Slavery and human progress.

SINCE THE 1950s, David Brion Davis, Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, has written voluminously on slavery. His latest book treats of the changing views of slavery in nineteenth-century Western culture.

Alathough Davis presents his material thoroughly and perceptively, he is a man with a strong political passion. Unlike other academic men of the Left, such as Eugene Genovese and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, he makes no attempt to deal sympathetically with those destined for the dustbin of history. Davis views the past and the present in stark Manichean terms, crying out against nineteent-century slave-owners and praising reformers.

Even so, Davis does clarify the battles over slavery in the first half of the last century. He is particularly informative about England's successful efforts toward abolishing the international slave trade between 1808 and the mid-1850s. Davis attributes this particular development largely to a shift in public opinion set in motion by the stirrings of religious conscience. Bishop

William Wilberforce and his fellow evangelicals inside and outside the Anglican Church made a compelling Christian case against the slave trade and, finally, against slavery itself. Although Davis does not deny the persuasiveness of natural-right arguments against slavery, he properly observes that natural-right theorists from John Locke on were often ambiguous on the question of involuntary servitude. T he abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire in 1833 represented a victory for evangelical Christians, who rejoiced over the "act of faith that supposedly removed Britain's burden of guilt and redeemed Christianity in the eyes of a skeptical and exploited pagan world."

Basic to the anti-slavery stance of English and American evangelicals was the belief in human progress, which had gained currency since the eighteenth century. John Wesley, the father of Methodism, had viewed the enslavement of black Africans as incompatible with life in a redeemed Christian society. Wesley had scolded the Scottish skeptic David Hume for disparaging remarks about the intelligence of Negroes. He and later evangelicals wished to show that Christianity, not the "infidel Enlightenment," was what was needed to advance human morals. Moreover, the evangelical hope for an imminent Second Coming supported the belief that the war against slavery had world-historical significance. Thomas Fowell Buxton, George Stephen, and Bishop Wilberforce, all of whom fought slavery in the British Empire, were influenced by millennialism. Even the New England Calvinists, despite ingrained pessimism about human nature, came to oppose slavery as part of their civilizing and redemptive mission. If human nature was, as the Calvinists believed it to be, deeply flawed, then slavery, by allowing one man total domination over another, increased the opportunity for sin.

Such theological arguments appealed to the prospect and even necessity of human progress, but, according to Davis, the advocates of slavery also invoked the same ideal. The slave trade and sugar production (which depended on servile labor) had contributed significantly to European and Early American commerce. Alathough Christians and Jews had greater difficutly than Moslems in reconciling the slave trade with religious teachings, Westerners long justified slavery as economically productive and morally beneficial for backward races. Such ideas remained widespread even in the nineteenth century; American slaveowners drew upon them to justify their way of life.

Davis outlines another view of human progress that often overlapped with the evangelical one, the free-market vision of the classical liberals. Many abolitionists were both evangelicals and fervent admirers of Adam Smith. They worked for emancipation not only as their Christian duty, but also because of their belief that free labor was more productive than slave labor. Unfortunately, this proposition could not be proved in the British West Indies. By the mid-1830s West Indian planters were growing anxious about their investments and tired of negotiating for short-term labor. With government complicity they began to impose long-term contracts on former black slaves and imported East Indians. The governor of South Carolina, James Henry Hammond, in making an argument against abolition, cited the "acknowledged failure" of West Indian emancipation. Later Southern polemicists insisted that capitalism would only produce wage slavery and failed social reforms such as the one in the West Indies.

Soon there arose religious visionaries who mocked these appeals to material interest. Northern Protestantism on the eve of the Civil War combined opposition to slavery with postmillennial faith. Preachers throughout the North demanded the removal of slavery in preparation for the Kingdom of Christ. It is hardly surprising that devout Northern Protestants resorted to apocalyptic images to describe the ensuing war.

Davis lapses toward the end of his book into his own celebration of progress. One need not like traditional slavery to recognize the smugness of his perspective. The American Civil War and the struggle against European colonialism are both presented without the slightest sympathy for the losers. Davis quotes Marx's sometimes perceptive comments on American in the 1860s, mostly to remind us that the ultimate victory of socialism necessitated a Southern defeat. The final epiphany of Davis's triumphant progress is the United Nations under Third World leadership. He closes his work by evoking the scene of formerly oppressed people banishing slavery from Arab emirates. Despite this achievement Davis cautions against excessive optimism: Wage slaves can still be found in Central America, Namibia, and other benighted places presumably outside the socialist camp. Davis never mentions involuntary servitude in the Soviet Union or among the victimized inhabitants of Third World states. Such a topic may be unfit for discussion in the UN--or at the gathering of Yale professors.