forces only. The older part of the country has constantly ministered to the newer. As the colleges of New England, in their first decades turned to old England for aid, so the colleges of the west have constantly turned for help, financial and personal, to New England and the Middle States. The churches of New England and the Middle States early organized themselves into societies for the purpose of the promotion of the higher education in the newer Commonwealths. The most efficient of all such associations was called the American Education Society, which, formed in the second decade of the last century, aided in the establishment of colleges and in giving pecuniary help to students who were preparing to become ministers.

CHAPTER XI

IN THE SOUTHERN STATES

WHILE education was developing west of the Alleghanies and north of the Ohio, it was in the south impassive.

The birth of the University of Virginia was almost contemporaneous with the death of its father. Jefferson died with the belief that he had done a great work for his native state and for America, in the foundation of the University, but also with the assurance that this foundation was not appreciated by many people of the state. Less than six months before he died Jefferson wrote to his friend Cabell:

"I have been long sensible that while I was endeavoring to render our country the greatest of all services, that of regenerating the public education, and placing our rising generation on the level of our sister States (which they have proudly held heretofore), I was discharging the odious function of a physician pouring medicine down the throat of a patient insensible of needing it. I am so sure of the future approbation of posterity, and of the inestimable effect we shall have produced in the elevation of our country by what we have done, as that I cannot repent of the part I have borne in coöperation with my colleagues."

1

The co-worker of Jefferson in the long and perplexing labor of the establishing of the University, helped to make good the hope of Jefferson that the University would prove of value in the uplifting and liberalizing of men. As legislator, visitor, and friend Cabell wrought well. Whatever truth there may lie in the words of Emerson that an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man, it is also true that the impression made by the University was rendered much larger and deeper by the devotion and self-sacrifice of Cabell. In the generation which

1 Jefferson and Cabell, "University of Virginia," p. 366.

divides the death of Jefferson from the death of his friend, the University gained in power and in genuine eminence. It came to possess a dominant educational force throughout the South. Its influence became so thoroughly interwoven with all the in.titutions of the southern states that it would be difficult to differentiate its elements. Its system of independent schools has been adopted in not a few institutions. In this period it has enrolled not far from seven thousand students, who, departing from the University with or without a degree, have entered into all the relations of the life of the South. The teachers in not a few colleges have been its graduates.

The causes of the influence of the University of Virginia are manifold. The first cause is undoubtedly the high character of the members of the teaching staff. The purpose of Jefferson, that the professors should be the ablest that he could secure, was more adequately gained than is usual in the case of the founders of colleges. A majority of his teachers came from Europe. George Long was without doubt the most famous. The brevity of his career, however (of only three years), was not sufficient to prevent his influence upon his fellow-teachers and students becoming great, and it has proved even to be lasting. He fixed high standards. With him there came from over the sea, Blaettermann as a professor of modern languages; Key, like Long a Master of Arts of the Cambridge Trinity, and Charles Bonnycastle, who was educated at the military academy at Woolwich. Among their associates or successors were George Tucker, Dunglison, Gessner Harrison, and William B. Rogers. The value of the scholastic character and of the influence of the teachers of the University of Virginia was great.

United with this primary cause and, in a degree, springing forth from it as a reason of the high place of the University, are the elective system of studies, the high conditions for securing a degree, and the honor system of discipline. The height of the attainment necessary to secure a degree is evidenced by the fact that only about thirteen per cent of the matriculates have in its entire history come up for graduation, and more than half have been content with remaining as students one year only. The decimation of a class as it passes through a course has been large.

Whether the standards have been held too high might be open to question; but it should be said that the height of the standard necessary for receiving a degree has vastly aided in upholding all the better conditions of the higher education throughout the South. It also might be said that the conditions for admission had been kept too low.

The application of the elective system of studies has proved to be a great benefit. The application has been somewhat more generous than has been suffered in most institutions in later years, for the student has been permitted to pursue one study or one group of studies. Through poverty, or through the desire to become proficient in a single subject, he has been allowed to devote himself to a single one of the schools which constitute the University curriculum. The influence of this opportunity upon the elevation of the people of the South who have not been able to give themselves the advantage of a complete education has been very great.

1

It is also evident that the honor system of discipline maintained at the University has been of great worth. The type of southern manhood has easily lent itself to this system, and it has in turn tended to make this system the more vigorous and noble.

Through these causes there obtained a high and thorough system of intellectual training. One of the more eminent, able, and useful of American educators, writing in 1845 to the Legislature of Virginia, affirmed that the system of the University of Virginia was higher and more thorough as a scientific and literary training than had previously been accessible in the United States.2

In this same period there were at least two other universities which were making worthy contributions toward human enlightenment and betterment. They were the two universities of the two Carolinas. Both of these universities were, like every institution, prosperous by reason of the ability and energy, skill and character of their teaching staff. Caldwell, the first president

'Trent's "Influence of the University of Virginia upon Southern Life and Thought," p. 156.

• William Barton Rogers, "Life and Letters," vol. i, p. 400.

of the University at Chapel Hill, a graduate of Princeton, able, alert, zealous in labors, was aided by Mitchell, Olmsted, and Andrews. Mitchell for forty years devoted himself to astronomical and similar investigations. His service touched the imagination of the people. He lies buried in an humble mound at the highest point of a mountain of the Blue Ridge which bears his name. Olmsted's career was brief, injected between two periods of service at Yale, but it added to the luster of the institution. The term of Andrews was more brief than even that of Olmsted, covering only the six years from 1822 to 1828. But the service of one whose text-books and lexicon have become familiar to every schoolboy and schoolgirl represents a most useful period in the history of the University.

Through this quartette of notable scholars and teachers and their associates a high scholastic character was maintained. This character was in a large degree the transplanting of the influence of Yale College, which, throughout this period, was becoming the mother of colleges as well as their nurse.

The higher education was quite as well maintained in South Carolina as in the state directly to the north. These institutions are well represented in the college at Columbia. Fortunate in the personalities which prevailed in its founding and first official relationships, such as Paul Hamilton, and Jonathan Maxcy, it was also at once fortunate and unfortunate in their successors. Thomas Cooper was president from 1820 to 1834. Born in London in 1759, educated at Oxford, possessed of a tempestuous nature, he went to France in the midst of the Revolution. For his visit to France, Edmund Burke thought it worth while to attack him in the House of Commons. Coming to America, he practiced law in Pennsylvania. Entering political life he was made a commissioner and a judge. Removed in 1811 for arbitrary or petty conduct, he applied himself to the study of chemistry. He was successively professor of the subject in Dickinson College and the University of Pennsylvania. Selected by Jefferson for a place in the Faculty of the University of Virginia, and retiring because his Unitarian views were not satisfactory to the orthodox party, he was, in 1819, chosen professor of che South Carolina College. A year later he was made pr

Γ