First you say...”We are in the dark about a lot of things that happened in the past. Hence my hesitation in coming to a conclusion”.
But did you really hesitate? Of course not.
Then you said: “Brown wasn't the only college or university to use slave labor in constructing its first building”.
Interesting didactic, but factually challenged as it relates to William and Mary.
And before you run off and think that you have facts...you only have conclusions.
First, your “authority”, Mr. Terry L. Meyers is an english professor, not a historian. The papers he reports to have discovered provide no proof.
Then he quotes about your recently discredited source, Lounsbury the architect, as...”An architectural historian at Colonial Williamsburg, Carl Lounsbury, has recently speculated that the older buildings on campus were probably built with slave labor...”
Speculated? That is about as valid as that term paper you quoted several months ago to try to make a point, where in the student simply submitted and did not have a peer review.
Very lame.
Why don't you go ahead and write the College of Charleston and let's learn a little.
Well, here's Brown University being upfront and honest about the role of slavery in their universities history, and you don't give them credit for that.
One version of Meyers's paper -- the one I linked to in my original post -- is here. He says, as I quoted in my last post: "The early master builders were brought from England, but local contractors for the Wren Building supplied the laborers, who included, noted Lounsbury, two of President James Blair’s slaves."
But William and Mary wasn't the only university in the South to use slaves in construction of their earliest buildings. For example, there's the University of North Carolina:
Using census records, we have documented the ownership of slaves by several of the contractors and subcontractors for the antebellum buildings. Other sources, examples of which are included in this section, confirm the use of slave labor by some of the contractors in the construction of the buildings.
...
OLD EAST (Original Construction)
From University Papers #40005 (connect to finding aid).
19 July 1793. Plan of Old East. On 19 July 1793 the Building Committee of the Board of Trustees contracted with James Patterson of Chatham County to construct the university's first building. The contract is on the verso of this plan, and it specifies "the Building to be (96) Ninety Six feet (7) Seven Inches in Length, (40) forty feet one Inch and a half in width, two storys in height . . . Eight rooms on a floor with a Chimney to each Room . . . the Sum to be given for finishing the said Building . . . is the Sum of two thousand five hundred pounds."
18 August 1795. James Patterson to John Haywood. Patterson writes to John Haywood, secretary-treasurer of the Board of Trustees, to complain that he has not received the final payment for the work on Old East. Recounting the problems he had during the construction, he explains that he proposed painting the roof before the scaffolding was taken down but was forbidden to do so. Once the scaffolding was down, he "was ordered to Paint the Roof and had to Make two Ladders 44 feet Long to Reach the Roof and too Hanging Do 28 feet Long to Reach the Length of the Rafters ... and Risk My own Slaves to Such Jeopardy ... the Least Slip of Hand or foot would have Cost them their Lives and Me a Valuable Servant."
There's also documentation for the University of Virginia. I don't know if it relates to the very earliest building, but the evidence is there.
I don't doubt that slave labor may also have been used in the construction of other Northern universities, but it's pretty clear that the same is true of Southern institutions as well.