Silent Sam's Reckoning

#SilentSam memorialized 287 #UNC Confederate dead. Their families bought, sold and enslaved men, women, and children. Here are the receipts: #samsreckoning

[Silent Sam's Reckoning @sams_reckoning]

Let's take a moment to consider the main way #UNC, as an institution, participated in the slave trade - not just implicated in the actions of slaveowning students/faculty/administrators - but the actual buying and selling of human beings. Let's talk about the "escheat" system.

[Silent Sam's Reckoning @sams_reckoning]

Multiple UNC sources claim he “died in service,” but he returned to Chowan after being released in 1865. Died of unknown causes on 3/2/1866. His name is held in a place of honor inside UNC’s Confederate Shrine aka Memorial Hall, memorialized under 1836, the year he entered UNC.

[Silent Sam's Reckoning @sams_reckoning]

Lucius Junius Johnson, #UNC Class of 1840, born to Charles Johnson & Ann Taylor of Chowan Co., NC., enslaved at least 159 people by 1850. Although honored by UNC as having “died in service,” survived the war but died in March 1866. #samsreckoning

[Silent Sam's Reckoning @sams_reckoning]

Captured again in Feb. 1862, at Roanoke Island. Captured again in March 1865, where he remained until taking Oath of Allegiance on July 25, 1865. In between time as a POW, he served in NC’s Bureau of Conscription, enforcing the Confed. draft & prosecuting deserters.

[Silent Sam's Reckoning @sams_reckoning]

Not all of the 287 names venerated as UNC Confederate Dead are chiseled on tablets inside Memorial Hall.
We’ve reckoned 149 / 259 tablet names and, to date, 46.3% of them were slavers; the slaving rate among parents of these Dead is 100%.
#samsreckoning for all the receipts.

[Silent Sam's Reckoning @sams_reckoning]

Time for a research update.
We've reckoned 56.4% of #UNC's Confederate Dead (162 / 287). Just under half of these UNC Dead were slavers; the slaving rate among parents of the Dead is 100%.
These 162 families enslaved at least 8,021 people.
#samsreckoning for all the receipts.

[Silent Sam's Reckoning @sams_reckoning]

Silent Sam is rusting in pieces somewhere off campus, but men venerated by the monument are still held in a place of honor inside UNC’s Confederate Shrine aka Memorial Hall.
William T. Nicholson & Edward A.T. Nicholson are memorialized under 1856 & 1860, the yrs each entered UNC.

[Silent Sam's Reckoning @sams_reckoning]

Yesterday was the anniversary of Silent Sam’s fall. In recognition, we present 2 of UNC’s Confederate dead: the Nicholson brothers of Halifax Co NC. As depicted by the plaque on the plinth (RIP): one brother left UNC to die for a bigoted Southern society.
https://t.co/oGajLz55I8

[Silent Sam's Reckoning @sams_reckoning]

It is not by chance that a plaque on Silent Sam’s plinth featured a woman, in Classical dress & personifying NC, handing a young male student a sword as he dropped his book & turned away from his studies.

[Silent Sam's Reckoning @sams_reckoning]

Brother Guilford attended UNC from 1857-61 & survived the war.
1865: Guilford wrote to the Freedmen’s Bureau asking for help transporting freed peoples from the Nicholson’s Halifax Co plantation “back” to Mississippi, from where his family taken enslaved ppls generations earlier.