Fuller disagreed.įuller raised concerns about slavery’s abuses, but he defended it nonetheless. In 1847, Fuller and Brown University president Francis Wayland published Domestic Slavery Considered as a Scriptural Institution. The heart of the matter boiled down to a simple question: Is slavery, in principle, a sin? Wayland argued it is. After practicing law, he led churches in Beaufort, South Carolina, and in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated in 1824, earned a law degree, got married, and became a Baptist. Fuller’s parents raised him Episcopalian before sending him to Harvard. Baptist pastor Richard Fuller, for example, used the Bible to defend the institution of slavery. Of course, some Americans did more than assume slavery. Like so many others, he took for granted that Scripture permitted it. And even if he thought slavery unkind, Washington’s economic interests trumped his moral reservations. He never offered a biblical defense for slavery. A devout but private Anglican, he never wore religion on his sleeve. Looking back, we understand Washington, like other Founding Fathers, was a man of his times. Though he emancipated his slaves upon his death, while he lived he depended on slaves to run his Mount Vernon farm. My elementary teachers taught me George Washington boldly led the Continental Army, ably served as America’s first president, and humbly refused to seek reelection after a second term.
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