Our Ancestors Were Slaveholders

“On the eve of secession, the great majority of white people in South Carolina did not own any slaves…. Lowcountry planters, and all planters who owned more than twenty slaves, were a minority of a minority.”

Theodore Rosengarten, Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter (© 1986, Morrow & Co.) pg 208

Our ancestors were slaveholders. That’s a difficult thing to ponder. In response we are tempted to make excuses, or shake our heads and wag our fingers at previous generations that were not as enlightened and civilized as we consider ourselves to be.

The Freedom House Museum in Alexandria, Virginia is housed in a brick townhome with a notorious past, once among the largest slave-trading businesses in the country. As descendants of the proprietors came to understand just what their ancestors did for a living they were horrified, an understandable reaction. When they reached out to cousins, some shared their horror and discussed what they could do to atone for the sins of their fathers. Others felt no personal burden of responsibility, both understandable reactions.

There is a saying that you should always be careful about pointing your finger, because when you do three more are pointing right back at you. If we hold such disdain for previous generations, consider, doesn’t it follow that our descendants will hold disdain for us? Our cultural sins are different, but there nonetheless; The neglect or outright rejection of the God who created and loves us. Abortion on demand and up to the moment of birth. Rampant pornography. Destructive lifestyles and actions celebrated in our music, television, and movies which we then export throughout the world to other cultures.

“For the planters of St. Helena, there would be no coming home from the War and rebuilding a life with elements of the past…. They lived long lives, with as much intensity and singularity as anyone. But they happened to live in the last years of the slavery epoch, in the only country where it took a civil war to throw off slavery, and their distinction lies in that fact.”

Rosengarten, Tombee pg 34

Our ancestors were slaveholders. Others have ancestors that were slaves. As their distinction lies in that fact and the era in which they lived, so too does ours. In our freedom, many of us have become slaves to the pursuit wealth or power, honor or pleasure. Instead of shaking our heads and wagging our fingers, let us reach up in gratitude and worship to the One who made us and loves us, reach out in charity and service to those we encounter in our daily lives, and reach back in honor and recognition of the intensity and singularity of the lives our ancestors lived.

“For you were called to freedom brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be slaves of one another.”  -Galatians 5:13

Adapted from A String of Bells: Stories of a Southern Family © 2020 by Nick J. Guevara, Jr.