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During the antebellum period, the faculty of the University of Virginia (UVA) shifted from depending on slavery in private life to advocating for the institution as public intellectuals. When UVA opened in March 1825, Thomas Jefferson hoped that the University would bolster Virginia’s national standing and disseminate his vision of republican government. Although the institution depended on enslaved labour from its inception, Jefferson’s lingering influence contributed to some professors’ misgivings over slavery’s morality and a broader reticence to defend the system publicly. Academic currents and political sentiments began to shift in Virginia after Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831. Even as many of their peers openly advocated for slavery, establishing its defence as the defining feature of Southern education, UVA’s professors hesitated. Coming under increasing pressure from the public and its student body, the University changed tack after the Crisis of 1850, hiring a series of fiercely proslavery and pro-Southern professors. Sweeping away the vestiges of Jefferson’s republican ideology, and its comparative ambivalence towards slavery, these faculty members emphasized inequality and hierarchy, praising slavery as the central feature of a well-ordered society.

From Jeffersonian Republicanism to Southern nationalism: faculty engagement with proslavery thought at the University of Virginia, 1825–1861