already long existed."[143]

As these great notions of human rights first took hold of the Anglo
Saxon through religion, so it was through religion also that the
ideals of freedom and equality first affected the status of the slave.
We have already seen what was the prevailing doctrine of Christendom
at the time of the discovery of the new world. It was that infidels
and heathen were without the Christian fold and so did not come under
those sanctions of conduct that prevailed in the dealings of
Christians with each other. The colonists, therefore, assumed "a right
to treat the Indians on the footing of Canaanites or Amalekites" with
no rights a Christian need regard.[144] The same was held true of
the Negroes. In time, however, petitions began to be received from
slaves desiring to be admitted to baptism and this raised the
question concerning the status of the slave after conversion to
Christianity.[145] The dilemma faced by the slave-owner with religious
scruples was as follows: To confer baptism would be in accordance with
the contention of pious churchmen that slavery was but a means to
bring about the salvation of the heathen.[146] On the other hand, to
admit to baptism would, according to the doctrines of the Reformation,
destroy the slave status entirely. By virtue of having entered the
democracy of grace represented by the Church of Christ, the
distinction of bond and free disappeared. To keep out the slave would
be to hamper the spread of Christianity; to admit him would be to
eliminate slavery.

This problem, however, seems never to have troubled the Puritan's
conscience greatly.[147] From his stern, high Calvinistic point of
view he was the elect of the earth, to whom the Almighty had given the
heathen for an inheritance, and in this he found a satisfactory
justification for his harsh and high-handed dealings with weaker races
such as the Indian and the Negro. Yet the germ of freedom contained in
the limited democracy of the elect of Calvinism was bound in time to
break the hard theological moulds in which it was originally cast. It
did this subsequently under the stress of external events in the
effort to throw off the shackles of British oppression. Nowhere did
the essential injustice of slavery become more evident to the minds of
men than in the healthful humanizing and socializing atmosphere of the
progressive industrial democracy of New England.

In the southern colonies especially, the question abo