John Chavis Considered

By David A. Keeling ’73,

For the first time, a Presbyterian minister, Reverend John Chavis, has been honored at Washington and Lee University by having his name on a building of the Colonnade.  As the Presbyterian Church founded W&L, this seems appropriate.

Chavis was a teacher, who, after attending Washington College, founded a school for black and white children in Raleigh, North Carolina.  He felt that education should teach academic subjects and instill higher values.  As the advertisement for his school stated, “Those who think proper to put their Children under his care, may rely upon the strictest attention being paid, not only to their Education but to their Morals, which he deems an important part of their Education.”  August 23, 1808, in the Raleigh Register.

As Chavis’s biographer, Helen Chavis Othow, wrote, “Chavis and his intellectual forebears strongly believed that there could not be an educated person without a religious background nor a religious person without education.”  As a Presbyterian Minister, Chavis believed that the Bible was the foundation of education, and moral education was its end.

In the spring of 2019, the university renamed “Robison Hall” “Chavis Hall.” Located on the W&L colonnade, what is now Chavis Hall was originally named after John Robinson, a white man who in 1824 donated many slaves, much money, and land to Washington College. That renaming ostensibly took place because of the slaves that John Robinson gave to the school. Yet Chavis, a black man, was also a slaveholder, as the 1830 census of Granville, NC, listed him owning one female slave.

At the time, the Presbyterian Church’s Calvinist theology stipulated that God had ordained the black man to serve and that it was up to mankind to make the best of the condition.  Reverend Chavis was well acquainted with the belief that Noah had cursed his son, Ham, and his son, Canaan. That belief comes from the following passage.

 “Cursed be Canaan, slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers.” And he continued: “Bless, O Lord, the tents of Shem; may Canaan be his slave. May God extend Japheth’s bounds, let him dwell in the tents of Shem, may Canaan be their slave.”  Genesis 9: 20-27 is the complete quotation.

According to one interpretation of the Bible, after the exodus from Egypt and 40 years in the wilderness, the children of Israel entered the Holy Land. They expelled the Canaanites, who went down to Egypt and later to the land of Cush (modern Ethiopia).  Later still, they spread into West Africa, from where they were brought to the Americas.

Because that religious interpretation allowed slavery, and since his father and grandfather had been slaveholders, and the USA encoded slavery in law, he did not object. Indeed, Chavis opposed the abolition of slavery, like most white planters.  He considered slavery an evil, but that since established by God, only He could end it, and one ought to learn to live with it.  He wrote against many petitions of abolitionists which came before Congress in 1835.  “I would advise the Americans that as long as slavery exists so long they ought to be on the alert and upon the watchtower for these abominable wrenches.” By “abominable wrenches”, Chavis meant abolitionists.

On November 17, 1836, Chavis wrote to Congressman William P. Mangum, his former student, to assert that Congress had “no more right to pass a law eliminating slavery in the district than I have to go to your house and take Orange (Mangum’s slave) and bring him home and keep him as my servant.” Chavis considered slaves as much the property of their owners as were animals, and that the owner had the right to do as he pleased with them.

Years earlier, Chavis had written to Mangum to say that the US government should not recognize the government of Haiti, where the slaves had gained their freedom by revolution in 1802. Additionally, he vehemently opposed Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion.

In our age of political correctness and spinning the truth, Reverend Chavis can teach us about education, godliness, and slavery.  Like General Robert E. Lee, he was a devout Christian who thought that slavery should not be abolished suddenly, but slaves should be emancipated gradually.  That process had been occurring before the civil war, and if continued, might have prevented much bloodshed and bitterness, which endures today.