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Date:
Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Start Time:
12:00 PM

End Time:
1:00 PM

Location:
Rotunda

Description:
Prof. Brophy will speak about "Slavery and Jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina Before the Civil War.” He will detail the ideas about constitutional law and slavery at the University from the 1830s to the Civil War. Drawing on such diverse sources as graduation addresses, Dialectic and Philanthropic Society debates, and books written by the faculty, Brophy shows that UNC’s students and faculty were more ambivalent about slavery than most southern schools. It was not until the 1850s that UNC fully embraced slavery and even then the students, faculty, and community at UNC remained substantially more committed to the idea of Union than most other southerners. The talk reveals the sophisticated debate about the Constitution’s protection of the Union and slavery at the University, as well as our school’s response to crises like Nullification, the Nat Turner rebellion, and the secession movement in those difficult years as the United States split apart.