Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) Spring 4-23-2014 Southern Enlightenment: Reform and Progress in Jefferson's Virginia Scott aT ylor Morris Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd Recommended Citation Morris, Scott aT ylor, "Southern Enlightenment: Reform and Progress in Jefferson's Virginia" (2014). All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). 1253. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd/1253 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Department of History Dissertation Examination Committee: David Konig, Chair Iver Bernstein Randall Calvert Wayne Fields Peter Kastor Southern Enlightenment: Reform and Progress in Jefferson’s Virginia by Scott Taylor Morris A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2014 Saint Louis, Missouri © 2014, Scott Taylor Morris Table of Contents Abbreviations iii Acknowledgements iv Abstract vii Introduction The Enlightenment, Liberalism, and Conservatism in the South 1 Chapter 1 “The Gospel of Equality and Fraternity”: Bishop James Madison 21 and Teaching Enlightenment at the College of William and Mary Chapter 2 “The Argument Is Closed Forever”: 47 The Fate of Enlightenment at William and Mary Chapter 3 “The Idea Is Not Chimerical”: The Struggle for Public Education 70 Chapter 4 “The Perpetual Improvability of Human Society”: 102 Internal Improvement and Economic Development Chapter 5 “The Democratick Spirit of Her Principles”: 136 Democracy, Slavery, and the Future of Virginia Chapter 6 “The Black Race Were Not Inferior”: 174 Edward Coles and the Southern Enlightenment Conclusion and Epilogue 206 Bibliography 213 ii Abbreviations ACS American Colonization Society EAI Early American Imprints (followed by index number) HSP Historical Society of Pennsylvania LOC Library of Congress PTJDE Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition PJMDE Papers of James Madison Digital Edition PUSC Princeton University Special Collections TJ Thomas Jefferson VMHB Virginia Magazine of History and Biography WMQ William and Mary Quarterly WM College of William and Mary, Swem Library UVA University of Virginia, Special Collections Library iii Acknowledgements One thing that drew me to the study of history was the importance of remembering the history of my own life, the “genealogy of the present.” There are many people who shaped the outcome of this project. My advisor, David Konig, has displayed the virtues of patience and positive attitude. Just as importantly, his deep knowledge helped lead me to formulate a successful project. One takes a risk in going to graduate school by pledging to work with one person who is at that point a stranger. I won in that gamble. My committee members, Iver Bernstein, Peter Kastor, and Randy Calvert, were not just readers, but also offered learning opportunities at multiple points over the years. I became a better teacher by working with them. Wayne Fields is a teacher of more than literature, although he is also unparalleled in that. He could find the profound questions in anything. Some gems have always stood out in my mind, such as the difference between the merely “picturesque” and the truly “sublime.” He has also been an inspiring figure in how to live life through its trying times and in taking on projects outside of the academic environment, such as installing a floor. I truly miss working with him. My studies began at the University of Alabama, and I still look back fondly on my time there. Tony Freyer was a very positive and learned advisor who helped me keep moving up the path, and Forrest McDonald helped solidify my interest in the Founding generation by advising my undergraduate thesis. Material support for my research in Virginia and Philadelphia came from the Lynn Cooper Harvey American Culture Studies Fellowship at Washington University. The Tennessee Governor’s School for International Studies and my teachers, then colleagues, Blanche Deaderick, Ruth Dunning, and Larry Torres, helped lead me in the process of becoming a teacher. iv People who trod with me through this process and provided welcome camaraderie include Matt Stewart, Nick Miller, Steve Schrum, John Aerni-Flessner, Aaron Akins, and Charity Rakestraw Carney. Others who have stood by me over the years include Michael Stefan, Virginia Halliburton, Moses Katz, Jamie Kitson, and my grandfather, the late Bill Taylor. Finally, my education began before I first walked into Kindergarten. My parents, Cerez Morris and the late Steve Morris, provided everything I needed to achieve whatever I wanted. Scott Taylor Morris Overland, Missouri April 23, 2014 v Dedication To my mother, Cerez Taylor Morris vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Southern Enlightenment: Reform and Progress in Jefferson’s Virginia by Scott Taylor Morris Doctor of Philosophy in History Washington University in St. Louis, 2014 Professor David Konig, Chair This dissertation posits that in the five decades following the American Revolution, there was a movement among the elite of Virginia’s rising generation to envision a future different from the path that would ultimately take the state toward the retrenchment of slavery and even secession. This younger generation, claiming the legacy of Thomas Jefferson, demonstrated that the liberal side of the Enlightenment had a life in Virginia that went beyond the Founders’ generation, and that the Enlightenment in the South offered possibilities for social and political reform. The primary types of reform animating liberal elite reformers in this generation were those requiring state action organized through the political process, and they included such reforms as the promotion of internal improvements, public education, the gradual abolition of slavery, and the democratization of the state itself. Although these reformers did not succeed in fundamentally changing the trajectory of Virginia’s future, they attempted to offer an alternative, while at the same time confronting their own ambivalences and the realities of a society that was becoming more overtly proslavery. vii Introduction The Enlightenment, Liberalism, and Conservatism in the South In the South they are fiery Voluptuary indolent unsteady independant zealous for their own liberties, but trampling on those of others generous candid without attachment or pretensions to any religion but that of the heart. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Marquis de Chastellux, September 2, 1785 1 When Jefferson wrote his list of the characteristics of southerners to the Marquis de Chastellux, he was comparing a list of corresponding characteristics that he observed in northerners. Both sides had their strengths and weaknesses. Northerners, who were favorably compared in their “cool” and “laborious” personas, and who were “jealous of their own liberties, and just to those of others,” were also “chicaning,” and “superstitious and hypocritical in their religion.” Jefferson liked the generosity and unpretentious religion that he saw in the South, but he also deprecated the “trampling” of the liberties of others and the indolence and unsteadiness that he believed resulted from the reliance on slave labor. He was beginning to formulate his ideas about the necessity of changing the very constitution of southern society. Chastellux was one of the French correspondents with whom Jefferson shaped his inquiries in his manuscript of Notes on the State of Virginia , especially on the peculiar effects 1 TJ to Chastellux, Sept. 2, 1785, in Notes on the State of Virginia , ed. David Waldstreicher (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), 74. 1 that the institution of slavery had on his society. It was Chastellux to whom Jefferson confessed his fear that the criticisms of slavery in the Notes could “produce an irritation which would indispose the people towards the two great objects I have in view, that is the emancipation of their slaves, and the settlement of their constitution on a firmer and more permanent basis.” 2 Jefferson’s anxiety about his role in the necessary end of slavery was a lifelong dilemma, for which he has been the subject of controversy ever since. Although he expressed antislavery sentiment there and elsewhere, his failure to either emancipate his own slaves or to give further public advocacy has called into question his sincerity on the most fundamental moral question of his time. 3 This study reflects on Jefferson’s legacy on slavery and a range of other political and economic reforms less through his own work and more through his legacy as perceived by his younger protégés in Virginia. When Jefferson expressed his wish for eventual emancipation to Chastellux, he also offered one the reasons that led to his own reticence in addressing the question himself. Even though he feared wider publication of his Notes in Virginia, Jefferson reported that he had “printed and reserved just copies enough to be able to give one to every young man at the College [of William and Mary.] It is to them I look, to the rising generation, and not to the one now in power for these great reformations.” 4 He similarly told the English abolitionist Richard Price that “the young men of Virginia under preparation for public life” in Williamsburg were under the tutelage of George Wythe, “one of the most virtuous of characters, and whose sentiments on the subject of slavery are unequivocal.” Jefferson encouraged Price to direct his “exhortation” to these students, whose role in the future of slavery could prove 2 TJ to Chastellux, June 7, 1785, in Waldstreicher, 67-70. 3 Paul Finkelman offers one of the more pointed critiques in “Jefferson and Slavery: ‘Treason Against the Hopes of the World,’” in Peter Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 181-224.