Gop Candidate Defends Slavery ‘Nowhere On Earth Were Servants Better Treated Than In The Old South’

A white state senator running for Congress wrote a speech in which he argued that slavery is justified by the Bible and was good for blacks.

“People who are bitter and hateful about slavery are obviously bitter and hateful against God and his word, because they reject what God says and embrace what mere humans say concerning slavery,” Charles Davidson wrote.

Davidson, 61, a Republican from Jasper, had prepared the speech for a Senate debate Tuesday over his proposal to fly the Confederate battle flag over the Capitol. The measure was tabled before he had a chance to speak, but he passed out copies later.

Davidson cited the Book of Leviticus - “You may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you” - and quoted 1 Timothy as saying slaves should “regard their own masters as worthy of all honor.”

“The incidence of abuse, rape, broken homes and murder are 100 times greater, today, in the housing projects than they ever were on the slave plantations in the old South,” he wrote.

“The truth is that nowhere on the face of the Earth, in all of time, were servants better treated or better loved than they were in the Old South by white, black, Hispanic and Indian slave owners.”

Davidson, a restaurateur elected to the state Senate in 1994, is running for the GOP nomination for the U.S. House seat being vacated by Democrat Tom Bevill. The primary is June 4.

He said that his ancestors fought in the Civil War but did not own slaves.