Do you think that the United States' Civil War was about slavery? In part, it was-- a very small part. If slavery was the issue, then when our current southern enthusiasts say "The South shall rise again!" we would all understand that to mean that they think enslaving a race of people is a good thing and that it should be happening more often.
Go back to the very beginning of our country. Simplistically, the northern and southern colonies were inhabited by two very completely different peoples. To the south came the gentry of the civilized world at the time. Available land was scarce in England, so it made sense that when someone was to be rewarded by the crown with a gift of land, that land could be procured more easily in the Americas. (You know, because the Native Americans didn't count as owners of the land they lived on.) This was also a way to slap the hand of an errant aristocrat without shaming the family publicly. Receiving one of these land gifts was a double edged sword. Most of the early settlers succumbed to the parasitical diseases that flourished here in the Americas. Since they were the gentry, they didn't know the first thing about living in a wilderness. They made bad choices, like building a city on a tidal river without understanding that the salt water they barely tasted would kill them.
Another group that came to the south were the criminals. The prisons, work houses, and debtors prisons were overflowing in England. Again, the colonies provided with an out of sight, out of mind solution. Give the wretches a choice-- languish in a squalid prison, or provide work for the new landed aristocracy of the colonies. Making the choice to cross the water was not without peril. Those pesky parasites were not choosy about whom they infected. Many of the criminals were hardened men and women..... in London. They didn't have the slightest idea on how to live where the pickings were not only not plentiful, but not even available. Indeed, these prison refugees died in droves. They were not a viable work force.
To the north came those of the middle class by a blessed accident. They were heading for Jamestown, but a storm pushed them miles up the coast. These were merchants and artisans, who also happened to be religious refugees. This was a group of people who, though suffering from some of the same diseases and hardships as their counterparts in the south, had a tradition of work behind them. They believed in individual accountability and group accountability to the Lord. They had their righteousness to give them backbone and to lend credence to their ownership of this new land, over the arguments of the natives.
Can you see the differences in the very traditions and make up of the peoples of the North and the South?
In the south, since the prison population and the natives were ineffective at getting all of the work done that needed doing to make the area just like home, slavery as we think of it began. The African people were more resistant to the parasites. They were cheaper. They were not civilized. Hey, they sang as they worked-- they must be happy about it. It seemed like the perfect solution for a group of people who didn't know how to labor and had plantations and land commitments beyond their personal level to care for successfully even when they had the desire.
There is a huge mistake in thinking that the north had a higher moral standing than the south when it came to slavery. If they hated slavery so much-- if they hated the buying and selling of people-- then why did they practice it themselves? Indentured servitude, which sometimes worked out all right for the servant, but many times did not. Buying orphans from an orphanage to work on the farm or in the house. Paying pennies for labor done by those too poor to complain and too hungry to revolt. Many of the great northern capitalists built their fortunes on the backs of the destitute.
No. The North didn't have a problem with taking advantage of its own kind. The North struggled with the idea that the South was taking advantage of an uncivilized people, a lesser people. There was wickedness in that. Even to the abolitionists, there was never a thought that the races were on equal footing. The mindset of the time, north and south, was that the African race was human, but not to the level as the Caucasoid race. Medical science of the time backed this up. We know that science now to be so much hoo-ey, but at the time, it was considered fact.
Today in Institute a question was asked by a sister. She wanted to know if we have to follow the counsel of the apostles if what they say is dumb. There was a brief moment of shocked silence followed with, "Yes. Better to follow them than not." Then came, "You're not including Brigham Young in that, are you?!"
Wha?!
I'm not sure what she was talking about, what thing that Brigham Young was supposed to have done or said that was so "dumb". I don't want to know. We moved quickly on from that point.
I just wanted you to have a little bit of a background for the time that Brigham Young grew up in and was a part of if the treatment of the Black race in the early church is a problem for you. This was his world. A prophet is a man of his time for his time. Mostly his counsel resonates through out the generations, but sometimes it is for the constraints of his time, colored by the knowledge of his time. Maybe Brigham Young could have been a better man than he was, but that's between the God that made him prophet and kept him there and himself.
I know that despite all their faults and human foibles, the prophets of this church are lead by God. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet. I know that the First Vision occurred-- that he actually saw God and Jesus Christ. I know that even the hard to understand principles of the gospel are from God. We will come to understand them and we can know the truth of all things if we are obedient and have the Spirit with us. We have to be obedient.
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