Puritans and Slavery

Abstract English people of all religious orientations agreed with the broad European consensus that slavery was justified under certain circumstances. Engagement in the institution of slavery in the Atlantic world provided opportunities to rethink the legitimacy of the institution (even as Atlantic conditions contributed to a particularly brutal form of the practice), but these opportunities were largely ignored. Those Protestant-labeled “puritans” accepted enslavement as it was applied to Africans and Indigenous Americans. They endorsed various justifications even as they perceived slavery to be a grave wrong, and they participated in enslaving and in slave trading as local circumstances allowed. In contradistinction to our expectation that religious devotion might militate against holding human chattel, these Reformed Protestants embraced the institution wholeheartedly.