Chapter 1 There isn’t a question about the validity of the contradiction wrought from discovery of the new world (America) and the introduction of slaves to it. The “promised land” was corrupted by a kind of “original sin”—the problem of slavery in western culture— which many argued would by the “laws of moral physics” would eradicate itself. Davis argues 19th century enlightenment thinkers exaggerate the historical opposition between Christianity and slavery, disregarding its economic primacy**. This cosmic —almost providential— manichean view could explain early disinterestedness in abolitionism and their optimism. Today the historiography tends to bear closer to some Marxist lens of power struggles and the bourgeoisie clinging on to the status quo. This is clearly mostly nonsense, Davis says “while these new approaches have revealed weaknesses in the traditional teleological view of the anti-slavery crusade they have tended to divert attention from the fact that Negro slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries posed genuine moral problem..”
There isn’t a question about the validity of the contradiction wrought from discovery of the new world (America) and the introduction of slaves to it. The “promised land” was corrupted by a kind of “original sin”—the problem of slavery in western culture— which many argued would by the “laws of moral physics” would eradicate itself. Davis argues 19th century enlightenment thinkers exaggerate the historical opposition between Christianity and slavery, disregarding its economic primacy**. This cosmic —almost providential— manichean view could explain early disinterestedness in abolitionism and their optimism. Today the historiography tends to bear closer to some Marxist lens of power struggles and the bourgeoisie clinging on to the status quo. This is clearly mostly nonsense, Davis says “while these new approaches have revealed weaknesses in the traditional teleological view of the anti-slavery crusade they have tended to divert attention from the fact that Negro slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries posed genuine moral problem..”