Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. This month marks the 160th anniversary of the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which permanently ended slavery in the United States. The amendment was passed by Congress in January of 1865, but only became part of the Constitution when three-quarters of the states voted to finally close this ugly chapter in American history. What Lincoln once called the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil.
Finally, it came to an end.
Now, such drastic cultural change did not happen as quickly or as straightforwardly as America's earliest documents seem to imply. For example, Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence included a condemnation of the British slave trade. In 1787, the U.S. Constitution suggested that the slave trade would end by 1808. The treaty that ended the War of 1812 called the slave trade, and I quote, irreconcilable with the principles of humanity and justice.
And 30 years after that, in the agreement that finalized the border with Canada, the US and the UK agreed to deploy naval forces along the coast of Africa to wipe out the British slave trade. But rather than die out, as many had expected, slavery in America actually got worse. In 1850, the U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, and that meant that slaves who had found freedom in northern states could still be arrested and returned to bondage. Seven years after that, the Dred Scott decision by the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled that black Americans, and I quote, are not included and were not intended to be included under the word citizens in the Constitution. And one unexpected factor that helped sustain slavery was the cotton gin. Eli Whitney's invention in 1794 dramatically changed the production dynamics of one of America's most important crops, making it possible to clean seeds out of the cotton much faster than by hand. As Whitney boasted, quote, one man and a horse will do more than 50 men with the old machines. That opened the door to immense profits in the cotton trade, provided that there were enough slaves to pick the cotton.
And so by the 1860s, slavery was so ingrained into southern culture that slaves Slave owners were willing to face a devastating war in order to protect it. But ideas can take a culture in more than one direction. After all, if bad ideas have victims, then good ideas will have beneficiaries. Abolition was a good idea. It emerged in the seventeen hundreds.
Though slavery had been common throughout human history and select slaves had been freed in different times and places, it took this odd collection of atheist philosophers, Quakers, and evangelical activists to advance the idea of ending slavery altogether. What needed to change was how slavery was understood, from a regrettable, inevitable institution to a serious violation of human identity and moral decency.
Now ideas alone are not able to shift culture. Ideas need champions. The end of slavery involved obvious heroes like Wilberforce and the Clapham Group in Britain and Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Beecher Stowe in the United States. But there were others too, many who have been lost to history, played a significant role in normalizing the idea of abolition. Tangible contributions, or what we might call cultural artifacts, are also required in order to shift a culture.
Now laws in and of themselves usually are not enough to do this, but in the case of slavery a change in law was indeed essential. The Thirteenth Amendment played a significant upstream role to change hearts and minds downstream.
So in time, slavery became not merely illegal, but also unthinkable. The stream between politics and culture, in fact, tends to flow in both directions. The history of slavery and the 13th Amendment can teach us that humans are not merely products of impersonal forces acting without purpose. No, human history is in fact the history of humans. Humans were created by God to make culture.
Not only does this mean that history is not as inevitable as many claim it is, but it also means that our actions have real meaning. What we do matters. We must not succumb to theories of inevitable decline or theories of unstoppable progress, nor should we cower to claims of being on history's right side or wrong side. Rather, Holy Scripture places history in the hands of God, and God uses the hands of people for his purposes. As one Hindu scholar recognized, the Bible uniquely presents a comprehensive story of human history, and within it describes human beings as, as he put it, responsible actors within history.
And the Bible also describes the cultural moment that we're in as being a decision made by God.
So, all that means our actions matter. We're here by God's design. The question we must now answer is, what will we do with the moment we have been given? Truthrising the study was made to help Christians answer that question. Families, churches, small groups, Christian schools across the country right now are wrestling with their calling to this cultural moment through Truthrising the Study.
To learn more about this free worldview study and to access it, visit truthrising.com. That's truthrising.com. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy.
Padgett. If you appreciate Breakpoint commentaries, would you leave us a review wherever you download your podcast? And for a version of the commentary that you can download and share with others, go to breakpoint.org. At the Colson Center, we're committed to strengthening families, churches, and schools to be faithful influences for Christ. Because in a culture severed from truth, the question isn't how do we fix everything, but how can we be faithful where God has placed us?
In 2026, we want to help families, educators, and church leaders answer that question with courageous faith. But we need your help. Make your best gift to the Colson Center by December 31st. Thanks to a generous $500,000 challenge grant, your gift will have double the impact. Make your gift today at colsoncenter.org/slash December.
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