Collegiate Republic: Cultivating an Ideal Society in Early America

One Cultivating the College World “The Generous Purpose”

Cultivating the College World One “The Generous Purpose” • 15 • in 1805 george Baxter rode out of his mountain town of Lexington , Virginia, on a borrowed horse. Newly elected to the presidency of the “college at Lexington,” the young Presbyterian minister intended to solicit funding for its future success. The cities of the eastern seaboard were to be the prime coordinates on his “begging” tour. As a graduate of another new college, Hampden-Sydney, as a minister, and as a former academy principal , Baxter was no stranger to the advocacy of religion and education. In the past, he had found that the two traditional pillars of post-Revolutionary society—virtue and knowledge—had sparked much enthusiasm and financial generosity from fellow Presbyterians. On this tour, Baxter hoped to cast a wider net for his new institution, determined to find even more friends and even more funding.1 The new president wanted more than sectarian supporters. His institution had recently gained a national friend, and he hoped to cultivate a few more. Originally founded as a school that taught the languages of the ministry , Greek and Latin, to the chosen sons of Presbyterian families, Baxter’s institution had once been known as Liberty Hall Academy. It received its first national exposure when it gained the attention of George Washington . Lexington families were thrilled when the “asserter of the liberties of his country,” the “illustrious Washington,” donated funds to support the little school that survived the Revolution. They promptly renamed their institution after the president, and Washington Academy quickly turned into Washington College—chartered, like all new colleges, by a state legislature that allowed it to give out college degrees. As he prepared for his fundraising trip in 1805, Baxter envisioned “people of first rank” emulat- 16 • collegiate repuBlic ing their former leader, eagerly sharing friendship and funding with an institution worthy of Washington’s notice.2 Confident in his expertise at fundraising, experienced as an advocate of virtue, and bolstered by Washington’s support, Baxter was optimistic that his fellow Americans would want to follow their first president’s classical ideal of virtue: the tradition of self-sacrifice for the common good. President Baxter was only one of hundreds of educators involved in building the college world, and they all undertook similar fundraising tours. By following him, we can see the challenges they faced as they tried to promote their favored definition of virtue—self-sacrifice and collective effort in the name of education—in a rapidly transforming nation starting to embrace less-sacrificial definitions of virtue. In his history of Dickinson College, Charles Sellers observed that the “American mania for college founding” revealed two cultural needs haunting post-Revolutionary society: the desire to speculate over founding ideals like virtue, and the desire to speculate over all the new economic or political opportunities emerging after the Revolution. Underlying this mania was the republican fear of self-interest and the extent of its influence on the new republic. This is the dilemma that George Baxter and his colleagues confronted whenever they solicited funds for their institutions. Their attempts at cultivating their college world compelled Americans time and again to ponder the place of classically defined virtue in their new society. Were Revolutionary ideals based on self-sacrifice and collectivity still relevant in a republic increasingly characterized by intense competition , the individual search for opportunity, and the vehement contestation of opinion? Did a classical definition of self-sacrificial virtue have a place anymore in the increasingly commercialized and politicized nation?3 Baxter and his colleagues firmly believed that it did. They believed that all Americans were capable of practicing self-sacrifice for the common good; they simply needed to be reminded of this Revolutionary duty to be generous. After 1800, it took a more potent blend of traditions—both classical and Christian—to rouse the people to prioritize the collective good above their own self-interest. College families considered it part of their new “business of instruction” to issue these reminders.4 Baxter was an eyewitness to the potential power of this combined call for civic and Christian action. Hearing about the religious revivals along the Kentucky frontier, Baxter traveled there, where he saw “professed infidels” transform into model citizens who expressed “friendly temper,” cultivating the college World • 17 “sobriety,” and a deep love of God after listening to sermons on salvation , charity, and brotherhood. Baxter was most impressed with the widespread...