Pro-slavery intellectuals were hard-pressed to find any justification for slavery and racism within Christian theology which taught that all humans were descendants of Adam and therefore one race, possessed with equal salvation potential and deserving to be treated as kin. The curse of Ham was used to drive a wedge in the mythology of a single human race, as elite intellectuals were able to convince people that the three sons of Noah represented the three sects of Man and their respective hierarchy of different fates. Leading intellectuals in the south, like Benjamin M. Palmer, claimed that white Europeans were descended from Japhet who was prophesied by Noah to cultivate civilization and the powers of the intellect, while Africans, being descendants of the cursed Ham, were destined to be possessed by a slavish nature ruled by base appetites.