On June 20th, 1832, Justice WIlliam Gaston entered Gerard Hall on the University of North Carolina campus (picture at right) to deliver an address to a joint meeting of the school's two literary societies. This was a relatively new tradition of inviting outside speakers to address the literary societies at graduation. But it was a growing tradition and it was one that lasted until the Civil War on the UNC campus. At schools throughout the country, literary societies were increasingly inviting speakers, often judges, lawyers, ministers, or politicians, to address students.
You may have read the most famous of the literary addresses, Ralph Waldo Emerson's "American Scholar" at some point in an American literature class. But it's unlikely you've read any others. Many, hundreds, actually, were published before the Civil War; they sit unread on library shelves -- and some are now on books.google.
Though it was not nearly as popular as Emerson's, Gaston's address was one of the most popular. For Gaston had spoken eloquently about a series of themes of much concern to students at his time -- duties to themselves, the dangers of politics, the threat to order, and, even, slavery. Gaston, who was born in 1778 and who Patriot father was killed during the Revolution, was educated at Princeton, then returned to North Carolina and studied and practiced law. He was elected as a Federalist to Congress in the 1810s, then returned to practice and last became a justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court. By this point, he was a Whig, the successors in many ways to the Federalists. Those themes of how students might improve themselves, how they might sustain and continue their studies, how they needed to work hard and to maintain a Christian morality were all commonplace in American thought. Perhaps that was more common in Whigs than Democrats, but there was little there one would disagree with, no matter what one's political ideology. Then the address moved outward from responsibilities of individuals to themselves to their responsibility to their society, to the dangers the republic faced from demagogues (a veiled attack on Democracy), and then towards the end Gaston came to a problem facing the south: the institution of slavery.
Gaston said:
On you too, will devolve the duty which has been too long neglected, but which cannot with impunity be neglected much longer, of providing for the mitigation, and (is it too much to hope for in North-Carolina?) for the ultimate extirpation of the worst evil that afflicts the Southern part of our Confederacy. Full well do you know to what I refer, for on this subject there is, with all of us, a morbid sensitiveness which gives warning even of an approach to it. Disguise the truth as we may, and throw the blame where we will, it is Slavery which, more than any other cause, keeps us back in the career of improvement. It stifles industry and represses enterprize--it is fatal to economy and providence--it discourages skill--impairs our strength as a community, and poisons morals at the fountain head. How this evil is to be encountered, how subdued, is indeed a difficult and delicate enquiry, which this is not the time to examine, nor the occasion to discuss. I felt, however, that I could not discharge my duty, without referring to this subject, as one which ought to engage the prudence moderation and firmness of those who, sooner or later, must act decisively upon it.
That was in 1832 -- less than a year after the Nat Turner rebellion in Southampton, Virginia, just across the border from North Carolina. Gaston's address was the last time up to the Civil War that an orator before the UNC literary societies criticized slavery....
It was not, however, the first time. In 1829, Professor William Hooper spoke in even more direct terms against slavery. Hooper was the grandson of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and at that point a young professor at UNC. He went on to other posts -- including the presidency of Furman, then later taught at academies in North Carolina. Hooper said:
That slavery is a baneful parent of the vilest morals, every virtuous family in this southern country knows full well, and deplores that it hold within its own walls a fountain of moral poison, which, in spite of the most watchful care, is continually diffusing around its baleful influence and infecting the health of all the household.
Hooper longed for the day when “the collective wisdom and resources of the nation shall be put into action for the extirpation of the bitter root from our soil."
Anyway, back to Gaston. His address was remembered for decades in North Carolina. Senator George Badger -- about whom I have some thoughts later -- spoke about it during debate over the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. But Gaston is himself worth a lot more consideration. In 1835, he gave another (and to my mind more political) speech at Princeton in 1835. Last fall I mentioned Gaston's talk to the Princeton Whig and Cliosophic Societies.
What I like about the 1835 Princeton address is that it addresses more fully public law issues than did the UNC address. It is particularly concerned with the maintenance of public order -- a common theme among Whigs, particularly in the wake of mob violence. Gatson did not identify the violence he had in mind but it is likely he was referring to anti-abolition mobs inCharleston, South Carolina, and the burning of the Charlestown, Massachusetts Convent in 1834. The later was of particular interest to Gaston because he was Catholic.
You might recall that Abraham Lincoln gave an address with a similar theme -- of the need for public order -- in 1838 to the Springfield Lyceum.
Coming up soon (not necessarily in this order): George Badger continues on the Whig themes; Bedford Brown and John Mason provide the Democratic responses; Henry Pinckney's retreat from nullification; James Bruce, free thinker; political affiliation of speakers -- some data and a hypothesis or two; the image of "the book" in antebellum politics; constitutional culture in the literary addresses. And then the coming of sectional conflict. And, of course, "fun with concordance software!"
Update: My article, "The Republics of Liberty and Letters: Progress, Union, and Constitutionalism in Graduation Addresses at the Antebellum University of North Carolina," is now out in the North Carolina Law Review. You migth also be interested in a much shorter treatment of William Greene's 1850 Phi Beta Kappa address at Brown. And here's a podcast of a lecture I gave on the addresses in 2011 at the law school's annual CLE, the Festival of Legal Learning.
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