Slavery Vs Southern Slavery

While the Old Testament verse Leviticus 25:44-46 was crucial in the biblical slavery debates, other verses were equally significant. A notable example being Exodus 21:20 which states “When a slave owner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished.” Based on this verse southern proponents of slavery argued that the Bible’s acceptance of slavery was a given. In essence, if the Bible provided laws which regulated and allowed for the punishment of slaves by masters, then how could one deny that the Bible sanctioned slavery? In response to this assertion, abolitionists argued that this law actually showed that southerners were not justified in using the Bible as a rationalization for the
As noted in the introduction of the chapter, some abolitionists challenged the claim that Exodus 21:20 supported southern slavery arguing instead that it pointed to the existence of an institutional distinctions between biblical slavery and southern slavery. To these abolitionists, this distinction undermined the legitimacy of southerners using the Bible to sanction slavery as they practiced it. A prime example of this perspective is found in the writings of the Rev. Albert Barnes. In his work, An Inquiry into the Scriptural Views of Slavery, Barnes identified two significant institutional distinctions between southern slavery and biblical slavery based on Exodus 21:20. These distinctions rested on the fact that while Exodus 21:20 called for masters to be punished for the murder of their slaves, southern slave laws were designed in such a way that masters could murder their slaves and face no punishment. With the first distinction, Barnes drew attention to the fact that in some states in the South, laws “expressly acquit the master for killing his slave, if it be done when inflicting moderate correction.” To prove his point, Barnes quoted a North Carolina law dealing with the murder of slaves. The North Carolina law stated, “Be it enacted that if any person shall hereafter be guilty of willfully or maliciously killing a slave, such offender shall be… guilty of murder…provided always that this act shall not extend…to any slave in the act of resistance to his lawful owner or master, or to any slave dying under moderate correction.” Thus, in contrast to Exodus 21:20 which called for the punishment of masters who murdered their slaves, the North Carolina law provided masters a convenient loophole through which a master could escape punishment for the murder of his slave. If a slave died under “moderate correction,” nothing would be done and