Lectures from the Allen Room & Wertheim Study: How Episcopal Bishops of the Antebellum and Civil War Years Responded to Slavery

     Felder Dorn, writer in residence in the Library’s Wertheim Study, and retired professor of chemistry and Dean Emeritus at Kean University, will offer an analysis of the ways in which bishops in the Episcopal Church confronted slavery during the antebellum and Civil War years.
     Documentation to support this lecture comes primarily from diocesan journals of the period which recorded the words and reported the actions of the bishops who led dioceses.  The episcopates of two prominent bishops will be used to provide specific examples of the approaches of bishops in Southern states to the slaves in their midst.   These illustrations will be followed by a series of summary observations about the roles of Southern and Northern bishops with regard to the institution that held human beings in bondage.  The question of why neither Southern nor Northern bishops spoke publicly against slavery during the antebellum period will be examined.
     A manuscript, Challenges on the Emmaus Road, that documents the responses of Episcopal bishops to slavery, secession, civil war, and emancipation is under consideration by the  University of South Carolina Press.  Dr. Dorn’s book, The Guns of Meeting Street: A Southern Tragedy, a documentary account of feud that occurred in Edgefield County, South Carolina, in the 1940s, was published by the USC Press in 2001.

     For other lectures by the writers of the research study rooms, click here.