The Slaveholders at UGA Project uses the UGA Alumni Catalog of 1906 as a point of departure for collecting slaveholding information on all UGA administrators, faculty, and alumni from 1785 through 1865. The data, when complete, will help confirm quantitatively what we already know qualitatively—that the university was particularly dependent upon, and answerable to, Georgia's slaveholding class.

In fall 2018, project team members began "datafying" the Alumni Catalog, which is to say scanning, tabulating, and cleaning the data. Most entries now include the student’s full name, place and year of birth, last known address, year of matriculation or graduation, and biographical information, such as the name of a spouse, profession, and, occasionally, year and cause of death.

Team members are now engaged in cross-checking these students and their families against the names of owners captured in the Slave Censuses of 1850 and 1860. In the meantime, team members have begun entering slaveholdings for known university administrators and faculty, beginning with the presidents.

University Presidents

Abraham Baldwin, president (1785–1801; 16 years)
Josiah Meigs, president (1801–1810; 9 years)
John Brown, president (1811–1816; 6 years)
Robert Finley, president (1817; 1 year)
Moses Waddel, president (1819–1829; 10 years)
Alonzo S. Church, president (1829–1859; 30 years)
Andrew A. Lipscomb, chancellor (1860–1874; 15 years)
Henry Holcombe Tucker, chancellor (1874–1878; 4 years)
Patrick Hues Mell, chancellor (1878–1888; 10 years)

1. Abraham Baldwin (1754-1807), President (1785–1801; 16 years)

Abraham Baldwin was the founder of the University of Georgia. Born and raised in Connecticut, he graduated from Yale with a degree in Theology in 1772. He served as a chaplain in the Revolutionary Army during the War for Independence. [1] Following the war, Baldwin studied law and was admitted to the Connecticut bar but, for reasons that are unknown, moved to Georgia. In 1784, he began practicing law in Augusta. He was elected to the state legislature and tasked by Governor Lyman Hall with devising an educational plan for Georgia. From this plan, the state issued a land grant to establish the University of Georgia (Franklin College) and chartered the school in 1785. [2] It would not be until 1801, however, that the university opened to students.

In 1787, Baldwin was selected as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. There he played a significant role in working out a compromise over how to best apportion representation between the states. He is recognized as one of the architects of the Great Compromise that determined representation in the House and in the Senate and was one of only two Georgians to sign the Constitution. [3]

Baldwin’s comments about slavery reflected the conflict and ambiguity over the issue during the Constitutional era. He argued during the Convention that the legality of slavery should be a matter left to the individual states and was not the purview of the federal government. But he also suggested that Georgia, “if left to herself,” might be inclined to “put a stop to the evil.” It is not known whether Baldwin owned slaves. Henry Clay White, in his 1926 biography of Baldwin speculated that he “probably did not.” [4]

2. Josiah Meigs (1757-1822), President (1801–1810; 9 years)

From 1801-1810, Josiah Meigs served as the second president of Franklin College (later UGA) after Abraham Baldwin. Born in Middletown, Connecticut in 1757, Meigs graduated from Yale college in 1778. Meigs also studied law and passed the bar in 1783. From 1789-94 he practiced law in Bermuda, but due to his “political outspokenness” was arrested for treason. [5] He was then released and returned to Yale as a professor of math and natural philosophy.

Meigs, admittedly a “warm friend of the French Revolution,” was a strong supporter of Jeffersonian Republicanism. [6] His political leanings led to his resignation from Yale. Baldwin, Meigs’ former tutor at Yale, invited Meigs to be a professor at the university in Athens. [7] As president, Meigs steered the college’s curriculum in a progressive direction that included the study of classics, but also incorporated science. Later, Meigs’ also faced political collision with the University’s Board of Trustees during a time of economic and religious factionalism, which led to his resignation in 1810. [8] In 1812, President Madison also appointed Meigs as Surveyor General Northwest of the Ohio.

Evidence suggests that Meigs owned slaves while living in Athens. In an 1803 letter to a relative, he writes that “we have had no death except of my favorite Negro female slave and her child, an infant.” [9] After moving North, however, Meigs became more disapproving of the institution as a stultifying force upon the ingenuity southern whites, if nothing else. In 1818 he praised a correspondent’s decision to leave Kentucky stating that: “I have little hope of anything really clever in States which permit Slavery.” [10] Yet during the Missouri debate in 1819, Meigs opposed any restriction on slavery in Missouri’s Constitution. Meigs’ oldest son, Henry, held the same opinion and lost his congressional seat after voting against the restriction.

3. Robert Finley (1771-1817), President (1817; 1 year)

Robert Finley was born in Princeton, NJ and attended the College of NJ (Princeton), graduating in 1787. He studied theology under John Witherspoon and became a Presbyterian minister. He is most well known for his founding role of the American Colonization Society. He died shortly after becoming president at Franklin College (University of Georgia.)

Finley organized the American Colonization Society in 1816, which through public and private funds was designed to settle manumitted African Americans in a colony in west Africa. The settlement became the independent country of Liberia in 1847. Supporters of the African colonization movement believed that removal was a humane solution that would encourage slaveholders to emancipate their slaves, while critics (both at the time and today) alleged that it was primarily a scheme to remove blacks from the United States. [11] Finley shared with others the belief that the condition of enslavement would plague post-emancipation race relations and prevent African Americans from achieving full freedom as American citizens. Thus, in arguing for the benefits of a colony for freed slaves, Finley wrote, “Should the time ever come when slavery shall not exist in these states, yet if the people of colour remain among us, the effect of their presence will be unfavourable to our industry and morals. The recollection of their former servitude will keep alive the feeling that they were formed for labour, and that the descendants of their former masters, ought to be exempt, at least, from the more humble and toilsome pursuits of life. The gradual withdrawal of blacks would insensibly, and from an easy necessity induce habits of industry, and along with it a love of order and religion.” [12]

5. Moses Waddel (1770-1840), president (1819–1829; 10 years)

Moses Waddel became President of Franklin College (UGA) in 1829. By then he had become a well known educator, recognized for his establishment of Willington Academy in South Carolina since 1804. Some of his students included many notable southern politicians such as William H. Crawford, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, George McDuffie, George Gilmer, Thomas W. Cobb, and John C. Calhoun. [13] He also wrote a best selling book in 1819, Memoirs of the Life of Miss Caroline Elisabeth Smelt.

Moses Waddel was born in 1770 in North Carolina, the son of Irish immigrants. He began teaching at a young age and was noted as a talented educator. He then became religious and entered the Presbyterian ministry after graduating from Hampden-Sidney College in 1793 in Virginia with a degree in theology. He stimulated the religious life of the campus and organized the first Presbyterian congregation in Athens. He resigned his presidency in 1829 due to an extended feud with the Baptists and Methodist factions at the college. [14] Afterwards, he returned to Willington Academy.

Sources indicate that Moses Waddel owned slaves. His son, John Waddel, writing after the end of the Civil War and slavery claimed that his father had been a “most humane master...no cruel treatment was ever known or permitted, and every reasonable liberty was allowed them.” [15] While such claims are difficult to prove or disprove, it does appear that Waddel believed in Christian instruction for slaves. In 1833, at a time when the teaching of slaves was and prohibited in some areas, Waddel chaired a Presbyterian committee for the religious education of slaves. [16]

6. Alonzo Church president (1829–1859; 30 years) (1793-1862)

Alonzo Church was born in 1793 in Vermont and graduated from Middlebury College in 1816. He moved to Georgia and was appointed head of the Academy of Eatonton. Alonzo Church became professor of Mathematics at the University of Georgia in 1819 and then president in 1829. He was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1824. After his long tenure as president he retired in 1862. During his presidency, Church navigated persistent challenges to the growth of the university. The community became increasingly concerned that the college was only dedicated to the wealthy elite of the state, while the conservative state legislature provided little financial support for maintaining or expanding higher education. [17]

Church was noted for his disciplinarian nature. In 1846 and 1852 professors of physics and chemistry, brothers John and Joseph LeConte resigned. This caused a public controversy in which Church was accused of “improper treatment” of faculty. [18]

Alonzo Church owned slaves in Athens. According to the Federal Slave Census he owned 9 slaves in 1850. Clarke County probate records indicate that his children inherited the enslaved. His will also mentions the hiring of an enslaved person named Alfred. [19]

7. Andrew A. Lipscomb, chancellor (1860–1874; 15 years)

In 1860, the Board of Trustees aimed to modernize and reorganize the university. The Board changed the position of the President to Chancellor, for which they elected Andrew A. Lipscomb. Lipscomb tried to continue the expansion of the university during his tenure that lasted through the Civil War and Reconstruction until he retired in 1873.

Lipscomb graduated from Georgetown Military Academy and became a Methodist minister at 19. In 1849, he left the ministry to found the Metropolitan Institute for Young Ladies in Montgomery, Alabama. He then served as president of the Tuskegee Female College before coming to the University of Georgia. Lipscomb struggled to keep the university open as students left to fight in the war in increasing numbers, but the university closed from 1864-1866. [20]

On the brink of war, soon after being inaugurated, Lipscomb delivered a speech at a General Assembly meeting. In the speech, Lipscomb put forth a religious argument that supported the war and the defense of slavery. He argued that Providence charged the “Anglo-Saxon race” with the “advancement of the African race.” [21] He also claimed that unlike the North, the South was better equipped for slavery because “Southern men have shown a capacity to manage the institution, and hold it up against all outward pressure… I think then that Slavery has proved an immense benefit to the negro, while on the other hand, it has enriched and exalted our country, and at the same time, promoted beyond computation the peace and prosperity of the world.” [22]

8. Henry Holcombe Tucker, chancellor (1874–1878; 4 years)

Tucker, a native Georgian, was a Baptist clergyman. During the Civil War Tucker opposed succession. He served as president at Mercer College from 1866-1871 and served as chancellor of University of Georgia from 1874-1878. Following Lipscomb’s progressive direction for the university, Tucker aimed to return the curriculum to the old classical system of a traditional liberal arts college. (Tucker also supported tuition free public higher education in Georgia.) [23] However, the trustees adopted the new plan that turned away from a commitment to agricultural education and fired the reform-minded Tucker. [24]

In the historical record, Tuckers views on slavery appear to change dramatically over time. At the start of the Civil War Tucker delivered a sermon to the Georgia legislature in which he rallied for the Confederate cause. In the sermon he portrayed the North as the villains saying, “Retaliation! To arms! To arms! Let us kill! Let us destroy! ...We had no hand in bringing it on. We asked for nothing but our rights. Our desire was for peace. They tormented us without cause while we were with them. What we cherish as a heaven-ordained institution they denounce as the "sum of all villanies.” [25]

Later, in 1888, several years after the war ended, Tucker blamed the North for the very existence of slavery in a letter to the First African Baptist Church in Savannah. “This atrocious crime was perpetrated by Northern men, not Southern men. Not a solitary Southern vessel was engaged in that traffic nor yet a solitary Southern man; nor was there a single dollar of Southern Capital engaged in the enterprise.” Tucker went on to qualify his previous upholding of slavery writing, “There were many who never liked it, but who, nevertheless, after it was introduced and became thoroughly interwoven with the social fabric, defended that position of the slaveholders. I was one of these. I was never in sympathy with those Northern pirates who foisted slavery upon us. On the contrary, I always regarded them and their deeds with abhorrence.” Furthermore, Tucker stated that he had no remorse for being a slaveholder because, as he argued, “I always believe that the slaveholder, who inherited this condition was as innocent of wrong as the slave, who also inherited it. I am still of that opinion; and though a slaveholder from birth until the happy demise of the institution, I am wholly unrepentant of the share I had in it, and feel that I have nothing to repent of.” [26]

9. Patrick Hues Mell, chancellor (1878–1888; 10 years)

Patrick Hues Mell was a Baptists minister who was a professor at Emory College and Mercer College before he became a professor at the University of Georgia in 1856. He then served as Chancellor from 1878 until 1888. Following the firing of his predecessor, Henry Holcombe Tucker, Mell pursued a turn back to a conservative administrative direction that primarily served the educational interests of the political elite rather than meet the rising demand for more agricultural and technological opportunities. [27]

A native Georgian, Mell attended Amherst College in Massachusetts but returned to Georgia within a few years. Mell’s son wrote of an event that took place while his father was at Amherst, “Prof. Fiske was the Professor of Physics in the college...this gentleman was also a minister, and while preaching one Sunday to the students, he took occasion to say some things concerning slavery that were very obnoxious to the Southern young men who were in his audience. Mr. Mell turned to one of his companions and said he would not remain any longer to be insulted, and immediately rose and walked out of the room.” [28] Indeed, as demonstrated by a 1844 pro-slavery treatise attributed to him, Mell was very proud of the benefits of slavery to the South. He suggested that slave ownership made slave owners more moral:“So far from believing that the lawful dependence of our fellow creatures upon us is a hindrance, I maintain that it is one of the greatest aids to the advancement of piety in our hearts.” [29]

Reacting to abolitionist charges that slavery was a social evil, Mell was adamant that slaves were treated better in America than anywhere else in the world. [30] Mell even argued that slave ownership made slave owners more well-mannered: “That slavery has a tendency to promote social intercourse, is evident, from the following considerations: … Slaveholders are more likely to be polished in their manners. This is especially true of those who own large numbers of slaves, and who have consequently, the leisure and other facilities for mingling together in social intercourse.” [31]

Other Quotes from Noted People

Joseph LeConte

“As a result of the war I lost everything I had in the world, for, except the eight thousand dollars in bonds lost at the capture of the wagons, all my property was in lands and negroes. But this total loss did not in the least dishearten me; I did not lose a wink of sleep. This was partly because everybody else had suffered in the same way, partly because I felt sure that I could make my living somehow, partly, and perhaps chiefly, because I had always been oppressed by the ownership of slaves. Not because I felt any conscientious scruples about it, but because I felt distressingly the responsibility of their care; because I felt that those who own slaves ought personally to manage them, as my father did.” [32]

Joe Brown

In 1849, during the Georgia General Assembly debate on slavery in the states, Brown argued that slavery was supported in the Bible, “Moses in his law received from the Creator himself made provisions for relations between master and servant. Paul speaks without the slightest disapprobation of the relations of master and servant. I am not ashamed to be found doing that which was countenance and practiced by such men as these, more especially when they were acting under divine inspiration.” [33]

As Governor, Brown lobbied passionately in defense of preserving slavery in the South. “It is sickening to contemplate the miseries of our poor white people under these circumstances…They are a superior race, and they feel and know it…” At the prospect of the abolition of slavery he said, “[they] must labor in the fields together as equals. Their children must go to the same poor schools together, if they are educated at all. They must go to church as equals, enter the courts of justice as equals, sue and be sued as equals, sit on juries together as equals, stand side by side in our military corps as equals, enter each other’s houses in social intercourse, as equals; and very soon their children must marry together as equals. May our kind heavenly Father avert the evil, and deliver the poor from such a fate.” [34]

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Brown, Isaac Van Arsdale. Memoirs of the Rev. Robert Finley. Terhune & Letson, 1819.
County, Clarke. “Mention of Enslaved Person, Alfred, in Alonzo Church Will,” July 28, 1865. https://digihum.libs.uga.edu/items/show/36.
Lipscomb, A. A. Substance of a Discourse Delivered before the Legislature of Georgia, on the Occasion of the Fast-Day Appointed by His Excellency, Joseph E. Brown. Milledgeville, GA: Boughton, Nisbet, and Barnes, 1860. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/emu.10002331664.
Love, Emanuel King. History of the First African Baptist Church. Savannah, GA: The Morning News Print., 1888. https://docsouth.unc.edu/church/love/love.html.
Meigs, William Montgomery. Life of Josiah Meigs. Philadelphia, PA: J.P. Murphy, 1887.
Mell, Patrick Hues. Life of Patrick Hues Mell. Louisville, KY: Baptist Book Concern, 1895. http://archive.org/details/lifeofpatrickhue00mell.
———. Slavery: A Treatise, Showing That Slavery Is Neither a Moral, Political, nor Social Evil. Penfield, GA: Benj. Brantley, 1844. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/emu.000011274285.
Tucker, Henry Holcombe. “God in the War. A Sermon Delivered before the Legislature of Georgia, in the Capitol at Milledgeville, on Friday, November 15, 1861, Being a Day Set Apart for Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer, by His Excellency the President of the Confederate States.,” November 15, 1861. https://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/tuckerh/tuckerh.html.
Waddel, John N. Memorials of Academic Life: Being An Historical Sketch of the Waddel Family, Identified Through Three Generations with the History of the Higher Education in the South and Southwest. Richmond, VA: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1891. http://archive.org/details/memorialsofacade00wadd.

Secondary Sources

Adams, O. Burton. “Yale Influence on the Formation of The University of Georgia.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 51, no. 2 (1967): 175–85.
Coulter, E. M. “Abraham Baldwin’s Speech to the University Of Georgia Trustees.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 10, no. 4 (1926): 326–34.
Douglas R. Egerton. “‘Its Origin Is Not a Little Curious’: A New Look at the American Colonization Society.” Journal of the Early Republic 5, no. 4 (1985): 463. https://doi.org/10.2307/3123062.
Dyer, Thomas G. The University of Georgia: A Bicentennial History, 1785-1985. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985.
E. Merton Coulter. “Why John and Joseph LeConte Left the University of Georgia, 1855-1856.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 53, no. 1 (1969): 18–40.
Furlong, Patrick J. “Abraham Baldwin: A Georgia Yankee as Old Congress-Man.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 56, no. 1 (1972): 51–71.
Ralph M. Lyon. “Moses Waddel and the Willington Academy.” The North Carolina Historical Review 8, no. 3 (1931): 284–99.
Smith, Gerald. “Abraham Baldwin (1754-1807).” New Georgia Encyclopedia. Accessed April 27, 2019. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/abraham....
White, Henry Clay. Abraham Baldwin: One of the Founders of the Republic, and Father of the University of Georgia, the First of American State Universities. McGregor Company, 1926.