Religious slaveholders were judged the cruelest of all by enslaved people

Evidence

Reflecting back across his life, Douglass concluded solemnly: “Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.” — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 250

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to White Too Long’s own thesis that Southern white Christianity was ideologically warped by racism — Douglass’s testimony is the enslaved source for the modern claim. — connects to: Religion supplied slaveholders moral sanction rather than conscience for cruelty — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 246; The most devout slaveholders were reputedly the most brutal slavers — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 249; Enslaved people regarded religious masters as the worst masters — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 250 (+4 more)
• ADDENDUM: Pairs naturally with the sacrifice article’s treatment of how authority legitimizes lethal structures through religious ideology.

Broader Connections

• Enslaved people regarded religious masters as the worst masters #corroborates (1.00) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 250
• Slaveholder religious conversion made slave treatment harsher, not gentler. #corroborates (0.95) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 245
• Religious conversion made slaveholders more cruel, not less #expands (0.92) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 246
• Theological blessing of slavery severed slaveholders’ natural moral impulses #expands (0.88) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 251
• Religious justifications for slavery used curses to keep converts enslaved #expands (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 118