n early colonial days. Just
as it was the zeal of the early Church which had much to do with the
eradication of the slavery of antiquity, so it was also the zeal and
bigotry of churchmen that had much to do with the reinstatement of
slavery of a type worse in some respects than that of antiquity.
Speaking of the custom of the Spaniards of enslaving the Moors that
fell into their hands through conquest, Prescott says: "It was the
received opinion among good Catholics of that period, that heathen and
barbarous nations were placed by the circumstances of their infidelity
without the pale both of spiritual and civil rights."[135] The
expansion that took place as a result of the discovery of the new
world brought Europeans into contact with heathen who according to the
prevailing opinions were without the pale of Christianity and,
therefore, possessed of no rights that Christians need observe. It is
not surprising then that Columbus brought back Indian slaves with him,
though Isabella ordered returned those "who had not been taken in just
war."

The Puritan settlers of New England were not one whit behind the
Spanish in making use of the same religious grounds for the enslaving
of the Indians conquered in war. Roger Williams in a letter to John
Winthrop in 1637 writes as follows of a successful expedition against
the Pequots: "It having again pleased the Most High to put into our
hands another miserable drove of Adam's degenerate seed, and our
brethren by nature, I am bold (if I may not offend in it) to request
the keeping and bringing up of one of the children." The following
extract from a letter to Winthrop in 1645 is a curious mixture of
religious bigotry and Yankee shrewdness: "A war with the Narragansetts
is very considerable to this plantation, for I doubt whether it be not
sin in us, having power in our hands, to suffer them to maintain the
worship of the devil, which their pow wows often do; secondly, if upon
a just war the Lord should deliver them into our hands, we might
easily have men, women and children enough to exchange for Moors
(Negroes?) which will be more gainful pillage for us than we conceive,
for I do not see how we can thrive until we get into a flock of slaves
sufficient to do all our business, for our children's children will
hardly see this great continent filled with people, so that our
servants will still desire freedom to plant for themselves and not
stay but for very great wages. And I suppose