{"id":606,"date":"2018-10-22T13:26:05","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T13:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/slavery\/?page_id=606"},"modified":"2018-12-15T15:29:26","modified_gmt":"2018-12-15T15:29:26","slug":"benjamin-rush","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/slavery\/people\/benjamin-rush\/","title":{"rendered":"Benjamin Rush"},"content":{"rendered":"
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PUBLIC MEMORY AT DICKINSON<\/strong><\/h6>\n

\"Rush\"A statue of Rush occupies the very center of the Dickinson campus.\u00a0 He is also widely featured in most college publications, and has become an inspiration for the college’s modern approach toward promoting “useful knowledge.”\u00a0 The college website does include a section acknowledging that Rush’s views on race and slavery “were not without flaws.”<\/p>\n

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BRIEF PROFILE<\/strong><\/h6>\n

Born near Philadelphia in 1745 into a slaveholding household,\u00a0Benjamin Rush\u00a0was a noted physician, reformer and signer of the Declaration of Independence.\u00a0 \u00a0Rush’s anti-slavery leanings became apparent after 1769, following a meeting with influential Quaker abolitionist\u00a0Anthony Benezet, a\u00a0vocal critic\u00a0of the\u00a0Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Rush then became an open admirer of Benezet, later writing that his “name is held in veneration in these parts and deserves to be spread throughout the world.”\u00a0 As an adult, Rush was not shy about expressing his own anti-slavery feelings. In one letter, dated April 1773, the physician claimed to have “refused a thousand guineas a year lately offered to me in Charleston, South Carolina,” preferring instead to reside in Pennsylvania rather than “where wealth has been accumulated only by the sweat and blood of Negro slaves.” Yet many Pennsylvanians did\u00a0benefit from “the sweat and blood of Negro slaves” since the state’s gradual abolition act (and eventual total freedom) was still many years away.\u00a0 Rush himself was one of these slaveholders.<\/p>\n

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FURTHER READING<\/strong><\/h6>\n