How did enslavers prevent the school’s proposed dissolution?
By: Ryan Bachman | Posted: 3-26-2024
American colleges and universities faced the ever-present threat of closure in the nineteenth century. Inconsistent state support, economic depressions, and war meant that a given school could shut down at any time. Sometimes, wealth from slavery was all that kept an institution afloat. In recent years universities around the country have grappled with this aspect of their respective histories. Rutgers, for example, was bailed out not once, but twice, by the generosity of enslavers, while Georgetown avoided financial ruin in 1838 by selling 272 people enslaved by the school.[1] In the early 1850s, the University of Delaware—or Delaware College, as it was then-known—was likewise rescued by its ties to chattel slavery. Without the financial support of concerned enslavers, the institution as we know it today would not exist. The following blog entry explores this overlooked chapter in the school’s history and adds the University of Delaware to ongoing conversations about institutions of higher education that owe their survival to slavery.
There were calls to shutter Delaware College as early as 1843—only ten years after its incorporation.[2] This early effort was led by a pair of former trustees who felt that their successors were mismanaging the school’s funds.[3] While unsuccessful, the men were not wrong about the poor financial state of the institution. Indeed, its dwindling endowment eventually led to an official motion to disband the college at a January 1850 meeting of the board of trustees. The school was saved, however, by a novel fundraising plan suggested by President Matthew Meigs: the selling of scholarships. For $100 (not an inconsequential sum in those days), a buyer could send twenty students to Delaware College tuition-free.[4] Meigs and the trustees hoped that the scheme would raise up to $100,000 by the end of 1852 and replenish the school’s endowment; if it failed to raise at least $50,000, the money would be returned, and Delaware College would likely close. This ambitious plan, variations of which were also tried at institutions like Wesleyan, Oberlin, and Columbia, effectively made the school dependent on wealthy benefactors—including enslavers.[5]
The Delaware College account book, currently in the University Archives at the University of Delaware, provides a partial list of scholarship buyers. Approximately one third of them were enslavers.[6] Among their ranks were doctors, lawyers, politicians, and businesspeople. The latter two groups were especially well represented. For example, Delaware’s governor, William Henry Harrison Ross, and the state’s sole member of the House of Representatives, George Read Riddle, both purchased scholarships. Ross enslaved over a dozen people on his Sussex County plantation, while Riddle held three people in bondage in his Wilmington mansion.[7]
When it came to businesspeople, the most prominent were the Reybold brothers and Robert Polk. Anthony, William, and Philip Reybold Jr. were all sons and business partners of Major Philip Reybold, the “Peach King of Delaware.” Philip Sr. was one of the first farmers in the state to grow peaches on a commercial scale. By the mid-nineteenth century, he and his sons managed a network of orchards that dotted the length of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal.[8] Much of the work on these properties was done by enslaved people. In early 1856, for example, abolitionist William Still noted the arrival of three freedom seekers in Philadelphia. The men—James Green, Jonathan Fisher, and John Henry—had recently been enslaved on adjoining peach farms owned by William and Anthony Reybold.[9] Robert Polk, meanwhile, was William and Anthonys’ brother-in-law. He was also one of the wealthiest men in Delaware, as described in a biography from 1899:
“Polk…owned and ran the steamboats (and held much of the stock) that drew all the commerce through the Delaware and Chesapeake Canal, having control of it, and was also interested in other branches of commerce. He was a very large land owner in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Texas, and Florida. He owned many fruitful farms and plantations.”[10]
Upon his death in 1854, Polk’s probate inventory listed seven enslaved people: a man named Daniel, two women named Minda and Mary, and Mary’s four children (none of whom were referred to by name).[11]
On the surface, Meigs’s scholarship plan seemed to work. In October 1852, the trustees announced that the fundraiser had brought in $50,000, the minimum amount required to keep Delaware College open. This claim, however, was misleading. According to historian John A. Munroe, the $50,000 figure included cash on hand and IOUs. Only around $25,000—half of the target amount—had actually been collected by the school. Unfortunately for the trustees, students, and faculty, this was only enough to keep the college running for a few years, especially when so many IOUs went unpaid. As enrollment increased (temporarily boosted by students attending on scholarships), the money steadily ran out.[12]
In March 1859, once it became clear that the state would not intervene on behalf of Delaware College, its trustees fired the remaining faculty and suspended all classes. The institution was not disbanded, but rather went into a type of hibernation. Its remaining endowment was left intact, and the trustees continued to meet and discuss new options for fundraising—the only things missing were courses, professors, and students. As early as 1858, there were hopes that a proposed land-grant bill in the U.S. Congress might rescue the school.[13] Under this act, each state was granted a certain amount of federal land (taken from Indigenous nations) which they could then sell and use the proceeds to fund higher education.[14] When the bill finally passed in 1862, the trustees saw their chance. It took five years, but they eventually convinced the state legislature to designate Delaware College as the recipient of any land-grant funds. After a few more years of preparation, classes finally resumed in September 1870.[15]
Delaware College would not have survived to that point without the money of enslavers. By January 1850, its endowment was so diminished that closing the institution seemed to make the most financial sense. The school only received a new lease on life thanks to President Meigs’s scholarship plan, which placated the trustees and kept the college intact. An examination of who took part in this fundraising drive reveals that its success hinged on the support of enslavers like George Read Riddle and the Reybold brothers. Indeed, the University of Delaware—as Delaware College was renamed in 1921—exists today largely because of such individuals and the wealth produced by the people they enslaved.
Ryan Bachman graduated from the University of Delaware with a Ph.D. in history in August 2023. He is currently a stay-at-home dad in Virginia, where he lives with his wife Lauren and daughter Frances.
[1] “Georgetown Apologizes for 1838 Sale of More Than 270 Enslaved, Dedicates Buildings,” Georgetown University, Apr. 18, 2017, https://www.georgetown.edu/news/georgetown-apologizes-for-1838-sale-of-272-slaves-dedicates-buildings/; Kendra Boyd, Miya Carey, and Christopher Blakely, “Old Money: Rutgers University and the Political Economy of Slavery in New Jersey,” in Scarlet and Black: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History, ed. Marisa J. Fuentes and Deborah Gray White (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016), 52-53.
[2] The lack of state funding or religious affiliation made Delaware College dependent on tuition for revenue. For an examination of how enslavers funded the school through tuition payments, please see: Tara Lennon, “How Did Delaware College Benefit from the Exploitation of Black Labor in Student Family Households?” Jul. 7, 2022, UDARI Legacies, https://sites.udel.edu/udari-legacies/2022/06/23/students-delaware-college-and-the-exploited-labor-of-black-people/.
[3] John A. Munroe, The University of Delaware: A History (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1986), chap. 3, retrieved from https://sites.udel.edu/uarm/
[4] Munroe, The University of Delaware, chap. 4.
[5] Munroe, The University of Delaware, chap. 4.
[6] For a full accounting of these buyers, please see: entries from Nov. 17, 1857 – Feb. 1, 1860, Delaware College Account Book, Safe D378D T784a 1833-1879, University Archives and Records Management, University of Delaware, Newark, DE. According to John A. Munroe, the president of Delaware College began “negotiating with the holders of [unused] scholarships to have them surrendered to the college as…gift[s]” once it became clear that the scholarship plan had failed. The buyers mentioned in the account book were those who agreed to “surrender” their remaining scholarships. For more on this topic, please see: Munroe, The University of Delaware, chap. 4.
[7] Entry for William H. Ross, 1860 U.S. Census Slave Schedule, Northwest Fork Hundred, Sussex County, Delaware, enumerated Jun 2, 1860; Patience Essah, A House Divided: Slavery and Emancipation in Delaware, 1638-1865 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 80.
[8] Barbara E. Benson, et al, The Delaware Adventure (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2007), 114; Jeanette Eckman, ed., Delaware: A Guide to the First State (New York: Hastings House, 1955), 468.
[9] Quoted in Milt Diggins, “Reuniting a Brother and Seizing an Opportunity,” Freedom Seekers and Freedom Stealers Along the Mason-Dixon Line, Sept. 27, 2015, https://mdiggins.com/blog-freedom-seekers-and-freedom-stealers-along-the-mason-dixon-line/archives/09-2015 (accessed Mar. 2, 2024). These Reybold farms were located just south of the canal zone in Maryland’s “peach region.” For more on the Reybolds’ Maryland holdings, please see: Erwin F. Smith, Peach Yellows: A Preliminary Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1888), 69.
[10] Mary Winder Garrett, “Pedigree of the Pollok or Polk Family: From Falbert the Saxon, A.D. 1075, to the Present Time,” The American Historical Magazine IV, no. 1 (Jan. 1899): 151-152.
[11] Estate inventory of Robert Polk, New Castle County Register of Wills, New Castle County, Delaware, Nov. 7, 1855.
[12] Munroe, The University of Delaware, chap. 4.
[13] Munroe, The University of Delaware, chap. 4.
[14] For more on the University of Delaware and Indigenous nations impacted by its land grant, please see: Amy Wolf, “Acknowledging History,” UDaily, Feb. 9, 2023, https://www.udel.edu/udaily/2023/february/land-grant-university-morrill-act-american-indians/.
[15] Munroe, The University of Delaware, chap. 5.