Title: The North and the South!
Description: There's a copy of J. C. Lovejoy, Esq., to his brother, Hon. Owen Lovejoy, M.C. written March 16, 1859 in Boston with remarks by the editor of the Washington Union in pamphlet form at the Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville Campus, Lovejoy Library Archives. 

Some background: On Feb. 17, 1859 The Hon. Rev. Owen Lovejoy as a member of Congress presented a speech on the Fanaticisim of the Democratic Party. In part he  mocked the southern Democrats abuse of the Bible. “But the strangest and most impious phase of this fanaticism is that it claims the sanction of the Bible for American Slavery. . . . If the Bible sanctions slavery at all, it is of white men.”  Then he told them what the bible says. “Thou shalt not steal.” He chastised them for breaking up families by selling children and spouses to another owner by reminding them that the Bible requires one to  “Honor thy father and thy mother,” and to remember the biblical injunction that “What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” He used the ridiculous to expose the truth and amused them with this satirical judgment on their reducing persons to property, “Would it not be an interesting spectacle to see one of these clergyman, who teach that the Bible sanctions Slavery, called in to attend the wedding of a bureau and chest of drawers! The chairs, and shovel and tongs are invited as guests. After a fervent prayer for the divine blessing the clergyman says ‘by the old Levitical laws I join the bureau to the drawers.’”  
 
From 1833 to 1853 Joseph had shared his brothers Elijah, John and Owen and his mother Betsey's ardent Bible judgments on the sinfulness and inhumanity of racial salvery.  On March 16, 1859 at the instigation of newly made southern friends who had invited Joseph South to see for himself, he wrote this letter to be published by the prodemocratic Washington Union newspaper.  His brother Owen was a rising antislavery voice in Congress having served effectively for two years.  For various reasons Joseph had changed his mind to the delight to of southern Democrats.  
He defended slavery on constitutional and biblical grounds. He claimed that slaveholders were “benefactors to the country and to the human race’ and American slavery was “a redemption, a deliverance from African heathenism.” 
	 Joseph claimed the only effect of his younger brother’s February speech would be to “irritate the south and alienate one section of the Union still more from the other.” American slavery started in Virginia. It had been hard to stop. Natural laws, not moral laws, stopped slavery in the north. Northerners are hypocrites because they allow blacks liberty but forbid them jobs, education, or a pew in church. 
	Joseph now found the Bible full of slavery. He claimed that “even if they [Slaves] cannot read the Bible in the U.S. South, they can hear the Bible’s message and can be saved. “American slavery has produced and cultivated more African intellect, more social affection, more Christian emotion in two hundred years than all Africa [Central and Southern] for two thousand years.” 
He also said, “You claim human beings cannot be made into property, but they have been down through history. By rising up abstract rights of man, you have opened a Pandora’s box—Do you support the rights of woman, the rights of woman in divorce?” 
	Joseph dismissed any value in African cultures. He denied the excruciating suffering of the Middle Passage. He accepted the myth of “the kind master,” that “Africans are lazy and we must teach them to work. In slavery the slave does work. You find vices in the South; well, they are also rampant in the North." 
	Joseph concluded: 
Most of our great American men were slaveholders—Washington, Jefferson, and some present day southerners I greatly respect such as Alexander Stephens. As for your misplaced motto, it is the Republicans who are fanatics. They are unpatriotic. They are divided between [Nathaniel] Banks who “goes for the absorption of the colored races, while Mr. Blair goes for their expulsion. Which shall be the policy of the party?” The Democratic Party calls for equality—equality among the states—each State to manage their own affairs. . . . Affectionately, your brother, Joseph C. Lovejoy. 
If intrested in more information contact www.lovejoysociety.org
Subjects: Justification, Slavery
Places: United States
People: Owen Lovejoy (1811-1864)