Clotel

Many Christians in Clotel use Scripture to justify the institution of slavery, and they teach Scripture to the slaves only because they believe it will make them obedient. Georgiana best explains the exploitation of Christianity: she sees “the sermons preached by Snyder to the slaves […] as something intended to make them better satisfied with their condition, and more valuable as pieces of property” (133). Her belief is reaffirmed in Chapter 13, “A Slave Hunting Parson,” when Brown explains that “[r]eligious instruction” is “calculated” to make slaves “more trustworthy and valuable as property” (111).

The hypocrisy of Christian slave owners is illustrated as early as Brown’s narrative. After describing how a blind child was taken from his mother and given as “a present” (9) to an innkeeper, Brown writes, “The thought that man can so debase himself as to treat a fellow-creature as here represented, is enough to cause one to blush at the idea that such men are members of a civilized and Christian nation” (11). Similarly, in telling how he and his mother were captured in their attempt to escape, he notes that “the very man who, but a few hours before, had arrested poor panting, fugitive slaves, now read a chapter from the Bible and offered a prayer to God” (14-15).