In the pages of the Primitive Baptist (the newspaper of Primitive Baptists in south Georgia and north Florida), editor Burwell Temple breaks from the ranks of most of his fellow Primitive brethren by publicly addressing the issue of secession.
Temple expresses foreboding for the new year, but remains hopeful that all “true” Primitive Baptists – North and South – will remain united despite the crisis at hand. The perceived need for secession in the South he blames on “abolitionist priestcraft.” Slavery is biblical, Temple maintains, thus abolition is heresy. Believing that secession is warranted when the federal government oversteps its boundaries, he declares that northern states that oppose southern slavery should be dismissed from the Union as a Primitive Baptist association might disfellowship from an unruly church.Thus,
The very first step toward the abolition of slavery in this country, was of the spirit of the devil himself, under the garb of preachers, with an eye single to the upsetting of this republican form of government, in order to set up one more congenial to their love of filthy lucre and aggrandizement; to fatten faster on the labors of the unsuspecting part of the community ….
I am in favor of the Union on the strict principle of our Constitution; and if the Southern States, in their sovereign capacity, shall be debarred of their just and equal rights, I am for secession as the last resort – though I much prefer the Union, if it indeed be a Union of rights, interest, and honor.
Source: Primitive Baptist, January 12, 1861, pp.12-15, as referenced in John G. Crowley, Primitive Baptists of the Wiregrass South, 1815 to the Present (University Press of Florida, 1998), pp. 91-92.
