James Armstrong Duncan (14 April 1830–24 September 1877), president of Randolph-Macon College, was born in Norfolk and was the son of David Duncan and his second wife, Alice Amanda Needler Piemont Duncan. When he was six years old, the family moved to Mecklenburg County, where his father joined the faculty of Randolph-Macon College. Duncan received an A.B. from the school in June 1849 and an A.M. in June 1852. On 17 December 1850 he married Sallie Duke Twitty, in Warrenton, North Carolina. They had two sons and two daughters that survived to adulthood.

The Methodist Episcopal Church South licensed Duncan to preach in 1848 and assigned him to what became the Washington Street Methodist Church, in Alexandria. Admitted on trial into the Virginia Annual Conference in 1849, he served pastorates in northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., during the next eight years. Duncan was admitted to full connection and ordained as a deacon, both in 1851, and became a conference elder two years later. As pastor of Richmond's Trinity Methodist Church beginning in 1857, he increased membership and within two years had led a group of parishioners to establish Broad Street Methodist Church.

In November 1860 Duncan became acting editor of the Methodist-sponsored Richmond Christian Advocate. He left Broad Street Methodist Church the following year when the conference appointed him the Advocate's permanent editor, a position he retained until 1866. Duncan struggled to keep the Advocate operating during the Civil War. He reduced it to a two-page biweekly edition in 1864 and briefly suspended publication in 1865. The only source of war news for many Methodists, the Advocate provided religious inspiration for soldiers and encouraged them to fight. Duncan's editorials and sermons (he had returned to preaching at Broad Street Methodist Church in 1863) voiced strong support for the Confederacy. He believed in a theocracy in which God, religion, and church organizations formed the foundation on which the government stood. He contended that the Confederate cause could not fail because its people were Christians.

Duncan defended slavery as God's plan and argued that Southerners should be able to maintain slavery without interference. In response to the Emancipation Proclamation, he wrote a treatise on religion, society, and slavery first published in April 1863 under the title "Address to Christians Throughout the World" and reprinted in newspapers throughout the North and South. Ministers of Protestant denominations across the South endorsed its positions. Duncan insisted that the separation of the Southern states from the Northern had been final and that the Emancipation Proclamation violated the United States Constitution and would lead to slave insurrection.

Duncan received an honorary doctorate of divinity from Wofford College in 1866. After leaving the Advocate and Broad Street Methodist Church in 1866, he ministered at Petersburg's Washington Street Methodist Church for the next two years. During this period Randolph-Macon College suffered financial difficulties and a dwindling student population because of its rural location, lack of accessible railroad lines, and diminishing support from Methodists. Relocating the school from Mecklenburg County seemed necessary, but the controversial decision resulted in the resignation of the school's president in July 1868.

The board of trustees elected Duncan president of Randolph-Macon College on 7 August 1868. Two months later the school reopened in the Hanover County town of Ashland, with sixty-seven students and an entirely new faculty, including Duncan as the professor of moral philosophy and metaphysics. Later he also taught Biblical literature. Duncan used his powers as president to shape the institution more than his predecessors had by broadening the curriculum, especially in modernizing the courses in English and philosophy. Facing a dire financial situation, Duncan traveled widely to raise money. Although the school's financial situation improved under his administration, Randolph-Macon remained in debt.

Duncan proved a charismatic recruiter whose efforts bordered on revivalism. His emphasis on training ministers, along with the school's relocation, enabled Randolph-Macon to attract new students. Enrollment had grown to more than 100 by 1870 and jumped to more than 200 early in the 1870s. Although these numbers declined later in the decade, chiefly because of the financial panic of 1873, during Duncan's administration Randolph-Macon's ministerial students constituted most of the clergy entering the Virginia Conference and shaped it for decades.

The constant traveling for fund-raising and recruiting took a heavy toll on Duncan's health, and in October 1875 the board of trustees took steps to lighten his workload. In June 1876 he resigned because of continued health problems. Duncan was subsequently elected president of the board of trustees. After a potential successor declined to take the office, however, Duncan was reelected college president in November 1876. The following year he was also reappointed board president.

Duncan served several times as a delegate to general conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, was a candidate for bishop in 1870, and attended a national conference in 1876 to discuss reunification of the northern and southern branches of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which he favored. On 23 December 1870 his wife died of heart disease. Duncan married Elizabeth, or Bettie, Amis Wade on 3 July 1873, in Charles Town, West Virginia. They had two daughters, one of whom died in childhood. He continued to travel and preach throughout the Virginia and Baltimore Conferences despite suffering a nearly fatal bout of typhoid fever in 1874. James Armstrong Duncan died at his Ashland home on 24 September 1877 of complications following surgery to remove an infected portion of his jawbone. He was buried in Hollywood Cemetery, in Richmond. The new chapel at Randolph-Macon College, opened in 1882, bore his name.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in O. P. Fitzgerald and C. B. Galloway, Eminent Methodists (1897), 159–198 (with birth date), James Harris Fitts, Genealogy of the Fitts or Fitz Family in America (1897), 117–124 (with first marriage date), and Arthur L. Stevenson, Native Methodist Preachers of Norfolk and Princess Anne Counties, Virginia (1975), 9–12; Jefferson Co., W.Va., Marriage Register (1873); Rockingham Register, 4 July 1873; undated family history by grandson William D. Mallam, with variant second marriage date of 2 July 1873, in Flavia Reed Owen Special Collections and Archives, McGraw-Page Library, Randolph-Macon College, Ashland, Virginia; publications include Duncan, Sermons (1867), and Addresses of Rev. Lovick Pierce, D.D., of Georgia, Rev. Jas. A. Duncan, D.D., President of Randolph Macon College, Va.,… Fraternal Delegates from the M. E. Church, South,… May 12th, 1876 (1876), 14–31; Richard Irby, History of Randolph-Macon College, Virginia (1898), esp. 246–264; Henry Lee Curry III, "The Confederate Careers of James Armstrong Duncan, Moses Drury Hoge, and Charles Frederic Ernest Minnigerode" (Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1971), esp. 18–61; James Edward Scanlon, Randolph-Macon College: A Southern History, 1825–1967 (1983), esp. 213–216 (portrait on 214); obituaries and memorials in Petersburg Index and Appeal, 25 Sept. 1877, Richmond Daily Dispatch, 25 Sept.1877, 26 Sept. 1877, and Richmond Daily Whig and Richmond Enquirer, both 25, 26 Sept. 1877, Richmond Christian Advocate, 27 Sept., 4 Oct. 1877, and Methodist Episcopal Church South, Virginia Annual Conference Minutes (1877), 33–38.

Engraving in Irby, History of Randolph-Macon College, Virginia, opp. 186.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by John G. Deal.

How to cite this page:
John G. Deal, "James Armstrong Duncan (18308–1877)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2025 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Duncan_James_Armstrong, accessed [today's date]).

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