The Architecture of Slavery: Art, Language, and Society in Early Virginia
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W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1991 The architecture of slavery: Art, language, and society in early Virginia Alexander Ormond Boulton College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the African History Commons, Architecture Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Boulton, Alexander Ormond, "The architecture of slavery: Art, language, and society in early Virginia" (1991). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539623813. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-3sgp-s483 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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Ann Aibor, MI 48106 THE ARCHITECTURE OF SLAVERY Art, Language, and Society in Early Virginia A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Alexander Ormond Boulton 1991 APPROVAL SHEET This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Alexander Ormond Boulton Chandos Brown Michael McGiffe: It was a long time ago I have almost forgotten my dream. But it was there then, In front of me, Bright as a sun — My dream. And then the wall rose, Rose slowly, Slowly, Between me and my dream. Rose slowly, slowly Dimming Hiding The light of my dream. Rose until it touched the sky — The wall. "As I Grew Older" — Langston Hughes (Selected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York, 1926.) iii "I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." — Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, August 1, 1816. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.......................................... vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.................................. viii ABSTRACT.................................................. ix INTRODUCTION............................................... 2 "TO PENSHURST"............................................ 10 WILLIAM BYRD II........................................... 37 THE LANGUAGE OF THE AUGUSTAN MOMENT...................... 85 WILLIAM BYRD III AND THE AUGUSTAN MOMENT IN VIRGINIA 113 LOCKE'S LEGACY........................................... 136 THE BOURGEOIS MR. JEFFERSON..............................163 THE HEAD AND THE HEART...................................231 DECONSTRUCTING SLAVERY...................................285 APPENDICES............................................... 296 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation was never conceived (in the terns of the old metaphor) as an attempt to stand on the shoulders of giants so that I could see further than those who preceded me. Instead, I have tried to listen to the voices of those around me, and distill their voices into a single sound. Conversations with family and friends, often on topics far removed from the study of history have influenced my conclusions at least as much as words I have read in books. While at William and Mary, Beverley Peterson, Richard John, and Ted Delaney have been attentive listeners, challenging critics, and good friends. My sister-in-law, Pamela Nomura Boulton, first introduced me to Ben Jonson's poem "To Penshurst," which turned into the beginning of the Ariadne's thread which I followed from Kent, England to the Virginia Piedmont. During my studies the encouragement of James P. Whittenburg, Robert skolnick, Whitfield Bell, Thomas O'Connor, Edward Pappenfuse, and James Bond were bright lights in an often dark and dispiriting academic maze. In the creation of my career as an historian, Carla Davidson at American Heritage magazine, has often seemed in my imagination to be have played the role of the protagonist in Mary Shelley's novel. Mark Wenger at Colonial Williamsburg in several conversations generously shared the results of his extensive research into vi William Byrd's Westover. The writtings of Claude Levi- Strauss, James Deetz, Cary Carson (and many of the members of the Vernacular Architectural Forum), David Brion Davis, and Eugene Genovese have played an important role in my evolving thought. I have been fortunate to have an excellent committee overseeing the development of this dissertation; Chandos Brown, Robert Gross, Michael McGiffert, Cary Carson, and Eugene Genovese, each of whom knows how critically important their input has been. To all — my thanks. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS I. Frontispiece to Letters of Junius. II. Penshurst, Great Hall. III. Penshurst, plan. IV. Penshurst, Kip engraving. V. Lady Gamage and children. H > • Aerial Photograph of Penshurst, Church and Village VII. Plat of Penshurst, c.1800 VIII. Durer illustration of peasant housing. IX. Westover, 1706 plat. X. Westover, 19th c. drawing. XI. Westover plan. XII. Bacon's Castle, elevation XIII. Bacon's Castle, plan XIV. Governor's Palace, Williamsburg XV. Mount Airy XVI. Monticello, elevation of first building. XVII. Monticello, elevation of second building. XVIII . Monticello, plan. XIX. Monticello, insurance plat, 1796. XX. Plan of University of Virginia. XXI. Nineteenth-century log cabin. viii ABSTRACT Inspired by the concept of culture as expressed in the work of Claude Levi-Strauss, this dissertation traces the roots of modern perceptions of slavery and race by analyzing three sites each of which is associated with a distinct cultural pattern and social ideology. The first, Penshurst in Kent England is described as feudal, organic, vernacular, and popular. The second, Westover in tidewater Virginia is classical, rational, and elite. Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in the Virginia piedmont, the third site, is described as romantic, liberal, and bourgeois. It is only at this third site, the locus for a distinctly modern family type, that concepts of race and slavery unique to our age are found. The new ideas about family structure, race and slavery, evident at Monticello, it is argued, have had a vast influence upon the course of American social and political development. ix THE ARCHITECTURE OF SLAVERY: ART, LANGUAGE, AND SOCIETY IN EARLY VIRGINIA INTRODUCTION This dissertation attempts to trace some of the origins of intolerance in the early years of this nation's founding. Slavery and racism, which are the most obvious and most consequential forms of intolerance in America, are not historical universals. They have grown and developed, waxed and waned, in tandem with other great changes in the society, economics and politics of the country. "America,” according to George Fredrickson, "was not born racist? it became so gradually."1 While the roles that slavery and racism have played in American history have always been very sensitive to the course of historical events, the major period when these roles crystallized and assumed the forms they have taken in the modern world was the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries — the very years in which the basic structure of our national government arose and assumed its modern shape. The argument of this dissertation is that this coincidence was not accidental. In understanding the relationship between social ideas and the state, I have been strongly influenced by the explication of culture described in the works of the George M. Fredrickson, The Arrogance of Race: Historical Perspectives on Slavery. Racism. and Sflfiial Inequality(Middletown. Connecticut, 1988), 205. 2 anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. To Levi-Strauss and other structural anthropologists, culture is the expression of an underlying structure or