A

SCRIPTURAL EXAMINATION

OF THE

INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY

IN THE

UNITED STATES;

WITH ITS

OBJECTS AND PURPOSES.

BY HOWELL COBB.

GEORGIA:

PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR.

1856.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by

HOWELL COBB,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court, for the Southern District of Georgia.

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PREFACE.

E

The particular object of this work.

We have not undertaken to write the general history of slavery, nor the history of slavery in the United States; the extent of our undertaking is, to show the purposes for which African slavery was instituted, in so far as the United States stand connected with it. There are two propositions of essential importance, and which never must be lost sight of, in the investigation of this subject, to wit :

1. African slavery is a punishment, inflicted upon the enslaved, for their wickedness.-The proper understanding of this proposition requires that we should keep steadily before the mind the fact, that nations, communities, peoples, may and do sin against God, as well as individuals; and nations, communities, peoples, are punishable and punished, as well as individuals. The only difference is this: individuals may escape punishment; they often do, in this world: their punishment may be postponed to the day of judgment; but nations, communities, peoples, must be punished in this world, for they cannot, as such, be brought into the judgment of the great day.

2. Slavery, as it exists in the United States, is the Providentially-arranged means whereby Africa is to be lifted from her deep degradation, to a state of civil and religious liberty.

It must not be supposed, that in the performance of this task we desire to present an apology for slavery, or to con

ciliate favor for it; we have no such intention or object in view. An institution of Divine appointment does not need the aid of human writers, further than an explanation of its meaning.

Why should any one be astonished at slavery? this is not the only time that it has been employed as a means of working out great purposes. God's chosen and peculiar people; they who first composed the Church; they to whom the oracles of salvation were delivered; they of whom the prophets were; they from whom the Redeemer of the world sprang, were enslaved in as hard, perhaps in much harder bondage, than has ever been experienced by Africans in the United States-a bondage from which they were delivered only after a series of the most astonishing displays of the Divine displeasure, inflicted upon their oppressors for their obstinacy in refusing "to let the people go.”

Nor was Egyptian bondage the only bondage they experienced, for their history shows that there were repeated instances of captivity, during which they were subject to the most degrading and humiliating slavery. And their history further shows, that these instances of captivity were inflicted as punishments upon them for their unfaithfulness to God, in disobeying His commands.

Nor was this mode of punishment confined to the Hebrews; for, the sacred record shows, that it was frequently threatened and inflicted upon other nations. Indeed, we may say, slavery has ever been a common mode of divine punishment inflicted upon nations.

The Bible our authority.

We have been directed, in the execution of the more important portions of our undertaking, by the Bible; that is our sole authority for many things which we have written in this volume. Men may and will question, controvert, and discuss, everything of human origin, and agree or