Lockean Meritocracy Satisfies the Evolutionary Natural Desire for Social Status and Egalitarian Hierarchy

There are at least twenty natural desires that are universal to all human societies because they are rooted in human biology as shaped by evolutionary history.  If the good is the desirable, then these twenty natural desires provide a universal basis for moral judgment.  A Lockean liberal social order can be judged to be the best regime in so far as it allows for the fullest satisfaction of those natural desires.

For example, there is a natural desire for social status that was formed in the Lockean evolutionary state of nature.  And we can see how the meritocracy in a Lockean liberal society satisfies that desire for social status.

Human beings generally desire social status through comparative social ranking.  This is a human universal found in all human societies (Brown 1991).  Human beings' esteem for themselves requires they be esteemed by others whose judgments they respect.  Human beings attain high social status through prestige, fame, or honor within the groups to which they belong.  And they can be ranked differently in different groups.  Although some societies are much less hierarchical than others, all societies rank individuals as higher or lower based on age, sex, kinship, physical formidability, physical attractiveness, social competence, and practical skills.

Individuals become socially dominant through any trait or activity that elicits deference in others.  A few charismatic individuals become heroic leaders because of their extraordinary power to win the respect of the people around them.  

And yet, subordinate individuals can resist excessive or exploitative dominance and thus limit the power of dominant individuals.  Subordinate individuals can form large coalitions to challenge those at the top of the hierarchy.

Men generally (on average) have a stronger desire for dominance in social hierarchies than do women.  Men compete for mating opportunities, and dominant men are generally more attractive to potential mates.

In a recent article published in The Quarterly Review of Biology, Noah Smith and Reuven Dukas have surveyed the evidence and arguments for the evolutionary psychology of social ranking in humans and other animals.  They identify five major dimensions of social ranking in humans and two subcategories for each dimension:  physical formidability (height and muscularity), social conventions (age and nepotism), physical attractiveness (symmetry and health), social competence (empathy and extraversion), and practical competence in complex skills (intelligence and perseverance).  Although I agree with them about these five dimensions, they have overlooked a sixth major dimension of social ranking--the counter-dominance of subordinates that can establish what Christopher Boehm called a "reverse-dominance hierarchy" or "egalitarian dominance," which corresponds to what Locke identified as the natural equality of human beings in the state of nature.

Let's consider each of these six dimensions of social ranking.

(1)  Physical formidability.  Many animals live in social hierarchies in which higher ranking individuals can claim priority in access to scarce resources (such as food and shelter) and opportunities for sexual mating (Wilson 1975; Tibbets et al. 2022).  This ranking is mostly determined by physical formidability, which is the ability of an individual to win a fight.  Those who win a fight are more likely to win the next fight.  Those who lose a fight are more likely to lose the next fight.  Those with a reputation as winners can usually avoid costly fights by acting assertively and deterring challengers.  Those with a reputation as losers avoid costly fights with those who seem to be winners.  Consequently, actual fighting is usually rare, because conflicts are often settled through ritualistic displays of dominance and submission without the violence of real fighting.

Although physical formidability is not as important for human ranking as it is for nonhuman animals, it does have some influence in human social ranking.  For example, height is a cue for physical formidability, and height is correlated with high status and leadership positions (Cheng and Tracy 2014; Zeng et al. 2022).  One illustration of this is that the Presidents of the United States have been generally taller than the average for men.  But some of this correlation between height and high status could be explained by the correlation of height with intelligence and cognitive ability, because nutritional status during childhood affects both height and cognitive development in adults (Lindqvist 2012).

(2)  Social conventions.  Age and nepotism are two social conventions for determining social status that are important for both nonhuman animals and human beings.  Adults rank higher than children, and often older adults rank higher than younger adults (Redhead and Power 2022).  Nepotism (the tendency to favor one's kin) also shapes social hierarchies in which one's social ranking depends on the ranking of one's family (Bellow 2004).

(3)  Physical attractiveness.  Physically attractive people tend to have a high social status.  They have more friends, higher incomes, and better jobs.  This is true for both men and women (Frevert and Walker 2014).  Despite the variability in the perceptions of physical beauty, there are some general patterns that are universal, such as the judgment that the bodily signs of health and vigor, the youthful nubility of women, and facial and bodily symmetry are physically attractive (Jones et al. 2001).

(4)  Social competence.  In all human societies, people recognized for their social competence have high social status.  Social competence is the skill for performing social tasks and handling social interactions--such as leading a social group or mediating social disputes.  This requires a mixture of social intelligence, sociable personality traits, and social experience.  Socially competent people show cognitive sympathy (understanding other people's mental states) and affective sympathy (responding to people's mental states with appropriate emotion).  They also show sociable personality traits such as extraversion (Dukas and Bailey 2024; Smith and Dukas 2024).

(5)  Practical competence in complex skills.  In hunter-gatherer societies, people have high social status when they show competence in complex tasks such as hunting and toolmaking (Henrich 2016).  In modern societies, people gain high status when they show professional expertise in providing all kinds of goods and services (Anderson and Willer 2014).

(6)  Counter-dominance.  Smith and Dukas fail to recognize the importance of counter-dominance for subordinate individuals who need to resist exploitative dominance by socially superior individuals.  In their analysis of the traits necessary for social competence, Smith and Dukas (2024:164) include "the ability to control the impressions that other people have of an individual, and the ability to manipulate others for personal gain," and in support of this idea, they cite Niccolo Machiavelli's Prince and the writing of Richard Christie and Florence Geis (1970) on the "Machiavellian personality."

But they do not notice that the longest chapter in Machiavelli's The Prince--Chapter 19 on "Of Avoiding Contempt and Hatred"--is about how princes who become hated by the people they rule open themselves up to conspiracies leading to their assassination.  Although the people don't want to rule, they don't want to be exploited by those who rule them, and they will resist exploitative rule, sometimes violently.  Frans de Waal saw that political assassination was also part of the Machiavellian politics of chimpanzees, in which resistance to exploitative rule established an "egalitarian hierarchy" in chimpanzee communities as opposed to a "despotic hierarchy."  

Christopher Boehm saw this in both chimpanzees and in the foraging ancestors of human beings--a natural tendency to counter-dominance--the natural propensity of individuals to resist being dominated.  Among some primates, subordinate individuals can resist excessive dominance and thus limit the power of dominant individuals.  Subordinate individuals can form large coalitions to challenge those at the top of the hierarchy.

Locke saw this natural resistance to exploitative dominance in the evolutionary state of nature as the natural support for an egalitarian hierarchy, in which some have higher status and power than others, and yet all men are naturally equal in their liberty to live without being ruled by anyone without their consent.

REFERENCES

Anderson, C., and R. Willer.  2014. "Do Status Hierarchies Benefit Groups?  A Bounded Functionalist Account of Status."  In The Psychology of Social Status, eds. J. T. Cheng, J. L. Tracy, and C. Anderson, pp. 47-70.  New York: Springer.

Bellow, Adam.  2004.  In Praise of Nepotism: A History of Family Enterprise from King David to George W. Bush.  New York: Knopf Doubleday.

Brown, Donald.  1991.  Human Universals.  Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Cheng, J. T., and J. L. Tracy.  2014.  "Toward a Unified Science of Hierarchy: Dominance and Prestige Are Two Fundamental Pathways to Human Social Rank."  In The Psychology of Social Status, eds. J. T. Cheng, J. L. Tracy, and C. Anderson, pp. 3-27.  New York: Springer.

Christie, Richard, and Florence Geis.  1970.  Studies in Machiavellianism.  New York: Academic Press.

Dukas, R., and N. Bailey.  2024.  "Evolutionary Biology of Social Expertise." Biological Reviews https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.13115.

Frevert, T. K., and L. S. Walker. 2014. "Physical Attractiveness and Social Status."  Sociology Compass 8:313-323.

Henrich, Joseph.  2016.  The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter.  Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Jones, B. C., et al.  2001.  "Facial Symmetry and Judgments of Apparent Health: Support for a 'Good Genes' Explanation of the Attractiveness-Symmetry Relationship."  Evolution and Human Behavior 22 (November): 417-429.

Lindqvist, Erik.  2012.  "Height and Leadership."  Review of Economics and Statistics 94:1191-1196.

Redhead, D., and E. A. Power.  2022.  "Social Hierarchies and Social Networks in Humans."  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 377:20200440.

Smith, Noah M. T., and Reuven Dukas.  2024.  "Winner and Loser Effects and Social Rank in Humans."  The Quarterly Review of Biology 99:157-174.

Tibbets, E. A., et al.  2022.  "The Establishment and Maintenance of Dominance Hierarchies."  Philosophical Transactions for the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 377:20200450.

Wilson, Edward O.  1975.  Sociobiology: The New Synthesis.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Zeng, T. C., J. T. Cheng, and J. Henrich.  2022.  "Dominance in Humans."  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 377:20200451.

The Catholic Integralist Critique of Locke on Toleration: The Holy Spirit Cannot Overcome Religious Pluralism

Pope Gregory I (the Great), Pope from 590 to 604.  He is Writing in his Study.  The Holy Spirit as a Pentecostal Dove Whispers in His Ear.  Below, Scribes Copy His Work.  A Tenth-Century Ivory, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

 

I have long argued that the desire for religious understanding is one of the twenty natural desires of our evolved human nature.  If the good is the desirable, then we can judge the goodness of a social order by how well it secures the conditions for human beings to pursue the satisfaction of those natural desires. 

The Catholic Integralists say that a Catholic Integralist regime is the best social order because it enforces belief in the one true religion in a Catholic confessional state, and thus satisfies the natural desire for religious understanding.  But they are mistaken because they fail to see that the evolved natural desire for religious understanding is pluralistic in that human beings will always disagree in what they believe to be the true religious experience of the transcendent world.  And there has never been a divine revelation of the religious truth clear enough to bring religious believers to agreement.  Whatever the Holy Spirit might have whispered to Pope Gregory the Great was not clearly heard by others.

The evolutionary science of religious pluralism supports John Locke's liberal theology of Christianity--that since "everyone is orthodox to himself," and "every Church is orthodox to itself,: there is no set of universal doctrines binding on all Christians, except perhaps the belief that Jesus is the Messiah; and therefore, there is no orthodoxy strictly speaking that can be properly enforced by government.  

For this reason, a Lockean liberal social order that secures religious liberty and religious toleration is the best regime for promoting the pluralistic pursuit of religious happiness.  It does this by creating a marketplace of religion in which churches compete for customers, and those churches that best satisfy the desire for religious experience increase their share of the market.  I have elaborated this argument in some previous posts.

But I haven't yet responded to Derek Remus's integralist critique of Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration.  This was originally published at the website for The Josias, the main online outlet for integralism, and then published in print in Integralism and the Common Good: Selected Essays from The Josias, volume 2: The Two Powers, edited by P. Edmund Waldstein (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2022), 335-371.  Remus first wrote this paper as an undergraduate thesis at Thomas Aquinas College (Santa Paula, California).  Father Remus is now an Associate Pastor at St. Luke's Catholic Church in Calgary, Canada.

Remus's introduction to his paper is a brief history of Christianity and the relation between church and state.  He then states his thesis--that the Catholic Church is right about the proper relation between church and state, and Locke is wrong.

To support this thesis, the main body of his paper has three parts:  a summary of Locke's claims in A Letter Concerning Toleration, an exposition and defense of the Catholic Church's position on church and state that relies largely on Thomas Aquinas's teaching, and then a Catholic refutation of Locke's position.  

Finally, Remus adds an Appendix on the question of whether the Catholic integralist understanding of church and state can be defended in the modern world where Catholics are in the minority in many Western countries (such as the United States).

I will respond to each of these parts of his paper.  My references to Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration will be to the Liberty Fund edition edited by Mark Goldie (2010).

THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE

Remus's first two paragraphs survey the first 1600 years of the history of Christianity in relation to the state:

"The first three centuries of the Catholic Church's existence were a period of violent and bloody persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire--that is, the state.  The Church persevered through this trial, however, and, instead of diminishing, increased in proportion to the persecutions she suffered, until at last she was granted freedom of worship and hers was made the official religion of the Empire.  This was the beginning of that harmonious union between Church and state which gave rise to Christendom--a union in which the state recognized that its proper good was ordered toward a higher good, namely, eternal beatitude, and the Church, to the extent that affairs of state bore upon the salvation of souls, was solicitous about those affairs."

"This union lasted throughout Europe for twelve hundred years.  Then came the Protestant Reformation.  The divine origin of the papacy was challenged; the religious unity of Europe was shattered; Christendom unraveled.  The Church still existed, however, and the question of how governments ought to deal with her under the new order of things became an urgent problem for political philosophers" (335).

Remus then notes that while political philosophers like Hobbes and Spinoza thought the head of state should also be the head of the Church to ensure religious peace, Locke thought there should be a separation of church and state, with the church devoted to the salvation of souls in the afterlife, and the state devoted to securing the earthly goods of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Moreover, Locke thought the state should tolerate all religions except when religious doctrines or practices threatened the peace of the community.

Remus observes that the United States has clearly adopted the Lockean position through Locke's influence on American Founders like Thomas Jefferson who insisted on "a wall of separation between Church and State."  Consequently, many American Catholics have adopted the Lockean view of church-state relations as the ideal that all nations should follow.

But this kind of thinking, Remus asserts, is "clearly opposed to that of the Church's Magisterium."  The "Magisterium" of the Catholic Church is its "teaching" function--the authority of the Church through the popes and the bishops to truthfully interpret the revealed Word of God as conveyed through the Bible and the Church's tradition.  So, here, Remus interprets the Church's Magisterium on the relation between Church and state by quoting from the papal pronouncements of three popes--Pius IX (1846-1878), Leo XIII (1878-1903), and Pius XI (1922-1939).  They all agree, in the words of Leo XIII, that the state is bound by divine law to support the "public profession of religion . . . not such religion as [men] may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only true religion"--the religion of the Catholic Church (337).  This shows, then, that Locke is wrong in arguing for the separation of church and state, because this contradicts the Catholic Church's teaching.

In this introductory section of his paper, Remus makes three dubious claims.  The first is that from the beginning of Christianity, the Catholic Church has been "the Church," the only Church, because it is the only truly Christian Church, or even "the only true religion," as Leo XIII declared, as confirmed by "certain and most clear marks."  

This denies the historical fact of religious pluralism in Christianity.  Contrary to Remus's assumption that there was no religious pluralism in Christianity prior to the Protestant Reformation, the history of Christianity beginning with the first Christians has been a history of disagreement over Christian doctrines and practices as manifest in the many schisms and heresies among Christians.  A Christian schism is when one Christian group divides into two groups that cannot live together as one religious community.  A Christian heresy is one Christian's religious belief that is considered false by other Christians.

Beginning in the early history of the Christian Church, there have been constant battles with one group of heretics after another.  For example, between AD 150 (with the Marcionist schism) and 1054 (with the Great Schism that separated the Latin Church in the West from the Greek Orthodox Church in the East), there were at least twenty-two major schisms in Christianity.

The Church Councils that met during the first five centuries of Christianity were called to rule against the numerous heresies that sprang up, many of which had to do with how to understand the place of Jesus Christ in the Trinity.  The first Council of Nicaea in 325 ruled against Arianism--the anti-Trinitarianism of Arius, an Alexandrian priest, who believed that while Jesus was the Son of God, he was not equal to God.  The Council of Ephesus in 431 ruled against Nestorianism--the teaching of Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople, that the incarnate Christ had two separate natures--one divine and the other human--and that Mary was only the mother of the human Jesus, and thus not the Mother of God.  The Council of Chalcedon in 451 ruled against the view of the Coptic Churches that Christ had only one divine nature (monophysitism) and in favor of the view that Christ had two distinct natures, one divine and one human, but united in one person (dyophysitism).  The Coptic Churches continue today in North Africa, the Near East, and Ethiopia.

Surveying the entire history of Christianity, Wikipedia has lists of over 50 schisms and over 40 heresies.  That's what I mean by religious pluralism in Christianity.  Later in his paper, Remus speaks of "that great achievement of contemporary man called religious pluralism" (370), as if there had been no religious pluralism until recently.  But that is obviously not true.

This religious pluralism in Christianity also denies Remus's second dubious claim in his introductory section--that there was a "harmonious union between Church and state" that sustained Christendom for twelve hundred years prior to the Protestant Reformation.  Beginning with Constantine, rulers who tried to enforce Catholic orthodoxy, often through violent coercion, were frustrated by the heresies and schisms that made it impossible to sustain any "harmonious union" of Christians.

In 313, the Roman Emperor Constantine I issued the Edict of Milan that granted religious freedom: Christianity and all other religions would be free from persecution.  Later, in 380, the Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica that declared Christianity as defined by the Nicene Creed of 325 as the official religion of the Empire; and those who disagreed with any part of the Nicene Creed--such as the Arians who denied that Jesus was of "the same essence" as God--could be punished by the Church and the state.  But the debate over trinitarian theology--often a violent debate--continued to fester for centuries.  These and other theological disputes created a religious pluralism among Christians that neither the Church nor the state could suppress.  Remus is silent about all of this theological conflict within Christianity.

The irresolvable problem of religious pluralism in Christianity eventually forced the Catholic Church in the Second Vatican Council to issue the "Declaration on Religious Freedom" or Dignitatis Humanae in 1965, which endorsed the human right to religious liberty and thus embraced the Lockean argument for religious toleration.  This denied the teaching of Leo XIII that divine law requires the state to enforce Catholicism as the true religion.  

This refutes the third dubious claim in Remus's introduction to this paper--the claim that the Church's Magisterium opposes Lockean religious liberty.  Strangely, however, Remus never even mentions Dignitatis Humanae anywhere in his paper.

Remus might agree with Thomas Pink's argument that Dignitatis Humanae was a change in policy but not a change in doctrine.  Pink explains: "The Church is now refusing to license the state to act as her coercive agent, and it is from that policy change, and not from any change in underlying doctrine, that the wrongfulness of religious coercion by the state follows."  The unchanged doctrine is that while the state has no authority on its own to coerce religious belief, because the ultimate authority over religious belief belongs to the Church, the Church can authorize the state to act as the "secular arm" of the Church in enforcing religious belief.  In particular, the Church can ask the state to punish those baptized Christians who have been condemned by the Church as heretics, apostates, or schismatics.  

Pink relies heavily on a passage in the first section of Dignitatis Humanae: "Religious freedom, in turn, which men demand as necessary to fulfill their duty to worship God, has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society.  Therefore, it leaves unchanged (integram) traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ."  Pink infers that if "traditional Catholic doctrine" remains "unchanged" by Dignitatis Humanae, that must mean that the traditional doctrine about the Church's authority to use the state as the "secular arm" of the Church in coercing religious belief has not been changed by Vatican II.  That Remus agrees with Pink about this is perhaps suggested by the fact that Remus's paper in Integralism and the Common Good is immediately preceded by a paper by Pink, and both papers are in a section of the book with the title "Religious Liberty."

As I have argued, there are lots of problems with Pink's reading of Dignitatis Humanae.  One is that there is no reference anywhere in Dignitatis Humanae to the "secular arm" doctrine of the Catholic Church.  Another problem is that when the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2105) quotes the passage about the "unchanged traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion," the Catechism explains this as affirming the moral duty of the Church to be "constantly evangelizing men," and nothing is said about the possibility of using a "secular arm" to coerce Catholic faith.  Remus is silent about all of this.

LOCKE'S FIVE ARGUMENTS FOR TOLERATION

In summarizing Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration, Remus correctly identifies four of Locke's main arguments (341-42).  But he fails to recognize the importance of a fifth argument, which is actually Locke's primary argument.  

Remus also fails to see the importance of Locke's numerous references to the New Testament as providing crucial scriptural support for his arguments.  Unlike Locke, Remus provides almost no scriptural support for his arguments--he quotes from the New Testament only once.  Consequently, Remus seems unwilling or unable to refute Locke's claim that the New Testament teaches liberal toleration.

Locke makes four arguments for why the state (or "Commonwealth" as Locke calls it) secures only the "civil interests" or "civil goods" in caring for "the things of this World," and therefore it must be separated from the churches that secure the salvation of souls in "the World to come."

First, the care of souls has not be committed to any civil magistrate by anyone--neither by God nor by consent of the people (LCT, 13).

Second, "the care of Souls cannot belong to the Civil Magistrate, because his Power consists only in outward force: But true and saving Religion consists in the inward persuasion of the Mind; without which nothing can be acceptable to God" (LCT, 13).

Third, even if outward force could influence people's religious beliefs, this would not necessarily lead to the salvation of their souls, because given "the variety and contradiction of Opinions in Religion" among political rulers, most rulers would favor false religions that would lead to the eternal damnation of most people (LCT, 14-15).

Fourth, the duty of the magistrate to secure the civil interests of everyone does not require enforcing any religious belief, because my neighbor's religious beliefs do not affect my civil interests (LCT, 20, 37, 44-46).  Thomas Jefferson expressed this Lockean argument for religious liberty in a memorable way: "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.  But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg" (Notes on Virginia, Query XVII).

Although Remus rightly identifies these four arguments, he ignores Locke's primary argument set forth in the first pages of the Letter Concerning Toleration--that toleration is "the chief Characteristical Mark of the True Church," because "every one is Orthodox to himself," and Jesus taught Christians to show "Charity, Meekness, and Good-will in general towards all Mankind," so that the "Toleration of those that differ from others in Matters of Religion, is . . . agreeable to the Gospel of Jesus Christ" (7-12).

To prove this, Locke quotes from the New Testament 6 times in this introductory section, and a total of 14 times in the whole of the Letter Concerning Toleration.  He also quotes from the Old Testament 5 times in order to contrast the Mosaic theocracy of the Old Testament and the religious liberty of the New Testament.  The "Commonwealth of the Jews" was an "absolute Theocracy," so that there was no difference between the Commonwealth and the Church; and "God himself was the Legislator."  "But there is absolutely no such thing, under the Gospel, as a Christian Commonwealth," because Jesus "instituted no Commonwealth."  "Nor put he the Sword into any Magistrate's Hand, with Commission to make use of it in forcing men to forsake their former Religion, and receive his" (42).

As I have argued in previous posts, the proponents of early modern classical liberalism like Locke could plausibly read the New Testament as teaching religious toleration and religious liberty.  Remarkably, Remus is silent about all this.  He quotes from the Bible only once when he quotes Matthew 28:19: "Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (357).  So, he never attempts to refute Locke's interpretation of the Bible.

Last year, I wrote about how the coronation of King Charles III of Great Britain showed the acceptance of Locke's liberal interpretation of New Testament Christianity as supporting toleration and religious liberty. 

REMUS'S REDUCED INTEGRALISM

After explaining Locke's account of the separation of church and state, Remus turns to "the way things really are," or to "the truth about Church and state" as taught by the Catholic Church.  This is a teaching about "the primacy of the common good," and defending this teaching must move through five steps, as explained by "the Common Doctor of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas" (337, 346-47).

First, Remus shows how the common good is preferable to the private good.

Second, he shows how the end of the state is the political common good.

Third, he shows how religion promotes the political common good.

Fourth, he shows how the end of the Church established by Christ is the common good of eternal beatitude.

Fifth, the rulers of the state are subject to the rulers of the Catholic Church in so far as the lower common good of politics must serve the higher common good of eternal beatitude.

Although Remus does not explicitly say that this teaching is Catholic Integralism, it clearly is.  But what's remarkable about Remus's account of this teaching is that it is a reduced Catholic Integralism.  A full Catholic Integralism, such as found in the teaching of Thomas Aquinas and in the history of the Catholic Church prior to Dignitatis Humanae in 1965, includes the claim that the Catholic Church has the divine right to employ the state as its secular arm in persecuting and even killing heretics.  Remus rejects this claim because he agrees with Locke about "the unjustness of using the state to kill and persecute one's neighbor on account of religion" (338, 362).  Although he does not explicitly explain to his reader what he is doing, Remus is reducing or revising the Catholic tradition of integralism by rejecting the traditional integralist claim that the Church is divinely commanded to persecute and even kill heretics.

The clearest indication of what Remus is doing is in his selective reading of Thomas Aquinas and of the history of the Catholic Church's persecution of heretics.  Remus is silent about Aquinas's endorsement of the Inquisition.  Aquinas taught that heretics--those who claim to be Christians but deny some of the doctrines of the Church--can be rightly compelled to keep the faith.  Heretics must be given repeated chances to recant their heretical beliefs, but if they refuse, they can be rightly executed (ST, II-II, q. 10, aa. 8, 11; q. 11, a. 3).  Aquinas cannot cite any passages from the New Testament that condone the killing of heretics, because as Locke pointed out, there are none.  Remus says nothing about this.

Remus also says nothing about the history of the Catholic Churches execution of heretics.  For example, in 1415, Jan Hus, a Catholic priest who sought to reform the Church, was condemned by the Council of Constance to be burned at the stake for heresy.  He sang hymns as he was burned to death.  Hus was a charismatic priest who inspired his followers in Bohemia to defeat five consecutive papal crusades against them from 1420 to 1431--the Hussite Wars.  Hus and the Hussites were intensely pious Christians.  Similarly, Martin Luther and the other Protestant Reformers were all intensely pious.  Thus does the mystical experience of grace--of being divinely inspired with an experience of the transcendent--often move Christians to dissent from Catholic orthodoxy.

Remus says nothing about this.  He claims that God's revealed truth is conveyed to believers by the "grace of the Holy Spirit" (356).  But he is silent about how pious Christians like Jan Hus and the Protestant Reformers were inspired by the Holy Spirit to dissent from the Catholic Church, which exposed them to the violence of the Inquisition.  This shows that the grace of the Holy Spirit cannot overcome religious pluralism by conveying the message of revelation so clearly that all or most believers can agree on that revealed truth.

Remus also says nothing about how some of the recent popes--John Paul II and Benedict XVI--have asked forgiveness for the Church's history of violence against heretics.

A REFUTATION OF LOCKE'S "GODLESS STATE"?

Remus begins his paper by promising his readers that he will refute Locke's position on church and state in the light of the Church's position.  But when Remus comes to that part of his paper, his supposed refutation of Locke's "godless state" actually agrees with Locke on some crucial points, which explains why his reduced Integralism is so different from the Church's traditional Integralism.

As already indicated, Remus agrees with Locke that it is unjust to persecute and kill people because of their religious beliefs.  He also says that "the Catholic Church agrees with Locke that it is unjust for the state to force its citizens to perform acts whereby they become members of a given religion, even if that religion is the true one" (362).  The reason for this is that Locke is right in saying that faith is not real if it depends on "outward force" without "inward and full persuasion of the mind."

But still, Remus observes, Locke is wrong not to see how even though the coercive force of the state cannot influence the mind and will directly, that force can influence the mind and will indirectly by creating social conditions that help Catholic citizens fortify their faith and become more effective in persuading non-Catholic citizens to become Catholics. 

Remus says that "in a nation where most people are Catholic," and the rulers are Catholic, there are four ways in which the state can rightly use force to indirectly favor the Catholic Church without directly forcing anyone to become a Catholic (360, 362).   The state can refuse to give marriage licenses to Catholics who have been married in a non-Catholic marriage ceremony, because according to the Catholic Church, this is not a real marriage.  The state can require that students in state schools are instructed in the Catholic faith.  The state can prohibit the building of non-Catholic schools.  And, finally, "the state also has the right to prohibit the propagation of opinions in the press which are opposed to its citizens' attainment of heaven, such as opinions that are blasphemous or constitute an attack on the Church" (360).  This is what I mean by Remus's reduced Catholic Integralism: the state uses force to favor the Catholic Church, but without the killing of people for public heresy and blasphemy that was part of traditional Integralism.

But notice that Remus recommends this only for countries where the majority of the citizens are Catholic, and the rulers are Catholic.  Why couldn't Protestants turn this argument around to say that these same four ways for the state to enforce religious belief could be used to enforce a Protestant religion in countries where most of the people and the rulers are Protestant?

In fact, that was the argument of the High Church Anglican Protestant Jonas Proast, who wrote three tracts criticizing Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration, which provoked a prolonged debate between Proast and Locke.  Like Remus, Proast argued that while Locke was right in saying that the mind cannot directly be coerced into religious belief, Locke failed to see how legal coercion with moderate penalties without persecution could indirectly dispose men's minds to submit to religious instruction.  Also like Remus, Proast insisted that this use of legal coercion to enforce religion was proper only for enforcing the "true religion."  But, of course, for Proast, the evidence clearly showed that Anglicanism was the true religion, and Catholicism was a false religion.  (Proast's three tracts are available in the 5th volume of The Reception of Locke's Politics, edited by Mark Goldie [London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999], 25-128.)

Here's Remus's response: "To say that the state has a care of souls and that it has a duty to worship God, however, is not to say that the state may adopt whatever religion it happens to like or even judges to be true.  Rather, it is to say that the state has a duty to adopt the religion which has truly been revealed by God, namely, the Catholic religion" (363).  Remus then quotes from Leo XIII's Immortale Dei (1885), saying that "it is evident that the only true religion is the one established by Jesus Christ Himself, and which He committed to His Church to protect and to propagate."  Remus does not notice, however, that Leo cited many New Testament verses as supporting this claim.

The most important New Testament text for Leo and other Integralists as establishing Catholicism as the true religion was Matthew 16:18-19, where Jesus says to Peter: "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."  The Latin version of these words is inscribed around the base of the dome of the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome, in letters six feet high.  On these few words rests the entire structure of the Roman Catholic Church.  Catholics interpret these words as teaching that the Apostle Peter was chosen by Jesus Christ Himself to be the first pope--the Bishop of Rome--and all the other popes have been the direct successors of Peter as the Bishop of Rome, and thus have had the papal authority granted originally by Jesus.

                                                      The Dome of St. Peter's Basilica

Remarkably, Remus says nothing about Matthew 16:18-19.  Locke denies that Jesus ever conferred on any bishop of a church "Ruling Authority derived from the very Apostles, and continued down unto the present times by an uninterrup0ted Succession" (16).  But, oddly, Locke never mentions Matthew 16:18-19.

Locke could have argued that there are good reasons to doubt the Catholic interpretation of these verses.  First of all, these words in the Gospel of Matthew do not appear in any of the other Gospels, which should make one suspicious.  Secondly, it's not clear what Jesus meant by these words.  The word for "church" (ecclesia) occurs only twice in the four Gospels, and it's not clear that Jesus was really thinking about founding a church.  Moreover, Jesus says nothing about Peter having an endless number of successors who would inherit his apostolic authority; and Jesus says nothing about there being bishops in Rome.  And one would think that Jerusalem would be more important than Rome for Jesus.  Furthermore, there is no evidence in the New Testament that Peter ever went to Rome.  There is no contemporary reference to Peter as having been a bishop in Rome.  And the first indications of there being a bishop in Rome come from the second century.

What is said in the New Testament about the first Christian churches confirm Locke's claim that they were "voluntary and free societies" that did not use violent coercion to enforce belief, although they did excommunicate those they deemed deviants from church norms.  And while these churches had bishops, there is no evidence that there was a strict hierarchy of bishops with the bishop of Rome enforcing orthodoxy on all the churches.

So, again, it seems that the New Testament teaches the classical liberal principles of religious liberty and religious toleration.

INTEGRALIST CATHOLICS ARE INTOLERABLE

In his Appendix, Remus responds to the objection that in modern countries like the United States with religious pluralism, and where Catholics are in the minority, it seems absurd to propose that the Catholic Church should be the established church enforced by the state.  Remus's answer is that yes, in these circumstances, a Catholic confessional state is not practicable, and so it would be imprudent for the Catholic Church to insist that the governments in these countries should subject themselves to the religious rule of the Catholic Church.

Nevertheless, Remus argues, the imprudence of doing this does not deny the truth of what he has said about the proper relationship between the Church and the state.  Consequently, Catholics are obligated to strive to win as many converts to Catholicism as they can, as they work toward achieving the social and political power over their societies that will someday allow the Catholics to establish the rule of the Catholic Church and to use legal force to restrict the religious freedom of non-Catholics.

Locke argued that churches that do not teach and practice religious tolerance of other religions cannot themselves be tolerated.  Remus agrees!  "A government which holds in principle that it must treat all religions within its domain equally and that those religions must in turn refrain from any intervention in politics cannot tolerate the Catholic Church and be consistent with itself" (371).

Amazingly, the final conclusion of Remus's argument for Catholic Integralism and against Lockean toleration is that Lockean liberal regimes like the United States must not tolerate Catholic Integralists.

 

Black Armed Rebellion Against the Fugitive Slave Laws

An 1872 Depiction of the Shooting of Edward Gorsuch at the "Christiana (Pennsylvania) Riot," in 1851

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of a package of laws called the Compromise of 1850, which was an attempt to mediate the conflict between proslavery interests in the South and abolitionists and free-soilers in the North so as preserve the Union.  Over the next ten years, the violent resistance to the law in the North and the anger of Southerners who complained that the law was not fully enforced contributed to the polarization over slavery that provoked the Civil War.  The violent rebellion against the law--by both black and white people--was justified as both a natural right and a constitutional right to use armed violence in defense of life and liberty.  Proslavery Southerners objected that this violated their constitutional right to have their runaway slaves returned to them.

Throughout the history of slavery over thousands of years, slaves have run away from their enslavement; and they have used violence to defend themselves against slave catchers.  But this had never led to the abolition of slavery as a system, because while runaway slaves don't want to be enslaved themselves, they do not necessarily object to the enslavement of others.

But in the black violent resistance to the fugitive slave laws, many of the runaway slaves--people like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman--helped other slaves to escape through the Underground Railroad.  So, these slaves were seeking freedom not just for themselves but for all slaves; and they were justifying this by appealing to the abolitionist principle that all human beings are naturally entitled to equal liberty.

                                                    Harriet Tubman Always Carried a Gun

TWO FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS

The abolitionists were challenging the constitutional authority for the fugitive slave laws supposedly rooted in a clause in Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, of the Constitution:

"No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due."

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was the first legislative enforcement of this clause.  Fugitive slaves in free states could be seized or arrested by the slave owner or his agent and taken before a federal judge or a local magistrate.  The slave catcher would then have to prove to the judge or magistrate through oral testimony or an affidavit that the person seized or arrested was indeed a slave who owed service or labor to the person claiming him or her.  It would then be the duty of the judge or magistrate to issue a certificate that would warrant the return of the slave to the state or territory from which the slave had escaped.  Anyone who obstructed or hindered the claimant in taking the slave could be fined five hundred dollars.

To prevent or restrict the enforcement of this law, many of the state governments in the North passed "personal liberty laws" to impede the capture and return of fugitive slaves.  Some of the most common of these laws allowed jury trials for escaped slaves and prohibited state authorities from cooperating with the slave catchers.  In jury trials, juries often refused to convict fugitive slaves and thus nullified the fugitive slave law (Morris 2010).

Armed black violence also obstructed the enforcement of the 1793 fugitive slave law.  Here are a few examples.  In 1806, Ned Page and his wife had escaped from slavery in Kentucky; and they were traveling near Dayton, Ohio.  They were in a tavern.  Two armed men entered, and they were ready to take the Pages back south as slaves.  Ned pulled a pistol and threatened to kill them.  Some friends came to his support.  The two slave catchers were arrested and charged with breach of the peace.

In 1810, in Jefferson, Ohio, slave catchers captured a family of fugitive slaves, tied them up, and started marching them south.  They were stopped by a group of twenty black men armed with guns and other weapons.  Under the threat of a fight, the Southerners agreed to present their claim to a local magistrate, who ruled that the black fugitives should be freed.  The slave hunters were charged with assault.  After posting bail, they rode away.

In 1820, John Reid was a fugitive slave living in Kennett Township, Pennsylvania.  Armed slave catchers broke through the door of his cabin.  Reid grabbed his gun.  He shot dead Samuel Griffith, who had been his owner.  His single-shot gun was now spent.  So, he used a club to kill Peter Shipley, who had been his overseer.  Although Reid was charged with murder, the jury acquitted him on the murder of Griffith and convicted him of a lesser charge in the killing of Shipley (Johnson 2014: 39-40; Harrold 2010: 25-27, 32, 95).

There were hundreds of similar cases in which armed fugitive slaves successfully resisted slave catchers with the help of sympathetic local magistrates and juries.  That is why proslavery Southerners demanded a new more effective fugitive slave law in 1850.

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 did indeed favor the slave catchers.  Enslavers needed only to provide an affidavit stating their claim on a fugitive slave to a federal marshal to capture the fugitive.  Federal circuit courts were to appoint commissioners who would hold hearings to determine whether someone was a fugitive slave based only on the sworn testimony of a slave catcher.  The person charged as a fugitive slave had no right to testify in his defense, no right to trial by jury, and no right to a writ of habeas corpus.  A commissioner was paid ten dollars if he found that an individual was a fugitive slave, but only five dollars if he found that this was a false charge.  Anyone helping fugitive slaves to escape could be charged with a crime and subject to a fine of up to one thousand dollars and imprisonment up to six months.

Shortly after the passage of this new fugitive slave law, libertarian abolitionist Lysander Spooner published A Defence for Fugitive Slaves.  He argued that since slavery was both unjust and unconstitutional, people held as slaves had the right to run away, and other people had the right and the duty to help them.  Therefore, the fugitive slave laws of 1793 and 1850 were unjust and unconstitutional.

SPOONER'S ATTACK ON THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS

For Spooner, the unconstitutionality of slavery and fugitive slave laws is indicated by the simple fact that the words "slave" and "slavery" never appear in the Constitution.  What has been called the "Fugitive Slave Clause" of the Constitution says nothing about "fugitive slaves."  Rather, it says, "No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another" shall be discharged from their service or labor.  A "person held to service or labour" is standard legal language for a person who has a contractual obligation as a servant to someone, and such a servant is not a slave.  "Now a slave is not 'held' by any legal contract, obligation, duty, or authority, which the laws will enforce," Spooner observed.  "He is 'held' only by brute force" (46).

Spooner noted that at the Constitutional Convention, Pierce Butler and Charles Pinkney (delegates from South Carolina) proposed clear language "to require fugitive slaves and servants to be delivered up like criminals."  But the delegates never agreed to this language that would have expressly identified "fugitive slaves" along with "servants" (Farrand 2:443). 

Spooner pointed out that, at the Virginia Ratification Convention in 1788, James Madison quoted the language in the final text of the Constitution about "no person held to service, or labour"; and he asserted: "This clause was expressly inserted to enable owners of slaves to reclaim them" (Bailyn 1993, 2:707).  But actually this clause did not "expressly" mention "slaves," as had been proposed by Butler and Pinkney.

Even if Madison was expressing the original intent of many people at the Constitutional Convention and the Ratifying Conventions, he was not expressing what Spooner identified as the original meaning of the text of the Constitution.  Spooner thus became the earliest proponent of the constitutional jurisprudence of textualist originalism.

Spooner also insists that this original meaning of the constitutional text must be known to the people who ordained and established the Constitution: "We the People."  Consequently, the common assertion that the judiciary has the right to decide all constitutional questions authoritatively for the people is mistaken.  Nowhere in the Constitution is it stated that the judiciary is the final authoritative interpreter of the Constitution.  The people must decide for themselves whether a judicial decision has correctly interpreted the original meaning of the Constitution.  

"In the very nature of things, nothing but the law can be binding upon anyone," Spooner explained.  "An unconstitutional judicial decision is no more binding, than an unconstitutional legislative enactment--and a man has the same right to resist, by force, one as the other, and to be tried for such resistance by a jury, who judge of the law for themselves."  Since juries have the right to judge both the constitutionality of the law and the justice of the law, juries can nullify the fugitive slave laws if they judge them to be unconstitutional and unjust.

That Spooner was right about the unconstitutionality of the fugitive slave laws was confirmed by the framing of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America in 1861.  As I have indicated in a previous post, the Confederate Constitution is largely a word-for-word copy of the U.S. Constitution (as it existed in 1861), except that while the U.S. Constitution never uses the words "slave" or "slavery," the Confederate Constitution uses those words nine times.  This is the case for the clause about returning fugitives.  While the U.S. Constitution says, "No Person held to Service or Labour . . .", the Confederate Constitution says, "No slave or other person held to service or labor."  Thus, the text of the Confederate Constitution has an expressly stated fugitive slave clause, while the text of the U. S. Constitution does not.

But even if, for the sake of argument, we assumed that the U. S. Constitution did have a fugitive slave clause, we could still argue, as Spooner did, that the fugitive slave laws were unconstitutional.  He gave various reasons for this.  These laws deny the slave's rights to trial by jury and to the writ of habeas corpus, although these rights are guaranteed by the Constitution.  The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 authorizes cases to be decided wholly by ex parte testimony, because it requires a judge or commissioner to decide a dispute through testimony by one side only--the slave catcher--while prohibiting the alleged fugitive from testifying in his own defense or confronting his accusers.  The law declares: "In no trial or hearing, under this act, shall the testimony of such alleged fugitive be admitted."  This is unconstitutional because excluding testimony is an exercise of the judicial power vested by the Constitution in the courts.  This legislation is thus a usurpation by Congress of the judicial power.

Having shown that the fugitive slave laws were unconstitutional, Spooner argued, he could then conclude that the people have a constitutional and natural right to resist those laws--even violent resistance.  Without any constitutional authority, the officers appointed to execute these laws are "mere ruffians and kidnappers," who may be lawfully resisted like any other ruffians and kidnappers.  Everyone is legally and morally obligated to rescue anyone assaulted or restrained by them.

    An April 24, 1851, Poster Warning about Boston Policemen Acting as Kidnappers of Fugitive Slaves

Spooner saw a constitutional right to armed resistance to the fugitive slave laws stated in the Second Amendment: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  When the government goes beyond, or contrary to, the textual meaning of the Constitution, and there is no peaceful remedy for this usurpation of power, then the people have the constitutional and natural right to resort to armed resistance as the only remedy.

Frederick Douglass expressed this thought in blunt terms:  "The true remedy for the Fugitive Slave Bill is a good revolver, a steady hand, and a determination to shoot down any man attempting to kidnap" (Frederick Douglass's Paper, June 9, 1954).  One of the most famous examples of that harsh remedy occurred in a small town in Pennsylvania.

THE CHRISTIANA RIOT

As dawn broke on the morning of September 11, 1851, William Parker was in his farmhouse outside of Christiana, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, preparing for the arrival of Edward Gorsuch, a slaveholder from Maryland who was coming with a federal warrant to recover his four runaway slaves.  What happened on that morning would be reported in newspapers across the United States with big headlines such as "CIVIL WAR, FIRST BLOW STRUCK" (Slaughter 1991).

Parker had been born a black slave in Maryland.  When he was seventeen, he ran away to the free state of Pennsylvania and settled in Christiana, only twenty miles from the Maryland border.  In 1851, he was 29 years old.

Slave catchers often came to this part of Pennsylvania looking for fugitive slaves.  Sometimes, the slave catchers kidnapped free blacks that they could sell into slavery in the South.  For at least twenty years, there had been a mutual protection society of blacks in the area, who alerted their neighbors when slave catchers were around, and they would retrieve any blacks taken captive before they could be taken back across the state line to Maryland.  Parker joined this group, and he became an active conductor for the Underground Railroad.

When Gorsuch in Maryland discovered that four of his twelve slaves had run away, he found out that they had likely gone to Lancaster County.  On September 9th, he was in Philadelphia, where he obtained a federal warrant under the Fugitive Slave Act for the arrest of the four runaway slaves.  Henry Kline, a deputy Federal Marshall, was authorized to make the arrest.  In Philadelphia, there was a Special Secret Committee of people who were organized to watch the federal courthouse, looking for slave catchers getting federal warrants.  One member of the group followed Gorsuch and Kline, and he warned the black community around Christiana that they were coming.

Gorsuch's posse entering Christiana included Kline, Gorsuch's son Dickinson, two nephews of Gorsuch, and two other men.  This party of Gorsuch's men were led at night on September 11 by a hired white guide, who led them to Parker's house just before dawn and then left.  Parker was in the house with his wife, her sister, three other men, and two of Gorsuch's slaves.  Parker and his household moved to the second floor of the house with their guns so that they would be in the best position to defend themselves.

Gorsuch's party surrounded the house, and Kline shouted that he was a Federal Marshall with a warrant for seizing the slaves.  Parker and his household argued with Gorsuch and his men.  Parker's wife blew a horn that was a signal that they needed help from local blacks.

Someone fired shots, but no one was injured.  Some of those in the posse recommended that they retreat and then recruit a larger group of men.  But Gorsuch refused.  Parker asked for time so that he and his household could talk about whether to give up the runaway slaves.  Parker might have been delaying to allow time for reinforcements to arrive.  Over the next 30 minutes, several unarmed white neighbors arrived, along with 75 to 150 armed blacks.  Kline identified himself to the white men as a Federal Marshall, and he asked them to join in arresting the fugitive slaves.  One of the white men--Caster Hanway--said that they would not help in the arrest, and he told Kline and his men to leave to avoid bloodshed.  Kline warned that they were committing a federal crime by refusing to help with the arrest.

One of Gorsuch's slaves came out of the house.  When Gorsuch challenged him, he clubbed Gorsuch until he fell to the ground.  Gorsuch was then shot multiple times, and he died.  When Gorsuch's son jumped in to help, he too was shot multiple times, but he later recovered.  As soon as the violence started, Kline and others in the posse ran away.

Parker, Gorsuch's four fugitive slaves, and some other blacks fled north to Rochester, New York, to the home of Frederick Douglass.  Parker and Douglass had known one another when they were both slaves in Maryland.  Douglass arranged for the group to catch a ferry to Canada.  Parker gave Douglass a revolver that he said had been used to kill Gorsuch.  Douglass cherished it for the rest of his life as a trophy.

Some white slave owners had been killed prior to 1850 in attempts to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.  But Gorsuch was the first white slave owner to be killed since the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.  This created public pressure on the federal government to show that violent resistance to the new fugitive slave law would be severely punished.  President Millard Fillmore--who had been instrumental in passing the Compromise of 1850--called out the marines to search the area around Christiana.  41 men (36 blacks and 5 whites) were arrested and charged with treason.  Parker and the four fugitive slaves in Canada were charged in absentia.

Caster Hanway--one of the five white men charged--was the first to be indicted.  The trial in Philadelphia lasted from November 24 until December 11, 1851.  The lead judge in the case--Supreme Court Justice Robert Grier--instructed the jury that treason would have to be a conspiracy of a public nature to overthrow the government or hinder the execution of the law.  He suggested that the Christiana resisters were acting for purely personal motives.  "A number of fugitive slaves may infest a neighborhood, and may be encouraged by the neighbors in combining to resist the capture of any of their number; they may resist with force and arms. . . . Their insurrection is for a private object and connected with no public purpose."  Perhaps influenced by this instruction from the judge, the jury took on 15 minutes of deliberation to vote for acquittal.  However, the jury might also have been moved by Spooner's idea that juries can rightly nullify laws that they regard as unconstitutional or unjust.

After Hanway's acquittal, the federal prosecutors dropped the treason prosecutions.  They could have charged the remaining black defendants with riot and murder, but they worried that remanding them for trial on these state offenses would probably result in lenient treatment by county court and juries.  Ultimately, then, no one was convicted of a crime.

This case evoked some public sentiment in support of the armed resistance to what many regarded as an unconstitutional and unjust fugitive slave law.  But there was also popular scorn (in both North and South) for abolitionist violence that violated the constitutional right of slaveowners to have fugitive slave laws enforced.

This one dramatic example of armed black resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 raises three kinds of questions.

The constitutional question is, Did the resisters have a constitutional right to use armed violence to resist the Fugitive Slave Law as being unconstitutional?

The moral question is, Did they have a natural right to resist that law with armed violence to defend their life and liberty?

The political question is, Was this a politically prudent way to advance popular support for the abolitionist cause?

It should also be noted that, at least by historian Thomas Slaughter's reckoning, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 as it was enforced really did favor the slaveowners.  During the first 15 months after the law was passed, 84 alleged fugitive slaves were sent back South by federal commissioners, and only 5 were set free.  Over 10 years, 332 blacks were sent back to slavery, and only 11 were released by federal commissioners.

REFERENCES

Bailyn, Bernard, ed.  1993.  The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification.  2 vols.  New York: Library of America.

Farrand, Max, ed.  1937.  The Records of the Federal Convention.  4 vols.  New Haven, CN:  Yale University Press.

Harrold, Stanley.  2010.  Border War: Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Johnson, Nicholas.  2014.  Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms.  Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Morris, Thomas.  2010.  Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North, 1780-1861.  Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Slaughter, Thomas.  1991.  Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North.  New York: Oxford University Press.

Spooner, Lysander.  1850.  A Defence for Fugitive Slaves, against the Acts of Congress of February 12, 1793, and September 18, 1850.  Boston:  Bela Marsh.

The Black Tradition of Armed Self-Defense and Rebellion in America: The Answer to the Christian Uncle Tom Problem

Discovery of Nat Turner, an 1884 Wood Engraving Illustrating Benjamin Phillps's Capture of Nat Turner--Turner with a Sword, Phillps with a Rifle

First published in 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin sold millions of copies in the United States and around the world and became perhaps the single most influential expression of abolitionist rhetoric.  And yet, as I have indicated in previous posts, some black abolitionists criticized her for depicting Uncle Tom as a submissive Christian slave who followed the Bible's admonition "Slaves, obey your masters."  In the 1950s, black author James Baldwin renewed this criticism and made "Uncle Tom" a term of scorn for blacks who passively submitted to their own exploitation and thus confirmed the racist depiction of blacks as unmanly in their servility.

Perhaps in response to this kind of criticism, Stowe seemed to change her mind in 1856 with the publication of her second novel Dred, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp.  Her hero in this novel--Dred--is a leader of violent slave insurrections who sneers at the meek passivity of Christian slaves.  Speaking to a slave, he declares:

"When a man licks his master's foot, his wife scorns him--serves him right. Take it meekly my boy! 'Servants, obey your masters.' (Ephesians 6:5) Take your master's old coats--take your wife when he's done with her--and bless God that brought you under the light of the Gospel! Go! You are a slave! But, as for me, . . . I am a free man! Free by this," holding out his rifle. "Free by the Lord of hosts, that numbereth the stars, and calleth them forth by their names. Go home--that's all I say to you! You sleep in a curtained bed.--I sleep on the ground, in the swamps! You eat the fat of the land. I have what the ravens bring me! But no man whips me! --no man touches my wife--no man says to me, 'Why do ye so?' Go! you are a slave!--I am free!" (199-200)

To those of us who think of the history of the modern civil rights movement as dominated by the Christian nonviolence taught by Martin Luther King and others, it might seem strange to think of American blacks as made free by their rifles.  But, in fact, there is a long American black tradition of armed self-defense and rebellion from the seventeenth century to the present.  The best single history of that tradition is Nicholas Johnson's Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms (Prometheus Books, 2014).  

What I see in this history is the black assertion of the Lockean natural right to keep and bear arms in defense of one's life and liberty--a natural right that has been made a civil right in Anglo-American law such as the Second Amendment to the Constitution.  Whenever people find themselves in circumstances where they cannot rely on governmental authorities to protect their life and liberty, they are thrown into a state of nature with what Locke called "the executive power of the law of nature"--the power and the right to punish those who aggressively attack them.

Johnson shows that there have been four periods in American black armed violence.  In the first, from the earliest colonial settlements with slavery in the 17th century to the end of Reconstruction in 1877, blacks used armed violence both in personal self-defense and in rebellion against slavery.  In the second period, from the end of Reconstruction to the early 1960s, blacks employed armed violence for individual self-defense, but they usually avoided political violence.  Then, in the early 1960s, a few black radical leaders recommended political violence to achieve "black power," which provoked a backlash from both black and white leaders who said that while violence in self-defense could be justified, political violence was foolish and unjustified.  Finally, beginning in the late 1970s, the high rate of black-on-black gun violence led many black leaders to recommend a complete ban on the private ownership of all guns as the only way to reduce gun crime in black neighborhoods.

ARMED VIOLENCE FOR SELF-DEFENSE AND REBELLION, 1712-1877

In colonial America, there is evidence that slaves often fought back in self-defense against their masters.  For example, some studies of the legal records shows that violence against masters was the most common form of slave crime (Johnson 2014: 32, 36).

There is also plenty of evidence of armed violence in slave rebellions.  Historian Herbert Aptheker identified over 250 slave uprisings involving 10 or more slaves (Aptheker 1943).  Consider three examples.

In the early 1700s, about 20 percent of the population of New York City were enslaved black people.  On the early morning of April 6, 1712, a group of over 20 black slaves set fire to a building, which served to distract the white colonists who tried to put out the fire.  The slaves were armed with guns, swords, and hatchets; and they killed 8 whites and wounded 7.  The slaves were captured almost immediately.  As many as 70 blacks were arrested.  21 were convicted and executed.  After the revolt, the city and colony passed restrictive laws for black slaves, including prohibiting blacks from carrying firearms (Hughes 2021).

On September 9, 1739, a Sunday, 20 slaves led by Jemmy Cato assembled near the Stono River southwest of Charlestown, South Carolina, with the hope of fleeing to Spanish Florida, where they would become free under a 1733 proclamation by the Spanish King.  Cato could read and write, which made it easier for him to learn about the King's proclamation. They did this on a Sunday because most of the planter families would be in church, and because by tradition slaves were left unsupervised on Sundays to work for themselves.  The slaves first attacked a warehouse belonging to a Mr. Hutchenson.  They killed some white people there, and they seized many small arms and ammunition stored there.  They plundered and burned other houses and killed other white families.  They began marching south towards Florida, carrying a banner that said "Liberty."  Other slaves joined while they marched until there were as many 100 in the march.  Colonel Bull, Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina, happened to be riding in the area.  Bull rode off to spread the alarm and to raise a militia to pursue the slaves.  When the militia attacked, many of the slaves ran away, but as many as 40 fought to the death.  It was all over by the end of the day.  Overall, about 40 blacks and 20 whites were killed (Hoffer 2011).  

The story of this rebellion shocked white people in South Carolina and elsewhere.  It was especially disturbing in South Carolina, where slaves outnumbered whites, and thus whites feared a general slave uprising.  New laws were passed restricting slavery such as prohibiting slaves from being taught to read and write and from carrying firearms.

On August 21, 1831, Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in Southhampton, County, Virginia.  Turner was a deeply religious preacher who believed that God had told him to lead a slave insurrection.  He planned the rebellion carefully over many months telling only a few trusted slaves.  Starting with a few, the rebellion expanded to over 70 slaves and freedmen.  They were armed with knives, hatchets, and clubs.  They had not been able to collect any firearms.  Turner ordered his men to "kill all the white people."  They moved across the countryside freeing slaves and killing whites.  

The rebels killed as many as 65 white people before the rebellion was suppressed by the state militia on the morning of August 23.  The militia greatly outnumbered the rebels.  The militia was also well armed with guns and even artillery.  Turner, however, escaped; and he survived in hiding for over two months.  On October 30, Turner was discovered by a farmer--Benjamin Phipps--who turned him over to the authorities.  Turner was tried and convicted.  He was hanged on November 11, and his body was mutilated.  During this time false rumors about a spreading slave rebellion led militias and mobs to kill over a hundred blacks who were falsely assumed to be rebels (Oates 1975).

These three slave rebellions illustrate a general pattern for such rebellions.  The number of rebels is small--usually no more than a few dozen, sometimes up to a hundred.  Remarkably, even in places like South Carolina, where the slave population was the majority, the rebels could not spark a general insurrection, which could have overwhelmed the white population.  The rebellion is quickly suppressed within one or two days.  The rebels fail because they are outnumbered and outgunned by their white opponents.  Notice in the picture of Nat Turner being captured by the farmer that Turner has only a sword, while the farmer has a rifle.

And most significantly, none of these rebellions led to the abolition of slavery.  Turner's rebellion in 1831 did provoke the Virginia Legislature in 1832 into a debate over the possibility of abolishing slavery.  Thomas Jefferson's grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, warned that if slavery were not soon abolished peacefully by the legislators, it would someday be abolished violently by the rebellion of slaves.  He proposed a version of his grandfather's plan for the gradual emancipation of slaves and then sending the freemen to colonies in Africa.  Although the proposal was defeated, it had strong support.  The principal objections had to do with the impracticability of the plan.  Notably, no one in this long debate spoke of slavery as a good that should be preserved forever (Root 2008).  But within a few years, some Southern thinkers began for the first time to defend slavery as naturally good for slaves because of their biological inferiority to white people and the need of black people for paternal care by whites.  By 1837, John C. Calhoun defended slavery on the floor of the United States Senate as a "positive good" (Calhoun 1992: 474).

Some historians have argued that black slave rebellions show that blacks were not dependent on white abolitionists for their emancipation, because the slaves emancipated themselves by their aggressive resistance to slavery.  But, as I have noted in a previous post, historians like Joao Pedro Marques have pointed out that while slaves for thousands of years resisted their enslavement, slaves never sought the abolition of the system of slavery.  In fact, many emancipated slaves have become slaveholders themselves.  The abolition of slavery in the 19th century depended on the Enlightenment idea of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and endowed with equal liberty, and therefore slavery is inherently unjust.  Slavery was abolished not by slave rebellions, but by the ideology of abolitionism.

Through most of our evolutionary history as hunter-gatherers, in which our human nature was shaped, slavery did not exist, and human adults lived as free and equal individuals.  But then with the establishment of agrarian societies and formal bureaucratic governments, slavery arose and became so deeply established that a "slaveless world" seemed so unimaginable that even while slaves sought every opportunity to liberate themselves, they could not conceive of a world without some being enslaved to others.  It was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the Liberal Enlightenment--from John Locke to Adam Smith--introduced the rhetoric of bourgeois equality and liberty that was expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which gradually, in the nineteenth century, led to the abolition of slavery, which was a return to the equality and liberty of the evolutionary state of nature. 

Marques is correct in saying that slaves did not abolish slavery through their slave rebellions alone.  But slave rebellions contributed to the abolition of slavery once those armed slave rebellions became part of the moral and political movement to secure the natural rights to equal liberty promised by the Declaration of Independence.  One can see that in the resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, in the Civil War, and in Reconstruction.  In each case, black armed rebellion was in the service of the principle of equal liberty as demanding the abolition of slavery.

To be continued . . .