Slavery, Race, and Gender at Princeton Seminary: The Pre-Civil War Era

Abstract

The pre-Civil War leaders of Princeton Seminary desired social reform and progress, but these had to come gradually and non-disruptively. Thus while Charles Hodge and his colleagues looked for an end to slavery at some indefinite time in the future, they supported in the meantime the colonization of free blacks in Africa and fought immediate emancipation. They likewise opposed full equality for women. A properly ordered society, they believed, involved “social subordination”—of humanity to God, woman to man, children to parents, slaves to masters, and the morally unfit and uneducated to the best and brightest.