- Title
- North Carolina historical review [1948 : October]
-
-
- Date
- October 1948
-
-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
-
North Carolina historical review [1948 : October]
Hits:
(0)
























The North Carolina
Historical Review
Volume XXV October, 1948
Number 4
THE NEGRO IN THE THINKING AND WRITING OF
JOHN SPENCER BASSETT*
By Wendell H. Stephenson
John Spencer Bassett, pioneer in the origins of southern his¬
torical scholarship, was also an advocate of liberal thought on
the race problem in the South.1 As the nineteenth century
drew to a close, he expressed himself frankly on the political and
social questions of the day and urged fellow Southerners to break
with tradition and face practical realities. From the vantage
point of a professorship in history at Trinity College, he preached
a doctrine of liberalism to students who came under his tutelage,
and he aroused the ire of conservative politicians, editors, and
churchmen. The Negro was not a central theme in Bassett’s
varied activities as teacher, researcher, editor, and lecturer, but
the subject was of sufficient importance to merit careful exami¬
nation.
His paternal ancestors, Bassett asserted in a brief memoir,
were antislavery in their views despite the fact that they were
slaveholders on a small scale in Virginia and North Carolina.
His grandfather, Richard Bassett, carpenter and contractor at
Williamsburg, was faced with the dilemma of purchasing a cook
who had served him faithfully as a hired slave for many years or
of seeing her sold to an unacceptable master. He chose the for¬
mer alternative. Richard’s son, Richard Baxter Bassett, fol¬
lowed his father’s trade and purchased skilled laborers to promote
his business. According to the memoir, neither father nor son
was an agitator in the antislavery cause. Richard Baxter served
the Confederacy, first as a soldier and then as a manufacturer of
* This article is a sequal to the same author’s “John Spencer Bassett as a Historian of
the South,” The North Carolina Historical Review, XXV (July, 1948), no. 3. Editor.
1 Much of the material for this paper was assembled in 1944-1945 while the writer held
a research grant from the General Education Board, to whom thanks are gratefully
acknowledged.
[ 427 ]
Select what you would like to download. If choosing to download an image, please select the file format you wish to download.
The Original File option allows download of the source file (including any features or enhancements included in the original file) and may take several minutes.
Certain download types may have been restricted by the site administrator.