American Slavery and the Immediate Duty of Southern Slaveholders

“Jack Davidson’s examination of a long-unpublished treatise from 1860 is anything but a historical curiosity . . . The minister, Eli Caruthers, deserves to be much better known for the way he used an Old Testament passage (Exodus 10, ‘let my people go’) to attack slavery systematically, which was unusual at the time in general and all but unknown in the South. This unusually informative book makes a powerful contribution as both history and theology.”


—Mark Noll, author of The Civil War as a Theological Crisis





“Jack Davidson is to be congratulated on transcribing and thus enabling the long overdue publication of Eli Caruther’s 1862 manuscript. It reveals the passionately and comprehensively argued anti-slavery stance of this Southern Presbyterian minister’s pioneering vision, amazingly based on his reading of Exodus 10:3 . . . This is a must-read for all engaged in understanding the powerful role of the Bible in the anti-slavery debates.”


—William S. Campbell, Reader in Biblical Studies





“Eli Carruthers’ 1862 writing is a very important antislavery voice from the Confederate South, by a pastor thoroughly familiar with both the Scriptures and the slaveholding society in which he lived . . . It is surprising, almost scandalous, that, though mentioned in scholarly histories, it has remained so long unpublished. By making it available in print, Jack Davidson is doing a valuable service to scholarship and to the reading and thinking public.”


—Jack Maddex, Professor of United States History