[Question:]{.underline} Is slavery evil, and if so, surely the North was right in the American Civil War?
[Answer:]{.underline} Slavery as an institution can be understood in two ways. The ancient pagans understood it as the right of ownership of one person over another, as over a thing or an animal, the slave entirely belonging in every aspect to his master, without any recognition of his free will. This is illicit and immoral, for one person can never have the right of control over another’s intellect and will, according to which he is made in the image and likeness of God. Such a pagan concept of slavery is manifestly opposed to the natural law, and a violation of every man’s duty to use his own intellect and will to freely serve God.
However, slavery need not be understood in this sense. It can be simply the ownership of a man’s ability to work, his abilities, his productivity. Understood in this sense, it does not violate a man’s free will, nor his duty to love and serve God, and is consequently not opposed to the natural law.
Furthermore, slavery is not opposed to the divine positive law, i.e. to the law promulgated by God Himself. We consequently find it in this sense allowed in the Old Law for the Jews. Slavery is also mentioned several times in the New Testament as something licit, slaves not being encouraged to revolt, but to maintain their faithful service, for example by St. Peter: “Servants be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward”. St. Paul says the same: “Servants, be obedient to them that are your lords according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the simplicity of your heart, as to Christ” (Eph 6:5) Also Col. 3:22. Likewise, masters are not told to free their slaves, but to treat them well: “Masters, do to your servants that which is just and equal: knowing that you also have a master in heaven” (Col 4:1). Also Eph 6:9. Consequently, it cannot be said that God forbids slavery in itself.
The fact that slavery is not in itself intrinsically wrong can also be established from the fact that it is licit for one man or for society to have power over a man’s services or his acts. If a man can hire his labor out for a time, he can hire it out for life, as was the case of the serfs in Christendom. Likewise, if Society has authority over a man to impose imprisonment or capital punishment for crimes, then it has the authority to impose a lesser sentence, such as the ownership of a man’s services.
This being said, it is manifestly obvious that the rise of the Catholic Church little by little put an end to this institution, which it has many times condemned. The problem with slavery is that it is so open to abuse, the slaves having no protection against the infringing of their interior, personal freedom, nor having any guarantee of being treated with kindness, of being supplied with all the necessities of life, of not being overworked, and of respect for their person.
These abuses became horrifically apparent in the slave trade for the New World. Slave-hunting, selling of children into slavery, inhumane treatment in the transports and by slave traders, and some slave owners are but some of these immoral conditions. It is for this reason that the Popes again and again condemned this slave trade, starting with Pius II in 1462, including Paul III (1537), Urban VIII (1639), Benedict XIV (1741), Gregory XVI (1839) and Leo XIII (1888). Gregory XVI had this to say: “The Roman Pontiffs our predecessors of glorious memory have not at all failed to many times seriously reprehend slavery, as is their duty, as being harmful to their (the black peoples’) spiritual salvation and bringing opprobrium to the Christian name…whence we admonish and order by our Apostolic authority all the faithful of every condition…not to reduce into slavery…or exercise this inhuman trade” (Dec. 3, 1839).
Leo XIII was even more explicit in his letter In plurimis on May 5, 1888 to congratulate the bishops of Brazil on the emancipation of slaves in Brazil on the occasion of the 50^th^ anniversary of his priestly ordination: “This decision was particularly consoling and agreeable to us because we received the confirmation of this news, so dear to us, that the Brazilians desire henceforth to abolish and completely extirpate the barbaric practice of slavery…For in the midst of so much misery, we must particularly deplore that misery of slavery, to which a considerable part of the human family has been subject for many centuries, thus groaning under the sorrow of abjection, contrary to what God and nature first established…This inhuman and iniquitous doctrine that slaves must, as instruments lacking reason and understanding, serve the will of their masters in all things, is supremely detestable — so much, indeed, that once it has been accepted there is no oppression, no matter how disgusting or barbarous, that cannot be maintained uncontested with a certain appearance of legality and law.”
Consequently, there can be no doubt that the importing of slaves from Africa to the New World, so frequently condemned by the Church, as actually practiced was evil. This does not, however, mean that the Church condemned every slave owner. There were certainly Catholic slave owners, who took real care of their slaves, supported their families, provided for all their needs, gave them every facility to become Catholic and save their souls, and who consequently committed no sin, but rather acts of virtue. In practice, however, the multitude of evils and abuses far outweighed the good.
This being said, Catholic historians who have studied the Civil War point out that the real question was not one of slavery at all, but one of economic control. It was the capitalists of the North, with their factories, mines, means of production, forcing an industrial and economic revolution on the agrarian South. The Northerners had long had slaves of their own. However, the Industrial Revolution produced new kind of slavery, that of the factory workers, who would sweat very long hours for little income, for the profit of their capitalist masters.
The struggles for the rights of workers demonstrate that despite their technical freedom, they were just as oppressed as the slaves of old, and very often more so, for the slaves at least were provided with all the necessities of life. The question of slavery is consequently of little importance in the discussion of right and wrong in the Civil War. It really is a question of economic revolution.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.