Vassar and Slavery

FounderMatthew Vassar

• Lived: 1792–1868
• Position: Probably abolitionist. Details are vague, but Vassar is known to have expressed outrage at slavery, contributed funds to freeing enslaved people, and (perhaps immodestly) regarded Vassar College as an achievement that established him as an emancipist comparable to Abraham Lincoln.

Enslaver Abolitionist Probably Abolitionist

Little has been written about Matthew Vassar and slavery, but there are incidents in his life that relate to this topic. ¹ In 1824 for instance, when the Dutchess County Colonization Society (DCCS) was formed, Vassar served as its Recording Secretary, a prominent role. Like the American Colonization Society (ACS) and other regional and local colonization societies, the DCCS promoted the migration of both freeborn and emancipated African Americans to the colony of Liberia in Africa. In an address to the inhabitants of Dutchess County at the time of its founding, the president of the DCCS declared it to be a “tremendous evil” that nearly two million African Americans were in “a state of moral and civil degradation” as either “slaves or degraded freemen.” This contradicted both the Declaration of Independence and scripture, he said, and the work of colonization would be a “humane and philanthropic design.” ⁸ The colonization movement appealed to “different people for different reasons,” including some pro-slavery politicians, some gradual abolitionists, and some social reformers. ⁹ Most African Americans and abolitionists, however, opposed it. Although about 10,500 settled in Liberia in the antebellum period, the hoped-for goals of the colonization societies were never achieved. One scholar has stated that “colonization was more of an intellectual movement for moderately anti slavery whites than a practical option for free blacks.” ¹⁰ We know that within the DCCS were members who worked to end slavery, had manumitted slaves, and sold land to free blacks. ¹¹ Unfortunately few records survive of the DCCS and little has been written about it or Matthew Vassar’s involvement.

Another episode in Matthew Vassar’s life that relates to slavery and enslaved persons took place in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. In 1851 John Bolding, a freedom-seeker from South Carolina who had been living for several years in Poughkeepsie and working as a tailor on Main Street, was recognized by a visitor to the city, who in turn alerted his previous owner, Robert Anderson. Bolding was apprehended by a U.S. Marshal and sent to New York City, where a trial took place to establish his status. Anderson won the trial, but afterward offered to sell Bolding to his friends and supporters in Poughkeepsie if sufficient funds could be raised. A community-wide fundraising effort was held, and Matthew Vassar was one of the donors who helped secure $1,109. Bolding was given his freedom and returned to Poughkeepsie, where he lived and worked until his death in 1876. ¹²

Finally it’s worth noting that some years later, in 1864, Matthew Vassar jotted in the privacy of his diary two telling notes: 1) “It is in vain to Educate Womans power of thought and then limit the operation—Education and Liberty walk hand in hand;” and 2) about the same time, “The founder of Vassar College and President Lincoln—Two Noble Emancipists—one of Woman—The Negro—” ¹³ Taken together, and in view of his earlier activities, it seems the founder had some degree of sympathy with antebellum efforts to promote the freedom of African Americans in Poughkeepsie and beyond, but the details of his thinking are not entirely clear.

First PresidentMilo Jewett

• Lived: 1808–1882
• President: 1861–1864
• Position: It’s complicated. While living in the South, Milo Jewett owned slaves and enslaved at least seven people. However, he appears to have been troubled by slavery and offered freedom to anyone who came with him when he moved north.

Enslaver Abolitionist It’s Complicated

Milo Jewett

The story of Milo Jewett—the College’s first president, from 1861–1864—as it relates to slavery is complicated. One must begin by noting that like Matthew Vassar, Jewett was involved in colonization activities as a young man. In 1833, while a student at Andover Theological Seminary, he signed a resolution of students to the American Colonization Society, stating that within six months they would raise funds to purchase the freedom of at least 100 slaves. ¹⁴ Andover at this time was “the training ground for the missionary-minded men…who would serve as agents and officers of the Colonization Society.” For many northern evangelicals, missionary work and colonization were seen as two sides of the same coin. ¹⁵

After graduating from Andover and teaching for a few years at Marietta College in Ohio, Jewett in 1838 moved to Marion, Alabama, where he opened Judson Female Institute, a school for young women. Over the course of more than sixteen years, he oversaw the growth of the campus, the expansion of the faculty and the student body, and the development of a progressive academic curriculum. ¹⁶ Judson was connected to the Baptist church and emerged as an important institution of the South. In this location, slavery was integral to the society, and we know that Jewett himself at this time lived with and enslaved several people. In 1850, it is recorded that he enslaved seven persons. We do not know their names, though four were identified as female and three as male. They ranged in age from four to thirty-two. ¹⁷

In 1855 Jewett left Judson, likely for a variety of reasons, but as one source has noted, “as a northerner he may have become increasingly uncomfortable in Alabama,” ¹⁸ and as another has observed, there was “increasing animosity in the community over his position on slavery.” ¹⁹ So great was the animosity that one local lawyer called him a “vile Abolition scoundrel” who should be hung “for secret manoeuvering with our slaves.” ²⁰ We know that when Jewett moved with his family to Poughkeepsie, he offered freedom to any of the people he had enslaved who chose to accompany him, and apparently some accepted. Once in Poughkeepsie, he spoke out against slavery, on at least one occasion, at the home of Matthew Vassar. ²¹ What does all of this mean? Jewett had clearly been a slaveholder, but at the same time he appears to have spoken out against this practice in ways that angered many of his neighbors, and in the North of course he manumitted several people. How did this situation develop? Was it a longstanding issue for Jewett, or did his views change over time? More research could perhaps help in answering these questions.

John Raymond

Second PresidentJohn H. Raymond

• Lived: 1814–1878
• President: 1864–1878
• Position: Abolitionist

Enslaver Abolitionist Abolitionist

There was less ambiguity in the views on slavery held by Vassar’s second president, John Raymond, whose tenure lasted from 1864–1878. Raymond was born in New York, and studied at Columbia, Union College, New Haven School of Law, and Hamilton Baptist Theological Seminary. Raymond’s interest in the anti-slavery cause began when he lived in Rochester, New York from 1850–55. ²² There, while serving on the board of the recently-founded University of Rochester, he developed close ties with some of the country’s most ardent abolitionists, including William Ellery Channing, Henry Ward Beecher, and Frederick Douglass. ²³ He was strongly against the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, as seen in his writings and speeches of the time. Raymond’s abolitionist activities continued during the Civil War. In 1863 he traveled to the United Kingdom with Henry Ward Beecher, one of the country’s most outspoken abolitionists, in an effort to prevent England from siding with the Confederacy. ²⁴ Beecher noted that in a gathering in London, where Raymond spoke: “His first sentence was like an explosion, and his speech, a tremendous outburst of indignation at the lukewarmness of English friends…it electrified his audience and me too!” ²⁵

Vassar’s first trustees—the charter trustees—were twenty-eight in number. ²⁶ All were men, and apparently friends of Matthew Vassar. ²⁷ Most were from the region in and around Poughkeepsie and had made their careers here. They came from a variety of professions, and several were either Baptist ministers or otherwise affiliated with the Baptist church. Many served long terms on the board. A detailed study of the charter trustees and their positions on slavery does not exist, and further research is needed; but even at a quick glance, we can see that as a group, these trustees reflected a wide variety of opinions on slavery.

Anti-slavery

We can begin by noting that some charter trustees showed themselves in various ways to be strongly opposed to slavery. ²⁸ John Raymond’s abolitionist activity has already been mentioned.

Elias Magoon, Benson Lossing, and Henry Ward Beecher

• Lived: 1810–1886
• Trustee: 1861–1886
• Position: Abolitionist

Charter TrusteeElias L. Magoon

• Lived: 1810–1886
• Trustee: 1861–1886
• Position: Abolitionist

Enslaver Abolitionist Abolitionist

Elias Magoon, a Baptist minister, art collector, and trustee until 1885, was born in New Hampshire and educated at Colby College and Newton Theological Seminary. Known as an abolitionist, he had been forced to leave his position as pastor of a congregation in Richmond, Virginia in 1846 due to his anti-slavery views. ²⁹ Benson Lossing, trustee until his death in 1891, was born in Beekman, New York; his mother was a Quaker. Best known as an historian, Lossing in his book Lossing’s History of the United States referred to the introduction of slavery in the seventeenth century as “a stain which was washed out with blood almost two centuries and a half afterwards.” ³⁰ Henry Ward Beecher, an alumnus of Amherst College and as noted earlier one of the country’s most outspoken abolitionists, served on the Vassar board for four years, having joined in the year his friend John Raymond became president (1864). Beecher’s term overlapped with a number of charter trustees, but he was not technically among their group, since his term began after 1861.

Pro-slavery

Samuel F. B. Morse

• Lived: 1791–1872
• Trustee: 1861–1886
• Position: Pro-slavery. While not known to have directly enslaved anyone himself, Morse was not just a supporter but an unabashed promoter of slavery.

At the same time, other charter trustees held strong pro-slavery views. One was Samuel F. B. Morse, a member of the board until his death in 1872. Born in Charlestown, Massachusetts to a famous Congregational pastor, Morse had success early in life as a painter, and for a time lived in Charleston, South Carolina. ³¹ Later he became known as the inventor of the telegraph and Morse code. These inventions brought Morse great wealth, and in 1847 he purchased the Locust Grove estate in Poughkeepsie. Politically, he was a Nativist; in fact, in 1836, he ran for mayor of New York on that party’s ticket. Espousing anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic views, he was especially upset that Irish Catholics spoke against the South and had “thrown a firebrand into the Slavery question.” ³² Later, during the Civil War, Morse’s promotion of slavery became more intense, both in his activities and his writing. He served as president of two pro-slavery groups, the American Society for the Promotion of National Unity, and then the Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge. For the latter, he wrote a pamphlet in 1863 titled “An Argument on the Ethical Position of Slavery in the Social System, and its Relation to the Politics of Today,” in which he stated, in part: “Slavery or the servile relation is proved to be one of the indispensable regulators of the social system, divinely ordained for the discipline of the human race in this world, and that it is in perfect harmony…with the great declared object of the Savior’s mission to earth.” ³³

Morgan L. Smith

• Lived: ????–1884
• Trustee: 1861–1884
• Position: Enslaver

Morgan L. Smith was a charter trustee who not only supported slavery; he had been an enslaver prior to his role at the College. Smith was born in Hyde Park, New York, in 1801 and attended school in Poughkeepsie. As a young man he moved to New York City where he had a successful business and became a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Aldermen, and the New York Militia, rising to a high rank. In 1834 he was called on to restore order during the city’s anti-abolitionist riots, and he “was not at all in sympathy” with the abolitionists. ³⁴ Later, he was appointed U.S. Consul to Texas (Texas was not a state until 1845), and eventually took his business and family there. From the early 1840s to the late 50s, he was the lead owner of Waldeck Plantation, a sugar plantation in Brazoria County. Smith enslaved people on the plantation, and during the 1850s he increased the number of enslaved persons on the plantation significantly. ³⁵ An early biography of Smith claimed that the system of slavery in place there “was shorn of many of its offensive features,” ³⁶ but one recent scholar has argued that enslaved people who lived on sugar plantations in Brazoria County “faced a life filled with constant work and abuse.” ³⁷ Smith sold the plantation in 1859, and returned to the North. He served on Vassar’s board until his death in 1884.

Other Views

Other trustees likely held more nuanced views on the issue of slavery but still supported its existence in certain places. One thinks especially of those who were affiliated with the Democratic party at this time, such as William Kelly, who served as the first chair of the board of trustees until 1872, and Joseph C. Doughty.

William Kelly

• Lived: ????–????
• Trustee: 1861–????
• Position: Ambiguous. Kelly’s views on this are unclear. While not an enslaver himself, he likely supported slavery if his constituents did.

Kelly was a businessman, farmer, politician, and philanthropist. ³⁸ As a young man he worked in the family’s New York business and traveled extensively in the South, as he had business contacts throughout the region. The business was so successful that he was able to retire at a young age; he purchased the Ellerslie estate in Rhinebeck and developed a farm there. In 1860 he ran for governor of New York on the Stephen Douglas Democratic ticket. The Douglas Democrats believed that each territory should decide for itself about slavery; they therefore supported its existence if the local population was in favor. Though little evidence survives detailing Kelly’s specific views on this topic, it seems unlikely he would have had opinions different from his party on such an important issue. ³⁹

Joseph C. Doughty

• Lived: ????–????
• Trustee: 1861–????
• Position: We don’t know

Doughty was a businessman in Poughkeepsie who was elected to the State Assembly from Dutchess County in 1863. He held “strong conservative views,” but like Kelly, little is known of his thoughts on slavery. ⁴⁰

Several Republican politicians were among the charter trustees, including John Thompson, Ira Harris, and George T. Pierce. In general, their party—the party of Lincoln—opposed the extension of slavery to the territories, but still, within their ranks there was some divergence of opinion. ⁴¹

John Thompson

• Lived: ????–????
• Trustee: 1861–????
• Position: Ambiguous. Similar to Kelly, Thompson appears to have adopted whatever position was politically expedient.

Thompson, who was a trustee until 1885, seems to have been a conservative Republican. ⁴² A prominent lawyer, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1857–1859; during his term he spoke on issues relating to slavery a number of times. In one speech from the House floor on the admission of Kansas, he voiced opposition to the Lecompton Constitution, a proposed constitution for Kansas that was pro-slavery, but in doing so, he said “though coming from the Empire State…it is well known that I am no political abolitionist, nor desirous of meddling with the domestic institutions of the South,” and later, “the population of the Territories will be the ultimate judges of what institutions they will establish.” ⁴³

Ira Harris

• Lived: ????–????
• Trustee: 1861–1875
• Position: Abolitionist

Ira Harris, who was a trustee until 1875, and chair from 1872, appears to have been a more moderate Republican, like his close friend Abraham Lincoln. We know that as a U.S. Senator from New York (1860–1866), he voted for the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States, except as punishment for a crime. ⁴⁴

George Pierce

• Lived: ????–????
• Trustee: 1861–1868
• Position: Probably Abolitionist

George Pierce, who was on the Vassar board until 1868, served terms in both the State Assembly and the State Senate. He had been one of New York’s “Barnburner” Democrats in the 1840s—part of the progressive, anti-slavery faction in that party—who joined the Republican party when it was formed. ⁴⁵

Ezekiel Gilman Robinson

• Lived: ????–????
• Trustee: 1861–1868
• Position: Probably Abolitionist. Evidence suggests Robinson had anti-slavery leanings, but was not open about them.

Ezekiel Gilman Robinson was another charter trustee who appears to have held anti-slavery sentiments but not to the point of being an abolitionist. He was born and raised in New England and became a Baptist minister and educator. From 1860 to 1872 he was president of the Rochester Theological Seminary (he later became president of Brown University, his alma mater). In 1846 he had accepted a teaching position at Western Baptist Theological Institute, a newly-formed school in Covington, Kentucky (near Cincinnati), that was supposed to be neutral in its position toward slavery. In 1847, however, a controversy arose when some trustees thought the president and other faculty held anti-slavery views. Robinson, along with the school’s president and another faculty member, had that year attended an anti-slavery conference in Ohio. The president and Robinson were later questioned by a committee of trustees about their views. Robinson tried to evade the questions being asked of him, and at one point said “I have known something of the violent abolitionists in the North, and by the grace of God have succeeded in keeping them at arm’s length.” But as a result of these events, both Robinson and the president left the school and took positions in the North. ⁴⁶

First FacultyMaria Mitchell

• Lived: 1818–1889
• Faculty: 1865–1888
• Position: Abolitionist

When Vassar opened in 1865, there were nine professors who together formed the faculty. ⁴⁷ Among them were President Raymond, who also served as a professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy, and eight others. Each faculty member was responsible for a different academic department. Two were women. Three had been born in England or Europe, and the rest in the northern United States. Unfortunately, little is known about what the original faculty may have thought about the institution of slavery. It seems likely that most would have supported the Union and its cause given their northern heritage, but we cannot be sure. We do know about John Raymond’s abolitionist sympathies, as discussed earlier. And one other person’s anti-slavery beliefs were clear: Maria Mitchell.

Mitchell, who taught at Vassar for twenty-three years, was professor of Astronomy and head of the Vassar Observatory. She grew up on Nantucket in a Quaker family (the Quakers had a long history of anti-slavery beliefs), and a number of incidents in her life before Vassar reveal her own anti-slavery sentiments and actions. She had strong memories of her father helping a freedom-seeker living on the island to escape capture by his previous owner. In 1841, when she served as Librarian of the Nantucket Athenaeum, the library hosted a three-day Anti-slavery Convention where Frederick Douglass gave his first public speech and other key figures attended, including abolitionists such as Lucretia Mott, Lydia Maria Child, William Lloyd Garrison, and Wendell Phillips. As a form of protest, Mitchell refused to wear clothes made of Southern cotton. During a trip to the South in 1857, “the evil of slavery was uppermost in her mind,” and she wrote a number of reflections on its problems in her diary. ⁴⁸

Vassar’s first students entered in the fall of 1865, a few months after the war ended. ⁴⁹ There were 353 altogether, organized into three divisions: Regular Collegiate Students; Specials or Irregular Collegiates; and Regular Preparatories. Toward the end of the first year, the “Regular Collegiate Students” were organized into classes, and the first students graduated in 1867. Maria Mitchell observed in her journal that the first students formed a “heterogeneous” group. Although about half came from the state of New York, there were “pupils from all parts of the country, of different training, different views.” According to the first annual catalogue there were six students from the South; they came from states including Tennessee, Virginia, and Alabama. ⁵⁰ There were also four students from Washington, D.C., where slavery was legal until 1862, and a number of students from the “border states” of Delaware, Maryland, and Missouri (border states were slave states that did not secede from the Union). Little is known about the views of the first students towards slavery. It would be especially interesting to know more about the students from states where slavery had been legal. Did any of them come from families that had owned slaves? Had they supported the institution of slavery, as so many from their part of the country had? Was the issue ever discussed with the faculty, or among the students?

Slavery was abolished in the United States through a long, uneven process. In some states it ended during or shortly after the American Revolution; in others, such as New York, it occurred decades later, and only gradually. Of course, in southern states full eradication did not come until the end of the Civil War. As the war drew to a close, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, was passed in Congress on January 31, 1865; it was fully ratified on December 6 of the same year. Slavery no longer existed in the United States as it had for so long, but this does not mean that racial equality had been achieved. To the contrary, the system of slavery left behind a number of legacies—political, economic, social, and cultural—that even today continue to influence the lives of individuals, families, and communities in America. ⁵¹

A follow-up study to this discussion of Vassar and slavery could look at contexts and details of how race was viewed at Vassar in later years. It could begin with a consideration of the period immediately after the Civil War. For instance, we know that during this time trustee Ira Harris voted in favor of the Thirteenth Amendment but was also removed as president of the Baptist Missionary Union for being “generally averse to the enlargement of black rights.” ⁵² In the late 1860s a number of famous abolitionists visited campus and gave speeches; trustees balked on one of them—Wendell Phillips—whom they thought would expose students to “radical views.” ⁵³ We also know that beginning in 1872 the Society for Religious Inquiry began corresponding with African American students at Virginia’s Hampton Institute and sometimes sent contributions to help with their expenses. ⁵⁴ Together even these few incidents suggest again a complicated picture.

The study of history often reveals insights that make us rethink how we view a particular topic. When we look at the issue of Vassar and slavery, a complex situation emerges. We see a variety of opinion and a variety of actions, ranging from anti-slavery to pro-slavery, and with many falling somewhere in between. Within the sample examined here, those most clearly identified as abolitionists often had ties to anti-slavery epicenters like New England and Rochester, New York; some had relatives who were Quakers. And views that were more sympathetic to slavery seem mainly to have been held by people who had ties to the South, either from having lived there, or having had business ties, or both. Still, even though there were examples of both abolitionism and pro-slavery, it appears there were more who held positions in between these two views, positions that were against slavery in the North, but not opposed to its existence in the South, or in the territories. And of course being anti-slavery didn’t necessarily mean a person was fully committed to the desegregation of society in general. Ultimately these circumstances form a unique chapter in Vassar’s history, and it is important to include it in the larger history of the school. Vassar’s history as it relates to slavery is also part of the story of American higher education. While the preceding discussion suggests a view of this topic, at the same time we must admit that there is still much we don’t know, due to lack of evidence or lack of study. It is hoped that additional, more focused studies will follow. In this way, we can continue to develop a more inclusive history of the College.

By Ronald D. Patkus

Head of Special Collections and College Historian

Ronald Patkus is a native of Connecticut. He received a BA from Boston College (1986), an MA and Certificate in Archival Management from the University of Connecticut (1987), an MS in Library Science from Simmons College (1993), and a PhD in History from Boston College (1997). Mr. Patkus serves as Associate Director of the Libraries for Special Collections and is a member of the History Department. He holds the Frederick Weyerhaeuser Endowed Chair in Biblical Literature and Bibliography. His teaching and research interests focus on the history of books and printing.