My friend Terry Meyers, the Chancellor Professor of English at William and Mary, has posted his most recent article, "Thinking about Slavery at the College of William and Mary," on ssrn. Here is Terry's abstract:
In looking at how the College of William and Mary has recalled its past involvement with slavery, one sees things forgotten -- some seemingly bad (its 18th C. tobacco plantation), but some seemingly more benign (its founding affiliation with a school for black children in 1760, its awarding an honorary degree in 1781 to the abolitionist Granville Sharp).
This essay posits that in the years after the Civil War and Reconstruction, the College confronted a need for a new narrative of its history, one that would largely avoid mention of Thomas Roderick Dew, its ante-bellum pro-slavery president and his faculty, including Beverly Tucker. The result was a narrative that was silent on slavery into the 21st century or, for a short period, one that fantasized a delusional world of slavery as benign. Both narratives suppressed a history where William and Mary before Dew was more skeptical about slavery than has been recognized.
This essay documents extensively that unease about slavery by looking beyond George Wythe, St. George Tucker, and Thomas Jefferson, with special attention to students today largely forgotten at William and Mary who studied with William Small and Bishop James Madison. Those students and others included William Short, Edward Cole, and Winfield Scott.
The image is the Wren Building on William and Mary's campus, which dates to the late seventeenth century.
Comments