When Pastors Go Public: Richard Furman's Public Letter on Slavery

Abstract

Early in the history of South Carolina, leaders questioned pastoral influence as a potential threat to public discourse. The form of the public letter helped realize such a threat, by giving the eloquent and powerful Richard Furman a way to turn private correspondence into a multi-audience, transcendent appeal for the extension of slavery. The public letter was a hybrid genre of modern discourse, combining civic argument with intimate and social functions. The form allowed Furman to conceal his agency as a pastor delivering a written sermon on a timely political issue.