First Presbyterian Church
New Orleans, Louisiana
Founded: 1818
Current Building: 1939

Dr. Benjamin Morgan, pro-slavery theologian and minister of First Presbyterian from 1856-1902, was instrumental in bringing about Louisiana's secession from the Union. Morgan believed, like many Southern Christians, that slavery was a "Christian institution" and that blacks could have no greater calamity "befall them than the loss of that protection enjoyed under the patriarchal system."

Reconstruction: The Second Civil War
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Northerners in the South | Access to Learning | Slave to Sharecropper | The Negro Question
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