Date Available

12-12-2025

Year of Publication

2025

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College

Education

Department/School/Program

Educational Policy Studies and Eval

Faculty

Jane McEldowney Jensen

Faculty

Eric Weber

Abstract

This dissertation explores how debates about slavery impacted constituents at four early liberal arts colleges (Berea, Centre, Georgetown, and Transylvania) in antebellum central Kentucky. In addition to focusing on how these colleges participated in, responded to, and helped shape regional debates over slavery, this study also explores how college leaders’ consideration of slavery was intertwined with religion, politics, and the financial pressures inherent in operating a 19th-century institution of higher education. From archival research, I argue that these constituents were not passive participants in this process. In addition to considering slavery from religious, moral, or political perspectives, leaders advanced positions that were informed by their obligations to their educational institutions. These positions also introduced points of contention and could cost leaders their jobs, prompt the withdrawal of support for a college, or make them the target of threats and violence.

Because most of these colleges were denominational colleges, college leaders often represented a larger religious organization and were called to take an active role in shaping church positions on slavery. A dynamic already fraught with potential for conflict was exacerbated by national schisms over slavery in the Presbyterian (1861), Methodist (1844), and Baptist (1845) churches. In addition to schisms, larger regional and national conflicts portended campus conflicts over slavery. Debates about slavery at an Ohio seminary prompted Centre leaders to guard against abolitionist influences within their faculty. A contentious election and a vote for an emancipationist candidate cost the president of Georgetown College his job. John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry provided the pretext needed to organize white proslavery militias to threaten John G. Fee and the Bereans into fleeing their abolitionist community and school.

Perhaps paradoxically, for some leaders, central Kentucky’s tradition of tolerating antislavery positions blurred the boundaries of what was acceptable or unacceptable and made it possible to misstep and violate the local and regional norms about slavery. Other leaders were adept at crafting positions on slavery that corresponded with the popular sentiments within their community and furthered a vision for the mission and organization of the college. Still drawing from the memory of its founding saga, this work concludes by working to understand how antebellum conflicts over slavery still contribute to the understandings of the past employed by today’s college leaders.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2025.566

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