Yesterday, 08:23 AM
One may discern the seed that sprouted our current state of affairs socially in letters such as this.
Joseph C. Lovejoy went on a tour of the antebellum South, right before the War Between The States.
Lovejoy, and Owen, whom he is addressing here, were both brothers of the murdered abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy.
Joseph is not pro-slavery. He's just asking his brother up North to consider what's happening, and the best way to politically conduct any dissolution of slavery... peaceably, democratically, from within. Instead, the country was thrown into its worst turmoil. He says better to allow slaveholding to migrate to new states in the West, along with abolitionism, then let these new states, after their admission to the Union, decide for themselves at the State Level whether or not to outlaw the practice. This is a proposition that would have likely warded off the Civil War. He thought the nature and aspect of abolitionism was going to cause more harm than good. It was 1859, and he was right.
But there are just a few sentences I wanted to draw attention to, and it's not about slavery, it's about the seeds of secular humanism, the fruit from which we are living in our times.
The letter is only 12 pages.
Connect With Us