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Slavery and The University

Introduction

Over time multiple perspectives on the history of The Citadel have been shared. This section of the LibGuide deals with how the college, alumni, and others have perceived the role of race and slavery in the founding and development of The Citadel. This LibGuide offers institutional histories, academic publications, class publications from the late 19th Century to the present, and legislative acts which relate to the establishment of the school. 

The context of these sources is profoundly linked to the time in which they were created. Each of these captures a pivotal moment in the school's history, and how it viewed itself at those times. Many were also made with the purpose of projecting what they envisioned The Citadel should become. J.P. Thomas' The History of the South Carolina Military Academy (1893) was written in advocacy of the reopening of the school during the end of Reconstruction. While published posthumously, Col. Oliver J. Bond's Story of the Citadel commemorates the relocation of the Citadel's campus from Marion Square to its current location the banks of the Ashely River. While Thomas and Bond were the cornerstones of further writings of the Citadel's history, these histories were deeply influenced by Lost Cause ideology. Adam Domby's The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory deconstructs the Lost Cause narrative, and its role in contemporary politics and society. In He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey, Douglas Egerton offers a historiographical analysis of antebellum Charleston and the environment which created the Citadel, including the narratives that surround it. John Warley commemorates changes to the corps of cadets, to make it reflect a more inclusive Citadel of the 21st Century in Stand Forever, Yielding Never.

Narrative has been crucial to how military academies develop cadets and their identities as schools. In a broad study regarding narrative and military academies, Rod Andrews Jr. surveys the ways that military academies both proliferate and reinforce a common identity through historical narrative, featuring analysis of the Citadel in particular (Long Gray Lines: The Southern Military Tradition, 1839-1915). The sources in this LibGuide offer a window into the evolving perceptions that have shaped the Citadel's institutional identity.