Thursday, January 10, 2019
"Sunk below the very Sodomites" Frederick Douglass castigates my Cousin Colby Sparks in 1843
In the LIBERATOR for 12 May 1843, this denunciation if Cousin Colby from Traphill NC:
None but a priest whose mind had been besotted by the impurities of slavery, could 'solemnize' as bestial a union as this; and none but a community sunk below the very Sodomites in lasciviousness, for the same cause, would tolerate it.
Now, what had Cousin Colby done? He had performed the marriage of Chang and Eng to two Traphill sisters.
What did the Old Roaring Creek Baptist Church have to say about this horror? Well, maybe nothing, according to some minutes of meetings around this time. One of the Sparks men is a particularly heroic cousin, the William R. Sparks who dared to lead Union public meetings in NC in 1863.
None but a priest whose mind had been besotted by the impurities of slavery, could 'solemnize' as bestial a union as this; and none but a community sunk below the very Sodomites in lasciviousness, for the same cause, would tolerate it.
Now, what had Cousin Colby done? He had performed the marriage of Chang and Eng to two Traphill sisters.
What did the Old Roaring Creek Baptist Church have to say about this horror? Well, maybe nothing, according to some minutes of meetings around this time. One of the Sparks men is a particularly heroic cousin, the William R. Sparks who dared to lead Union public meetings in NC in 1863.
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