{"id":623,"date":"2018-10-23T18:32:55","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T18:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/slavery\/?page_id=623"},"modified":"2018-11-04T02:50:50","modified_gmt":"2018-11-04T02:50:50","slug":"moncure-conway","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/slavery\/people\/moncure-conway\/","title":{"rendered":"Moncure Conway"},"content":{"rendered":"
PUBLIC MEMORY AT DICKINSON<\/strong><\/h6>\n

\"Conway\"Conway Hall is named after Moncure Conway (Class of 1849).   Various depictions of Conway on the college and archival websites  and elsewhere in college publications make clear that he was a well-known Southern-born abolitionist during the Civil War era.  He is not a particularly well-known figure among modern Dickinsonians, but Conway’s legacy has been at least a small part of the institutional memory for decades.<\/p>\n

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

Moncure Conway was a unique figure in the House Divided era\u2014a southern-born abolitionist.  Yet Conway did not begin life with those views.  Born into prominent slaveholding family in Virginia, Conway came to Dickinson College in Pennsylvania as a firm believer in the peculiar institution.    But as a student in the late 1840s, he witnessed a dramatic confrontation over fugitive slaves and then later experienced a full crisis of conscience following his graduation.  What changed his mind was deep reading and thinking.  The young man abandoned his career as a Methodist preacher, went to Harvard Divinity School, befriended Henry David Thoreau and other New England transcendentalists, and then joined the abolitionist movement.  During the Civil War, however, he also became a pacifist, eventually resettling in London to escape the tragedy of the war.  He lived in Europe for most of the rest of his life.  Still, Conway remained connected to his homeland, authoring more than three-dozen books about American history and culture.  He became one of the best-known public intellectuals and progressive reformers of the late nineteenth century.  Moncure Conway died in 1907 at the age of 75.<\/p>\n