For an interesting “inside” view of Church teaching and practice regarding slavery in the antebellum era, go to this link and click on “Preview this book”:
books.google.com/books?id=wnFNAAAAYAAJ
This is a scanned Google Books copy of “On the Mission in Missouri, 1857-1868”, a memoir by Bishop John Joseph Hogan, written around 1910, of his years as a priest serving remote rural missions in the years leading up to and during the Civil War. He had a lot of, to say the least, interesting experiences during those years, such as surviving 21 train wrecks (many caused by sabotage), exorcising a haunted house, and barely escaping one of Bloody Bill Anderson’s most infamous massacres (in which a young Jesse James also participated, by the way)… but I digress.
With regard to slavery, in one passage Bp. Hogan describes traveling on a Missouri River steamboat that was carrying slaves for “resale” in Southern markets:
The groans of the poor fellows, as they clanked their manacled hands against the deck, or dragged and slashed in pain their booted heels on the rough boards on which they lay, were truly heart-rending. They were accused of no crime, were torn away without a minute’s notice from their homes, husbands separated from wives and children, sons separated from parents, brothers, and sisters. All were forced to leave dear friends and loved scenes behind them. Love of money caused it all. Traders had bought them and were taking them to trade them again, and for a much higher price, in the slave marts of St. Louis and New Orleans.
Later he describes his own encounters with Catholic slaves and their owners:
*The poor negroes had many virtues, and a gentleness of character altogether their own. Never, in my acquaintance with them, were they ever disrespectful or offensive to me, or to any one else so far as I could see. When on the mission at Old Mines, in Washington county, in 1852 and 1853, I taught a class of about forty negroes their catechism, day after day for several months, preparing them for First Communion… The negro Catholics of that congregation, and they were many, were devoted to the Church. The young men and young women, though not able to read or write, being debarred from such knowledge by statute, had nevertheless learned by heart the Gloria and Credo of the Mass, and several Psalms and Hymns, which they heard in the church, and which they took delight in singing as they followed the plough in the fields, or enjoyed the pleasures of home by their humble firesides. Their masters did not engage in the business of buying and selling slaves, hiring them out for payment, or separating wife from husband or parents from children…The black and white families went to the same church together. They lived in friendship and in neighborship, mutually aiding and depending on each other. The same parish priest ministered to their spiritual wants. They same family physician attended them in their aliments. They lived for each other, died near each other, and were buried near each other. The “Massa and Missus” and faithful servants, choosing in death as in life not to be separated. Surely before the Holy Altar of the one God, Master of all, and under the sacred influence of humanity divinely redeemed, there was and could be neither “bond nor free.” *
Perhaps this picture of slave life is a bit too rosy, but it seems to indicate that Catholic slaveowners (at least in Missouri, and probably elsewhere) were encouraged to treat their slaves as members of the family, and to take an interest in their material and spiritual welfare, rather than treat them as property to be bought and sold at will. Bp. Hogan goes on to state that:
The Church knew how to heal the bruises of the slave and to soften the severity of the master, and had her influence been allowed to prevail, it would have saved us from a calamity now and forever to be deplored, and which neither blood nor tears can ever erase from the pages of our history. Like Rachel, the Church has ever to mourn and without consolation her children’s misfortunes, usually none other than the dire results of selfish greed and atrocious political strife."
The implication seems to be that if masters and slaves had simply been taught to respect one another as fellow human beings made in God’s image, and slaves had not been exploited for “selfish greed” and political gain, the Civil War would have been averted, and slavery probably would have eventually died out on its own. Of course we’ll never know for sure if that would have happened, or how long slavery would have persisted with that approach.
In any event I encourage you all to read this book; it touches on a lot of subjects including Irish immigration and some important issues of religious freedom not unlike what we are facing today.
I agree the fed needs to but out. If only state supreme courts had been considered superior for their jurisdiction than the federal court then there would be no Roe V Wade. I would rather the law be unevenly applied then universally misapplied.