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,...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Watkins, Jordan 1983- (Author)
Format: Electronic Book
Language:English
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WorldCat: WorldCat
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Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2021
In:Year: 2021
Reviews:[Rezension von: Watkins, Jordan, 1983-, Slavery and sacred texts : the Bible, the constitution, and historical consciousness in antebellum America] (2022) (Gutacker, Paul)
Series/Journal:Cambridge historical studies in American law and society
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B USA / Slavery / USA, The United States Constitution (1787) / Bible / Interpretation of / Historical consciousness / History 1830-1861
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
Description
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.
Item Description:Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 11 Jun 2021)
ISBN:1108784348
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/9781108784344