The popularity of “heathen conversion” was disclosed in the public reception of George Fitzhugh’s Cannibals All! or, Slaves without Masters, who wrote that Africans, like wild horses, had to be “caught, tamed and civilized.” Resting upon irrational antipathies, white Christians—prominent and common-bred alike, clearly distinguished their personhood from that of Africans. Many were convinced that African peoples were somehow irreparably inferior to and less worthy than Europeans. Fixated on the fetish