vietnam and present time. that would be the story. we became a national park in the end here. thank you so much for inviting us. [applause] >> you are watching american history tv. 48 hours of programming on american history every week and on s c-span 3. follow us on twitter for information on our upcoming programs and to keep up with history news. next mercer university professor douglas thompson talks about slavery and religion. he recounts at examples of how whites and blacks interpreted biblical examples of slavery.

this class is about one hour. professor thompson: remember, we set the last couple of days focusing on how they were using the bible to make arguments on slavery. we talked about these texts already. i'm pointing you to them again to highlight why they matter, but also become on last one as a way of talking about what will happen within the african-american experience, particularly as they read scripture for themselves. the genesis nine account is what it is generally referred to -- it is actually the curse placed on cain. we talked about the completed stories and the curse of ham. we did not talk about -- because

the reader does not pull it together -- something known as the great dispersion, the power of babel text. it is often used to talk about why you have different races of people. i'm adding that in. the generous 11 account and the tower of battle is a way that you can understand difference -- the different races that exist. ephesians text, which is a whole household code, both for husband and wife children, but included in that is laid, and what is most often used is the idea of slaves being obedient to their masters. the next timothy message is similar, the slave code, how to be a good slave. then exodus 21 sets out a whole set of codes on how to treat slaves. in argument, if slavery is being

talked about, it is clearly being defended. right tackle if god did not want slavery to exist, it would be removed or condemned. they would al often use labor as a example of this. in this letter, paul has a slave who has come to him, run away from his master, in fact, it is a great letter in a lot of ways because the slave is actually taking stuff from the master. the slave who has run away comes to paul. paul writes us letter -- writes a letter back and sends it back to the slaveholder. often the way this letter is

used is to say if paul had seen slavery as morally reprehensible, is the slave ran to him, keep him, do not send him back to the slave owner. what happens in the text is interesting. that is why wanted you to turn to it. if you go to verse 15 -- paul writes, perhaps this is the reason he separated from you for a while -- this idea of running away. "of the you might have him back forever." verse 16 says, "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother, especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and the lord?" the reason i want you to pay attention to those verses is because how you read the text has to do with how you are experiencing this issue of slavery. if you are slaveholder, you might put more emphasis on, so

that you may have him back forever. if you are slave, what you might hear is this part -- "no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother." you see how that one passage can also work in a different direction. the person doing the interpreting thinks the other direction is not right. a slaveholder says, this clearly points out that slavery should exist, paul does not get rid of him, in fact, he sends the slave back to the slaveholder. clearly, slavery is not morally reprehensible. generally speaking, slaves will not use this text as a defense for why slavery should disappear, by wanted you to hear that. "not as a slave, more than a slave, a beloved brother." this passage has the ability to work in two different directions.

i'm highlighting this for you. you read it for class on monday, but i wanted to go back to it. what i want you to pay tengion to is the highlight, which is the ballpark. abolitionist had been arguing that the bible called slavery morally reprehensible, but the argue -- they argue from a not biblical perspective. the anonymous writer of this article says that the bible does have something to say about slavery. the part that is interesting is theat noted actions can make it wrong if the book is true. this idea of deduction is an important interpretive move.

here is how you would do this. if you are making a general principle argument about -- slavery might be morally reprehensible. what you would do is emphasize "more than a slave" in the text. make sense? what you are pointing to is that the text does not say that slavery should end or get rid of it, but what you would argue is that paul actually makes an argument bigger. he is no longer a slave, he has a brother, and he will. that is a general principle. by the way slaveholder's would argue, no, you are playing with scripture. that is not what is saying -- it is saying. the reason that is important is because slaves became part of a process within the evangelical movement. we will talk about this. some of eight yard he know,

i am refreshing your memory. some of it, i am pulling us forward. early on in the 18th century slave owners have an uncomfortable relationship with evangelical christianity. it is fine if you want to say that they somehow k christian them as babies, but talking about a born again experience. for us, it is a social standing. you are given a quality with your master if you both have souls. early slaveholders had a hard time with christianity, or the idea that their slaves could participate in evangelical movements. in that way, evangelicalism puts a strain on christianity. i have given you examples of this. in small churches, baptist churches in the 18th century

you have examples of slaves being able to bring slave masters up on charges. that they had violated them, had done harm to them, asked them to do work on a sabbath, which would be a good charge to bring forward. it allowed them to stand on an equal footing, and this would put a strain on slavery. that is the direct strain. the other strain is coming, in the 19th century, and it is about the power of reading. protestants put focus on literacy. if the book matters, you have to be able to read it. if the word is of god, it is an important book, and in order to understand it, you have to be able to read it. the reason i use the word

inspires because the holy spirit is actually helping the reader understand the text. what happens in this evangelical move is it the centers -- d ecenters power. who has word over what the bible says? the reader. this use of literacy, the ability it to read -- ability to read matters. it will cause great strain for southerners, in particular when slaves were able to read the text and interpret it for themselves, which is why during the 19 century, you will see a whole series of laws preventing slaves from learning how to read. that is connected. the reason you want to keep slaves from being able to read is because they might be able to understand the idea of freedom in language that they could read, and also in this case, they could interpret the bible.

we have talked about this before. exodus becomes a prime example of this. slave owners during the 19 century become uncomfortable with the book. remember on the previous slide? you have an example. i was 21 sets a strict rule on how slaves are handled. slave owners use that to justify slavery. you see how that works? slaves saw a bigger picture here. one we have talked about in class, and we will talk about again here right now. the bigger picture is that a group of slaves, people anointed by god are enslaved by an oppressive master, god cause out a leader, the leader comes to the master requiring that the slaves are set free. the slaves are instructed to

take from their neighbors -- remember, how do slaves and up with gold out in the wilderness? they are taking it. so, they end up in the wilderness, and god apparently has chosen slaves to side with. why is this a problem? this is a deductive argument. you read it in big terms. big narrative. you understand that god has sided with slaves, and we are slaves that god has sided with. here is how that works. one book can be read or justified in two different directions. two different groups can use it to make sense of the world that they inhabit. the reason that the election argument will be -- the deduction argument will be important is because we will to turn to the letter to the

galatians, and i will spend some time talking about how one specific verse will become important for the abolition movement. remember, i told you this from the beginning of class, especially in the american south, if you want to win the argument using the bible you have to be able to read it, but also line up your proof texts. if i have more text talking about getting rid of slavery who wins the argument? i do. in galatians chapter three verses 27-38. i will read all of it. i want you to follow along, and then i will talk more about galatians broadly.

"as many of you were baptized into christ, there is no longer do or greek. there is no longer slave or free. there is no longer male or female. all of you are one in christ jesus." there is an argument for why slavery might be morally reprehensible. in christ, there is no longer slave or free. it appears that paul is arguing that the status that we share -- jew, greek, slave, free, even more profound, male, female -- all of them disappear under this baptism. if you want to work from a position of a dead active -- deductive argument, you can point to this one part of this

passage. i will talk a little bit more about relations. this is what you would have done in the new testament class. i want you to see the context for why that passage matters for those of you who have it, turned quickly to chapter one. paul and an apostle, said neither by human commission or authority, but through jesus christ and the father, and all the members of god's family who are with them. by the way, in the corpus of paul letters, this is an ugly opening. he is angry at them. on the surface, you cannot really tell that. if you were to read one of the other letters, particularly to the church at philippi, he talks

about how much he loves them. it is this long opening. in this letter, he says, i have been sent by no human authority jesus and god sent me. that is serious. why doesn't matter? you will get a hint of this if you look at the beginning of the chapter. chapter three. it opens with this. "you full is galatians -- foolish galatians." what he is saying is the church in galatia has been caught in an interesting struggle. paul, if you have been reading all of his letters, argues it is not the case. no one is required to become a jew in order to become a christian. you have the struggle going on. the church at galatia apparently had a number of people who have, and heard from these people and

raise a question about paul's authority. how does he established his authority? "god sent me to." letter writing is a genre. he will follow the genre. he opens it but in a very direct manner. ffor the remainder of the letter, he opens up about the idea which faith operates. it starts to tear down all the barriers that people put up. why is he making this case? because there are people attacking his authority using barriers. in the whole of the letter, he is pushing this idea about the way whi in which faith moves us

in a direction, in part, pulling us together, this idea of unity. what you're getting is this buildup to a moment where he can make a claim that there is no longer slave or free. the slaveholder will not want that verse being repeated. or, this is more likely the case, the slaveholder will say this is not the slavery that he is talking about. the important part for you is -- that is an interpretive move. the interpreter is reading the text and make it makes sense to the world that they think they are the understand. so, a slave may read the text

and say, jesus is an example under christ, we are all equal. in fact, early evangelicals made that argument. by the middle of the 19th century, the argument is no longer being made. there is a change in the way the text is being understood. what you can do is take this one -- this is a deductive move -- you can take this one passage and make a blanket moral statement. what slaveholders are arguing is you cannot do that. in fact, it is a perversion of the word of god. if you make an argument and general principle off of something that is not being stated, then you have done harm to the text. the reason why i want you to understand it is because slaves generally had a different experience. they're different experience adjusted -- their different experience suggested that they

would read the text and the way different than their slaveholding masters. i will give you a brief history -- a historiography on the way in which christianity and slave life have been argued about or argued over a. of until the middle of the 20th century, for the most part historians had argued that slaves simply took on the european forms of christianity that they encountered. when they encountered baptist they took on the baptist form. when they encountered a methodist form, they took on a methodist form. when they encountered that follows is an, they took on catholicism. slaves played no role in the faiths that they were developing. in the middle of the 20 century, a sociologist argued that slaves had actually brought significant

types of religious life out of west africa into the slave experience, and if you were paying close attention to what they brought with them, you would start to see that they were adopting christianity to their own image. they were making changes, even if scholars had not noticed them. in the middle of the toy century, there had been a move in the direction of arguing for slave life, in its full form, having this religious life come out of west africa and being implanted into north america, in particular. the sociologist argues that this is all of the americas and the caribbean islands. for the most part, we now talk about the way in which this is a dialectic, or conversation between those religious expenses

that came out of west africa and how they formed in the slave culture. today, what you would do is have people who still argue forcefully that slaves did not take on any form of christianity at all, they just sort of mimicked it, or they actually took it on so much that they actually lost all of their -- you have those extreme arguments. folks have become more comfortable with this narrow area, the people take on characteristics, butt shape them for their own needs. i will give you an example. what happens is this idea -- there are examples of slaves who will mimic slave owners. the whole thing. slave should be good and submissive slaves. there are slaves that say that. there are narrative essays that

have been written, stories that have come out. i will tell you what about john jasper, about this idea that slaves and body everything that the slave culture had given them. they held onto it. they did not shape any part of it. however, there is a possibility that the molding is very important. you have to pay attention to the people individually, and how they are doing this. i'm giving you two examples. if you will turn to revelations, i will give you an example of how a text can be read in two different ways, even if the experiences the same. slaves do not have all the same extent across the board. john jasper. i will give you some background information on him. he is a preacher in the area just west of richmond, virginia. he is a slave.

he becomes famous -- or notorious, one or the other -- as a funeral preacher. in the middle of the 19th century, there is an adaptation going on. if you were a slave preacher, you could move between plantations fairly easily, up through about 1830. you could move from one plantation to another. you would probably have to take some sort of paperwork to explain why you are doing it, but as a preacher, you have that flexibility. jasper actually grows up inside of that kind of world. he adapts to the world that changes when there are more restrictions placed on him. jasper becomes an important funeral preacher. if you ever encounter him, he has noted because he preaches to white audiences. that is big deal.

an example of why slavery is not a bad thing is that you have a slave preacher who preaches to white audiences. good evangelical mode, he apparently had the ability to slay people -- not literally kill them -- but he could preach and they were moved by the spirit. you hear the revival language? his favorite passage for funeral purposes without of revelations, chapter six. "then i saw the land open one of the seals and i heard one of the creatures callout, come." "i looked and the writer had a white horse. he came out to conquer." here, the text seems fairly

straightforward. this is revelations. we have talked about this different period that use revelations in different ways. he was talking about what happens. he seems to have been very cultural in the slave system. he lives until the 20th century, 1901. you can actually trace of life after slavery into a free period , even post reconstruction. he will continue to have this sort of deferential response to slavery and slave owners. arguing often things like -- without slavery, i would not have encountered the gospel of

jesus christ. see how this works tac? historians would often talk about this as mimicking. he just takes on what the slave owner has argued for and therefore has no role to play in the faith that he is shaved by. if that is the dos i'll slave the other one is a rebellious slave, and that is not turner. for most of you, you may have come across turner. probably none of you have heard about jasper. not turner is also from -- nat turner is also from virginia. in the 1820's and 1830's, he has free reign in a town in hampton, virginia. he is able to move around plantations. he pulls together a group of slaves to agree to throw off

their slave owners. they will rise up in rebellion. he also is an evangelical priester -- evangelical creature. we spent the last few weeks talking about revivalism and division and why they are important. that gives you to turner. what turner argues is that god, the holy spirit, had given him a vision of what life should be like. it was not slavery. in fact, the vision was to take up arms and kill slaveowners, in particular, his own. when nat turner read revelations , he felt something different. look at the text again. what is he emphasizing is he is going to talk about rebellion?

go ahead and take a look at it. what is the emphasis on here? here, the conquer might actually be him. right? you take on the sword to conquer and kill. you see how this works? one passage can go in different directions, based on how you are appropriating the text or reading the text for your circumstances. in fact, turner has this very large vision about the way in which an uprising will occur. it is not out of the question. haiti has already had a revenue -- a revolution in 1803. there is now a black state, a former slave state off the

shores of the united states, so the idea that a slave society could rise up and throw off slave masters was clearly a possibility for him. i'm going to be careful for a moment to talk about this as rebellion. it is in fact an act of rebellion, they do rise up, he gets roughly about 75 people -- accounts are different. it is one of the more fascinating moments in history how, when he supposedly confessed that it was a white man who wrote down his confession, it is not clear if it is turner's confession or someone writing for him, what he might have confessed. the numbers are probably closer to 70 people who participated in the rebellion. they do in fact kill turner's

slave master, his wife, and his children. they go to a neighboring plantation, and do the exact same thing. all told, it is under 20 people who are killed. the effect of the net turner rebellion is -- of the nat turner rebellion is long-term. the remainder of the antebellum perio, this event stamped the south. slave preachers had greater restrictions put on them. see what happens? what might you be able to do if you move from plantation to plantation, you can creat a plan. then, you can rise up. that was the first thing. so, it limited the ability of slaves to move. it is not like they had a lot of freedom. near the 1850's -- 1855 or 1856

slave preachers do take on more freedoms again. it is so limited in a number of ways. the second thing that happens is that more than 150 slaves, or free people of color, are executed for the rebellion. there are people executed in georgia for the rebellion. they did not participate in this. you see what was happening? it was the fear of antebellum southern plantation owners that slaves could actually rise up. if they could kill their masters, you had to let people understand that you can not do this. there was a repressive response. i said this last week, i will reinforce that here, in the

commonwealth of virginia, there were buildings -- bills being put forward to and slavery in virginia. after 1851, there were no more bills being put forward. this rebellion shaped how slavery, during the rest of the antebellum perio, was affected. all right. for today you would have read the bed of life of frederick douglass. i importing him out here because what we talk about the text on monday, there are some things i want you to understand and pick up on. slave narratives are genre. they exist, just like letter writing exists. when you write e-mails, you are following a formula even if you don't think you are. slave narratives have the ability to set up -- in the

beginning, you will see an argument -- this is written in his own hands. the reason you want to make that claim by a white person is presumably a white person may have written the text and given the credit to the slave or former slave. you will see, the genre had already been put in place by the time frederick douglass has this piece published. also, slave narratives were tarred to talk about how horrible the slave experience was. these narratives were written and published on this exclusively by abolitionists and intended for abolitionists audiences. douglas does interesting things within that already set genre. one of those is he spends and a norma's amount time talking about a woman who teaches him how to read.

when i talk about douglas's luck, he is actually not lucky. slavery does not make you lucky. he does end up in baltimore which makes him an urban slave. he has the ability to start to make money on his own. these are things you will read about. he makes money on his own. what he gets is this ability to read texts. the mistress, the one who teaches him -- and she gets in trouble for teaching him to read -- she teaches hand to read the bible. she allowed for, let's put it that way allowed him to learn how to read. douglas but friended a group of schoolboys, white schoolboys,

and they have grammars. he makes friends with them and gets them to teach him grammar. he teaches himself. you will get more about the narrative when you read it. it is this idea about a slave who has access to reading, that allowed him to change how he saw his life. he will think of slavery in opposition to freedom, which is something that had been defined in the western hemisphere, europe as well -- this idea of freedom. i what you do pay attention when you're reading the text, see how he starts to define himself as a man of letters. a man who is able to read to define who he is. what will be interesting for us is the appendix. it is in the first edition of

the narrative. it comes at the very end -- that is what an appendix is. he makes an important statement about slaveholding christianity. what he argues is that it is in moralmoral, in fact, it is not christian. so, no matter how good a slaveholder was, they were not christian because they had not understood the gospel. not for general discussion but think about it for a second. why do you make a claim that they do not understand the gospel? why would he make that kind of claim? particularly when he has a slave owner, who has helped him on some level to learn how to read. what he argues is it does not matter how good she was, she could not see the system being

turned upside down. the gossip will -- gospel was supposed to say that there was no slave or free. you see what he is emphasizing? this idea about the way which a slaveholder is beholden to slavery. it dictates how they will understand scripture, or more portly, their christian faith. in this particular case, douglas is going to lift up something that we will not spend a lot of time discussing in class -- if you were to take african-american history or the new south class i teach, we would spend a lot more time talking about it, which is this idea that white americans have actually never understood christianity. they don't see it. they cannot see it because their experience is not what

african-americans have seen or experienced. in the appendix, you are getting a small taste of this. you will see a way in which a former slave makes an argument for why slaveholders can never see the hypocrisy. that is the last point. hypocrisy is often seen from the outside. if you encounter a hypocritical situation, i.e. a professor who takes images off of websites right? and claims credit for them. that is a bit critical because what wo do we spent all her telling -- all of our time telling you guys, don't do it. that would be hypocritical. it is in fact douglas's appendix

that will get us closer to this idea that slaveholding whites -- he also argues in a later edition of the narrative that even abolitionist whites cannot see it. in this particular one you have, it is that slaveholding whites cannot understand the gospel, and they have failed to understand the gospel. does that make sense to? how does that work? in this particular case, it works through the experience of suffering. we will slow down a little bit because this is how the reading of scripture forms most african-american experiences particularly in relationsh with christianity. slaves could easily see their

own story within the biblical narrative. the most obvious one we have artie talked about. accidents. if you have a people chosen by god, there is a next her burden on them. more importantly, and that port -- in that particular case, god has sided with the slave and in siding with the slave, they themselves were understood by god. the long biblical narrative was that you could ultimately understand the slave experience because god understood it. ok? what is interesting is the way in which that exit is text, and more portly, the later sort of choseness of the nation of israel is that that requires a greater burden on the chosen. they will suffer more because of

it. you will get hints of this today, this idea that christians are persecuted. they are being persecuted for their faith. that kind of language. this is not about individuals. this is about a people, and you have to recognize that that suffering is pervasive, and god recognizes it. when god recognizes that pervasive suffering, god sides with it. even if we are going to be treated poorly, even if we are going to be harmed, ultimately god will vindicate us. this idea about the way in which slavery works. most people operate under this idea. they do not see an oppressor having suffered. they can't. they cannot see an oppressor

suffer a loss, or some other kind of suffering that happens to them. that demand on them means that they are in a position -- this is the part that was getting at with frederick douglass -- ultimately, they are in a position to help redeem the nation. their suffering is a way to understand how god will refine the nation, how it will make the nation better, as long as you are willing to hear it. as long as you are willing to engage it. here's the thing, douglas is doing it in the narrative. our whites going to see a? the answer ultimately would be no. they cannot see it. they cannot see the suffering as redemptive of the people, the

nation as a whole. what happens in this particular case, the way in which the slave's take on the text recognize in the text their own experience, and try to help others see how that experience is being carried out has a long history. by the way, it is still with us. in the 20th century, you will get a group of preachers -- debbie be theubois picks up on this as well. there is something happening to make the african-american exteriors better, but you have to pay attention to it. take a step back for a minute. when you are reading the book of galatians, one of the things that you will point out is this idea that neither sleaves are

free -- here is what i want you to do. how does the slave owner here that passage? think about that for a second. neither slave nor free. we have been working on the slave owner for a while. two weeks. how does the slave owner here that particular passage? more portly, why -- more importantly, why would the slave owner not see the exit is narrative connected to the slave? what i'm trying to get you to recognize is -- they can clearly see the text, and clearly understand the slave can understand it in a different way, how come they cannot see it from the view of the slave? here is the part will live -- where i will have you talk a little bit, or i hope you talk a little bit.

why is it that the slave owner cannot see the texts in the way that the slave does? student: would it be that in exit is, the slaves are all white, and the slaves are all black? they cannot see the same relations. professor thompson: ok. hold on to that for a minute. anybody else? students: it could be denial. if that was true then a lot of , the things they had been doing to the slaves would weigh heavily on their conscience which could very well do a lot of things. professor thompson: ok, good denial. abby?

student: could it be because they do not see slavery as the same way as in the bible? with the hebrews, it was different because it was oppression of another religion versus oppression of a race? it is no longer about oppression, but the fact that they are property. it is like a different form of slavery, i guess. professor thompson: similar to the comment before. anyone else? those are all good. yes. part of what i've been chided you to understand the whole semester is why can't they see it relating to the slaves -- exodus is about whom? it is no longer about jews. it is about them. right? one of the texts that is early on in american history is the

idea that we are a new israel. right? if we are a new israel, who is -- where is your place in the story? you are the ones who have been let out of bondage. your binders was where? by the way, this is a narrative we continue to tell. your bondage was out of what? good. that would be the biblical story. your bondage is from where? yeah, european role. monarchs. so, the way they understand the story, of course this is not about slaves, because do slaves own slaves? no, it has to be about the chosen people. who are the chosen people? we are. part of why i want you to spend a minute thinking about it is because that is what we are working on. people will read the text based on their own particular vantage point.

their starting point is how they answer the question. i asked you about this on monday. you guys were flummoxed that slave owners used the bible for justifying slavery. right? why does that seem to baffle you? why did it bother you that they used exodus as an example of why slavery should be defended? student: god is literally supporting the freedom of slavery. he is the one who is saying that it is my will that slaves be free. why would they use exodus as an example for why people should be enslaved? professor thompson: anyone else? here is the thing, they cannot see -- this is about us.

they could use the text and it makes perfect sense. the problem is -- you are looking at it from what perspective? hindsight looking back. i began the class tell you about what story? you have to remember way back. four weeks ago. slaves read the story and solve themselves in it. you are already predisposed to reading exodus in one direction. when you get to it, ok, this is really about slavery. god sides with the slaves. except you are looking at the slave owners from hindsight. when you encounter the text, their use of it as a defense you say, that is not right. they cannot use that. yes, they can for the very reason that they see themselves as the chosen people. by seeing themselves as the chosen people, the text is not about slavery.

it cannot be about slaves. it is about us -- me. in this case, it would be about slaveholders. one last note. go back to the layman. after we have spent that time talking about it, we will go back to the text, talking about the way in which slaves' experience affects them. remember, this is not often used to defend abolition. this continues to happen today. people will use parts of text and leave other parts out. you have to pay attention to what they are leaving out. if they point to this person not that first, why did they leave that verse out? in this case abolitionists do not use layman often to argue

for a pollution why did they not use this book -- or letter to argue for abolition? what does paul do? he sends the slave back. you see how this works? there is a reason that it is not being used often. we will spend a minute talking about it. paul, a prisoner of christ jesus, and timothy, our brother our sister, our fellows soldier to the church, and the house grace to you and peace from god our father, and lord, jesus christ. remember, letters have a genre? there it is. deer, so-and-so. when i remember you in my prayers, i always thank my god because i think of your love towards the saints and the lord jesus. i pray that the sharing of your faith may be made effective when

you receive all the good from christ. i have indeed receive much joy and encouragement from your love because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you my brother. for this reason, though i am bold enough in christ to command you to do your duty, yet i would rather appeal to you on the basis of love, and i will do this as an old man and a prisoner of christ, jesus. i am appealing to you for my child, whose father i have become through my imprisonment. formally, he was useful to you but now he is useful to you and to me. i'm sending him -- that is, my own heart -- back to you. i wanted to keep him to me so that he may be of service to me during my imprisonment to the gospel, but i prefer to do nothing without your consent in order that your good deed may be

voluntary and not something -- perhaps this is why he was separated from you for a while, so that you would have him back forever. no longer a slave, but a brother, beloved to me, but how much more to you? both in the flesh and the lord. if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. if he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything charge to my account. i, paul, and writing with my own hand, i will repay it. i say nothing of your owing me. yes, brother, let me have this benefit from you. refreshed my heart in christ. i'm writing to you knowing that you will do even more than i say. one thing more. prepare a guest room for me because i'm hoping through your

prayers to be restored to you. my fellow prisoner in christ reads to you and so do my fellow workers. the grace of the lord, jesus christ, be with your spirit. here is what i want to do for our remaining time. i want you to hear the letter. if you will remember the documents on slavery, how do the slave owners use this letter? for defending slavery. do you remember? when they point to it.? they often refer to it in a way that says had paul condemned it he would have done what? he would not have sent the

slave back, he would have kept him, and said something about it. that is how it gets used. did you hear what is in the letter? "for this reason, though i am bold enough in christ to command you to do your duty, yet i would rather appeal to you on the basis of love, and i paul, an old man, and now prisoner of christ jesus i am appealing to you on my child, whose father i have become in imprisonment, formerly, he was useless to you, but now he is useful to both you and me, i'm sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you -- i wanted to keep him with me. goyes?

student: is this touching on [indiscernible] and how you should treat them. he touches on the fact that he is going to send him back but does to treat him as able, not a slave. professor thompson: the first part is perfect. the second part not to much. he's actually going to adopt him. this is the interesting part. what he said is what i really want to do is what? keep him. what was paul originally not going to do in this letter. not return him. by the way, it was going to take a biblical scholar into almost the end of the 20th century to start picking up on this letter and the power that it might have

served and abolitionist argument. when he argues that he is my son -- when i sent him back how should you treat him? yes. the way you treat him is the way you would treat me. now do you hear that language of "more than a slave, a beloved brother." here is the interesting thing. slave owners use deductive logic . remember the slide i put up for you about dubois. if it is not condemned outright you cannot argue that. what had slaveowners been doing? a deductive argument. the general principle is that the bible does not condone slavery. you see how this works? what i want you to get out of this is this idea about the

starting point of the reader, the person doing the interpretation. they are making moves, mostly internal, but they are intellectual moves, trying to make the text makes sense. here is an example. the letter is carried -- because we still have it -- which means what did he do? he went back. what is interesting is it becomes an argument for why slavery has not been condemned but the letter itself actually does make a statement about slavery. by the way, this is the wonderful moment where you are all good critical thinkers and actually asked me, why am i reading it that way? because i stand on what side of the slavery question? on this side where we already

adjusted if we have already adjusted -- addressed it, what part of y emphasize? student: [indiscernible] professor thompson: the part that's a advocating that not just the winner side, but that is the part of the letter i will pick up, because the next part of the letter says -- paul says, i choose not to do this to you. i am not commanding you to leave him with me. i will let you voluntarily let him stay. d.c. how this works -- do you see how this works? the idea, this is how we handle history as well. the fact that you might have

something that happened that one particular moment in a text, and you make a judgment based off that particular moment, there are all kinds of factors that go into interpretive move. funeral preacher. we talk about him preaching to white audiences. i am actually putting him in a position that suggests he might be an accommodationist to slavery. jasper later in life starts to convince us tear the individual piece of information i give you a fax how you understand a person. that is what we are doing. when we return, this is -- when we returned to the narrative life of frederick douglass, the opening section you will read there is not a lot of

conversation about the bible. i have been asking you to find biblical passages of how they interact, but for this one come i want you to pay attention to the way describes the life in particular. he is a slave on the eastern shore of maryland. early on as a young man, he will end up in baltimore. he later gets sent to act on to the eastern shore to work some pretty heavy labor environment. he ends up back in baltimore. baltimore is not a bed of roses at all. it allows him to be in a position to escape, to get freedom. i want you to experience and read a slave's's experience in this environment. that is what i want you to get

out of the book. when we get glass day we deal with the narrative life, that is when -- to the last day we do with the narrative life, that is when we talk about how slaves can read a text, former slaves, and understand it in a profoundly different way. are there any questions for me for today's klass? anything i spoke about that was not clear or that you would want more information on? clear asthma it? good. go in peace. -- clear as mud? good. go in peace. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] \ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] x you are watching american history tv all weekend and every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span

history. tonight on c-span's q and a former bloomberg news reporter kate andersen brower on the world in the white house to the eyes of the people who work there, from the kennedys through the obama's. >> they are an incredible family, and nine members of the family have more to the white house. i interviewed james jeffrey, the only current part-time butler who i did get to interview. you might see him there right now. worth every we get the white house. nine members of the family work there. his uncle john and charles or rate of these, the head butler. he told me my uncle ran the white house. they brought him and when he was 17 years old in 1959 during the eisenhower administration and he is still working there. he described how he used to work in the kitchen and he was a skinny guy. they kept giving him ice cream to eat.

it was incredible he remembers what the eisenhower's were like. a dying breed of person who remembers that and that is what i wanted is to get chevy it to these people. -- two contribute to these people. >> next, on american history tv national park historian ranger eric martin discusses the history of ford's theatre where john wilkes booth shot president lincoln 150 years ago. he examines the timeline. from lincoln's's assassination up until the death of booth and his co-conspirators. this program is a little under one hour. [applause]