Academic

Politics and the Antebellum UNC Literary Addresses

By Alfred Brophy

Following up my post on William Gaston's literary addresses at UNC and Princeton, I thought I'd talk a little about the political affiliations of the speakers.  There are thirty-four published graduation addresses from pre-Civil War UNC -- most are addresses to the literary societies, though there are also five alumni and two baccalaureate addresses as well.  Of those 34, one was given by a sitting judge (Gaston), 8 by lawyers, 15 by  legally-trained politicians, two by non-lawyer politicians, one by a physician, and one by a merchant-planter (James Bruce--about whom I'll have a post shortly).  Two of the literary addresses and the two baccalaureate addresses (no surprise here!) were delivered by religious leaders, including one by Benjamin Palmer, who played a leading role in the secession of Louisiana.  Palmer sets in motion Robert Bonner's fantastic new book on Confederate nationality--again, a story for another time.

All this set me to wondering a little bit about the speakers' political affiliation.  Leaving aside the religious leaders and a couple of people for whom I have inadequate data on their politics, there are 26 people with an identifiable political party.  This will come as no surprise to close followers of antebellum North Carolina politics: the Whigs were somewhat more predominant, especially before 1850.  Because tables never seem to work out well for me and typepad, here's a link to a table on political affiliations of my speakers.

This raises some interesting questions: who chose the speakers?  For the joint literary societies, the societies alternated choices of speakers each year: the Dialetic Society chose one year, then the Philanthropic Society chose the next.  One easy guide to this is that the Dialectic Society chose in odd years, the Philanthropic Society in even years.  Now what really interests me here is that the Dialetic Society members were, by and large, from western North Carolina and the Philanthropic Society members were, by and large, from eastern North Carolina.  So what we may be seeing here is regional, as well as political divisions.  The Phis (as they're commonly known) chose predominantly Whig speakers in the 1830s and 1840s; the Dis chose predominantly Democrats, in the 1830s.  And though there was a preponderance of Whig speakers over Democrats (14 to 11), the Democrats increased over time.  The alumni addresses are overwhelmingly Whig, which is not surprising given that the University's president throughout most of this time was a Whig, North Carolina's former governor, David L. Swain.  (I should also note that if I were a little more aggressive in assigning political affiliation to several, the Whigs would look even more predominant than they do.  I may be more aggressive in my paper.)

Why is this important?  I'm interested in using literary addresses as a gauge of the quality the antebellum southern mind, and also to get a sense of what was on antebellum southern minds.  If we see political ideology manifest in addresses--even in the studied moderation of graduation addresses--this confirms that the addresses are a useful gauge (maybe not a perfect gauge, but a useful one) of what southern intellectuals are thinking.  Also, this is a gauge of UNC's politics.  I've already written some about how Gaston's and Charles Manly's Whig ideology appeared in his address; my  next couple of posts will talk about other Whigs' ideas in their addresses and the Democrats' ideas in their addresses.  And here's the post to really wait for ... the image of the book in the literary addresses, which hypothesizes how Democrats viewed books differently from Whigs!

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on February 27, 2010 (boomark / email).