overtly racist book, Priest seeks to use references from the Bible to prove that God created black people to be slaves. Priest claims that Noah's three sons were each a different color. The black offspring was named Ham, which Priest says was a word Egyptians used to identify objects that were black. He goes on to assert that Ham was cursed from birth to be a servant. As a consequence of his sins, all his people would also suffer the fate of slavery. Priest writes, "The appointment of this race of men to servitude and slavery, was a judicial act of God, or in other words was a divine judgment." Multiple revised editions of this book were republished in the 1850s under the title, Bible defence of slavery or, The origin, history, and fortunes of the Negro race. Priest provides three pieces of evidence for why the Bible justifies the enslavement of black people. He says that the blacks were created with lower intelligence and more irrational behavior than other colors of man, suiting them as servants. He cites a verse in the Book of Genesis that states that Ham and all of his descendants were destined to be slaves. He argues that, due to the black's inferior attributes, they possessed a need to be enslaved. His book discusses how a black man's physical stature and skin, as opposed to those of a white man, are designed to be more durable and therefore intended for hard manual labor. Pamphlets and historical profiles In addition to his books, Priest wrote several pamphlets focusing on heroes of the American Revolution. His narratives suggest a preoccupation with racial conflicts, since they focus mainly on soldiers who had been held in captivity by Native Americans. Frank H. Severance (1856-1931), a noted author-historian, defended Priest's style of writing, saying, "I'm aware that Priest is not altogether trustworthy as a historian; yet he concedes to his works "a large amount of historic material obtained at some pains from sources more or less authentic."... Priest is least trustworthy in his more ambitious work; whereas his unpretentious pamphlets... contain true narratives of individual undertakings in the Revolution, Indian captivities and other pioneer experiences, gathered by the writer direct from the hero whose adventures he wrote down, without literary skill... but also without apparent perversion or exaggeration." Priest recorded stories of Native American atrocities against white settlers that otherwise