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Should The Bible Rationalize Slavery?

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Should The Bible Rationalize Slavery?
If slaves were free, white Southerners would see their fortunes decline. White Southerners depended on slaves to endure harsh working conditions and strenuous labor that they were not willing to do. They needed a way to rationalize cruelty in order to maintain their business. In their defense of slavery, they attempted to show ownership of people had been going on since Biblical times. If you strictly believe in the words of the Bible, white businessmen could point to those words to prove that the Bible sanctions slavery, albeit in a convoluted way. It seems to me that they were thinking that some form of slavery has existed since the beginning of time. Consequently, the Bible is used in an alternative way to explain why slavery should
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