“Though Their Skin Remains Brown, I Hope Their Souls Will Soon Be White”: Slavery, French Missionaries, and the Roman Catholic Priesthood in the American South, 1789–1865

Abstract

On August 21, 1861, Bishop Auguste Marie Martin of Natchitoches, Louisiana, issued a pastoral letter “on the occasion of the War of Southern Independence.” In it, Martin argued that slavery was “the manifest will of God.” It was the will of God for Catholics to continue “snatching from the barbarity of their ferocious customs thousands of children of the race of Canaan,” the cursed progeny of Noah. It was also the obligation of Catholics to repudiate abolitionists for “upset[ting] the will of Providence” and misusing “His merciful plans for unrighteous actions.” Father Napoleon Joseph Perché, coadjutor of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, submitted his approval of Martin's pastoral statement by printing it in the Catholic newspaper Le Propagateur Catholique. Three years later, the Roman Congregation of the Index issued a statement condemning the opinions espoused by Martin and approved by the French ecclesiastical leadership of New Orleans. The Index was Pope Pius IX's organization in charge of censoring ideas deemed unacceptable to Catholic doctrine. The Index argued against Martin's proposition “that there exists a natural difference between negroes and whites,” and that God sanctioned slavery as a means of redeeming Africans.