Slavery and sacred texts: the Bible, the Constitution, and historical consciousness in antebellum America
In the decades before the Civil War, Americans appealed to the nation's sacred religious and legal texts - the Bible and the Constitution - to address the slavery crisis. The ensuing political debates over slavery deepened interpreters' emphasis on historical readings of the sacred texts,...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subito Delivery Service: | Order now. |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
2021
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| In: | Year: 2021 |
| Reviews: | [Rezension von: Watkins, Jordan, 1983-, Slavery and sacred texts] (2022) (Gutacker, Paul)
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| Series/Journal: | Cambridge historical studies in American law and society
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
USA
/ Slavery
/ USA, The United States Constitution (1787)
/ Bible
/ Interpretation of
/ Historical consciousness
/ History 1830-1861
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| Further subjects: | B
United States Office of the Chief of Naval Operations Constitution
B Bible B Slavery and the church History 19th century (United States) B Slavery Religious aspects B Slavery History 19th century (United States) |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | In the decades before the Civil War, Americans appealed to the nation's sacred religious and legal texts - the Bible and the Constitution - to address the slavery crisis. The ensuing political debates over slavery deepened interpreters' emphasis on historical readings of the sacred texts, and in turn, these readings began to highlight the unbridgeable historical distances that separated nineteenth-century Americans from biblical and founding pasts. While many Americans continued to adhere to a belief in the Bible's timeless teachings and the Constitution's enduring principles, some antislavery readers, including Theodore Parker, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln, used historical distance to reinterpret and use the sacred texts as antislavery documents. By using the debate over American slavery as a case study, Jordan T. Watkins traces the development of American historical consciousness in antebellum America, showing how a growing emphasis on historical readings of the Bible and the Constitution gave rise to a sense of historical distance. |
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| Item Description: | Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 11 Jun 2021) |
| ISBN: | 1108784348 |
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/9781108784344 |