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William Barton Rogers and the Southern Sieve: Revisiting Science, Slavery, and Higher Learning in the Old South

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

A. J. Angulo
A. J. Angulo*
Affiliation:
Winthrop University
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Extract

William Barton Rogers, conceptual founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pursued two interrelated careers in nineteenth-century America: one centered on his activities in science and the other on his higher educational reform efforts. His scientific peers knew him as a geologist and natural philosopher, director of the first geological survey of Virginia, author of over one hundred publications in science, and promoter of professionalization. His colleagues in higher education, meanwhile, thought of him as the reform-minded professor at the College of William and Mary and the University of Virginia, who later left the South and established one of America's first technological institutes. Comparatively little has been written about either of these areas of Rogers's life and career. We know much more about the scientific and educational thought of such figures as Louis Agassiz at Harvard, Benjamin Silliman at Yale, Joseph Henry at Princeton, and Alexander Dallas Bache at the helm of the Coast Survey. The literature on Rogers, by comparison, has offered little insight into his life and even less about his relationship to broader developments in nineteenth-century science and higher learning.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , Spring 2005 , pp. 18 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 Moyer, Albert E. Joseph Henry: The Rise of an American Scientist (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997); Lurie, Edward Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science, rev. ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988); Brown, Chandos Michael Benjamin Silliman: A Life in the Young Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); Slotten, Hugh Richard Patronage, Practice, and the Culture of American Science: Alexander Dallas Bache and the U.S. Coast Survey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Relevant sources on William Barton Rogers’ life and family include the following: Savage, Emma ed., Life and Letters of William Barton Rogers, 2 vols., (New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1896), cited hereafter as LL; Ruschenberger, W. S. W. A Sketch of the Life of Robert E. Rogers, M.D., LL.D., with Biographical Notices of His Father and Brothers (Philadelphia: McCalla & Stavely, 1885); and Gerstner, Patsy Henry Darwin Rogers, 1808–1866: American Geologist (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994). Several tributes, obituaries, and chapters from institutional histories have been published on William Barton Rogers and vary widely in quality and accuracy. Scholarly articles are few and center mostly on his geological research.Google Scholar

2 Savage, James to His Daughter and Her Husband, November 23, 1852, reprinted in Savage, Emma ed., Letters of James Savage to His Family (Boston: n.p., 1906), 167. Historians have long debated whether the slaveholding South promoted or stifled the cultivation of scientific ideals. Virtually every imaginable method has been used to debate the matter, from the biographical to the statistical. One of the earliest examples of the scholarly quarrel can be found between Samuel Eliot Morison's The Oxford History of the United States, 1783–1917 (London: Oxford University Press, 1927) and Johnson's, Thomas Carey reply in Scientific Interests in the Old South (New York: Appleton-Century, 1936). Since then, works that have interpreted slavery and the culture of the antebellum South as having a diminishing impact on science and intellectual life include the following: Eaton, Clement Freedom-of-thought Struggle in the Old South (New York: Harper & Row, 1964) and idem., The Mind of the Old South, rev. ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976); Cash, W.J. The Mind of the South (New York: Vintage Books, 1941); Daniels, George H. American Science in the Age of Jackson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968); Faust, Drew Gilpin A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South, 1840–1860 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); McCardell, John The Idea of a Southern Nation: Southern Nationalists and Southern Nationalism, 1830–1860 (New York: Norton, 1979); Greene, John C. American Science in the Age of Jefferson (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1984); and Bruce, Robert V. The Launching of Modern American Science (New York: Knopf, 1987). Recent scholarship has called into question earlier studies by examining the productivity of Old South scholars and arguing that slavery had little or no impact on their work. See, for example, Stephens, Lester D. Joseph LeConte: Gentle Prophet of Evolution (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982); Numbers, Ronald L. and Numbers, Janet S. “Science in the Old South: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Southern History 48 (May 1982): 163–184; Stephens, Lester D. Science, Race, and Religion in the American South: John Bachman and the Charleston Circle of Naturalists, 1815–1895 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Pyenson, Lewis “An End to National Science: The Meaning and the Extension of Local Knowledge,” History of Science 40 (September 2002): 272–290.Google Scholar

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5 College of William, and Mary, Minutes of the Faculty, March 1820.Google Scholar

6 Ibid.Google Scholar

7 Thomas Cooper quoted in Clement Eaton, The Freedom of Thought in the Old South (Durham: Duke University Press, 1940), 27; for starters, see the historiographical syntheses on changes in southern political thought in McCardell, Southern Nationalism and Cooper, William J. Jr., and Terrill, Thomas E. The American South: A History (New York: McGraw Hill, 1996); from a contemporary sociological perspective, Noel, Lisa in Intolerance: A General Survey (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1994) argues that while the contemporary use of the term “intolerance” has come to represent any form of rejection, it has generally meant “the unjustified condemnation of an opinion or behavior” (p. 4). Cooper, and Terrill, The American South, 228–229, 158–159; Eaton, Freedom of Thought, 126–131; McCardell, Southern Nationalism, 23–24, 30–48.Google Scholar

8 Cooper, and Terrill, The American South, 232–233; see also Tise's, Larry Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701–1840 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 70–74; on Dew and the Virginia Convention, see Bruce, Dickson D. Jr., The Rhetoric of Conservatism: The Virginia Convention of 1829–30 and the Conservative Tradition in the South (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1982), 175–193; the proslavery thought of Dew, Nott, Hammond, and others in their southern intellectual context discussed in Michael O'Brien, Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810–1860, 2 vols., (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).Google Scholar

9 Brenaman, J. N. A History of Virginia Conventions (Richmond: J. L. Hill Printing Co., 1902), 43–48; Pullman, David L. The Constitutional Conventions of Virginia from the Foundation of the Commonwealth to the Present Time (Richmond, VA: J. T. West, 1901), 63–83; see also, Bruce, Jr. Rhetoric of Conservatism, ch. 2.Google Scholar

10 Rogers, William Barton (WBR) to Rogers, Henry Darwin (HDR), January 2, 1830, Box 1, Folder 7, William Barton Rogers Papers, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Archives (MITA).Google Scholar

11 WBR to HDR, January 2, 1830, Box 1, Folder 7, WBR Papers, MITA.Google Scholar

12 Alfred Lanning Binger, Carl Revolutionary Doctor: Benjamin Rush, 1746–1813 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1966); Rogers, James Blythe (JBR) to Rogers, Patrick Kerr (PKR), March 12, 1827, WBR Papers, MITA; Gerstner, Henry Darwin Rogers, 21–22; RER to WBR, December 3, 1832, WBR Papers, MITA; WBR to HDR, January 2, 1830, Box 1, Folder 7, WBR Papers, MITA. Hawke, David Freeman Benjamin Rush: Revolutionary Gadfly (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971); Donald, J. D'Elia, Benjamin Rush: Philosopher of the American Revolution (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1974).Google Scholar

13 Lieber, Francis quoted in Geer, William M. Francis Lieber at the South Carolina College (Raleigh: Print. Shop, North Carolina State College, 1943), 20, 4, 11; Freidel, Frank Burt Francis Lieber: Nineteenth Century Liberal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1948), 129; Roderick, Thomas Dew to WBR, November 2, 1835, LL, I, 124; WBR to HDR, November 30, 1834, LL, I, 112.Google Scholar

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15 Faust, A Sacred Circle, 7–14; see also, Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence, 44–51; Virginia's internal sectionalism discussed in Shade, William Democratizing the Old Dominion: Virginia and the Second Party System, 1824–1861 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996); Freehling, Alison Goodyear Drift Toward Dissolution: The Virginia Slavery Debate of 1831–32 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982); “Memorial to the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Adopted at Full Meeting of the Citizens of Kanawha, [Document No. 8],” Journal of the House of Delegates of Virginia, Session 1841–42 (Richmond: Shepard, Samuel 1841), 6, quoted in Adams, Sean Patrick “Old Dominions and Industrial Commonwealths: The Political Economy of Coal in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1810–1875,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999), 160–161; see also, “The Inequality of Representation in the General Assembly of Virginia: A Memorial to the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Adopted at Full Meeting of the Citizens of Kanawha,” West Virginia History 25 (July 1964): 283–298; Adams, Sean Patrick “Partners in Geology, Brothers in Frustration: The Antebellum Geological Surveys of Virginia And Pennsylvania” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 106 (Winter 1998): 5–34.Google Scholar

16 Ernst, William “William Barton Rogers: Antebellum Virginia Geologist,” Virginia Cavalcade 24 (Summer 1974): 15; Summers, George to Rogers, William Barton February 15, 1836, Board of Public Works Collection, Virginia State Library.Google Scholar

17 WBR to HDR, March 8, 1838, LL, I, 152–53.Google Scholar

18 WBR to HDR, April 1, 1839, LL, I, 163; Gerstner, Henry Darwin Rogers, 50–54; HDR requested an annual budget of $5,000 for the survey and the Pennsylvania legislature provided $6,400 for the project; Robert Rakes Shrock, Geology at MIT, 1865–1965: A History of the First Hundred Years of Geology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977), 166–167.Google Scholar

19 WBR to HDR and Robert Empie Rogers (RER), January 18, 1841, LL, I, 181.Google Scholar

20 Judge, J.F. May to WBR, March 16, 1841, LL, I, 183; WBR to RER, September 11, 1841, LL, I, 191–192.Google Scholar

21 Henry, Joseph on the issue of slavery quoted in Moyer, American Scientist, 199; letter of recommendation from Henry, Joseph July 6, 1835, LL, I, 126; for references to Rogers’ appointment, see University of Virginia, Minutes of the Board of Visitors, July 8, 1835; Cabell, Joseph C. to Madison, James July 25, 1835, Rogers, William Barton Faculty/Alumni File, College of William and Mary.Google Scholar

22 Jefferson, Thomas to Roscoe, William December 27, 1820, quoted in Wiley, Wayne Hamilton “Academic Freedom at the University of Virginia: The First Hundred Years—From Jefferson through Alderman,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1973), 75. Quotations from Dabney, Virginius Mr. Jefferson's University: A History (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981), 8–9; Bruce, Philip A. History of the University of Virginia, 1819–1919: The Lengthened Shadow of One Man, 5 vols., (New York: Macmillan, 1920), II, 34–35, 298.Google Scholar

23 “University of Virginia,” Watchman of the South, August 5, 1841, quoted in Feuer, “Sylvester,” 156–157; Bruce, University of Virginia, III, 79. Much has been written about the Sylvester controversy. This and the following account on the mathematician is largely derived from Feuer's, “Sylvester,” as well as: Archibald, Raymond Clare “Unpublished Letters of James Joseph Sylvester and Other New Information concerning His Life and Work,” Osiris 1 (January 1936): 85–154; Yates, R. C. “Sylvester at the University of Virginia,” The American Mathematical Monthly 44 (1937): 194–201; “Sylvester in Virginia,” The Mathematical Intelligencer 9 (1987): 3–19; James, I. M. “James Joseph Sylvester, F.R.S. (1814–1897),” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 51 (July 1997): 247–261; Parshall, Karen Hunger James Joseph Sylvester: Life and Works in Letters (Oxford, 1998), 12–13.Google Scholar

24 WBR to RER, September 11, 1841, LL, I, 192; for an extended discussion of Sylvester's initial reception, see Feuer, “Sylvester,” 154ff.Google Scholar

25 After leaving Virginia, Sylvester recounted being “in a state of utter… despondency” to Harvard mathematician Benjamin Peirce in the following letters located in the Benjamin Peirce Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA: J. J. Sylvester to Peirce, Benjamin Feb 28, 1843; Sylvester, J. J. to Peirce, Benjamin May 19, 1843; Sylvester, J. J. to Peirce, Benjamin May 22, 1843; Sylvester, J. J. to Peirce, Benjamin June 11, 1843; Feuer, “Sylvester,” 158–169; for further commentary on the mathematician's departure and later career, see Archibald, “Unpublished Letters of James Joseph Sylvester,” and James, “James Joseph Sylvester, F.R.S.”Google Scholar

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27 Student unrest described in Bruce, University of Virginia, III, 113–114; WBR to HDR, April 4, 1845, LL, I, 247.Google Scholar

28 JBR to Brothers [WBR and RER], January 10, 1845, Box 2, Folder 22, WBR Papers, MITA; WBR to HDR, April 29, 1845, LL, I, 249.Google Scholar

29 Journal of the House of Delegates of Virginia. Session 1844–45 (Richmond: Samuel Shepherd, 1844), 38, 40, 43.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 105; Rogers, William Barton “Report from the Committee of Schools and Colleges Against the Expediency of Withdrawing the Fifteen Thousand Dollars Annuity from the University [Document No. 41],” Journal of the House of Delegates. Session 1844–45, reprinted in LL, I, 400.Google Scholar

31 Rogers, “Report from the Committee of Schools and Colleges,” LL, I, 401, 408–409, 411.Google Scholar

32 Johnson, William R. to WBR, February 14, 1845, LL, I, 241; WBR to Johnson, William R. March 15, 1845, LL, I, 242; WBR to HDR, April 5, 1846, LL, I, 264.Google Scholar

33 WBR to Cabell, J. C. March 14, 1848, LL, I, 280–281; Cabell, J. C. to WBR, April 2, 1848, LL, I, 282; WBR to HDR, March 21, 1848, LL, I, 282–283; WBR to HDR, April 29, 1845, LL, I, 250.Google Scholar

34 Quotation on the Savages in Hillard, George Stillman Memoir of the Hon. James Savage, LL.D., Late President of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston: John Wilson and Son, 1878), 17, 32; WBR to HDR, March 13, 1846, LL, I, 259.Google Scholar

35 WBR to HDR, April 29, 1845, LL, I, 250.Google Scholar

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