Coming to Terms with Slavery: David Brion Davis Sums Up

Abstract

Prize for The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (1966). He is one of the scholars whose name comes to mind (as, for example, does Eugene Genovese for his powerful volume, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 1974) when American slavery is referenced. That said, In the Image of God. Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of is a somewhat misleading title for this most recent and summing up work by Davis. Nowhere does Davis explore systematically the nexus between religion, values, and slavery. The topic pops up time-to-time when, for example, Davis calls the reader's attention to his previous work-The Problem of Slavery in Western Cultureand reminds us that he took pains to emphasize the importance of religious sources of antislavery thought and the religious transformations that made slave emancipation a symbolic test of the efficacy of Christian faith (p. 218). Although Part I, From Religion to Slavery, suggests a genealogy exploring the from ... to, this nowhere appears. Instead, the reader is obliged to cull the theme diverse and (mostly) previously published essays and reviews, including those that touch on moral arguments involved in abolishing the slave trade and in freeing the colonial slaves, this an essay on Capitalism, Abolitionism, and Hegemony (p. 228). Of considerable interest is Davis's short, personal intellectual history. He tells us that he has been studying and writing about slavery for 33 years and, as well, that he is also interested in religion and the history of values. After all, Even Thucydides began his history with a theory of human nature (p. 1). Clearly, Davis is unfazed at committing that most dire of sins in the lexicon of much of the contemporary intelligentsia and that is to traffic in-dare one utter the word?-essentialism. As readers of this journal surely