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See also: Driving Slavery North | |  | Timothy Dwight: The Freeing of a Reputation Right sympathies, and bad scholarship, have disfigured and falsified Timothy Dwight's stance on slavery. The record, freed of arbitrary truncation and misplaced persons, makes this plain. |
According to the recent report, “Yale, Slavery and Abolition,” nine of the Yale’s twelve residential colleges are named for men who either owned slaves or gave public support to slavery. Among the accused stands Timothy Dwight the elder (President of Yale 1795-1817), for whom both Timothy Dwight College and Dwight Hall are partly named. 1
This last fall, in the wake of the slavery report’s allegations, Dwight Hall considered a name change, but then in a compromise move, installed a plaque in their building which proclaims:
“With this plaque Dwight Hall at Yale renounces the pro-slavery thought and actions of Timothy Dwight, while reaffirming our predecessors’ work on behalf of justice and equality.” The plaque has its origin in sound intentions, but patently slipshod scholarship. Dwight plainly denounced slavery. He statedly anticipated its abolition, while describing abolition as less than justice required. Who is being condemned?
Let’s pause for a little historical context. Timothy Dwight is the man most responsible for Yale’s transformation from a small regional college to a major national university. Not only an exceptional college president, he was a man of God with a mighty concern for students. When Yale departed from her historic foundation and embraced a fashionable rationalism and atheism, it was Dwight’s praying, preaching and intellectual challenge to the new philosophy that broke its hold on the student body. Spiritual revival visited the campus no fewer than four times in Dwight’s tenure, and many of the college’s future professors and presidents were brought to repentance and faith during these and subsequent revivals.
When a spiritual awakening in 1878-79 sparked the founding of a chapter of the Young Men’s Christian Association at Yale in the 1880s, it seemed natural to name first the chapter’s building and then the association itself after Timothy Dwight. There was no brighter light in Yale’s history than the elder Dwight, and no better example of sacrifice and service for Christ.2
The report’s case against Dwight
Dwight Hall’s hasty move to dissociate from President Dwight is not too surprising given that they no longer hold the faith he professed. But the speed of their action also suggests a fear of commemorating an unfashionable hero and scant knowledge of the thought and action of their predecessor. For Dwight’s legacy on the question of slavery is simply not as “Yale, Slavery and Abolition” represents it. Not even close.
The report purports to review Yale’s relationship to slavery and concludes that the school was founded and supported on money made from slave labor, was a significant source of pro-slavery thought, and produced a considerable number of pro-slavery graduates. Yale’s antebellum faculty, according to the report, were at best tepidly antislavery, and at worst actively pro-slavery.3
Timothy Dwight is in many ways critical to the report’s argument about Yale’s involvement with slavery, for it credits him with fostering pro-slavery attitudes in his students and influencing the college climate on this subject long after his death.
A review of the report’s charges against him will fairly test the report’s own validity.
A look at the record
A look at the record | “Yale, Slavery and Abolition” Fallacy #1: | | Dwight helped sell Jonathan Edwards’s slaves. |
Minor errors pepper the slavery report, and some of them are chronological. For instance, two separate pages record that Timothy Dwight the younger became president of Yale in 1881, when in fact he became president in 1886. Leonard Bacon is said to have graduated from Yale in 1783. That would have been a remarkable feat: Bacon wasn’t born until 1802.4
But the writers of the slavery report commit a major chronological blunder when they have Timothy Dwight, in administering the wills of his grandfather and grandmother Jonathan and Sarah Edwards, participate in the sale of their slaves. The fact is that in August 1759, when those wills were executed, our Timothy would have had to be one very precocious seven-year-old to be executing wills or selling slaves.
While the error is most explicit in the online version of the report, neither the online version nor the printed text differentiate in this instance between President Timothy Dwight, born 1752, and his father of the same name, born 1726.5 It is Dwight’s father who is most likely the “Timothy Dwight, Jr.” of the executor’s report.6 | “Yale, Slavery and Abolition” Fallacy #2: | | Dwight excused the slave trade and had contempt for African Americans. |
In 1810, the daughters of three prominent New Haven citizens decided to begin a school to teach black girls to read. President Dwight preached a sermon in support of this and other charitable projects,7 but singled this one out as most interesting to him personally. Despite his obvious purpose to promote the school, the writers of the slavery report select a quote from his sermon to demonstrate that Dwight was in fact using the occasion to make excuses for the slave trade.8 Regarding New Haven’s blacks, Dwight is quoted as follows:
“Our parents and ancestors have brought their parents, or ancestors, in the course of a most iniquitous traffic, from their native country; and made them slaves. I have no doubt, that those, who were concerned in this infamous commerce, imagined themselves justified; and I am not disposed to load their memory either with imprecations or censures.”9
“Yale, Slavery and Abolition” doesn’t give Dr. Dwight a chance to say what he is disposed to do, but we should. Starting a couple lines above the quote, here is a transcript of what Dwight actually said (emphasis his):
“Among these [charity] schools, I confess, that I feel a peculiar interest in that, which has been established for the benefit of the female children of the blacks. This unfortunate race of people are in a situation, which peculiarly demands the efforts of charity, and demands them from us. Our parents and ancestors have brought their parents, or ancestors, in the course of a most iniquitous traffic, from their native country; and made them slaves. I have no doubt, that those, who were concerned in this infamous commerce, imagined themselves justified; and am not disposed to load their memory either with imprecations or censures. Happily for us, the question has been made a subject of thought and investigation. This decided it at once; and we are now astonished, that it could ever have given rise to a single doubt. Under the influence of overwhelming conviction, we have made the descendants of these abused people free.”10
Dwight is here speaking of New England’s emancipation of slaves (see page 13), and he makes his position clear. The enslavement of Africans was patently wrong, his generation has seen it clearly and has set about freeing slaves. But this, he says, isn’t doing enough:
“Here we have stopped; and complimented, and congratulated, ourselves for having done our duty. But not withstanding this self-complacency, it is questionable, my Brethren, whether we have rendered to the present race of this people any real service.”11
Though the writers of the slavery report insist that Dwight felt contempt for African-Americans, in this sermon he unequivocally states that they are not “weaker, or worse, by nature” than others, but have been put at a disadvantage by the sin committed against them. Enslavement has established the conditions that make for “sloth, prodigality, poverty, ignorance and vice” in the black community. It is up to the children of the enslavers to give to the children of the enslaved “knowledge, industry, economy, good habits, moral and religious instruction, and all the means of eternal life.”
Dwight is soberly convinced that slavery is a multi-faceted evil that requires definite redress, and unlike many antislavery men of his time, or even later, he was willing to deal with the social situation it had created:
“It is in vain to alledge, that our ancestors brought them hither, and not we. . . . We inherit our ample patrimony with all its incumbrances; and are bound to pay the debts of our ancestors. This debt, particularly, we are bound to discharge: and, when the righteous Judge of the Universe comes to reckon with his servants, he will rigidly exact the payment at our hands. To give them liberty, and stop here, is to entail upon them a curse.”13
In short, if Dugdale, Fueser and Alves, the authors of the slavery report, had not branded Timothy Dwight a pro-slaver, they might more sensibly have used him as poster boy for a Connecticut campaign for reparations for slavery. Did they actually read The Charitable Blessed? It is known that by lecturing Dwight “raised a considerable fund” for the African American school, and that the work continued for a number of years.14
| “Yale, Slavery and Abolition” Fallacy #3: | | Dwight defended slavery in the United States, but condemned European and West Indian slavery. |
That Dwight was against the perpetuation of slavery in the United States is clear: as we have already seen, he didn’t think mere liberation of the slaves enough. That he looked forward to the end of slavery from as early as 1798 we know from his sermon The Duty of Americans, at the Present Crisis . . . , where, in listing recent works of God he notes:
“Measures have, in Europe, and in America, been adopted, and are still enlarging, for putting an end to the African slavery, which will within a moderate period bring it to an end.”15
Though Dwight may have guessed wrong about how soon slavery would end in America, he looked on its approaching demise with thankfulness. The authors of the slavery report appear to be unaware of what Dwight said in both The Charitable Blessed and The Duty of Americans . . . when they accuse him of hating slavery as it was in other parts of the world, but rejoicing in that practiced in America.16 They rest this claim on some lines from Greenfield Hill, a poem Dwight published in 1794. In a description of Connecticut village life, Dwight includes a view of the conditions of slavery:
| | “But hark! what voice so gaily fills the wind?
Of care oblivious, whose that laughing mind?
‘Tis yon poor black, who ceases now his song,
And whistling, drives the cumbrous wain along.
He never, dragg’d, with groans, the galling chain;
Nor hung, suspended, on th’ infernal crane . . .
But kindly fed, and clad, and treated, he
Slides on, thro’ life, with more than common glee . . .
Here law, from vengeful rage, the slave defends,
And here the gospel peace on earth extends.
He toils, ‘tis true; but shares his master’s toil;
With him, he feeds the herd, and trims the soil,
Helps to sustain the house, with clothes, and food,
And takes his portion of the common good:
Lost liberty his sole, peculiar ill,
And fix’d submission to another’s will.”17 |
Taken in isolation from the rest of the poem, this passage can be read as a portrait of jolly slavery in ye olde Connecticut. In context, though, it is a comment on the lack of brutality in that slavery. In Connecticut, the law and the Gospel keep the slave from the terrible experience of slaves elsewhere. Some lines not quoted from the above passage note what the New England slave does not have: | | “No dim, white spots deform his face, or hand,
Memorials hellish of the marking brand!
No seams of pincers, fears of scalding oil . . . .”18 |
Dwight moves from this on to condemnation of slavery as a whole. It is a destroyer, wherever it exists. Picking up from the last lines quoted in the slavery report: | | “Lost liberty his sole, peculiar ill,
And fix’d submission to another’s will.
Ill, ah, how great! without that cheering sun,
The world is chang’d to one wide, frigid zone;
The mind, a chill’d exotic, cannot grow,
Nor leaf with vigour, nor with promise blow.”19 |
Dwight says a young slave starts out “[f]irm [in] frame, and vigorous [in] mind”, but slowly the consciousness and reality of bondage begins to crush him. Slavery degrades him: he is “[c]ondition’d as a brute, tho’ form’d a man.” Dwight proposes satirically that future sages, looking at Africans, will ask “why two-legg’d brutes were made by HEAVEN” when in fact heaven didn’t make them at all, but slavery did. Slavery destroys its victims intellectually, morally, and spiritually. Here is Dwight’s fierce indictment of it: | | “O thou chief curse, since curses here began;
First guilt, first woe, first infamy of man;
Thou spot of hell, deep smirch’d on human kind,
The uncur’d gangrene of the reasoning mind;
Alike in church, in state, and houshold all.”20 |
Please note that Dwight regards slavery as gangrene on an otherwise “reasoning mind,” and equally bad in church, state, and household. Unquestionably, Dwight here condemns slavery in Connecticut, for no other place has yet been mentioned in this part of the poem. Before he here turns to European or West Indian slavery, Dwight notes that slavery has reigned in all earth’s ages “[a]nd all her climes, and realms, to either pole,” but it is everywhere man’s defeat and “Satan’s triumph.” The slavery report’s interpretation of Greenfield Hill is based on a failure to actually read the poem. In his notes to the poem, Dwight says “Some interesting and respectable efforts have been made, in Connecticut, and others are now making, for the purpose of freeing the Negroes.”21
| “Yale, Slavery and Abolition” Fallacy #4: | | Dwight defended Southern slaveholding. |
In 1815, an anonymous Englishman’s review of life in the United States roused Dwight to offer a corrective response. Among other things, Dwight was offended that the unknown writer criticized slavery and the slave trade of the American South, but ignored British participation in the same. Dwight’s object in replying to this part of the attack, he explains, is not to defend the slave trade or poor treatment of slaves, but simply to ask that these terrible things not be made “a characteristical disgrace peculiar to [America].”22 Slavery in the British dominions should be acknowledged, too. Beyond that, he gives the British writer permission to “stigmatize both” American and British slaveholders as severely as he pleases.23 Dwight goes on to commend British efforts to end slavery.
“Yale, Slavery and Abolition” draws out a footnote from Dwight’s text to demonstrate his supposed support for the Southern slaveholder:24
“The Southern Planter, who receives slaves from his parents by inheritance, certainly deserves no censure for holding them. He has no agency in procuring them: and the law does not permit him to set them free. If he treats them with humanity, and faithfully endeavors to Christianize them, he fulfills his duty, so long as his present situation continues.”
In context Dwight is plainly not cheering for Southern slaveholding or Southern slavery. He anticipated that slavery in England and America would be ended by government-sponsored abolition. Manumission laws in the South had been progressively tightening from the late 1790s forward. It had become increasingly difficult for a Southerner to free his slaves. Freed slaves were often kidnapped and reenslaved. Various subterfuges were necessary to secure the liberty and well-being of many former slaves, and as a law-abiding man Dwight may have objected to these.26 The Southern inheritor of slaves might hold them just “so long as his present situation continues,” and as we have seen, Dwight thought that it could not continue much longer. In the notes to Greenfield Hill, Dwight says “The manners of Virginia and South Carolina cannot be easily continued, without the continuance of the Negro slavery; an event, which can scarcely be expected.”27
| “Yale, Slavery and Abolition” Fallacy #5: | | Timothy Dwight was a slaveholder himself. |
Here we confront an especially tawdry allegation. On the basis of a manuscript found in the Dwight papers at Yale, the slavery report concludes that in 1788 Timothy Dwight purchased a female slave named Naomi. However, in the manuscript, which is Dwight’s covenant with Naomi, he flatly states “I never intended her for a slave.” Naomi is asked to work for Dwight and his family only until she refunds the money he paid for her and will pay for her clothing. The agreement specifically calls the seven pounds, sixteen shillings that Naomi is to refund to Dwight per year a “rate of hire,” something Dwight need not have given to one he bought and planned to hold in slavery.28
Robert Forbes, associate director of Yale’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, states that instead of buying himself a slave, Dwight is here buying a slave in order to free her.29 It is likely that a deed of mercy is being mistakenly judged a crime. More clear and convincing evidence The slavery report neglects other evidence about Dwight and slavery. The first antislavery society in Connecticut was formed in 1790, and Dwight joined it, signing a copy of its 1792 constitution (see page 11). Surviving correspondence shows that he was second in line to preach at the group’s September 1794 meeting.30 Green’s Register for the State of Connecticut for 1792 also records Dwight’s membership in the society.31
Made up in large part of Yale men, the society in 1792 petitioned the state legislature for the total abolition of slavery, and a bill freeing all slaves by April 1, 1795 indeed passed the lower house, though the Council later rejected it. “Yale, Slavery and Abolition” portrays the antislavery group as too weak-kneed to actually work for abolition in Connecticut, and Dwight’s connection with it is not mentioned. Some of the antislavery sermons preached at the society’s meetings were later published, and exerted a strong influence on future abolitionists.32
Though the slavery report states that Dwight nurtured pro-slavery opinions in his students, the charge is an insinuation, contrary to the evidence. Even a cursory canvass of Yale’s graduates uncovers many antislavery men, far more than a real hotbed of pro-slavery opinion (such as Yale is supposed to have been) could have possibly produced.
“Yale, Slavery and Abolition’s” conclusions about the Dwight matter, at least, are not faithful to primary historical sources. Good history needs to be. The report’s writers have placed argument above investigation, and theory above fact. The wise reader will inquire for himself.
By Marena Fisher, Graduate ’91
© 2002 The Yale Standard Committee
1. Antony Dugdale, J. J. Fueser and J. Celso de Castro Alves, Yale, Slavery and Abolition, ([New Haven], The Amistad Committee, Inc., 2001), p. 29.
2. Charles E. Cuningham, Timothy Dwight 1752-1817: A Biography, (New York, Macmillan, 1942), pp. 293-334; James B. Reynolds, et al, Two Centuries of Christian Activity at Yale, (New York, G. P. Putnam Sons, 1901), pp. 51-70, 211-216.
3. Dugdale, et al., pp. 12-14, 29-30.
4. Dugdale, et al., p. 32, p. 44, n. 84; p. 33.
5. Dugdale, et al., p. 41, n. 5. See also: www.yaleslavery.org/whoYaleHonors/dwight2.htm & www.yaleslavery.org/whoYaleHonors/je.htm
6. For a portion of the executor’s report, see William C. Fowler, The Historical Status of the Negro in Connecticut, (New Haven, Tuttle, Morehouse; Taylor, 1875), pp. 121-122.
7. Cuningham, p. 336.
8. Dugdale, et al., p. 14.
9. Timothy Dwight, The Charitable Blessed: A Sermon, Preached in the First Church in New-Haven, August 8, 1810, (New Haven, Sidney’s Press, 1810), p. 20.
10. Dwight, The Charitable Blessed, p. 20.
11. Dwight, The Charitable Blessed, pp. 20-21.
12. Dwight, The Charitable Blessed, pp. 21-23.
13. Dwight, The Charitable Blessed, pp. 22-23.
14. Cuningham, p. 336.
15. Timothy Dwight, The Duty of Americans, at the Present Crisis, Illustrated in a Discourse, Preached on the Fourth of July, 1798, (New Haven, Thomas and Samuel Green, 1798), p. 30.
16. Dugdale, et al., pp. 13-14.
17. Timothy Dwight, Greenfield Hill: A Poem in Seven Parts, (New-York, Childs and Swaine, 1794), part II, ll. 193-214, some lines omitted.
18. Dwight, Greenfield Hill, pt. II, ll. 199-201.
19. Dwight, Greenfield Hill, pt. II, ll. 213-218.
20. Dwight, Greenfield Hill, pt. II, ll. 223, 228, 249-250, 253-257.
21. Dwight, Greenfield Hill, pt. II, ll. 268, 260; notes to part II, L. 208.
22. Timothy Dwight, Remarks on the Review of Inchiquin’s Letters, (Boston, Samuel T. Armstrong, 1815), p. 81.
23. Dwight, Remarks, p. 86.
24. Dugdale, et al., p. 14.
25. Dwight, Remarks, p. 81.
26. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1966) pp. 57, 262-273; see also his The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1975), pp. 196-212, 256-257, 317.
27. Dwight, Greenfield Hill, notes to part I, L. 296.
28. Dugdale, et al., p. 12.
29. Yang, Jia Lynn, “Yale Slavery Report Questioned by Experts,” Yale Daily News CXXIV:65, p. 4.
30. Simeon Baldwin to Nathan Strong, Febr. 4, 1794; Minutes of a meeting of the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom, Sept. 11, 1794. Baldwin Family Papers, Group 55, Series I, Box 5, Folders 82, 84. Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Library, Yale University.
31. Green’s Register for the State of Connecticut: with an Almanack, for the year of Lord, 1792, (New London, T. Green & son, [1791]), p. 65.
32. Leonard Woods Labaree, comp., The Public Records of the State of Connecticut, from May 1793 through October 1796, (Hartford, Connecticut State Library, 1951), pp. xviii-xx; Arthur Zilversmit, The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North, (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 201-202; James D. Essig, The Bonds of Wickedness: American Evangelicals Against Slavery 1770-1808, (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1982), pp. 112-113; Mary Stoughton Locke, Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808), (Boston, Ginn & company, 1901), pp. 126-127.
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