American College and University: A History

3. The College Movement

3 The College Movement On a cold drizzly day in January 1795, a two-story empty brick building that called itself the University of North Carolina was opened to the public. An unsightly landscape of tree stumps, rough lumber, scarred clay, and a bitter wind greeted the governor, who had wanted to be on hand for this important event. He was also met by the faculty which consisted of one professor doubling as president. A month later the first applicant for admission knocked at the door. In the same year, far to the north, the founders of a college that would be called Bowdoin were offering the entirety of a township in Maine to any contractor who would build them a four-story building. They could find no takers.1 In March 1802, Nassau Hall at Princeton was consumed by flames. The next year, at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, its first building was burned down. At Burlington , Vermont, in 1806 President Daniel Clarke Sanders, who knew that the college had been in the process of creation since 1791, could not contain his enthusiasm for the way things now were going: 1 Kemp Plummer Battle: History of the University of North Carolina (Raleigh, 1907-12), I, 63-5; Louis C. Hatch: The History of Bowdoin College (Portland, 1927), p. 9. 45 The College Movement The college edifice [he reported] is nearly glazed. The tower is finished and painted on the dome. The vane and lightning rod are up. The bell proves a good one. The masons are at work, and all the chimneys will probably be finished before commencement.* In 1811 the Reverend John W. Browne, who believed deeply in the new Miami University in Ohio, set out on a trip to raise funds and a library. His visit to James Madison at the White House was unproductive, but he picked up a five-volume history of Ireland from a senator from Kentucky ; in the state of Delaware he collected $22.00, the good president of Princeton gave him $5.00, and from old John Adams at Quincy there were kind words, two books, and $10.00. All in all, a wagonload of books and $700 for the new college in Ohio. A few weeks later the Reverend Browne, on a preaching mission, slipped as he crossed the Little Miami River and was drowned.8 In 1818 at Ohio University in Athens the first college building was struck by lightning; it was not yet completed, and only torrential rains kept it from being totally destroyed by fire. In 1822 there was a fire in Maine Hall, the first building at Bowdoin, the college in Maine which had been unable to give away a township in order to get it built. At Burlington, Vermont, in 1824 the building that had so pleased President Sanders in 1806 was lost in flames. The college hovered on the edge of extinction; the president went insane.4 In 1826 a group of citizens of the town of Easton, Pennsylvania , received a charter for a college that they would 'Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker: Princeton 1746-1896 (Princeton, 1946), p. 126; James Henry Morgan: Dickinson College: The History of One Hundred and Fifty Years 1783-1933 (Carlisle, 1933), p. 87; Julian Ira Lindsay: Tradition Looks Forward: The University of Vermont: A History 1791-1904 (Burlington, 1954), pp. 63-4. 8 Walter Havighurst: The Miami Years 1809-1959 (New York, 1958), pp. 11-20. * Thomas N. Hoover: The History of Ohio University (Athens, 1954), p. 33;Hatch: Bowdoin, p. 403; Lindsay: Vermont, pp. 122-4. THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 46 call Lafayette. They went shopping for an academy in Philadelphia , hoping to move it to Easton and call it a college. They could not find one, and for the next four years they did not hold a meeting. Out on the prairies of Illinois a college called Illinois opened in 1829 with nine students, none of whom had ever studied English grammar. Seven years later three of them were graduated from the college. In 1830 half the plant of the University of Georgia was destroyed by fire.6 At Bloomington, Indiana, also in 1830, the Reverend Andrew Wylie arrived to take up the presidency of Indiana College. He had written ahead to suggest that for the good of the college something should be made of his arrival, and so he was escorted into town by the leading...