The South Defends Its Peculiar Institution

Abstract

This chapter explores the mission work and theological justifications developed by Southerners to confirm, validate and uphold slaveholding. Due to pressure from Northern abolitionists and the move by some denominations to proscribe slaveholding as a practice incompatible with Christian doctrine, the Southerners were placed on the rhetorical defensive in the years before the Civil War. To counter the abolitionists, the Southerners instituted the plantation missions.