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No restrictions. Open for research.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the David L. Swain Papers #706, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Alternate Form of Material

Microfilm copy of selected items is available.

Acquisitions Information

Acquired from the North Carolina Historical Society prior to 1940 with subsequent additions.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Library Staff, 1980

Encoded by: Bari Helms, March 2005

Updated by: Noah Huffman, addition of typed transcriptions, March 2008.

Conscious Editing Work by: Nancy Kaiser, October 2020. Updated abstract, subject headings, biographical note, scope and content note, and container list.

Updated by: Dawne Howard Lucas, November 2021.

Since August 2017, we have added ethnic and racial identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Battle, William H. (William Horn), 1802-1879.
• Chapel Hill (N.C.)--History--19th century.
• Education--United States--History--19th century.
• Governors--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Haywood, William H. (William Henry), 1801-1852.
• Historians--North Carolina.
• Holden, W. W. (William Woods), 1818-1892.
• Horton, George Moses, 1798?-approximately 1880
• Mitchell, Elisha, 1793-1857.
• Morehead, John Motley, 1796-1866.
• North Carolina--History--19th century.
• North Carolina--Politics and government--19th century.
• Phillips, Charles, 1822-1889.
• Railroads--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• Railroads--South Carolina--History--19th century.
• Ruffin, Thomas, 1787-1870.
• Slave records--North Carolina.
• Slavery--North Carolina.
• Slavery--United States--History--19th century--Sources.
• Spencer, Cornelia Phillips, 1825-1908.
• Swain family.
• Swain, David L. (David Lowry), 1801-1868.
• University of North Carolina (1793-1962)--History--19th century.
• University of North Carolina (1793-1962)--Presidents.
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill--History.

• University of North Carolina Papers (#40001), University Archives
• Epistolary Correspondence (5 volumes) of D. L. Swain, 1819-1835, in North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

David Lowry Swain was a white lawyer, governor, educator, and enslaver. He was born near Asheville, N.C., in Buncombe County. His father, George Swain, was a Massachusetts native who settled in Georgia and served in the Georgia legislature and constitutional convention of 1795 before moving to the North Carolina mountains. Caroline Swain, his mother, was the daughter of Jesse Lane. Caroline Swain had four children with her first husband, David Lowry. She and George Swain had seven children, of whom David was the youngest.

David Swain was educated in the Newton Academy and remained there for a time as an instructor in Latin. In 1822, Swain left to pursue his aspiration of becoming a lawyer and entered the junior class of the University of North Carolina. Older than most of the students and somewhat disappointed with the University, Swain left after only one week in order to study law in Raleigh at the school of Chief Justice John Louis Taylor.

In 1823, Swain returned to Asheville to practice law and soon became active in the political campaigns of his half brother, James Lowry, who was elected to the House of Commons. Along with most of his friends and associates, Swain supported the People's ticket, which first supported John C. Calhoun and later Andrew Jackson. Swain successfully ran for a seat in the House of Commons in 1824 by emphasizing local issues. Buncombe County voters sent him to the House of Commons five times, 1824-1826 and 1828-1829, where he became a champion of western interests.

In February 1826, Swain married Eleanor White, the daughter of former secretary of state William White. The couple had five children, only two of whom survived to adulthood--a son, Richard Caswell Swain, who became a physician, and a daughter, Eleanor Swain Atkins.

In December 1832, the General Assembly selected Swain to serve a one-year term as governor of North Carolina, a selection which surprised the public. By the end of his year in office, he was highly popular and some informed leaders thought him the most influential man in North Carolina. The General Assembly then elected Swain for another one-year term. In December 1831, Swain was also elected a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina.

The University's respected longtime president, Joseph Caldwell, died in 1835, and the position remained vacant for most of the year. Swain, needing employment after the end of his term as governor, sought the post. Despite Swain's lack of scholarly credentials, influential trustees concluded that Swain would be an effective manager, what they believed the University needed most.

In January 1836, Swain moved to Chapel Hill to assume his new duties as president and professor of national and constitutional law. He would remain at the University for the rest of his life, filling the longest term of any University president. His administration and the renewed prosperity of the University and the state produced the popularity and growth of the institution that the board had wanted. By the end of the antebellum period, enrollment had increased to nearly five hundred, the largest of any southern institution, with students drawn from throughout the South. New buildings were erected, the campus was improved curriculum and faculty were enlarged, and alumni began filling the most important state offices.

David Swain was an avid historian, concentrating on the study of North Carolina and the collection of source materials for the history of the state. At the University, he established the North Carolina Historical Society, which collected important newspapers and manuscripts about the state.

During the Civil War, Swain devoted most of his efforts to keeping the University alive by seeking exemption from conscription for University students and refusing to cease operations despite hardships. Most of the students left for the war, as did younger faculty members, and Swain and the older faculty members were left to teach a dwindling student body. Through Swain's determination, the University remained open and held commencement exercises every year of the war.

As William T. Sherman's army reached the center of North Carolina, it was Swain along with William A. Graham who acted as representatives of Governor Zebulon B. Vance and met with the general to request protection for Raleigh and the University. Sherman was conciliatory to the two old Unionists, and Raleigh was not destroyed, and the University was not vandalized.

During Reconstruction, despite of the University's largely Unionist board and faculty, Republicans considered the University a hotbed of secessionists because the students had been overwhelmingly southern in sympathy. In contrast, many North Carolinians felt that the University had given little support to the Confederacy. They thought Swain's readiness for peace, his acceptance of a horse as a gift from Sherman, his approval of his daughter's marriage to Union general Smith D. Atkins, who commanded the troops occupying Chapel Hill, and his invitation to President Johnson to the commencement of 1867 to be betrayals of the southern cause.

With no effective political or public support, the bankrupt University, which had only a few students and faculty, was in great danger. Some of its trustees and alumni concluded that a change in the plan of education would revive the institution. An elective system of education was recommended, and Swain along with the other faculty members tendered their resignations to facilitate the new plan. The new plan was adopted in the fall of 1868, but these efforts proved to be ineffective and political control proved to be more important. Under Reconstruction, a new state constitution was adopted, providing that the old board of trustees be replaced by a new one chosen by the Board of Education. The old board, at its last meeting in June 1868, reelected the old faculty. The new board convened in July and courteously heard the reports of the old faculty, but met without them the next day and accepted their resignations.

Swain, shocked and hurt by his removal, wrote a long legalistic protest that was ignored. An accident cut short any further effort on his part to regain the presidency. On 11 August 1868, he was thrown from a buggy pulled by the horse that Sherman had given him. Though confined to bed due to shock and weakness, Swain appeared to be recovering, but he succumbed to his injuries on 29 August. He was buried in the garden of his home in Chapel Hill, but was later reinterred in Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh.

David L. Swain was a white lawyer, legislator, governor of North Carolina, and president of the University of North Carolina, who also enslaved people. The collection includes a volume, 1855-1868, with a list of the people he enslaved, as well as debts owed to him. Correspondence relates to Swain's position as president of the University of North Carolina; his interest in the history of North Carolina in the colonial, Revolutionary War, and early national periods; and his activity as a collector of historical manuscripts. Also included are three letters from George Moses Horton, a Black poet enslaved by the Horton family in Chatham County, N.C., and scattered items on politics and on railroad promotion in North Carolina and South Carolina. The few items of earlier and later dates are miscellaneous and family materials, with little relating to Swain's active political career. Papers include correspondence with state and national leaders in fields of politics, education, and history, including William A. Graham, William H. Battle, William H. Haywood, Elisha Mitchell, John Motley Morehead, Thomas Ruffin, William W. Holden, Charles Phillips, and Cornelia Phillips Spencer

Also included are typed transcriptions of Swain correspondence, 1827-1868, probably prepared by former Southern Historical Collection Curator Carolyn Wallace as part of her research on Swain in the mid-1970s. These are not transcriptions of the original correspondence in these papers, but are likely transcriptions of original Swain materials held in the North Carolina Collection (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and elsewhere.

• Separated folder (SEP-706/1)
• Oversize volume (SV-00706/1)
• Photographs (PF-706/1)
• Microfilm (M-706/1)