The eldest son, Dr. William Dew (1796–1855), received 500 acres and a new house (now operating as Providence Plantation and Farm) as a wedding present in 1826.

[1] Moreover, Jesse Burton Harrison, of Lynchburg, Virginia, wrote a robust response that argued that colonization (sending freed slaves to Africa) was possible and that slavery was economically inefficient.

[11] In his inaugural speech as president at William & Mary, Dew "admonished young planters to resist fanatics who wished to eliminate slavery.

Dew emphasized the importance of a broad-based liberal arts education but singled out morals and politics as the most significant subjects of study.

His work resembles Southern surgeon and medical authority Samuel A. Cartwright, who defended slavery and invented the "diseases" of drapetomania (the "madness" that makes slaves want to run away), and dysaesthesia aethiopica ("rascality"), both of which were "cured" with beatings.

Dew also asserted that men were intellectually superior to women (across all cultures and historical periods), but blamed the disparity on educational differences rather than unequal natural endowments.

Dew advocated denying suffrage to women "because their intense focus on their own families impeded their ability to comprehend broader political developments.

[1][14] A compilation of his history lectures was published posthumously as A Digest of the Laws, Customs, Manners, and Institutions of the Ancient and Modern Nations (1853).

[1] Providence Plantation and Farm, his eldest brother's house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009, although still in private hands.

At least four of his nephews fought as Confederate soldiers in the American Civil War: Sylvanius Gresham having participated in thwarting Dahlgren's Raid and his namesake Thomas R. Dew rising from corporal to captain and his two brothers also were CSA officers.