight had difficulty fathoming religious and political changes in New England. Politically they were appalled by emergence of what they called the “Jacobins” a derogatory term they used to characterize the Democratic-Republican Party. After Jefferson was elected president, the two clergymen, both graduates of Yale College, began publishing the New England Palladium. Their aim was to strengthen New England, its culture, its government interwoven with the judiciary, and the clergy. As representatives of the Congregationalist conscience, they did not question their right to interfere in politics. Their aim was to criticize Jacobinism.[3] Jefferson , Madison and Southerners were all notorious Jacobins to New England’s Federalists.
Religiously, Dwight and Morse were the moderates. The New Divinity congregations, concentrated in central and southern Massachusetts, were the conservatives. Liberal Congregationalists in eastern Massachusetts lessened the once rigorous Calvinism of their forefathers. They even questioned the divinity of Jesus. They had managed to install a liberal clergyman to the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard College.[4] Harvard and Yale were the two principal institutions engaged in the education of Congregationalist clergy. Dwight and Morse were outraged.
In 1808 they allied with the New Divinity Calvinists in to establish the Andover Theological Seminary. They gained influence over a growing number of congregations. From 1800 until 1820 New Divinity dominated Congregationalism in New England.[5]
In the minds of New Englanders the immorality of slavery merged with the demonization of Southerners. The idea of all men being created equal became a moral issue. That some humans were not equal to others due to slavery became the sin of Southerners.
Next: Were the Federalists Abolitionists?
Look for it Monday, October 7
[1] Joseph Conforti, “Samuel Hopkins” American National Biography; James P. Walsh, “Jonathan Edwards” American National Biography. Note: Joseph Ballamy (1719-1790) was also a disciple of Jonathan Edwards and a preacher of New Divinity.
[2] James M. Banner, To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts 1789-1815 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970) 104.
[3] Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) 602.
[4] Wood, Empire of Liberty, 603.
[5] Conforti, “Samuel Hopkins”
