author
Isaac Allen
A 19th-century writer remembered for a pointed tract on slavery, Isaac Allen tackled one of the most urgent moral and religious debates of his time. His surviving work is brief, direct, and rooted in the fierce public arguments that preceded the American Civil War.
1 Audiobook
Is Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible?
by Isaac Allen
About the author
Isaac Allen is known today chiefly for Is Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible?, a tract published around 1860 by the American Tract Society. The work takes up a question that was central in the United States before the Civil War: whether the Bible could rightly be used to defend slavery.
Because reliable biographical information about Allen is scarce in the sources consulted, only a small outline of his life can be confirmed with confidence. What does come through clearly is his engagement with the religious and moral controversy over slavery, and his place among writers whose pamphlets and tracts helped shape public debate in that era.
For modern listeners, Allen is less notable as a widely documented literary figure than as a voice preserved from a decisive historical moment. His writing offers a compact window into how faith, politics, and conscience were being argued in print on the eve of national crisis.