Meridiana

By Tanner Potts
Research Associate
The Sewanee Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation

John Armfield (1797-1871), who made his fortune in the 1820s and 1830s in the slave-trading firm of Franklin & Armfield, was a critically important operator in the founding of the University of the South in the late 1850s. However, much misinformation and exaggeration surround his involvement and contributions.

This slideshow feature, prepared by the Project’s researcher Tanner Potts C’15, outlines Armfield’s importance to the founding of the university and in light of his formative influence in shaping the slaveholding order of the antebellum southern region.

Please email us (slaveryproject@sewanee.edu) with comments or questions.

About This Site

The Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation aims to bring together the Sewanee community — students, staff, faculty, alumni, and area residents — to pursue a comprehensive examination and thoughtful consideration of our university’s historic entanglement in the institution of slavery and its legacies in the long century of racial injustice after the end of the Civil War.

The title of our blog – the Latin for “of the South” – is drawn from the formal name that appears on diplomas awarded at Sewanee: Universitas Meridiana. Adopting this prepositional phrase for our online publication expresses our position that this investigation and the understanding that we derive from it are essential in determining what it means to be a leading university of and for the twenty-first century South.

This blog will publish features drawn from our research and sponsored events in order to share with the larger public the work we are pursuing.

About our header image: The chief founders of the University of the South, including the Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana, the Rt. Rev. Leonidas Polk, all had long histories as both slaveholders and defenders of the slaveholding order when they launched the campaign for a university “of the South” in 1856. The header image of our blog is a stark indicator of these southern histories. It is cropped from an 1855 bill of sale for landed and enslaved property in Bolivar County, Mississippi, belonging to Bishop Polk and his son Alexander Hamilton Polk. The Polks liquidated their 2,700-acre plantation and its enslaved labor force to cover personal debts owed to a pair of merchants out of New Orleans. The buyer of the land and persons in this case was James H. Yerger, the sheriff of Washington County, Mississippi. The sale document shown here itemizes the names and ages of the enslaved persons sold by the Polks.

Posts

The Cornerstone Gift: John Armfield and the University of the South