[Nashville, Tennessee: M'Kennie & Brown, 1855]. First edition. Octavo (8.25 x 5.25"), 12 pages. Sewn pamphlet removed from a larger volume, lacking wraps. OCLC finds five copies under two accession numbers as of 8/12/2022.

Condition: Moderately toned & foxed, last leaf detached, removed & lacking wraps, otherwise good or better. Please see photos.

"Theodore Clapp (March 29, 1792-May 17, 1866), an early Unitarian preacher in the southern United States who established an outpost of liberal religion in New Orleans and built it into a beacon of religious moderation, was born in Easthampton, Massachusetts … In 1823, his church established itself as the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans and associated with the Mississippi Presbytery. The financially troubled College of Orleans made him its President in 1824, but was able to keep its doors open only long enough for Clapp to create a scandal by holding balls at the school for As part of his conversion to his newly adopted city, however, he also became an enthusiastic apologist for slavery, which he regarded as less pernicious than Northern industrial "wage slavery." Slavery, he preached in 1838, had Biblical warrant in God's covenantal gifts to Abraham. "Here we see God dealing in slaves," he preached, “giving them to his own favorite child, a man of superlative worth, and as a reward for his eminent goodness." At this same time, however, he was aware of slavery's pernicious effects on slaveholders; passages from his autobiography show he was aware, as a pastor, of male slaveholders within his own congregation sexually abusing slave women. He understood this human behavior as sinful and discussed it from the pulpit in theological terms ..."
~ Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography, excerpted.