Theodore Parker

Letter to A Southern Slaveholder

I think they are doing a great wrong to themselves, to their slaves, and to mankind. I think slave holding is a wrong in itself, and therefore, a sin; but I cannot say that this or that particular slave-holder is a sinner because he holds slaves. I know what sin is-God only knows who is a sinner. I have never had that temptation; perhaps if born in Georgia, I should not have seen the evil and the sin of slavery. I may be blind to a thousand evils and sins at home which I commit myself. If so, I will thank you to point them out. I hope you will write me again as frankly as before. I wish I could see Este's book. I will look nothing to gain personally by the abolition of slavery, and have, by opposing that institution got nothing but a bad name. I shall not count you for it, and study it, for I am working for the truth and right. I have my enemy, but am truly your friend. In this dissertation we see both the abolitionist Parker and the forgiving minister Parker. It is clear too, that he made himself very unpopular with the Boston Brahmans to whom he preached against slavery.

However, as an advocate for abolition, Parker also not only believed that although all men had the God-given right to be free, the white race was superior to all other races. And herein lies the paradox of Theodore Parker’s thinking:

He said that the superior race had nothing to fear from them if they were set free. He said they were childlike, docile, and unintelligent. He said worse things about the Mexican population. Although he was against the Mexican American war, he described the Mexicans as “A wretched people; wretched in their origin, history, character, who must eventually give way as the Indians did. Yes, the United States would expand, but not by war, rather by the power of her ideas, the pressure of her commerce, by the steady advance of a superior race, with superior ideas and a better civilization, by being better than Mexico, wiser, humaner, more free and manly. (Howard Zinn, People’s History of the USA).