Since August of 2020, a group of dedicated student researchers, under the guidance of Dr. Christopher Wilkins, associate professor and chair of the department of history at William Jewell College, has been researching the history of slavery in relationship to Jewell. The research group that the students and Wilkins created, the Slavery, Memory, and Justice Project (SJMP), had its origins in an introductory history seminar last fall. This semester, Project members mainly convene during the HIS 204: Slavery, Memory, and Justice course that Wilkins teaches. They plan to conduct research for as long as it takes to bring the truth about the College’s relationship with slavery to light. This will ultimately conclude with the group publishing their research – writing a more accurate account of Jewell’s history in the hopes of creating a more inclusive college community. 

As the Slavery, Memory, and Justice Project compiles and verifies their research, The Hilltop Monitor will publish their findings. This is the final installment in a series of investigations into the history of slavery at William Jewell College. 

Over the past month, The Hilltop Monitor has detailed the Slavery, Memory, and Justice Project’s investigation into the founders and early trustees’ ties to slavery more broadly, and introduced their research on Dr. Jewell and Alexander Doniphan. In this final installment of the investigation, the Monitor reviews the society these figures were embedded in and where the Slavery, Memory, and Justice Project endeavors to go next. 

Alexander Doniphan, James T.V. Thompson and other founders and trustees from Clay County were rooted in the society of early Liberty and Clay County. To gain a more comprehensive picture of Jewell’s founding, the Slavery, Memory, and Justice Project continues to investigate Liberty and Clay County’s historical ties to slavery.

Over the course of this research, the SMJP began assembling evidence that reveals the terrible irony in the name of Liberty. Despite a name proclaiming freedom, both Liberty and Clay County broadly supported slavery and economically depended upon it. 

Founded in the 1820s, most of Clay County’s early white settlers originated from the slave states of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. When they traveled westward, they brought the enslaved people they owned with them. According to census records, 10,337 people lived in Clay County by 1850. Roughly 27% of this total population, or 2,742 people, was enslaved. 

Although Missouri was a slave state, Clay County was far above the norm for Missouri in its embrace of slavery. Overall 13% of Missouri’s population was enslaved in 1850 – or 87,442 enslaved people out of a total population of 682,044. Clay County more than doubled the percentage of the enslaved compared to that of the state as a whole. 

Out of 100 total Missouri counties in 1850, only four other counties had a higher percentage of enslaved people relative to the total population than Clay County.

According to the Project, critical to understanding the role of slave labor in Clay County is acknowledging the differences between how the slave system worked in the Deep South relative to Missouri. Geography and climate made the large-scale plantations of the Deep South ill-suited for Missouri. Slavery in Missouri tended to be more diversified and smaller in scale. 

Few Missouri slave owners owned more than twenty enslaved people. For many slaveholding farmers with smaller operations, the slaveholders worked in the fields alongside the people they enslaved. Sometimes these slaveholders supplemented their income by renting out enslaved people to perform domestic labor and construction. 

However, as scholars of slavery note, a difference in the organizational structure of slavery does not mean it was any less central to the economic system of Missouri and Clay County. By the end of the 1850s, Missouri was one of the largest hemp-producing states in the nation, and Clay County was among the foremost hemp-producing counties in the state. Since the cultivation of hemp demanded backbreaking labor, slaveholders almost always assigned this task to enslaved people.  

The wealth the citizens of Clay County received from this forced labor would be pivotal to their ability to persuade the Baptists to locate their college in Liberty, as recounted in the first installment in this series. 

As part of its research, the Slavery, Memory, and Justice Project interrogated one of the common justifications used to excuse slaveholders – that they were products of their time and did not have significant access to opposing viewpoints. 

The researchers on the SMJP uncovered evidence to the contrary of this argument. 

At the state level, hostility by a large majority of white Missourians towards abolitionist arguments clearly illustrated their awareness of these arguments. The General Assembly approved an act in 1837 that prohibited the promulgation of abolitionist doctrines. Violators of the law faced two years in state prison and a potential maximum $1,000 fine. Repeat offenders faced sharply escalating sentences: 20 years in prison for a second offense, and a life sentence for a third offense. One of western Missouri’s most prominent citizens, Clay County’s Alexander Doniphan, advocated publicly for the bill’s passage.

Though no prominent Missouri politician supported the immediate abolition of slavery during the Antebellum period, not all were favorably disposed towards the institution on moral grounds. In the early 1850s, the legendary Senator Thomas Hart Benton – one of Missouri’s most powerful politicians for three decades – criticized slavery. Although he was himself a slaveholder, Benton castigated slavery as an incurable evil. 

Given Benton’s prominence, his moral condemnation received wide coverage across the state. Benton’s public opposition stands in contrast to Dr. Jewell, who is similarly often portrayed as a slaveholder with antislavery sentiments. However, there is no evidence that Jewell ever publicly spoke out against slavery. 

In Clay County, two revealing incidents from the 1840s and 1850s demonstrate that citizens had exposure to alternative views. 

According to T.J. Stiles’s Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, in the 1840s, two evangelists identified only by their last names Chandler and Love dared to criticize slaveholders in Liberty. Jane Gill, the sister of early Jewell trustee Waltus Watkins,  described Clay Countians as sufficiently “enraged” against this anti-slavery preaching that they “threatened” Love “so that he could not preach there.” Swiftly after this threat, Chandler and Love “fled to a northern state.” 

Clay Countians’ feelings towards abolitionism hardened as the decade progressed. At a public meeting in Liberty concerning the Compromise of 1850, prominent figures and Jewell founders – including Doniphan, James T.V. Thompson and E.M. Samuel – all angrily denounced abolitionists. 

Finally, if there could be any doubt about Clay County’s awareness of abolitionist arguments and pro-slavery tilt, the conflict that became known as Bleeding Kansas silences it.

In 1854, after the Kansas-Nebraska Act determined that the slaveholding status of Kansas would be decided by popular sovereignty, Clay County slaveholders became concerned that a free Kansas would be a disaster for their economic interests and inspire the people they enslaved to attempt more frequent escapes. To prevent that outcome, Clay Countians played a significant role in broader Missourian efforts to ensure Kansas would enter the Union as a slave state. 

Clay Countians, led in part by Doniphan, organized a Pro-Slavery Aid Association dedicated to this outcome. Clay Countians formed part of the wave of Missourians who flooded across the border during voting for the territorial legislature, committing egregious voter fraud in the process. 

At times, the Clay Countians went beyond aid and voter fraud into violence. In December 1855, 100 pro-slavery men from Clay County seized weapons – including a cannon – from the Federal arsenal in Liberty, helped equip a large pro-slavery military force with those weapons and then rode into Kansas to besiege the free-state stronghold of Lawrence. This ‘Wakarusa War’ ended in a negotiated peace arranged by the territorial governor, and Clay Countians returned home, having contributed to efforts to make Kansas a slave state. 

If their actions left any ambiguity regarding the dominant view of white Clay Countians towards slavery, the citizens explicitly articulated their opinion in 1855. Following a mob attack on the Industrial Luminary, an anti-slavery newspaper, by citizens of neighboring Platte County, Clay Countians met to endorse the mob’s actions. At this meeting, an endorsed resolution went so far as to call those holding anti-slavery views traitors that needed to be punished. 

This initial research gathered by the SMJP paints a more complicated narrative regarding the citizens of Clay County than is often presented. It also reveals that William Jewell College was constituted in an environment characterized by staunchly pro-slavery sentiments, even beyond the founders and early trustees. 

For Wilkins and the student researchers of the SMJP, there remains considerably more research to uncover and assemble on the founders and early trustees, faculty and students, and Liberty and Clay County. The parts covered in this investigation only begin to scratch the surface of their ambitions. 

And they don’t plan to stop anytime soon. 

Over the past academic year, the SMJP researchers have invested time into learning best practices from how other colleges and universities have explored their historical ties to slavery. 

One of the best resources established for collaborative knowledge-and-technique sharing is the Universities Studying Slavery consortium established as part of the University of Virginia’s investigation into its historical ties to slavery. Over 70 colleges and universities have joined the consortium. Currently, William Jewell College is not one of them. 

This summer, Wilkins will guide more than a dozen student interns as they contribute to this research by fanning out throughout Missouri to visit county historical societies and archives, as well as continue online research. Several alumni with backgrounds in historical research have also volunteered to join the Project’s work.

Wilkins will continue this research over the next several years, including while on sabbatical this fall. He also plans to offer his HIS 204: Slavery, Memory, and Justice class every spring semester.  

One of the original student researchers, junior political science and history major Hayley Michael, will continue this research through her honors project. Michael will be focusing on Jewell students, faculty and staff between the Antebellum and Reconstruction periods and their ties to slavery. She will defend her honors project in the spring of 2022. 

“In my decade at Jewell, I have never worked with a more dedicated, passionate, idealistic, and impressive group of students,” said Wilkins. 

Wilkins emphasized that the crucial importance of students trained in rigorous historical inquiry is the animating force in this research and generating positive cultural change at Jewell. 

“Since last August, I have focused on helping to create and guide the independent Slavery, Memory, and Justice Project, and recently declined to serve on the administration-created Racial Reconciliation Commission, for two reasons,” said Wilkins. “The first is how the nature of who is doing the work influences whose voices are being heard on how to address this history. The SMJP is student-centered, community-based, and advised by faculty specializing in historical research.  We have done a tremendous amount of work over the past academic year, will collectively decide on when we believe our research is ready to be published and how it should be presented, and work together to advocate for policies that we believe in.”

Wilkins continued to speak on the timeline of the research.

“The second is the timeline of the SMJP’s work: to truly recover the history of slavery’s influence on Jewell will take time, and I expect the research and writing of the 100+ page report on slavery and Jewell will take until mid-2023,” said Wilkins. “That amount of time will be necessary to identify the names of as many of the enslaved people held in bondage by the founders and early trustees as possible, describe the conditions of those enslaved peoples’ lives and investigate the actions of the Jewell community during the Civil War era.”

Wilkins closed the interview by expressing his belief that there is a moral imperative to use our knowledge of slavery’s influence on Jewell’s history to help build a more inclusive college community in the future – a belief that serves as the foundation for all the work done by the Slavery, Memory, and Justice Project.

Since August of 2020, a group of dedicated student researchers, under the guidance of Dr. Christopher Wilkins, associate professor and chair of the history department at William Jewell College, has been researching the history of slavery in relation to Jewell. The research group that the students and Wilkins created – the Slavery, Memory, and Justice Project – had its origins in an introductory history seminar held last fall. This semester, project members primarily convene during the HIS 204: Slavery, Memory, and Justice course that Wilkins teaches.

The project plans to conduct research for as long as it takes to bring the truth about the College’s relationship with slavery to light. This will ultimately conclude with the group publishing their research – writing a more accurate account of Jewell’s history in the hopes of creating a more inclusive college community. 

As the Slavery, Memory, and Justice Project compiles and verifies their research, The Hilltop Monitor will publish their findings. This is the second in a series of investigations into the history of slavery at William Jewell College. 

Alexander Doniphan, one of the most influential Clay Countians, played a key role in the founding of William Jewell College. While Doniphan is not as well known as Dr. William Jewell, his contributions to the College are unmatched.

In 1849, Baptist leaders met in Boone County to discuss the location of a new Baptist college in Missouri. Doniphan’s famed oratorical skills and $7,000 – the equivalent of over $240,000 today – he helped raise from the citizens of Clay County secured Liberty as the College’s new home and helped ensure that the new institution would be named after Jewell. Thus, William Jewell College was born. 

Doniphan is also celebrated for his bravery in defense of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1838, Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs issued the Mormon Extermination Order. Missouri Militia Major General Samuel Lucas captured Latter-day prophet Joseph Smith and other church leaders and sentenced them to public execution for treason, a sentence Lucas ordered Doniphan to carry out. Doniphan refused the order.

“It is cold-blooded murder. I will not obey your order… If you execute these men, I will hold you responsible before an earthly tribunal, so help me God,” Doniphan said.

People have viewed Doniphan’s saving of Smith and others as evidence of his willingness to stand up against popular belief and his dedication to the rule of law. The church recently renamed a local ward in Liberty after him to show their respect and appreciation. 

Doniphan’s military leadership in the Mexican-American War has also been praised. He led his men on one of the longest marches in U.S. military history, winning key battles over much larger Mexican forces, and played a crucial role in the U.S. victory over Mexico. One source wrote, “None of the other campaigns — Zachary Taylor’s, Winfield Scott’s, or John C. Fremont’s — accomplished as much with such a small force or with as little difficulty.” 

In the 1850s, Doniphan’s success as a defense attorney, businessman, philanthropist and member of the State Legislature continued to make him a widely respected figure in Missouri life.

Narratives focusing on Doniphan and the Civil War emphasize his support for the Union and opposition to Missouri’s potential secession. Doniphan organized Union rallies in Clay County and advocated for keeping Missouri in the Union.

He served as a delegate to the 1861 Peace Conference in Washington, D.C., which sought a compromise to keep the Union together. When secessionist Missouri Governor Claiborne Jackson sought to convince Doniphan to serve as a Brigadier General in Missouri’s Confederate forces, Doniphan declined. Most Clay County citizens supported the Confederacy, so Doniphan, as a Unionist, had to stand firm against the majority opinion, which contributed to his reputation for bravery. 

While the preceding information is accurate, one of the most disturbing and important aspects of Doniphan’s history – his connection to slavery – has received very little attention. That is, until now. 

The research carried out by the Slavery, Memory, and Justice Project shows that slavery was not a minor element of Doniphan’s life; it was among the most central. From his earliest years until the abolition of slavery, Doniphan owned enslaved people and benefited from their labor. He used the wealth he acquired from them to give money to William Jewell College. Although he earned much of his fortune from his legal work and business investments, Doniphan greatly profited from the labor of enslaved people.

Federal census records show that Doniphan owned three enslaved people in 1840. Other sources demonstrate that he owned at least two enslaved people in the late 1840s. In 1850, he likely owned more than two enslaved people, as demonstrated by his farm’s production of 11 tons of hemp. The crop was cultivated almost exclusively by enslaved people, proving once again the economic benefits Doniphan reaped from forced labor. In 1860, census records again showed that the number of enslaved people he owned increased to five, indicating his strong commitment to the institution of slavery. 

In addition to his economic stake in slavery, Doniphan’s political commitment to defending slavery was profound. In 1837, while serving in the state legislature, Doniphan supported a bill making it a crime to publicly advocate for abolition, punishable by imprisonment in the state penitentiary. 

The bill as originally written would have punished violators with imprisonment in county jail, but Doniphan amended it to be the state penitentiary to further dissuade abolitionists from undermining slavery in Missouri. Doniphan also supported making Kansas a slave state – he served as a director of and donated money to the Clay County Pro-Slavery Society. 

When Doniphan was a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1854, he was viewed, according to a later account from Missouri Congressman James C. Rollins, as not only pro-slavery, but as someone whose dedicated defense of slavery had made him the “favorite” candidate for the “strongest pro-slavery district in Missouri.”

In 1861, Doniphan supported the Crittenden Compromise, an amendment that would have permanently enshrined slavery in the U.S. Constitution in exchange for ending Southern secession. In 1863, Doniphan only reluctantly endorsed the gradual emancipation of Missouri’s slaves because he feared Missouri Republicans’ plans for the immediate abolition of slavery. In July 1863, Doniphan told an audience in Clay County that even though he now supported gradual emancipation, he would always be pro-slavery “in his feelings and sentiments.” 

Doniphan’s ties to slavery are exemplified through the economic benefits gained from his ownership of enslaved people and the legislation he supported to protect and expand the institution of slavery. Doniphan was deeply pro-slavery, which is important to note when honoring his legacy with statues, street names, societies, and awards.

Dr. Christopher Wilkins – associate professor of history at William Jewell College – is teaching a class on Jewell’s history with slavery this semester. While the school prides itself on being a radically inclusive and accessible environment for students today, it was a different sort of institution in the past.

In 1849, the College was founded by members of the Baptist Convention and other prominent members of the Clay County community. At the same time, the post-Missouri Compromise state allowed slavery, and many people in Clay County owned enslaved people. 

The sheer magnitude of slavery within this county is a history not often taught or known by its residents. For example, in 1849, over 25 percent of Clay County’s population consisted of enslaved people. That number does not exclude those who founded the College.

Wilkins’ course, HIS 204: Slavery, Memory, and Justice, aims to investigate slavery in general but also how it specifically relates to William Jewell College’s history. Along with his students, Wilkins plans to research the exact magnitude of slavery as it relates to the school and then publish the results.

Questions the class will research include: how many of the founders or early faculty members owned slaves, if any of the students owned slaves, how many members of the Jewell community allied with either the Confederacy or the Union and whether or not there were any anti-slavery members of the Jewell community.

This research will be hard to face, and many of the answers will likely not reflect Jewell’s current commitment to equal access for all. However, knowing our history and correctly rectifying our mistakes is an important lesson in conciliation and critical thinking. An ongoing commitment to studying and appropriately dealing with the past is necessary for any institution that claims to be anti-racist and radically inclusive.

The Hilltop Monitor had the chance to briefly interview Wilkins about the course, and that conversation is below. As well, the Monitor will be following the class’s findings and publishing investigations into the subject. 

Monitor: What made you want to pursue this class? 

Wilkins: In the past year, Jewell students’ interest in studying slavery and its legacy has reached a level that I have not seen before in the decade I have taught here. I often teach a course on the global history of slavery and abolitionist movements, and students’ interest in those topics has generally been strong. 

But after intense conversations with students and colleagues last fall, it became clear to me that there are many people at Jewell who are deeply committed to learning more about slavery’s significance not only in U.S. history, but also in the history of Jewell, and who recognize that the way we think about our past matters a great deal for how we view the present and shape our aspirations for the future. I wanted to teach this course so that my students and I could contribute to these crucial conversations.

How did the administration at Jewell react to this class? 

The administration has been supportive of research on the questions at the heart of the course and granted me a sabbatical next fall to research and write on this topic. That support was reinforced by Dr. Rodney Smith’s visit to our class and enthusiasm regarding how the work we are doing in the course contributes to Jewell’s efforts to promote diversity and inclusion.

What, in your view, is the most important focus of the class?

In addition to the specific focus on better understanding the history of slavery’s influence on Jewell, there are three major points that I want students to take away from the course. 

First, they need to recognize that having informed conversations about controversial issues from the past is vital because those conversations can help build a more just community at Jewell (and beyond) in which everyone’s experiences matter and everyone’s voices are heard. 

Second, these conversations have to be based on thorough, detailed and accurate historical research, motivated by the desire to find the truth, regardless of where those facts lead. 

Third, the experiences of other colleges investigating their institutions’ connections to slavery show that the work a community does to address its history should not end with teaching a single course or writing a college-wide report. Our engagement with these issues needs to be marked by an ongoing commitment, on an institutional level, to continue to study a wide range of issues involving slavery, historical memory, and justice and to have public conversations about the relevance of those issues to the present and future. I think this course should be only the beginning of a larger project at Jewell.

The Hilltop Monitor plans to work alongside Wilkins and the class to pursue investigations into Jewell’s history surrounding slavery and will publish those investigations this semester.

Wilkins in his office.

The Hilltop Monitor sat down with Dr. Christopher Wilkins to discuss his background and love of history, his experience teaching at William Jewell College, his favorite presidents, traveling and Game of Thrones.  

Wilkins teaches courses on World War II, U.S. foreign policy, presidential leadership, slavery and abolition, and the American Civil War among others at William Jewell.

Wilkins affirms that he enjoys teaching all of his classes, but his U.S. foreign policy course is his favorite.

“I think that the U.S. foreign policy class so far has been my favorite because it was what I focused most of my attention on in graduate school. While I enjoy learning about a wide variety of other topics in American history, that is sort of where my heart lies – what I’ve studied from undergrad up to the present,” said Wilkins.

Wilkins earned his bachelor’s degree from Duke University, his master’s and doctorate from Stanford University and spent a summer studying at Oxford.

Wilkins discussed that during his time in undergraduate and graduate school, he was initially uncertain of whether to pick a career path in government and Foreign Service or one in academic life as a professor. Ultimately, it was his first-hand experience of instructing and helping students that produced a love of teaching.

“Through the beginning of graduate school I came in and knew that I really enjoyed studying, thinking about and writing about history, but when I started teaching – that’s when it really became clear to me that I wanted to become a professor. The experience of watching my students understand the world in a new way was really powerful and rewarding, so I did that as a graduate assistant and then as an instructor at Stanford. Then when the job at Jewell opened up, and I was fortunate enough to get the job, I found that I continued to enjoy it even more,” Wilkins said.

Wilkins holds a deep appreciation for the study of history and believes that understanding the past and present as a combined outlook is crucial for shaping the future. He discusses his opinions on why studying history is instrumental for current students.

“I think that if you are interested in reforming a country or society or some kind of institution and if you want to get things done and work successfully and efficiently it really helps to understand the past of that society or country or institution. I think it can also provide lessons over things you might want to avoid or embrace, and I feel that’s particularly relevant for an American citizen these days given the current political climate that we live in,” he said.  

Though Wilkins studies a span of history, he shared the niche of history he particularly enjoys.

“I started off with interest in mainly the American Civil War and its Reconstruction. Then I had moved more into finding more U.S. policy in the 20th century fascinating – especially in the era of World War II and the Cold War where you see this huge transition from the 1930s, when the U.S. was primarily an isolationist country, to assume the role of global leadership. After the Cold War and these days, we see something of a retreat from that. I think it’s intriguing to go back and look at the arguments that people made that propelled the U.S. global leadership to that and the arguments that people are making these days to try and take a step back from that and promote an ‘America first’ policy,” said Wilkins.

When asked about his favorite president, Wilkins had two answers: Ulysses S. Grant and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“I think Grant is certainly amongst my favorite presidents. I think he was a virtuous and honorable man, if we are looking at three people who made the continuation of the experiment of American democracy possible – during the first 80 years of American history – it’s Washington, Lincoln, and Grant. As brilliant of a leader as Lincoln was, you still needed someone to win the war, and Grant was ultimately the general who was able to get that done. I think that without Grant, the Confederacy would have won the war which would have had all sorts of terrible consequences for the world. Grant was a really strong leader of civil rights during Reconstruction in a way that a lot of people don’t appreciate,” said Wilkins. “Then… FDR, if you look at the profound nature and danger of the challenges that he faced and his ability to get the United States to get through both the Great Depression and World War II, it represents a truly astonishing feat of leadership.”

When Wilkins is not teaching a class or grading our historical research papers, he spends time with his family and attempts to travel with them as much as possible.

“I like spending as much time as I can with my daughter and my wife – family time is what really matters to me. As well as traveling, my wife and I go over to Europe to visit her family every year. It was really cool because we got to take my daughter to Bosnia, Croatia and Austria this last semester, and it was really enjoyable,” Wilkins said.

Wilkins considers Dubrovnik, Croatia, as one of his favorite cities. Dubrovnik, with its stunning views of the Adriatic coast, was where Wilkins proposed to his wife. Additionally, as a Game of Thrones fan, Wilkins finds Dubrovnik particularly interesting as some of the show was shot in the city. Wilkins highly recommends taking the GoT tour.

“I took the tour! It was incredible; you see where King’s landing is, you see where the Battle of Blackwater was shot, you could see from afar the area where the fight between the Mountain and the Viper took place. It’s incredible. We [Wilkins and his wife] walked up the steps where Cercei did her walk of shame,” said Wilkins.

For Wilkins, securing his position at Jewell to teach history in a liberal arts environment has overall been a highly beneficial and welcomed opportunity.

“Especially with academic jobs, tenure track jobs are so rare that to have one open up in Kansas City at a great school like Jewell where I could teach in a liberal arts environment – and teaching is really what I enjoy doing – it was just so fortunate.”

Photos by Hannah Koehler.