The contributions of Presbyterian Orthodoxy to the pro-slavery argument as exemplified by the writings of James Henley Thornwell, 1838-1860

An overview of the life and writings of James Henley Thornwell, a theologian in the Presbyterian Church of the United States before the Civil War. After the split between conservative and liberal theology in the Church in 1838, Thornwell became an apologist for the Calvinist theology of the Church which supplied no religious basis for reform and therefore accepted a theology so conservative that it offered little moral resistance to the growing defense of slavery. Thornwell is a striking example of how a man can become so obsessed with an immoral institution that he can entirely misappropriate Christianity for its defense.