were found those conditions which as we shall see later tended to fix the slave status as an integral part of southern life so that in time it came to be spoken of as the South's "peculiar institution." Strange as it may seem, religion also played a large part in the determination of the status of the slave in 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 you know very well how we shall maintain twenty Moors cheaper than one English servant."[136] Few passages better illustrate how religious ideas and economic needs