USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II > Part 60
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The location at Warren was temporary, determined in the first instance by Dr. Man- ning's residence there as pastor of the Baptist Church. East Greenwich, Newport, Provi- dence and Warren entered a vigorous competition as rival sites for the college, Providence being selected eventually. Excavation for the cellar of the building later known as University Hall was begun on March 27, 1770, and John Brown laid the first foundation stone, May 14. The work went steadily forward under the direction of John Brown for the Brown Brothers, who had the contract for construction. Dr. Manning removed to Providence in May, 1770. For a time, while the college edifice was being made ready for occupancy, college exercises were conducted at the town brick schoolhouse on Meeting Street. As it was, only the two lower stories of the college building were furnished at first. Dr. Manning became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Providence in 1771. John Dorrance became the third member of the faculty as tutor and librarian in 1774, after graduation. Commencements in Providence were held at Mr. Snow's meetinghouse until the First Baptist Church had been completed, both "for the public worship of Almighty God and also for holding commencement in."* The first commencement in the First Baptist Church, and the last until the end of the Revolution, was conducted in 1776, when Major General Nathanael Greene was awarded the honorary degree of Master of Arts, "in consideration of the great abilities, literary merit and the many eminent services performed .... to this state in particular, and the continent in general." The college was closed December 14, 1776; the students had already been dispossessed by the patriot army, which had occupied the college as barracks.
The graduates, including the class of 1777, which received diplomas "in absentia," num- bered sixty; of the forty-six whose records after graduation are known at the university, twenty-two became ministers, including eleven Congregational and six Baptist. Ten were physicians, seven lawyers, and one each a merchant and a manufacturer, and two were teach- ers. Ten were officers in army or navy, and five served as surgeons or chaplains. Of the first class graduated after the war, 1782, two had been army officers. President Manning issued a call for the reopening of the college in 1780, but then came the French army to occupy the college edifice as a hospital for two years. When, in 1782, the building was returned to the corporation the damage was estimated as £ 1300. The old quarters at the town schoolhouse on Meeting Street were occupied temporarily, while repairs were made by the state of Rhode Island. So few students were attracted by the reopening that none were graduated from 1783 to 1786. Meanwhile the college was casting about in various directions, seeking financial assistance. The faculty was strengthened by the engagement of Asher Rob- bins, 1782, and by the gratuitous services of Joseph Brown, as Professor of Experimental Philosophy, and Benjamin Waterhouse, who was Professor of Theory and Practice of Physics at Harvard. John Brown's offer to contribute half the cost of a set of philosophical apparatus and library was matched in 1783. Improvement continued, and the graduating class numbered twenty-two in 1790. Commencement was a holiday attracting crowds of people ; in 1790 the sheriff of Providence County was requested to attend "to preserve the peace, good order and decorum," and the church society was requested "to prevent the erec- tion of booths, or receptacles for liquors or other things for sale, and other disorderly prac- tices in the Baptist Meeting House lot on Commencement days." President Manning died in 1791.
*The Assembly granted a lottery to assist the building project. R. I .- 61
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NAME CHANGED TO BROWN UNIVERSITY-Rev. Jonathan Maxcy was the second Presi- dent. During his administration the college increased slowly but steadily in numbers of students and faculty but was beset for the most part by serious financial difficulties. A lot- tery granted by the state yielded $8000 in 1795-1800,t and the college occasionally received small gifts of money, books, apparatus or museum specimens. President Maxcy, resigned, was succeeded by Asa Messer. Nicholas Brown, in 1804, responsive to a vote of the corpo- ration "that the donation of $5000, if made to this college within one year from the late com- mencement,¿ shall entitle the donor to name the college," gave $5000 to establish a professor- ship of oratory and belles lettres. The corporation voted, thus exercising a function given in the charter, "that this college be called and known in all future time by the name of Brown University in Providence in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." Brown University established a medical school in 1811 with three professors-Solomon Drowne, Professor of Materia Medica and Botany; William Ingalls, Professor of Anatomy and Sur- gery ; William C. Bowen, Professor of Chemistry. Dr. Levi Wheaton and Dr. John M. Eddy were added to the medical faculty in 1815, and John D'Wolf in 1817. The medical school was discontinued during President Wayland's administration, when the university dis- pensed with the services of instructors not resident at the college. Nicholas Brown, appointed with Thomas P. Ives as a committee to erect a new building, proceeded with the construction at his own expense, and in 1823 presented the structure known as Hope College, so named for Mrs. Hope Ives, who was sister to Nicholas Brown. The name of the older "college edi- fice" was changed to University Hall. President Messer resigned in 1826 voluntarily, but probably because of embarrassment because he had been accused of leaning to Unitarianism.
FRANCIS WAYLAND'S REGIME-The resignation of President Messer marked the end of an old, and the election of Francis Wayland as his successor the beginning of a new régime at Brown University. Rhode Island College and Brown University, 1764-1827, compare favorably with other American colleges of the period. Most, like Brown, were struggling with serious financial problems, were poorly equipped with library books and apparatus, could pay such meagre salaries that teaching in college involved usually a sacrifice of economic advantage and advancement in other professions. American colleges had been established on English patterns, resembling Oxford and Cambridge in organization, content and methods of instruction, and relations between faculty and students. The instruction was principally in the Latin and Greek classics of antiquity, mathematics, a little science, English grammar, rhetoric, literature and oratory. In ancient classics the volume of reading accomplished was less than the minimum required for admission to college in 1900 .* Mathematics included arithmetic, and much of algebra and geometry which have been relegated to secondary educa- tion. The emphasis on oratory appeared in a letter written by John Brown shortly before his death in 1803: "And as the most beautiful and handsome mode of speaking was a principal object, to my certain knowledge, of the first friends to this college, I do wish that .. . . the corporation may find means . . to establish a professorship of English oratory." Nicholas Brown gave $5000 to endow the professorship in 1804. The college requirement of residence, the contacts in the college community with fellow students and with members of the teaching faculty probably were as educative as the academic work of study and in recitation and lec- ture. Keenness of analysis, thoughtful discussion, and eloquence in public speech were sought through the discipline of college studies and the practices of the college community. College education was also preparation to further study for entrance into the learned professions of the period. No better evidence of the value of the work done at Brown in the first sixty years may be found than the alumni.
tAnother lottery, granted in 1811, yielded a small amount.
ĮSeptember, 1803.
*Reduced since then, with substitution of other studies.
FIRST BAPTIST MEETING HOUSE, PROVIDENCE The Oldest Baptist Church in America
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HIGHER EDUCATION
From the following short list of 100t distinguished graduates have been omitted other hundreds of sterling citizens, patient and successful practitioners of chosen professions in church, education, law and medicine, and men of affairs, including, for example, judges of courts of inferior jurisdiction, members of state legislatures, college professors who did not become college presidents. Unless otherwise indicated with reference to public officers, the service was in Rhode Island, but the list shows also how widely Brown's sons were scattered and how the influence of the Rhode Island university was carried to other commonwealths and to nations beyond the seas. Included are the names of an acting Vice President of the United States, fourteen United States Senators, twenty-eight members of the National House of Rep- resentatives, a Secretary of War, a Secretary of State, eight Governors, three state chief edu- cational officers, thirteen chief justices and eleven other justices of state supreme or federal courts, five mayors of cities, nineteen college presidents, three Episcopal Bishops, besides America's first international lawyer, and Ministers to foreign countries. "Here they are": General James M. Varnum, 1769; Theodore Foster, 1770, United States Senator ; Samuel Eddy, 1787, lawyer, public officer, Congressman, Chief Justice ; Jonathan Maxcy, 1787, second President ; Jabez Bowen, 1788, Chief Justice, Georgia; James Burrill, 1788, Chief Justice, United States Senator ; James Fenner, 1789, Governor, President of Constitutional Conven- tion; Jeremiah Brown Howell, 1789, United States Senator; Asa Messer, 1790, third Pres- ident ; William Hunter, 1791, United States Senator, Minister to Brazil; James Brown Mason, 1791, Congressman ; Jonathan Russell, 1791, Congressman, Minister to Norway and Sweden; Nathaniel Hazard, 1792, Congressman; Samuel Willard Bridgham, 1794, Chancellor of the University, lawyer, first Mayor of Providence ; Solomon Sibley, 1794, Congressman; William Baylies, 1795, Congressman ; Ezekiel Whitman, 1795, Chief Justice, Maine ; Asa Aldis, 1796, Chief Justice, Vermont ; Tristam Burges, 1796, Professor of Belles Lettres and Oratory, Chief Justice, Congressman; John Holmes, 1796, Congressman, United States Senator, author ; James Ervin, 1797, Congressman ; Horace Everett, 1797, Congressman; Nathaniel Bullock, 1798, Lieutenant Governor; James Tallmadge, 1798, Congressman; Jeremiah Chaplin, 1799, President of Waterville College; Nathan Fellows Dixon, 1799, United States Senator ; John Pitman, 1799, Justice of United States District Court; John Mason Williams, 1801, Chief Justice, Massachusetts ; Henry Wheaton, 1802, Reporter of United States Supreme Court, Chargé d'Affaires, Denmark, Minister to Prussia, author and leading American writer on international law, chosen lecturer on international law at Harvard; Philip Allen, 1803, manufacturer, Governor, United States Senator ; John Reed, 1803, Congressman; Zebdiel Sampson, 1803, Congressman ; Virgil Maxcy, 1804, Chargé d'affaires, Belgium; Marcus Morton, 1804, lawyer, Congressman, Justice of Supreme Court of Massachusetts, member of Massachusetts Constitutional Convention ; Samuel Randall, 1804, Justice of Supreme Court ; William Durkee Williamson, 1804, lawyer, acting Governor of Maine, historian; Aaron Hobart, 1805, Congressman ; Walter Raleigh Danforth, 1805, lawyer, editor, Mayor of Prov- idence ; Theron Metcalf, 1805, lawyer and writer and editor of law books, Reporter and Jus- tice of Supreme Court of Massachusetts; Willard Preston, 1806, President of University of Vermont ; John Bailey, 1807, Congressman ; Adoniram Judson, 1807, missionary and author ; Ebenezer Stoddard, 1807, Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut, Congressman; Charles Wheeler, 1807, President of Rector College ; Abiel Bolles, 1808, President of Charleston Col- lege ; John Brown Francis, 1808, Governor, United States Senator ; William Learned Marcy, 1808, Justice of Supreme Court of New York, United States Senator, Governor of New York, Secretary of War, Secretary of State, editor ; Dutee Jerauld Pearce, 1808, Attorney General, Congressman ; John Hopkins Clarke, 1809, Congressman, United States Senator; Nicholas Brown, 1811, Consul to Italy, Lieutenant Governor; Daniel Wardwell, 1811, Congressman ;
1Of 1085 graduates.
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William Giles Goddard, 1812, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics, Professor of Belles Lettres, editor and author ; Richard Ward Greene, 1812, lawyer, Chief Justice; James Kinnicutt Angell, 1813, Reporter of Supreme Court, author of law books; Luke Drury, 1813, Justice of Supreme Court, author of new system of geography ; Job Durfee, 1813, Congress- man, Chief Justice, author ; Enoch Pond, 1813, President of Bangor Theological Seminary ; John Ruggles, 1813, United States Senator, author of United States patent law, 1836; Albert Smith, 1813, Congressman; Joseph Joslin, 1814, educator, President of People's Constitu- tional Convention; Joseph Adams, 1815, President of Charleston College, and of Geneva (Hobart) College; Wilbur Fisk, 1815, President of Wesleyan University, minister, member of State Board of Education of Connecticut; Charles Edward Forbes, 1815, Justice of Supreme Court of Massachusetts ; John Goldwire Polhill, Justice of Supreme Court, Georgia ; Benjamin Franklin Hallett, 1816, lawyer, editor of "Providence Journal"; Benjamin Bos- worth, 1816, Episcopal Bishop of Kentucky, State Superintendent of Education of Kentucky ; William Greene, 1817, Lieutenant Governor; Charles Jackson, 1817, Governor; William Read Staples, 1817, Chief Justice, editor, author; Jared Warner Williams, 1818, Congress- man, United States Senator, Governor of New Hampshire; Jesse Hartwell, 1819, educator, minister, President of Mt. Lebanon University ; Horace Mann, 1819, lawyer, educator, author, editor, Secretary of Massachusetts State Board of Education, Congressman, President of Antioch College; Rufus Babcock, 1821, President of Waterville College; Levi Haile, 1821, Justice of Supreme Court; Samuel Gridley Howe, 1821, soldier, naval surgeon, Superintend- ent of Perkins Institution for Blind, member of Massachusetts State Board of Education, author, educator ; Thomas Hopkins Webb, 1821, physician, editor of "Providence Journal" and "Common School Journal"; Thomas Mackie Burgess, 1822, Mayor of Providence; Alexis Caswell, 1822, Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, and acting Presi- dent of Brown, educator, minister, manufacturer, author; Samuel Leonard Crocker, 1822, manufacturer, Congressman ; Isaac Davis, 1822, educator, lawyer, Mayor of Worcester, member of Massachusetts State Board of Education; Samuel Starkweather, 1822, lawyer, Mayor of Cleveland; Samuel Ames, 1823, Chief Justice of Supreme Court, Reporter, author of Revised Statutes of Rhode Island, and of legal textbooks; Silas Axtell Crane, 1823, Presi- dent of Kemper College; Edward Mellen, 1823, Chief Justice, Massachusetts; George Den- ison Prentice, 1823, educator, editor of "Louisville Journal"; George Arnold Brayton, 1824, lawyer, Chief Justice of Supreme Court; George Gordon King, 1825, Congressman ; Chris- topher Robinson, 1825, Congressman, Minister to Peru; Barnas Sears, 1825, President of Brown, President of Newton Theological Seminary, Secretary of Massachusetts State Board of Education, author, editor; George Burgess, 1826, minister, Episcopal Bishop of Maine; Eleazar Carter Hutchinson, 1826, President of Kemper College; John Kingsbury, 1826, Commissioner of Public Schools, educator; Edwards Amasa Parke, 1826, educator, Profes- sor at Amherst and Andover Theological Seminary, author, historian, editor; Henry Wil- liams, 1826, lawyer, manufacturer, Congressman; John Henry Clifford, 1827, lawyer, Gov- ernor of Massachusetts ; Thomas Robinson Hunter, 1827, diplomat, Mayor of Newport ; John Pratt, 1827, educator, minister, farmer, President of Denison University; Israel Putnam, 1827, physician, Mayor of Bath, Maine; Lafayette Sabine Foster, 1828, educator, lawyer, United States Senator, acting Vice President of United States, Justice of Supreme Court of Connecticut, editor ; Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe, 1828, educator, minister, editor, author, Episcopal Bishop of Central Pennsylvania ; Joseph Thomas Robert, 1826, physician, minister, educator, President of Burlington University.
President Wayland, on taking office in February, 1827, threw all the vigor of robust physique and giant intellect into the work of reorganizing Brown University. In the later years of President Messer's administration, there had been marked relaxation of discipline,
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and occasionally disorder and destruction of property by student rioters. Discipline was restored by Wayland in college community life, in study hours and in the classroom, and was applied both to students and faculty. The former found themselves bound to quiet, orderly living in dormitories, to actual presence and work in study hours, and to regular attendance on an exacting and complete recitation schedule throughout the college year. Additional to the rigor of regulations, a stern but just man was in command. Students who complained at first of the new program learned to appreciate the progress that resulted from the strict regimen. Instructors were required to visit students' rooms for supervision, to report dis- order, infraction of rules and unsatisfactory accomplishment in studies, and to "occupy rooms in college during the hours appropriated to study." Enforcement of the rule last mentioned brought the medical school to an abrupt ending and precipitated resignations of professors, such as Tristam Burges, who had come to the college only to lecture. Wayland himself carried no textbook to class, nor did he permit his students to do so. Thus both instructor and student rose to the intellectual stature of independence of the text, and met on the common ground of acquaintance with the subject to be discussed. Both must be adequately prepared. Wayland's rule was extended to the college, thus: "No textbooks shall be brought into the recitation room, except the recitations of the learned languages." Within a few months Way- land had so quickened educational activity that he could recommend rigid entrance require- ments and enrich the college curriculum by introducing new studies. A chapter of Phi Beta Kappa was chartered in 1830 to encourage general high scholarship. Ten years later, after a visit to England, Wayland introduced the English practice of offering prizes for excellence in college studies. The almost revolutionary program inaugurated by President Wayland evoked criticism, but he pressed steadily onward. As he alarmed an exclusive "illuminati" by placing his hands in his side pockets while speaking from the platform, and by chewing tobacco in public, as well as by upsetting old and setting up new standards, he found favor with the body politic of practical men by reason of his intensely honest thinking, frank expres- sion, and firm, unflinching convictions. Requested in 1828 to make a survey of the public schools of Providence, his report* was epoch-making in constructive criticism, clear enunci- ation of principles vital to public education, and practical recommendations, most of which were undertaken immediately. Among other achievements early in his administration were: (I) The raising by popular subscription in 1831 of $25,000; as a permanent endowment for the college library, adoption of a plan for systematic accessions "so that the library may present a view of the progress and attainments of the human mind," and the appointment of a reg- ular librarian ; (2) the building of Manning Hall, 1834, gift of Nicholas Brown, as a house for library and chapel; (3) the building of Rhode Island Hall, as a science hall; and (4) a dwelling house for the President, both on land given by Nicholas Brown, who also sub- scribed $10,000 as an initial gift, conditional upon the raising of an equal amount by other subscriptions. A devise of land carrying the college estate easterly to Hope Street, and a bequest of $10,000 in the will of Nicholas Brown, who died in 1841, carried the total of his gifts to Brown University to $160,000. The expansion of the college estate involved an increase in expenditure for current maintenance ; Wayland's rigorous insistence upon high scholastic standards turned frivolous students away, and the number enrolled decreased steadily. Losses in the number of graduates was not so great, however, which indicated strong holding power, and excellent and successful teaching.
A list of fifty distinguished graduates during Wayland's administration includes three Governors of Rhode Island, two Lieutenant Governors of Rhode Island and one of Connect- icut ; eight members of the national House of Representatives, two United States Senators;
*Chapter XVI.
+$19,437.50 subscribed and placed at interest to accumulate $25,000.
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two Rhode Island Chief Justices, besides one who was elected and declined, the Chief Justice of Arizona, Kansas and Ohio, three Rhode Island Justices of the Supreme Court, and one of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts; President Robinson of Brown and Presidents of Almira College, Brownsville Female College, Granville College, Waterville College (two), Eno College, Andrews College, Des Moines College, Swarthmore College, Crozier Theological Seminary, Monongahela College, University of South Carolina, Colby College, University of Michigan, University of Vermont, and a Dean of Yale Law School; Mayors of Boston and Bangor; a national Secretary of State, and Ministers to Turkey (two) and China; Henry B. Anthony and James B. Angell, editors of the "Providence Journal"; Samuel Greene Arnold and Henry Crawford Dorr, historians; Jeremiah Lewis Diman, James Robinson Boise, Albert Harkness, John Larkin Lincoln, George Ide Chace, Samuel Stillman Greene, all brilliant scholars and teachers ; Nathan Bishop, first American Superintendent of Schools; Alexander Burgess, Bishop of Quincy ; a Rhode Island Commissioner of Public Schools; James W. C. Ely, one of the best known and most beloved of Rhode Island physicians; Samuel Sullivan ("Sunset") Cox, poet ; George Parks Fisher, author ; Augustus Hoppin, artist, and Reuben A. Guild, beloved by Brown men as librarian, and historian of the University.
A college cannot be maintained, however, unless its income is sufficient to pay the salaries of teachers and other current expenditures. When the time approached in which the college no longer would be able to meet its financial obligations, President Wayland tendered his resig- nation in 1849. The corporation requested that the resignation be withdrawn, and Wayland consented conditionally upon the appointment of a committee of inquiry and investigation. It was clear that his purpose had been to precipitate a situation that would necessitate action. In a report to the corporation on March 28, 1850, President Wayland directed attention to the failure of American endowed liberal arts colleges to meet the pressing demands of the nation for men trained in science, and to the loss of students in American colleges generally "because we do not furnish the education desired by the people." His view was not new; in 1842 he had published "Thoughts on the Present Collegiate System in the United States," in which he had sustained the thesis "that the present system of collegiate education does not meet the wants of the public." Wayland was an educational reformer, who chafed at the conservatism of Brown University, while he endeavored to use to the utmost advantage every opportunity to educate the youth committed to his guidance.
WAYLAND'S PLAN FOR A NEW HIGHER EDUCATION -- President Wayland recommended an entirely new plan for collegiate education, involving (I) abandonment of the traditional term of four years, every student to be allowed to carry on, without reference to time, such studies as he chose; (2) a liberal elective system, in which "every student might study what he chose, all that he chose, and nothing but what he chose"; (3) completion of courses once begun without interruption ; (4) new courses on subjects not theretofore included in the cur- riculum. The complete curriculum should include (1) Latin, two years; (2) Greek, two years; (3) three modern languages; (4) pure mathematics, two years; (5) mechanics, optics, and astronomy, with or without mathematical demonstration, one and one-half years ; (6) chemistry, physiology, and geology, one and one-half years; (7) English language and rhetoric, one year; (8) moral and intellectual philosophy, one year; (9) political economy, one term; (10) history, one term; (II) science of teaching; (12) principles of agriculture ; (13) application of chemistry to the arts; (14) application of science to the arts; (15) science of law. Wayland suggested that the changes proposed would increase the enrollment of students, which was the immediate purpose, by inducing many to remain longer, five or six years, and by inviting to enter college many others who could not remain four years but who could, in shorter time, complete one or more parts of the curriculum. He urged that the
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