This is one of my least favorite types of memes, as it is so historically inaccurate. The assumption here is one that is baseless, as people didn’t need the Bible to justify slavery. Nor did the United States create slavery. It was an institution they inherited. The fact of the matter is that slavery was a worldwide phenomenon, and it didn’t need any religion to support it.
Slavery simply didn’t need any justification in the United States as it was a part of life. Slavery just was. When justification eventually was needed, it wasn’t the Bible people turned to, but towards economy and racism. White people weren’t suited to work in the fields in the sweltering heat. Religion wasn’t needed.
On the flip side, religion wasn’t needed to defeat slavery either. A great example is Abraham Lincoln and his fight against slavery. He didn’t need religion to tell him that people are equal, and that slavery was a travesty.
Here’s the clincher though. The Bible wasn’t used to defend slavery until after it was being used by abolitionists in order to demonize slavery. And when those who were pro-slavery decided to use it, they cited the weirdest example; the Curse of Ham. I will go into the Curse of Ham in more detail later on, but quickly, the Curse of Ham goes back to an incident with Abraham. Ham walks in on his father, Abraham, as he was passed out naked. Ham tells his brothers, who walk in backwards and drops a covering over Abraham. Abraham wakes up, gets pissed, and curses Ham, saying he will be ruled over by his brothers. The pro-slavery group claimed that the descendants of Ham were Africans, and thus it was okay to enslave them. Yeah, so quite weird.
To sum up then, the Bible really had little to do with slavery in the United States. It wasn’t needed to justify it, and it wasn’t until after the abolitionists started using it to demonize slavery, that the pro-slave crowd started using it. But even then, it wasn’t the biggest justification.
