Thompson Union: a building dedicated to Jacob Thompson
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Memorial Place
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Named Building
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Thompson, Jacob
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Thompson Union: a building dedicated to Jacob Thompson
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Since its construction in 1888, the building that became known as Thompson Union served the University of the South as a science building, a student union, the office for its fundraising department, and, since early 2024, as the new Biehl Commons, or student center.
Thompson owned three farming properties in or near Oxford, Mississippi, and enslaved more than 97 people in 1860. In the 1850s Thompson rose to national prominence first as a congressman from Mississippi and later as Secretary of the Interior in the Buchanan administration. After a tenure marred by scandal, Thompson resigned his position in January 1861 to join his home state of Mississippi in the Confederacy. By 1864 Thompson's friend, Jefferson Davis, sent Thompson to Canada with considerable funds to organize espionage support for the Confederacy and lead attacks across the northern Union border. At the conclusion of the War, the U.S. government named Thompson a co-conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Thompson fled to Europe to escape capture as well as "negro" and "abolitionist" rule. He returned to Oxford, Miss., in 1868, began a career with the Carolina Life Insurance company in Memphis (where former Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, was company president), and served the diocese of Tennessee as a lay trustee to the University in 1873.
As a member of the Board of Trustees, Thompson pledged the lead gift to build what would become Thompson Union. The building opened in 1884 as Chemical and Philosophical Hall, and was later used as a student center (Thompson Union) in 1917 after the closure of the Medical school. Fire severely damaged the building in 1950. In 1974, Thompson Union housed University Advancement. In the entryway, a plaque memorialized the benefactor until 2018, when it was removed. Renovated in 2023-2024 and renamed for a recent donor, the building is now the University's Biehl Commons student center and bears no evidence of its original donor or his history.
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A large stone structure, originally three stories tall, on University Avenue at the center of the Sewanee campus.
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Original plaque:
In Memoriam
Jacob Thompson
1810-1885
Secretary of the Interior of the United States
Soldier-Statesman of the Confederacy
And for twelve years
Trustee of the University of the South
Donor of Thompson Hall
1883.
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Thompson, Jacob
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1884
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2024
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Thompson, Jacob
Position: 7850 (12 views)