Fairbanks, George Rainsford
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Fairbanks, George Rainsford
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George Rainsford Fairbanks was an important leader in founding the University of the South and a major slave-owner in Florida.
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George Rainsford Fairbanks, a founding trustee of the University of the South from Florida and a critically important manager of the pre- and post-war university, enslaved as many as 100 persons to work his orange groves, lumber mills, and plantations in the newly formed state. Born in Watertown, N.Y., and a graduate of Union College, he studied law and practiced in New York state, then moved to Florida in 1842, where he began a long career and became wealthy as a powerful attorney, judge, politician, planter, land speculator, and enslaver. His first purchase of an enslaved person was in 1846.
In the early stages of founding the University, the Diocese of Florida selected Fairbanks as one of its lay trustees; he pledged $3,000 to the cause. Fairbanks also served as the principal on-site manager, supervising building and labor (including leased enslaved labor). As late as 1861-62 he was actively dealing and investing in purchases of enslaved persons. While in residence in Sewanee in 1861 and hurting for income, according to his biographer, he arranged to lease thirteen people he enslaved in Florida to work in a mill in Chattanooga.
During the Civil War, Fairbanks served in the Army of Tennessee’s Commissary Department and oversaw hospitals in Atlanta. After the Civil War Fairbanks was critical to re-launching the university. Near the end of his life, he published History of the University of the South, From its founding in 1857 to the year, 1905, the most comprehensive account of the institution’s founding and early generations. While it contains a wealth of information, it is typical of contemporary “Lost Cause” accounts of Southern history in erasing slavery from the university’s origins.
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1820
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1906
Position: 782 (8 views)
