Thomas Roderick Dew
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Thomas Roderick Dew (1802–1846) was a professor at and then
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of
The College of William & Mary The College of William & Mary (officially The College of William and Mary in Virginia, abbreviated as William & Mary, W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded in 1693 by letters patent issued by King William III a ...
. He was an influential pro-slavery advocate.


Biography

Thomas Dew was born in
King and Queen County, Virginia King and Queen County is a county in the U.S. state of Virginia, located in the state's Middle Peninsula on the eastern edge of the Richmond, VA metropolitan area. As of the 2020 census, the population was 6,608. Its county seat is King and Qu ...
, in 1802, son of Captain Thomas Dew and Lucy Gatewood Dew. His father was a Revolutionary War soldier and founder of Dewsville, a prosperous plantation near Newtown, King and Queen County. He attended
The College of William & Mary The College of William & Mary (officially The College of William and Mary in Virginia, abbreviated as William & Mary, W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded in 1693 by letters patent issued by King William III a ...
, graduating in 1820, and subsequently spent several years studying in Europe. He was a professor of history,
metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
, and
political economy Political economy is the study of how Macroeconomics, economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and Economy, national economies) and Politics, political systems (e.g. law, Institution, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied ph ...
at William & Mary from 1827 to 1836, then President until his death from
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in 1846. He twice declined invitations to run for political office, as well as invitations to teach at South Carolina College (today the University of South Carolina) and the
University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...
. Shortly before his death, he married Natalia Hay. He died on their
honeymoon A honeymoon is a vacation taken by newlyweds immediately after their wedding, to celebrate their marriage. Today, honeymoons are often celebrated in destinations considered exotic or romantic. In a similar context, it may also refer to the phase ...
, in Paris; his remains were later moved to the crypt under the Wren Chapel on the William & Mary campus. His descendant Charles B. Dew is a professor of Southern history at
Williams College Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a col ...
, and wrote in ''The Making of a Racist'' (2016) of his Southern family's tradition of racism. Dew came to national prominence in 1828 when he attacked the tariff that passed that year (also known as the "Tariff of Abominations"). He was a proponent of free trade, arguing that export taxes benefited Northern manufacturers at the expense of Southern planters. He supported state banks over a national bank, stating that centralized banking would give the government too much control over the economy. Dew's largest book was the ''Digest of the Laws, Customs, Manners, and Institutions of Ancient and Modern Nations'' (1853). A source was P. Austin Nuttall's 1840 ''Classical and Archaeological Dictionary.''


Dew and slavery

In 1832, he published a review of the celebrated
slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
debate of 1831–32 in the
Virginia General Assembly The Virginia General Assembly is the legislative body of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the oldest continuous law-making body in the Western Hemisphere, the first elected legislative assembly in the New World, and was established on July 30, 161 ...

''A Review of the Debates in the Legislature of 1831 and 1832''
which went far towards putting a stop to a movement, then assuming considerable proportions, to proclaim the end of slavery in Virginia. The Virginia Legislature's debate was a response to
Nat Turner's slave rebellion Nat Turner's Rebellion, historically known as the Southampton Insurrection, was a rebellion of enslaved Virginians that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831.Schwarz, Frederic D.1831 Nat Turner's Rebellion" ''American Heri ...
of August 1831. Like many other white southerners, he argued that whites and freed blacks could not live alongside one other in peace.... Dew dismissed colonization of freed American blacks in Africa as prohibitively expensive and logistically impractical; that Blacks did not want to go was of no importance to him. He noted also that the deportation of blacks would prevent Virginia from profiting from its breeding and export of negros, as "a negro raising state for other states" of the South. While his position was convincing to many Southern readers, Jesse Burton Harrison, of
Lynchburg, Virginia Lynchburg is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. First settled in 1757 by ferry owner John Lynch (1740–1820), John Lynch, the city's populati ...
, wrote a robust response that argued that
colonization Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...
(sending freed slaves to Africa) was possible and that slavery was economically inefficient. In his inaugural speech as President at William & Mary, "he admonished young planters to resist fanatics who wished to eliminate slavery. Dew emphasized the importance of a broad-based liberal arts education but singled out morals and politics as the most significant subjects of study." Dew was well respected in the South; his widely distributed writings helped to confirm pro-slavery public opinion. His work has been compared to that of the Southern surgeon and medical authority
Samuel A. Cartwright Samuel Adolphus Cartwright (November 3, 1793 – May 2, 1863) was an American physician who practiced in Mississippi and Louisiana in the antebellum United States. Cartwright is best known as the inventor of the 'mental illness' of drapetomania ...
, who defended slavery and invented the "diseases" of
drapetomania Drapetomania was a supposed mental illness that, in 1851, American physician Samuel A. Cartwright hypothesized as the cause of enslaved Africans fleeing captivity. This hypothesis centered around the belief that slavery was such an improvement up ...
(the "madness" that makes slaves want to run away), and
dysaesthesia aethiopica In psychiatry, dysaesthesia aethiopica ("Black (Ethiopian) bad feeling) was an alleged mental illness described by American physician Samuel A. Cartwright in 1851, which proposed a theory for the cause of laziness among slaves. Today, ''dysaesthe ...
(" rascality"), both of which were "cured" with beatings. Dew's 1833 ''Review'' was republished in 1849, and collected in ''The Pro-Slavery Argument'', together with writings by
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, Hammond and
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. Many people at the time credited Dew with the defeat of the proposal to end slavery in Virginia in the 1830s. He was opposed to even gradual emancipation. Dew's teaching and his writings influenced the following generations, which opposed
Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...
and created
Jim Crow The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
.


Dew on men and women

In the ''
Dictionary of Virginia Biography The ''Dictionary of Virginia Biography'' (''DVB'') is a multivolume biographical reference work published by the Library of Virginia that covers aspects of Virginia's history and culture since 1607. The work was intended to run for a projected fou ...
'', Dew's views on the differences between the sexes are described as follows: He described the hardships faced by men in the marketplace and the almost brutal strength needed to survive in such a competitive atmosphere. He stated that courage and boldness are man's attributes. For Dew, women were dependent and weak, but a spring of irresistible power.


Works by Thomas R. Dew

* * * ** (The "first edition" is the 1833 publication cited above.) ** ** * ** ** * (16 page pamphlet) *


Briefer pieces, letters, speeches

* * * * * *


Archival material

Dew's family papers and papers from his time as president of the
College of William and Mary The College of William & Mary (officially The College of William and Mary in Virginia, abbreviated as William & Mary, W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded in 1693 by letters patent issued by King William III a ...
can be found at the Special Collections Research Center at the
College of William and Mary The College of William & Mary (officially The College of William and Mary in Virginia, abbreviated as William & Mary, W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded in 1693 by letters patent issued by King William III a ...
.


Media

* A non-existent book by Dew, ''Inequality Is the Basis of Society'', appears in the
spaghetti western The Spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's film-making style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most o ...
'' Sabata'' (1969), in which the book is read by a villain. A character reads a quotation from it: "The responsibility of command is to use lesser men."


References


Further reading (arranged by date)

* * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dew, Thomas Roderick 1802 births 1846 deaths Economists from Virginia American legal writers College of William & Mary alumni College of William & Mary faculty American proslavery activists People from Williamsburg, Virginia Presidents of the College of William & Mary Writers from Virginia People from King and Queen County, Virginia American slave owners Pro-Confederate writers American Fire-Eaters 19th-century American male writers 19th-century American non-fiction writers American male non-fiction writers 19th-century American economists