Laws Hall

Laws Hall was named for Samuel Spahr Laws, a southerner with strong ties to the antebellum South through marriage and finance. Laws, valedictorian of the class of 1848, received an honorary doctorate in 1914 and remained a major benefactor throughout his life. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Laws refused to swear allegiance to the federal government and was imprisoned for treason. He fled the country and spent much of the war in Europe. He maintained his support for the Confederacy long after the war, including delivering a speech at the 1900 Confederate Veterans’ Convention in Washington, D.C. Laws’ legacy raises questions about the implications of honoring donors with ties to a slaveholding society. His influence, including donations like the George Washington statue in Alumni Hall, complicates his commemoration, particularly given how such a legacy may have been perceived by African American students. Miami University has not formally addressed this history.

Laws Hall was named in 1959. Today, Laws Hall is an academic building in the central quad of Miami University Oxford Campus.

Obituary of Samuel Spahr Laws, February 1921

This obituary of Samuel Spahr Laws was published in the Alumni Newsletter in February, 1921. Laws was valedictorian of the class of 1848 at Miami and went on to be a successful businessman and inventor. However, he was also convicted of treason for ardently supporting the Confederacy. His wife, Anna Maria, came from a prominent landowning family, suggesting that their wealth was tied to enslaved labor. Laws would support the Confederate cause for most of his life and gave a speech at the 1900 Confederate Veterans’ Convention in Washington, D.C. He speaks of the Lost Cause narrative, a revisionist ideology that insists that the Civil War was about states’ rights, not slavery.

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