 Such authors included Thomas Roderick Dew, a College of William & Mary professor, who published a pamphlet in 1832 opposing emancipation on economic and other grounds.In the period leading up to the American Civil War, other Southern writers began to promote a paternalistic ideal of improved Christian treatment of slaves, in part to avoid such rebellions.Dew and others believed that they were civilizing black people (who by this stage were mostly American-born) through slavery.