USA > North Carolina > Sketches of North Carolina, historical and biographical : illustrative of the principles of a portion of her early settlers > Part 54
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Previous to his removal to Chapel Hill, he had been licensed to preach by the Presbytery of New Brunswick ; and while perform- ing the office of professor and president, he did not forget the preaching of the Gospel. He judged it impolitic to take charge of any congregation in the neighborhood ; and in that he doubtless judged rightly ; but he also judged it proper to preach the gospel to his students, and occasionally, abroad, as he had opportunity. As there was no regularly organized Presbyterian church in the university, and Mr. Caldwell did not choose to be connected with a congregation in the neighborhood, and the Synod of the Carolinas being particularly opposed to ordaining without charge, no effectual steps were taken for his ordination, till the year 1810; when the Presbytery of Orange overtured Synod for leave to ordain Mr. Joseph Caldwell of the university ; and the Synod, in consideration of his usefulness being, in all probability, greatly increased, author- ized the ordination. The next year his name appears upon the records of Synod, reported from Orange Presbytery. This year (1811) he made his circuit through the State, to collect funds, and everywhere made a favorable impression, as a man, a Christian, a minister, and the head of the university. Having received the degree of A.M. at the university and also at his Alma Mater, the honorary title of D.D. was conferred by both institutions ; that from Nassau Hall bears date in 1816, the year he was the second time chosen president. In 1812 he resigned his office as president, and aided in procuring Rev. Robert H. Chapman as his successor ; but a vacancy occurring by the resignation of Dr. Chapman, he was recalled to the chair, and filled it to the day of his death.
Dr. Caldwell might, from the specimens of preaching he gave from time to time, have excelled as a pastor, had his whole time been given to preaching and the pastor's office. Plainness, simpli- city and kindness, characterized his discourses ; often great strength and distinctness were mingled in an interesting manner. He wrote and published a variety of essays on the subject of the improvement
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of the mind, and the soil ; the citizens, and their State. On the subject of common schools, he was read with interest; and his essays on improving the State by roads, had an acknowledged effect. But his great work by which he was, and is to be known, was the building the University ; leaving to the State, at the conclusion of a laborious life, an institution worthy of his labors and their fostering care.
If a man's talents are to be judged by the works he accomplishes, Dr. Caldwell will be adjudged a man of talents. If the excellency and permanency of the works accomplished are a standard of the degree of talents, then the father of the university will not hold a low place. He was not esteemed a genius by his contemporaries, or looked upon as a man of splendid performances ; but when his plans and operations are compared with his contemporaries, poste- rity will judge that he had excellences the exertion of which could not be fully tested till years had tried the permanency of his works, and which will give him a place among the worthies of the Presby- terian church, and the benefactors of his race.
But while he was acting on the most enlarged principles and views, he did not suffer himself to be led by generalities to forget particulars ; laboring for the whole State, he did not forget that he was a Presbyterian, and a Presbyterian minister. He strongly advo- cated and encouraged the institute at Greensborough, which, in honor to him for his services to literature and religion, was named Caldwell's Institute, to be a high school, under the especial care and discipline of the Presbyterians, in which teaching the doctrines of the Presbyterian church, in connection with the Bible, should form part of the regular exercises on the Sabbath. He thought it due both to the church and to the community, that such an institu- tion should be established; and the location of it should be in the county where some of the earliest Presbyterian congregations were formed, and where the trials of the Revolution had been known. He also schemed a plan for a theological institution to be located somewhere in the upper country of Carolina, in which his sound judgment and practical mind were eminently displayed. But as the theological department, in connection with Hampden Sydney, had been the nursery of many preachers in Carolina, and was, about that time, in progress of being enlarged to a full and complete seminary, after a full and free discussion, he laid by his plan, and united with the Synod of Carolina in giving support to Union Seminary. And no man acquainted with the usefulness of Caldwell Institute or
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Union Theological Seminary, in training and sending out laborious servants of the church and public, can for a moment doubt the sound- ness of his conclusions, or fault his anticipations from these semina- ries.
The active part he took in the internal improvement of the State, publishing frequently on the subject in the regular papers, was on the principle that the produce of the mountains and upper country of Carolina should seek the ocean through a port on the sea shore of the State ; and for this purpose passways should be opened from the east and west, sufficient to encourage agriculture and popula- tion ; the products of the west should be the riches of the east ; and the enterprise of the east should reward the labors of the west. The soundness of these principles will one day be discussed again in Carolina.
Of Dr. Caldwell's personal religious experience we have an ac- count of much that is interesting, in his own handwriting, though less in quantity than could be desired. He commenced in the lat- ter part of his life, an autobiography, which he carried on till the period of his journey to Chapel Hill, in 1796; then it closed ab- ruptly. From that manuscript most of the facts respecting his early life have been derived. From that is derived the following infor- mation respecting the exercises of his mind and heart.
The first religious exercises, which were esteemed by him worthy of notice, as religious exercises, were felt while he resided with his mother at Bristol. The escape from a watery death has been men- tioned, and also his mother's kind treatment. He says the alarm at the thoughts of immediate death was inexpressible, and led him to pious resolutions : but, " the feelings gradually faded from my thoughts, and I lived as heedlessly as ever."-" But a circumstance which most impressively marks this period, is, that here I began, for what reasons I know not, to turn my thoughts, with greater earnestness than before, on the subject of religion. A part of the time while I was in this village, my mother went abroad, leaving me to board at a neighbor's table. This was so near, that one of the rooms in the house, which she occupied, was left open for my use, both day and night. There I slept; and whenever I chose, to this I retired. I got hold of a religious book, and finding it gave me pleasure in the reading, I would sit, or traverse the room alone, reading with an interest that grew so as utterly to preclude every disposition to stop. My feelings were excited by it, and they grew into ardor and intensity. I deserted all amusement. My reading,
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my reflections, and a gratifying sense that I might be engaged in the service of God and have his approbation, abstracted me from any of the diversions that occurred to my mind."
" My experience at that time was probably one of the first fruits of the pious sentiments which my mother had instilled into me from the first dawnings of reason. She was not there; but the spirit of God was, doubtless, fostering these principles in my heart, and re- ducing them into action. I have since reverted to the few days which passed in these circumstances, and with these emotions alive in my bosom, as among the most grateful seasons of my life, and to be remembered with renovated satisfaction."
" While living in Newark my religious impressions were often renewed. I do not know that I resisted them, or strove to repress or shake them off, but it is very certain that at various times when they had been felt with much force, alarm of conscience, and a dis- solving tenderness of affection, they soon passed away, and I be- came as thoughtless and careless as ever. Dr. M'Whorter's preach- ing was generally animated, plain and practical. He sometimes became warm, pointed the guilty sinner to the coming wrath, showed the danger of growing hardened to all the considerations of God's mercy, his justice, his judgments, the means of grace, the opportu- nities of improvement, the uncertainty of life, dread consequences of failing to prepare in this time of discipline and probation for the eternity that is to follow. I would come home like the wounded hart, with the arrow in my side; but it dropped off, the wound closed, and it ceased to be remembered."
Again the Dr. says of himself, in his review of his early life :- " I can remember many occasions in those early years, in the vari- ous places in which they were passed, when my reflections were directed on God, a future state, and the eternal world. The interest I took in them when they were impressed upon me by the scriptures, or by any other cause, was the same in its aspect and species as it has been through late years. The intervals sometimes are apparent as to their cause, and sometimes they seem to have become irrecov- erably lost to my remembrance. Whether they had a connection with one another, and by what ties of circumstances, or thought, or emotion, as they were successively renewed, it would be impossible for me to determine, though to the spirit of God who produced them and witnessed all their effects, they are present now as at the mo- ment when they agitated my bosom." Sometimes I would return from church with a heart deeply affected with the considerations
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presented there of my obligations to God for his goodness in the ordinary blessings of food and raiment, relations and friends, health and pleasures, connected with it. Conscience impressed upon me portentously the consequences of my thoughtless ingratitude. The prospects of heaven to the good, and the endless misery of the wicked, drove from me, for a time, every wish for the amusements on which I was commonly intent."
"The love of God in sending his Son into the world to redeem me from death, and open the way to Heaven, combined with all its force in impressing my conscience with the responsibility imposed by this consummation of mercy. My mother was often engaged in giving me religious instruction, and deepening its impression upon my heart. Sometimes an accident would happen to set before me the utter uncertainty in which I lived. The death of a neighbor, by sickness, or by some sudden accident, the grave-yard, the darkness of night, when in solitude, naturally plunging my thoughts into the spiritual world ; everything of this nature exerted in me a sense of religion, a reference to God, and to the danger I was in of being lost for ever if I should die without being made the subject of his sav- ing grace. It was all the striving of his spirit to prevent me from being wholly engrossed with the earth, and to educate me in the school of his providence for better and more glorious purposes than the interests and pleasures of a mere earthly existence. An excel- lent practical writer on Keeping the Heart, remarks, that Provi- dence is like a curious piece of tapestry, made of a thousand shreds which, single, appear useless, but put together they represent a re- gular and connected history to the eye."
While residing with Mr. Austin in Elizabethtown, these impres- sions were ripened into the deep conviction, that it was his duty to devote himself to the services of God in the gospel of Christ. How far he fulfilled the covenant of his devotion and performed the duties of a Christian Minister to his fellow-man, his services in the Uni- versity of North Carolina will abundantly testify.
In one of the elegant society rooms in the University is a bust of Dr. Caldwell, taken after his death, and a portrait drawn in his ear- lier years. The bushy eyebrows, and overhanging forehead, and calm countenance of the bust, impress the beholder with the power of reflection, self-possession, and unshaken firmness, combined with an amiable disposition.
There is a monument erected for him near the College buildings, in the beautiful grove, but at present it is without an epitaph. The
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omission was undesigned. But could the generation with whom he lived write his epitaph ?
He wrote his biography, or rather, began to write it, in his old age. In that, as we have seen, he refers with tenderness and emo- tion to the fervency of his early experience. From that single circumstance, we should be satisfied that the pure flame was burning with the brightness of youth and the intensity of experienced age. The testimony of others is, that " the nearer he approached his God, he but loved him the more." It is not improbable that, in his mul- tiplied duties, his personal piety may for a time have suffered ; his friends have thought it did! They may have been mistaken. But the same friends also thought that, in his advanced years, the flame burned more brightly on the altar of devotion, and that he became more lovely as he became more heavenly minded.
As the University increased in numbers, and the students could be admitted to a much less degree of intimate acquaintance, it is very probable the President, looked at from the distance of pupils that saw him more in the executive duties of his office, and less in his domestic tenderness, appeared more stern than kind, more resolute than forbearing. That the government of the University was an unit, and the President was really that unit, after consultation, cannot, perhaps, be denied,-it was never concealed nor boasted of. " Were I to live," said one who had served under him in the University, " under one who governed with despotic sway, I would choose Dr. Caldwell before any other man I have known." Before the discipline of the University was settled upon its firm basis, which was a work of years, an outbreak among the students gave an ex- hibition of Dr. Caldwell. For some unusual delinquency, the Dr. had determined upon discipline unusually severe. This caused great excitement. The delinquents and their friends determined on resist- ance, and mistaking the Doctor's disposition, proposed to intimidate him as their remedy in the last resort. As he was returning from the chapel to his residence, they met him at the mouth of the ravine near his dwelling, now filled, and clamorously demanded some relax- ation of his terms. He heard their demands, and calmly refused, and resumed his course ; in their excitement, they swung their canes as if for an attack, and some of them were athletic young men, and appeared to be closing round him, that he should go no further till he relented. With an unruffled countenance he moved on, saying- " Strike, young gentlemen, but remember the consequences." Al- though, in physical strength, he was altogether in their power, the
1
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young men felt that he was unconquerable and irresistible, and gave up the contest. To many of the students it is probable that he ap- peared rather the unconquerable President than the amiable man. But others beside his family knew that kindness was his nature, and severity the conviction of his judgment.
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P. S .- Materials for additional chapters are in readiness, but the size of the present volume forbids their publication. These materials, together with a selection from sermons by Hall, Caldwell, M'Gready, M'Pheeters and others, would form an instructive volume
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