Abstract
This article reassesses the life and legacy of John Knox Witherspoon on the basis of his relationship to slavery. It argues that Witherspoon's ideological commitment to Presbyterianism came into constant tension with the realities of slavery both in his native Scotland and in the burgeoning American colony he eventually called home. Three snapshots in Witherspoon's life encapsulate this tension: his interaction with Jamie Montgomery, an enslaved man whom Witherspoon baptized in Scotland; his contributions to the scheme to train two free African Americans—John Quamine and Bristol Yamma—for their mission to Africa; and his tutoring of John Chavis, a free Black man from Virginia, at the same time he held property in slaves. Most accounts of Witherspoon's life fail to interrogate these snapshots and so fail to grasp a nuanced portrait of the imminent figure. This article parses through his unequal treatment of the African Americans he taught and the African Americans he enslaved to deliver a new reading of Witherspoon. This reading, in turn, maps onto a broader reconsideration of the founding principles of the early United States.
John Knox Witherspoon (1723–1794) lived an incredible life by all accounts. Born in Scotland and educated at the University of Edinburgh, Witherspoon's fervor for moral philosophy and skill in the pulpit propelled him into fame within the Scottish Presbytery. Witherspoon is remembered, however, for his actions after he departed his homeland. From clergyman to college president to cosigner of the Declaration of Independence, his legacy looms large in the history of the early United States. When Princeton University historian Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker assessed the legacy of the college's sixth president, he concluded that Witherspoon “was perhaps the greatest educator of the eighteenth century as well as the greatest ecclesiastical leader.” 1
Yet, most accounts of Witherspoon's life exclude any mention of the president's relationship to slavery. John Witherspoon's ideological commitment to Presbyterianism came into constant tension with his lived reality as a slaveholder in a nation growing dependent upon slave labor. In his efforts to nurture the minds of future Presbyterian ministers, Witherspoon privately tutored four Africans throughout his lifetime—one enslaved and three freedmen. Simultaneously, Witherspoon acquired and maintained property in slaves until his death in 1794. This article thus reexamines John Witherspoon by asking how he navigated such contradictions. My aim is not write an exhaustive biography of John Witherspoon; these waters that have been well tread by scholars across disciplines. Rather, I invite readers to peer into three snapshots of Witherspoon's life that provide starting points to interrogate his relationship to slavery, to Africans in America, and to race in education.
Each snapshot chronicles Witherspoon's interaction with Africans. First, I look to his relationship with Jamie Montgomery, an enslaved man whom Witherspoon baptized in Scotland. I then examine Witherspoon's contributions to a scheme to train two free Blacks—John Quamine and Bristol Yamma—for their mission to Africa. I end my analysis with John Chavis, a free Black man from Virginia who studied under Witherspoon in the last years of the reverend's life. Witherspoon's actions, particularly his unequal treatment of African Americans he taught and African Americans he enslaved, conformed to the dictates of his time. Like his contemporaries, he struggled to cohere his vision of the world as it should be with the realities of the world he inhabited. Therefore, while I have attempted to analyze Witherspoon's actions on their individual merits, I have also attempted to use an eminent figure in American history to tell a broader story about critical moments in the beginning of the nation.
John Witherspoon and Jamie Montgomery: Lessons in Fugitivity
When Jamie Montgomery first sat down in the pews of John Witherspoon's church in Beith, Scotland, sometime in 1750, he could not have predicted the chain of events set in motion by the moment. Jamie Montgomery was born enslaved in Virginia around 1730. 2 Jamie chose his name later in his life and so this article will honor that choice as opposed to using the name “Shanker” selected by Jamie's enslavers. Jamie lived his early life on the tobacco plantation of Captain Joseph Hawkins, likely in the company of his mother, also enslaved by Hawkins. In 1750, teenaged Jamie came under the ownership of Robert Sheddan, a merchant from Fredericksburg, Virginia. The conditions of his sale were beneficial to both Sheddan and Hawkins: Sheddan purchased Jamie for 56 pounds with a promise to send the young man to Scotland to apprentice as a joiner under the care of his brother-in-law, Robert Morrice. 3 After the completion of his training, Jamie would return to America where Sheddan would sell him back to Hawkins for the same price plus an additional one thousand pounds of tobacco. At the end of the transaction, Hawkins stood to gain back a skilled laborer who would, presumably, fetch a higher price on Virginia's slave markets. 4
These are the circumstances that led a young Jamie Montgomery to the town of Beith late in 1750. Though Jamie would have certainly been one of the few enslaved Africans living amongst the parishioners, his presence might not have been so foreign. Eighteenth-century Scotland remained part of the ever-expanding British colonial enterprise. Those in Beith would have had experience living and trading with slaveholding planters who traveled between the metropole and its colonies in the New World, oftentimes making the journey in the company of their property in humans. Perhaps this familiarity could explain, in part, how Jamie seamlessly integrated into John Witherspoon's congregation when he began attending church with the Morrice family. Jamie certainly found himself in good company as most of the residents in town flocked to the sermons of the wildly popular minister. While the forces of capital and commodification dictated the terms of his arrival to Scotland, Jamie soon took his fate into his own hands by leveraging the power of his Christian faith. Sometime around 1754, Jamie embarked on the course of baptism under Witherspoon.
Even though, in the ensuing legal battle, Jamie's enslaver accused him of using the baptism as a means to argue for his freedom, Jamie himself maintained that he “had no other intention than to continue as a servant in the said Robert Sheddan's service” after his baptism. 5 In all likelihood, Jamie repeated this claim to Witherspoon and, in so doing, assuaged any doubts the reverend might have held about legitimizing a potentially controversial confession of faith. Indeed, if Robert Sheddan's court testimony is to be believed, John Witherspoon told Jamie “over and over again” baptism “by no means freed him,” thus giving Jamie little room to negotiate the intentions behind his actions. 6 Nevertheless, Witherspoon taught Jamie how to lead a pious life. It is likely such instruction aligned with the lessons he gave other congregation members before baptism. 7 After this instruction, Witherspoon provided Jamie with a certificate verifying his “good Christian conduct.” Finally, in April of 1756, Witherspoon baptized Jamie under the name James Montgomery. 8
Jamie Montgomery lived only briefly as a free-ish Christian in Beith. Mere months after receiving his certificate from Witherspoon, Jamie's owner returned to Scotland in order to make good on the terms of his bargain. However, when Robert Sheddan encountered Jamie, he encountered someone far different than the enslaved teenager he deposited in the country six years prior. Jamie had not only gained skills that set him apart from most laborers, enslaved or free, but he also gained a sense of living in a society enmeshed in gradients of unfree and free labor. This was a far cry from colonial Virginia, where the ideas of liberty were nourished alongside institutional slavery. Indeed, Jamie's own testimony reveals that the threat of being sent back to Virginia, rather than the moment of his baptism, spurred him to attempt escape from bondage. Jamie intended to remain enslaved “till of late he [Sheddan] with some of his relations conspired together to transport me to Virginia or some other plantation.” 9
In the silences left by the historical record, it is hard to gauge Jamie's intentions through his court testimony. Even if he had believed that his baptism had legally freed him, Jamie would have been hesitant to voice such beliefs to his captors and he likely would have considered the ramifications Witherspoon would face should such testimony be published. However, it is equally challenging to labor under the assumption that Jamie did not understand his baptism to be a move—however small—toward freedom. Jamie testified to being “instructed in the Christian religion and about two years ago publicly Baptized in front of the Congregation in the parish Church of Beith as is instructed by a certificate under the hand of Mr. John Witherspoon.” 10 That Jamie chose to highlight the public nature of the baptism in the court record suggests that, in the moment and afterwards, he played a long game. Jamie likely sought legitimation from Witherspoon in such a public manner to prove himself in the eyes of God, yes, but also in the eyes of man.
Such maneuvering is corroborated in Jamie's final flight from slavery. In his own words, he “fled to Edinburgh for protection & applied to Mr. Peter Wright for work by whom I was employed as journeymen.” 11 Jamie Montgomery might have sought instruction “under the hand of Mr. John Witherspoon” as an extra layer of protection against his status as a slave in the same way he sought protection in the employment of Peter Wright. Ultimately, Jamie built webs of relationships in Scotland to insulate himself from his bondage. That they failed to free him in the end speaks to the pervasiveness of the institution of slavery even in places otherwise read as free.
In the instance when John Witherspoon first came into contact with Jamie Montgomery, the minister confronted a myriad of ways to navigate the situation. He could have refused to allow Jamie to commune with his other congregants and he certainly could have denied him baptism and a certificate of Christian faith. Because Witherspoon chose instead to engage with Jamie and treat him—in the ways available to him—as equal, this is one of the earliest windows into Witherspoon's complex relationship to slavery and the Africans ensnared in its grasp. Here, we see the young minister grappling with and attempting to cohere the ideology he preached with his actions and his practice. Still, though, Witherspoon and Jamie's owner agreed that Christianity did not guarantee freedom from slavery. 12 Witherspoon baptized Jamie with the understanding of freeing Jamie from sin, not from bondage. His actions speak to his investment in Jamie's Christian well-being and his desire to ensure Jamie continued his path the piety. He likely did not anticipate that his actions would embolden Jamie to seek his freedom. As for Jamie, he never fully realized the freedom he desired. He died in 1757 while imprisoned in Edinburg before the court came to a verdict on his case. 13
John Witherspoon, John Quamine, and Bristol Yamma: Lessons in Pedagogy
John Witherspoon's relationship to slavery transformed when he accepted a position as president of Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey) in 1768. Many hailed his arrival as a “Prince coming to his throne.” 14 University administrators hoped that he would bring some of the versatility and charm he displayed in his pulpit in Beith to the new college (barely twenty years old) that struggled to find its footing between colonial America's more established institutions: Harvard, Yale, and the College of William and Mary. The colonial outpost of New Jersey, though oftentimes fashioned as distinct from the slave societies of Virginia and South Carolina, enmeshed itself in the business of slavery. 15 Located between the commercial hubs of New York and Philadelphia, New Jersey attracted a burgeoning class of merchants who oftentimes employed slave labor to upkeep their countryside estates and urban businesses. 16 When Witherspoon arrived in 1768, the Jersey legislature had already heard petitions from its eastern residents to protect against the “dismal consequences” of the abolition of slavery, namely amalgamation and descent into degradation. 17 By the end of Witherspoon's life, his home state had more than twice as many slaves as neighboring “slave” state Delaware. 18
This set of entangled obligations, in turn, explains the staying power of slavery in New Jersey. It was the last northern state to abolish the practice and did so well after the Revolutionary War. It also explains, in part, Witherspoon's seamless transition into the ranks of slaveholders. By 1780, when he moved into his permanent residence at Tusculum, he owned one enslaved individual. Four years later, tax records show he owned two enslaved individuals, and would do so consistently until 1788. 19 Whatever arrangement Witherspoon entered into with these individuals—whether he came into ownership as a result of his marriage to Anne Dill, or whether they were inherited in conjunction with the Tusculum property, or whether Witherspoon purchased them in a similar manner to the 1766 auction of enslaved people at the steps of the old university president's house—Witherspoon made no moves to legally manumit his property over the course of his life. 20 Extant records testify that he paid taxes on two enslaved individuals for eight years while at Tusculum. A final appraisal of his property (enumerated after his death) reveals that he still held two people in bondage when he died. If Witherspoon did issue “freedom papers” as it were, they have been lost to the archive. 21
In truth, Witherspoon's slaveholding placed him closer—not farther—in line with his contemporaries. When, in the early days of his transition to Princeton, he stayed in the home of fellow future founding father Richard Stockton, Witherspoon lavished in hospitality at the expense of the enslaved people residing at Morven. 22 That he mimicked the same patterns of property ownership and mastery as the other co-signers of the Declaration of Independence speaks to what historians have deemed over and over again the central paradox in American history: that the ideas of liberty developed in tandem to a slave society. The earliest founders of our nation, Witherspoon included, held others in bondage even as they fought and died for their own freedoms. 23 Where Witherspoon departs from his contemporaries, however, is that he had already had intimate contact with Africans in America before his 1780 move to Tusculum and entrée into slaveholding.
In 1774, Witherspoon began privately tutoring two African students at Princeton. The plot to bring Bristol Yamma and John Quamine to New Jersey originated with Ezra Stiles and Samuel Hopkins. 24 Stiles and Hopkins were both Congregational ministers and academics at Yale (Stiles would serve as president of the college later in life). Operating out of Rhode Island at the time, the pair corresponded often on issues concerning their faith. Both of their congregations welcomed African American members, enslaved and free. Finally, both men had firm anti-slavery leanings at the time, even though Stiles still had property in slaves. 25 By 1770, Hopkins developed a desire to train “Heathen Africans” for the ministry in the hopes that they would go on to lay the “Foundation of Christianizing the Africans.” 26 He found common ground in this desire with Ezra Stiles, even though the younger minister rivaled him theologically. Together, the team quickly identified two men as worthy subjects for their Christian mission from within the congregants of their own churches.
What we know of Bristol Yamma and John Quamine comes mediated through the diaries of Stiles and Hopkins. John was born on the African Gold Coast. He probably went by Quamino as a child, which was Anglicized to Quamine when he arrived in America (and, finally, John Quamine in freedom). 27 At ten years old, Quamine's father sent him to Rhode Island in 1754 with the intention of receiving an education. The ship captain instructed with Quamine's care sold him into slavery instead. Despite his bondage, Quamine “fell under serious Impressions of religion” in 1761 and ended up in the pews of Stiles’s church. 28 As for his friend and traveling companion, Bristol Yamma, neither Hopkins nor Stiles records any such history before coming to Rhode Island. According to Stiles, Yamma's life story began in 1765 with his baptism in Newport as a servant of Captain Benjamin Church. 29
By the time Stiles and Hopkins leveraged their networks to fundraise for their Christianizing mission, Bristol Yamma and John Quamine had both purchased their freedom. Yamma took up his last name shortly afterwards, preferring it over the last name of his enslaver. 30 For a brief period of time, Stiles tutored the two students. However, he quickly realized that his rudimentary lessons in the basic principles of religion would not satisfy the demands of a mission in Africa. In the fall of 1773, Hopkins wrote to John Witherspoon, then-president of a growing university with a reputation for excellence in Presbyterian teaching. The reverend confirmed that he would “gladly take care of them [Quamine and Yamma] and do all in his power to assist and command them.” Therefore, in the winter of 1774, these two men traveled from Rhode Island to Princeton as students of John Witherspoon. 31 They stayed only a few months in the winter of 1774–75 before their studies were disrupted by dwindling funds for their education and the beginnings of the Revolutionary War. 32
There are no records to illuminate what Quamine and Yamma learned during their brief stint as pupils of John Witherspoon. All that is known is that they were tutored privately and never matriculated through the College. Nor does the historical record say much on Witherspoon's motivations for accepting the two as students. It might have been that he owed Ezra Stiles a favor after he opened his home to Witherspoon on a fundraising trip in 1770; it might have been that Witherspoon personally supported the plan to repatriate Quamine and Yamma back to Africa. What is clear is that Witherspoon demonstrated a commitment to teaching Quamine and Yamma. This commitment perhaps outweighed that of Samuel Hopkins and Ezra Stiles who opted to send the students away rather than continue their studies in Rhode Island. Witherspoon's belief in his African students’ ability to learn the Gospel and train as ministers signals a recognition of Black intelligence that escaped some of his more famous peers.
Still, though, the whole project of Quamine and Yamma's education hinged upon their eventual emigration. Neither Stiles, nor Hopkins, nor Witherspoon, could imagine weaving the two students into the fabric of the nation being born in front of them. This call to educate and civilize at the expense of African American liberty, this freedom with conditions, stands in stark contrast to the freedom that John Witherspoon himself would fight for in the months after Quamine and Yamma left his care. It also stands in contrast to the freedom Quamine would die for shortly after his departure from Princeton, being killed in action fighting the British on board a privateer ship “with the desire not only to support in this way the cause of the army but to obtain money to purchase the freedom of his wife.” 33
Furthermore, this pattern of holding emancipation hostage is a through-line that connects the legacy John Witherspoon left behind to the ones his forebearers at Princeton took up. This is seen most forcefully in the activities of the American Colonization Society. 34 The ideological underpinnings of Witherspoon's early tutoring of African students belies an institutional commitment to freedom in the abstract. It entails a recognition of Black liberty that is predicated upon white men determining when those in bondage are “ready” for freedom and further determining how best to utilize that “freedom” once it has been seemingly earned.
John Witherspoon and John Chavis: Lessons in Praxis
By coincidence or by design, the last snapshot of Witherspoon's life that illuminates his relationship to slavery finds the aging minister in contact, once again, with a Black man from Virginia. In 1792 the trustees of Princeton discussed the possibility of John Chavis, a “free black man of Virginia” receiving funds to come to Princeton for his education. 35 Though no records exist on how John Chavis came to approach the College of New Jersey for his formal education, the College's reputation throughout the country and Witherspoon's reputation within the Presbytery must have held some sway. John Witherspoon's previous African students, conversely, may have convinced the elderly Witherspoon to accept him as a pupil. Late in 1792, John Chavis arrived in Princeton and began lessons with Witherspoon at his home in Tusculum. 36
When John Chavis arrived in New Jersey, the 69 year old Witherspoon had already ceded the bulk of the administrative duties of Princeton to his successor, Samuel Stanhope Smith. 37 Witherspoon spent the subsequent days of his retirement at home. He became an amateur “scientific farmer” and focused his energy on growing crops. 38 After the death of his first wife in 1789, he remarried. His new wife, Anne Dill, was the widow of Witherspoon's former student and 45 years his junior. 39 He likely enjoyed the comforts of domestic tranquility with help (in part or in whole) from the two enslaved people he owned at the time. It is hard to imagine how John Chavis fit into the landscape at Tusculum, or whether he pondered his place alongside the minister, the minister's new wife, and the minister's slaves. Their interaction is further complicated by Witherspoon's public professions on the subject of slavery. At this point in his life, Witherspoon had already voted against the hasty abolition of slavery in the New Jersey legislature. 40 It could likely be that Witherspoon justified educating one African American—Chavis—while simultaneously enslaving two others because tutoring Chavis would give him “such good education as to prepare [him] for better enjoyment of freedom.” 41
Witherspoon did not live to see whether and how John Chavis—already a free man—made use of his education. He passed away peacefully at his home in 1794. John Chavis returned to Virginia to finish his education at Liberty Academy, the predecessor to Washington and Lee University. Much of what is known of Chavis's life before encountering John Witherspoon is based on speculation; much of what is known about his life post-Princeton has been well documented by biographers, historians, and highway markers. 42 Chavis was born free, poor, and probably learned to read and write under an apprenticeship either in Virginia or North Carolina. Little is known about the sponsors who sent him to Princeton. Upon his return in 1794, Chavis spent six years at Liberty Academy, completing his studies with distinction around 1800. 43 At the time, he neared 40 years in age.
In 1801, the Presbyterian General Assembly hired Chavis to be a missionary “among people of his color,” a position he held for five years until he moved to his final home in North Carolina. 44 Here, Chavis nurtured his affinity for teaching and secured fame for an innovative kind of pedagogy: he taught African American students in the same building as white students. For at least two decades, from around 1807 to around 1832, Chavis taught school out of his home in Raleigh. White students attended in the day and colored students attended at night. Though materials from his curriculum have not survived, it is not far-fetched to suggest that his “classical curriculum” took inspiration from his lessons with John Witherspoon. 45 Chavis also exhibited a remarkable propensity for oratory and charm; traits that, like his mentor at Princeton, won him favor with the most powerful men in the state. Children from the prominent Mangum and Hargrove families numbered among Chavis's pupils and he kept a lifelong correspondence with North Carolina senator Willie P. Mangum, one of his former students. 46
These connections, however, proved poor insulation against the growing tide of pro-slavery and anti-Blackness that swept North Carolina in the wake of Nat Turner's rebellion in 1831. By 1832, the state legislature outlawed Negros, free or enslaved, from preaching or teaching. This severely limited Chavis's ability to support himself financially. By 1837 the Presbytery sent him a regular pension of fifty dollars. 47 Though as committed to the spread of Presbyterianism as Witherspoon, and though similarly endowed with a gift of teaching that attracted crowds of admirers, Chavis's life trajectory, unlike Witherspoon's, remained bound by the limits placed upon him in the slave South.
These barriers did not stop Chavis from ultimately aligning himself ideologically with his first mentor on the question of slavery. Having been spared a life of bondage due to his birthright and having witnessed a lifetime of slavery's influence in North Carolina and Virginia, Chavis privately confided to Willie Mangum that “I am clearly of the opinion that immediate emancipation would be to entail the greatest earthly curse upon my bretheren according to the flesh that could be conferred upon them especially in a Country like ours.” 48 That a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a slaveowner could find intellectual common ground with a free Black preacher and teacher should not surprise those well-versed in American history. Such a history is messy, nuanced, and as contested today as it was when history-makers like Witherspoon and Chavis interacted with each other centuries ago.
Conclusion: The Witherspoon Legacy
On November 15, 1794, John Witherspoon passed away in his study after having the day's newspaper read aloud to him. 49 The nation in general, and Princeton University in particular, mourned the passing of a revered minister, mentor, colleague, and friend. Whether we place just as much emphasis on these monikers for Witherspoon as his other descriptor—slaveowner—is a question that is best pondered over the course of a monograph, not an article. The three snapshots I have discussed provide one point of departure in the quest to weigh Witherspoon's legacy. I would like to end with yet another point of departure, inspired by these snapshots in Witherspoon's life: What ideologies did he hold that made him so unlike his contemporaries in his capacity to visualize Black intelligence? How did he come to look at Jamie Montgomery, Bristol Yamma, John Quamine, and John Chavis and see the potential for knowledge when so many others in his position could, would, and did not? Finally, what ideologies did Witherspoon hold that led him to assess the American Patriot's cause and demand instantaneous liberation, but simultaneously assess the slave's cause—including his own slaves’ cause—and implore them to wait for freedom?
