History of Davidson County, Tennessee, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 103

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia, J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1013

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BIOGRAPHIES.

nary ; and, having resigned the presidency of the Univer- sity of Nashville in October following, he removed to New Albany in December, and entered on the duties of the pro- fessorship at the beginning of the next year. Here he con- tinued usefully and acceptably employed until April, 1853, when he resigned the office, contrary to the unanimous wish of the board.

The remaining two years of his life were spent chiefly in study, devotion, and intercourse with his friends.

In May, 1855, he was appointed a commissioner to the General Assembly which met in Nashville that year. He took an active part in its deliberations, and was the guest of his son-in-law, the Rev. J. W. Hoyte. On Wednesday morning, May 23d, he was struck with apoplexy, and died on Friday, the 25th. His funeral-rites were under the direction of the General Assembly on the Monday following. The providence which thus led to his return and decease in the scene of his great life-work and in the midst of his children was much noticed.

Dr. Lindsley left five children,-three sons and two daughters. All his sons were graduated at the University of Nashville. One of them, Adrian Van Sinderen, has been secretary and treasurer of the board of trustees of the Uni- versity of Nashville more than forty years, and has been postmaster of Nashville and senator from Davidson County in the State Legislature. The second, Nathaniel Lawrence, was professor of languages in Cumberland University, doing much in founding that famous university. He also estab- lished Greenwood Seminary, in Wilson County, and is justly styled by Killebrew "Tennessee's great educator and scholar." The third, John Berrien, after an interval of five years, succeeded his father as head of the University of Nashville. His daughter, Margaret Lawrence, married Samuel Crock- ett, Esq., of Nashville. His youngest child, Eliza Berrien, married Rev. J. W. Hoyte, now also of Nashville.

HIS CHIEF WORK AT NASHVILLE.

It is known that he declined the highest position in the gift of his Alma Mater and cast his lot in the West con- trary to the wishes, and iudced with the deep regret, of his friends at the East. Who can tell the career of honor and usefulness which might have awaited him there had he ac- cepted that important position ? Who can say that a presi- dency at Nassau Hall, running through a quarter of a cen- tury, would not have presented a career of usefulness fully equal to that of Dwight at Yale, or Nott at Union, or any other which our country has yet afforded ? Still, we hesi- tate not to think that he acted wisely and well in going just when he did to what might then be called the wild woods of Tennessee. We have no manner of doubt that he there achieved a greater and more important work for his genera- tion than he could possibly have ever done at Princeton, New Haven, or any other Eastern seat of learning. The heart of man deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps. A great State was just emerging from the wilder- ness,-building its churches and school-houses, constructing its works of internal improvement, bringing its ,virgin soil into cultivation, and just ready to lay the foundations of its literary and scientific institutions. The greatest work which any State can ever do for its children in all time to

come, that of forming and putting into operation its sys- tems of liberal and popular education, was here to be done. A master-workman was needed for the occasion,-one who had the knowledge to grasp the problem, and the genius, energy, and enthusiasm to solve it. That master-spirit was found in Philip Lindsley. It is not too much to say that, if Cumberland College had made her selection from the entire circle of the Eastern colleges, she could not probably have found any man more competent and better furnished for the task, better prepared, by all his tastes, studies, and attainments, to be the very pioneer, missionary, and chan- pion of collegiate or university education at the South- west.

Having thus selected his ground, and driven down his stakes, at a point which was then the extreme southwestern outpost of educational institutions, he determined once for all not to abandon it. Nothing is more striking in all his history, and indicative of that firmness of purpose which constituted so important an clement in his character, than the fixed and persistent determination which kept him from ever leaving Nashville till his work was done. No induce- ment from abroad, and no amount of difficulty at home, could ever wean him from this his first love of Western life. There was scarcely a year of the twenty-six when he might not have gone to other posts of usefulness and honor. Offers came to him unsolicited, from the East, the North, the South. To those who understood the discouragements which he had to encounter at Nashville, and the repeated liberal inducements held out to him from other quarters, there was a touch of the heroic and sublime in that steady, unalterable resolve which kept him at his chosen post so long, and from first to last so confident of success.

. Says Dr. Sprague, " Though Dr. Lindsley never, directly or indirectly, sought an appointment from any literary in- stitution, such was his reputation that he was solicited to the presidency of such institutions more frequently, per- haps, than any other man who has ever lived in this coun- try. In addition to the cases already mentioned (in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio), he was chosen to the presi- dency of Washington College, Lexington, Va., and of Dick- inson College, Carlisle, in 1829; was chosen twice to the presidency of the University of Alabama, at Tuscaloosa, in 1830; was chosen provost of the University of Pennsyl- vania, at Philadelphia, and president of the College of Louisiana, at Jackson, in 1834; president of South Ala- bama College, at Marion, in 1837; and president of Tran- sylvania University in 1839; all which appointments he promptly declined, though he was greatly urged to accept them."

Now, the explanation of all this is that he saw from the first, with the clear intuition of his strong, practical . mind, that there was a great work to do in Tennessee,-one not to be finished in a day or a year, but demanding the labor of a lifetime; and accordingly, instead of frittering away his energies on half a dozen different schemes and points of in- fluence, he determined to make the most of life by devoting it all to that one work, and never to leave it until those who should come after him might be able, upon the founda- tion which he had laid, to rear a noble and lasting struc- ture.

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HISTORY OF DAVIDSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE.

HIS SPOKEN AND PUBLISHED ADDRESSES.

The published writings of Dr. Lindsley consist chiefly of his baccalaureate addresses and occasional sermons. His great theme, even in his sermons, was education and its kindred topics. In one of his ablest published discourses, delivered at the installation of Dr. Edgar, in Nashville, in 1833, he speaks of his preaching in the following terms, indicating a far humbler estimate of it, in his own mind, than the public were accustomed to take : " My own par- ticular sphere of ministerial duty has ever been extremely humble and limited, as it regards age and numbers, though not unimportant in reference to the ultimate welfare of the church and the public. My province too has always de- manded a different kind and form of preaching from that which obtains in a popular assembly. A word in season- a little here and a little there-and something every day to one or a dozen, as occasion offered or suggested-without touching on points of theological or ecclesiastical contro- versy, and without the formal method of regular sermoniz- ing-has been the fashion of my own very imperfect essays in the good work of the gospel ministry." And hence it was that, always regarding himself as an educator of the young, he was often, even in his public discourses on the Sabbath, found pleading the cause of education.

Dr. Sprague gives the following list of his publications : " A Plea for the Theological Seminary at Princeton" (sev- eral editions), 1821 ; " Early Piety Recommended" in a ser- mon delivered in the college chapel, Princeton, 1821 ; " The Duty of Observing the Sabbath," explained and enforced in a sermon addressed more particularly to the young, 1821 ; " Improvement of Time," two discourses delivered in the chapel of the College of New Jersey, 1822; " A Farewell Sermon," delivered in the chapel of the College of New Jersey, 1824; " An Address at his Inauguration" as presi- dent of Cumberland College, 1825; " The Cause of Edu- cution in Tennessee ;" " A Baccalaureate Address," 1826 ; " A Baccalaureate Address," 1827 ; " A Baccalaureate Ad- dress," 1829; " A Baccalaureate Address," 1831 ; " A Bac-

calaurcate Address," 1832; " An Address on the Centen- nial Birthday of George Washington," 1832; " A Dis- course at the Installation of the Rev. John T. Edgar," Nashville, 1833; " A Baccalaureate," entitled " Speech in Behalf of the University of Nashville," 1837; " A Lecture on Popular Education," 1837 ; " A Baccalaureate Ad- dress," entitled "Speech about Colleges," 1848.

Besides these he wrote various articles on education for the public prints, and contributed two learned and able papers to the " American Biblical Repository" on the " Primitive State of Mankind," which excited much attention at the time both in this country and in Europe. Indeed, he was one of the first scholars, if not the first, of our times to take the ground which has since become so common, and has recently been so ably argued in Kitto's " Cyclo- pedia of Biblical Literature,"-viz., that man's primeval condition was not that of a savage, but a civilized being. Says Dr. Kitto (Art. Antediluvians), " That a degree of cultivation was the primitive condition of man, from which savageism in particular quarters was a degeneracy, and that he has not, as too generally has been supposed, worked himself up from an original savage state to his present posi-

tion, has been powerfully argued by Dr. Lindsley, and is strongly corroborated by the conclusions of modern ethno- graphical research." Indeed, we find Dr. Lindsley " power- fully" defending this view (for it was a favorite theme with him, which he held with all the tenacity of a discoverer), not only in the " Biblical Repository," but as far back as 1825, in his inaugural address, in which he shows that the old infidel idea of a man's being at the start a sort of noble savage is contradicted alike by reason, revelation, and history.

But this point would lead us too far from our present purpose. Besides these publications Dr. Lindsley left other valuable writings, in carefully prepared manuscript, bearing on the same general topics discussed in those already men- tioned. The writer heard many of these baccalaureate and other addresses when they were delivered, and can bear witness to the powerful impression which they produced. It is questionable whether any man in our country has erer made more of baccalaureate addresses and done a mere effective service with them than Dr. Lindsley. They were always prepared with the utmost care, and charged with his maturest and weightiest thoughts. They were generally delivered to the largest audiences ever assembled in Nash- ville, consisting often of legislators, judges, professional gentlemen from all parts of the State, and the very élite of the city. He had made it a point in the start never to speak in public till he had something to say and was fully prepared to say it. And such was his reputation, after a few efforts of this kind, that both in the college and the city the baccalaureate was looked forward to as the great occasion of the year. He seemed never so much in his true element as on the commencement stage. And he came forth on these occasions, and delivered this heavy artillery of learning and eloquence with much of the power and success exhibited by our ablest statesmen in their set speeches in Congress. There was in fact scarcely any one instrumentality employed by Dr. Lindsley during his whole career at, Nashville through which he seemed to exert a deeper, wider, and more wholesome influence on the publis mind than these addresses. They were for the most part published in pamphlet form, and some of them passed through several editions. Thus heard and read by the leading men of Tennessee, and incorporated, as so much established truth, into the living thought of all his pupils, they were reproduced in a thousand different forms, and became part and parcel of the public sentiment in all the educated circles of the State.

And they were well deserving of the honor. We have just now had occasion to read most of them over again after the lapse of many years. And we have been more than ever impressed with their wisdom and beauty. We know not where to find, in the same compass, within our whole range of reading, so much sound doctrine, wise coun- sel, and soul-stirring sentiment on the subject of the educa- tion of the young. There are some persons who look with disparagement upon our pamphlet literature, and shrink, with a sort of dignified contempt, from the idea of a great man burying himself in a pamphlet, as the common say- ing is. But no man can read the pamphlet addresses of Dr. Lindsley, especially if he had ever had the good for-

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tune to see and hear him in the delivery of one of them, without feeling that they were, in his hands, a powerful engine of doing good. If he had spent his life in writing large and learned books, he could doubtless have filled a wider sphere and gained a more extended fame, but we have no idea that he could ever thus have reached and in- doctrinated the leading minds of Tennessee, as he did by these apparently ephemeral but really effective spoken and published addresses. We consider his example in this re- spect worthy of all praise and all imitation on the part of those who, called to the presidency of our struggling col- leges, will find it necessary, not only to supply the demand for instruction within the college walls, but continually to create a demand for that supply without by inspiring the people with enthusiasm for learning, and indoctrinating them into large and liberal views of the subject.

By these annual tracts on education, containing the con- densed results of his own reflection, reading, and experi- ence, fraught with the living spirit of his own burning en- thusiasm for knowledge, and sent forth with the high in- dorsement of his acknowledged scholarship, he gave a dignity to the teacher's office in Tennessee, and elevated the whole standard of popular instruction in the Southwest to an extent which is none the less real and salutary be- cause it was done so gradually that the public mind, even to this day, is scarcely conscious of the change, or to whom it is most indebted for the elevating influence. By this we do not mean to affirm that Dr. Lindsley did all the work alone, nor to detract aught from the valuable services of his coadjutors and predecessors. There were men before him at Nashville, preparing materials for the temple of learning, even in the wilderness, as the well-known and honored names of Priestly and. Hume can bear witness. And there were men with him at Nashville-men worthy of their high calling, and master-builders, each in his sev- eral department-who stood by him and nobly seconded all his efforts : such men as Troost, and Hamilton, and Thom- son, and Cross, whose names will long remain as a tower of strength in Tennessee. But what we mean to say is, that Dr. Lindsley, from the time be set foot in Nashville, was the mainspring of the movement,-the master-spirit of the great work of liberal and popular education. The very fact that he gathered around him, and through all embarrass- . ment and discouragement ever kept at his side, a corps of instructors fully equal to any in our country, is proof itself of the important part we have ascribed to him. The fact that literary and scientific men, and many eminent teachers, attracted by his influence, soon found their way to Tennes- sce,-that rare and costly standard works, and bookstores on a scale not then known anywhere else in the West, began to be multiplied at Nashville,-is additional proof of it. Certain it is that, under his leadership, there was an influence exerted and a work done which to this day could not have been realized, unless indeed God had raised up some other leader of like spirit and ability .*

We may form some conception of his work and influence

if we consider the number and character of the pupils whom he educated. We are not able to state the whole number ; but we find in his address of 1848 one important item. Up to that time there had been three hundred and ninety- eight regular graduates of the university, and fifteen bun- dred others had received instruction without graduating. Here then we have an aggregate of nearly nineteen hundred youths receiving the elements of an accomplished collegiate education, nearly four hundred of whom completed the whole literary and scientific course. These were from all parts of Tennessee, and from all classes of the people,-nay, from all parts of the Southwest. A large number of them were sons of prominent and wealthy citizens. But the rich and the poor here met together and, pari passu, struggled upwards to the high places of knowledge and power. It mattered not, when they went forth, from what rank they had sprung. They went forth brothers and equals,-all to take the foremost rank and become themselves heads and leaders of the people. They went forth into all parts of the great Southwest-furnished with the panoply of liberal learning, and fired with the enthusiasm of the Gamaliel at whose feet they had been sitting-to plead the great cause of education, to take part in laying the foundations of new States, new colleges and seminaries, and everywhere, from Tennessee to Texas and California, to fill the highest posi- tions of honor and usefulness in the State and the Church.

The writer has had occasion to know something of these great Southwestern States,-something of the men who have founded their institutions, and of the influences which have moulded the character of their people during the last quarter of a century,-and, without wishing to detract a jot or tittle from other eminent and useful laborers, he can bear witness that he has visited no point in all this vast region where the influence of Philip Lindsley had not been felt, and where some of his pupils were not found in the foremost rank of honorable men, bravely battling for the true and the good. Often, while weary himself with the heat and burden of the day, in some humble and distant corner of the field, has he felt his own heart cheered to renewed ac- tivity, as he has looked back to that unpretending college hillside at Nashville, and thought of the master-magician there-the very Arnold of our western colleges-who, quietly, unobserved by the world, and wielding a power greater than that of Prospero in the Tempest, was sending forth his influences to bless and save his country. What an illustration of the power of knowledge,-of the way in which a good man may perpetuate his influence ! Many of these nineteen hundred pupils have become educators. Through them the head-master is still teaching-teaching in the colleges, universities, high schools, common schools, medical and law schools-teaching in the pulpit, the press, the courts of justice, the legislative halls-teaching at the firesides, in the counting-rooms, in the work-shops, in the banking-houses of this great Mississippi Valley. The waves of popular and liberal education, thus created as by a great central elevating force, are still rolling, and ever widening as they roll. It was fortunate, it was providential, for the Southwest, that such a force should be applied just when and where it was.

But perhaps the most striking illustration of his influ-

. . "The Life and Works of Philip Lindsley," in three very hand- some volumer, were brought out in 1866 by J. B. Lippincott & Co., of Philadelphia, ably edited by Le Roy J. Halsey, D.D., of Chicago.

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ence as an educator is seen at Nashville itself,-the scene of his longest labors, the home of his adoption, the resting- place where his ashes sleep. We have no citizenship at Nashville, and hence cannot be accused of partiality in what we are about to say. But of all we have seen and know we may safely say there is no city west of the moun- taines which seems to us so justly entitled to be called the Athens of the West as Nashville. And for that distinc- tion we think there is no man to whom Nashville is so much indebted as Dr. Lindsley. If any man ever made his mark deep and ineffaccable upon a place and people, he made it at Nashville. We say this, too, with a full knowl- edge and appreciation of the eminent labors of his compeers and predecessors. There were many faithful laborers with him and before him, whose names the people of Nashville will not willingly let die,-serving well their generation in all the professions and vocations of life,-Priestly, Hume, Jennings, Weller, Trimble, Lawrence, Troost, Hamilton, Stevens, Berry, Craighead, Crutcher, Porter, Yeatman, Woods, Shelby, McGavock, Ewing, Foster, Nichol, Mc- Nairy, Gibbs, Robertson, Roane, Overton, Rutledge, Hunt, Tannehill, Campbell, Polk, Grundy, Fletcher, Cannon, Carrol, Jackson, and many others,-all intimately associated with the reputation of the city abroad and her prosperity at home. But among all these eminent and honored citi- zens, we doubt not that for deep, wide, and lasting influence the foremost place is due to Dr. Lindsley.

And now we ask, To whom is Nashville more indebted for all this prosperity and improvement, this intellectual, moral, social, educational, and even material development which now renders her pre-eminent in the South, than to the man who, even at the darkest hour of her temporary depression, when her own sons were ready to forsake her, would never leave her, but clung to her through all vicissitudes, determined neither to give up her university nor suffer its real estate to be sacrificed ? We had an opportunity only a few years ago of visiting Nashville, and while there of comparing her past and present condition. We examined somewhat closely into the influences which have been at work to make her what she is. In all we saw and heard we were more and more impressed with the conviction that the prominent ele- ments und agencies of her growth and of her present elevated character as a city were those which had origin- ated on that same College Hill. We found that the "Old University," though for a season suspended, was in fact still governing the city. We found that most of the leading men in all the learned professions, mercantile pursuits, and even mechanic trades, had, in one way or another, been connected with the university and in a measure educated by it. We found that many of her most gifted alumni from other parts of the State, and even from other States, after rising to wealth and influence at home, had worked their way back to Nashville and were now contributing all the resources of their talents, their experience, their attain- ments, and their fortunes to the onward and upward growth of the city. We found that, thus congregating at Nashville and throwing the whole weight of their character, their public spirit, their enterprise, their love of education, into all the intercourse of society and all the walks of business, and the whole public administration of the city, they were not only

making the capital of Tennessee an emporium of wealth and an Athens of learning, but sending forth an influence over all the surrounding region,-nay, one that must be felt in every nook and corner of the State. We found that thus there was a great elevating moral power at Nashville, -the power of letters, the power of education, the power of her own university. And when we saw all this-saw how the city had grown, and why it had grown to its pres- ent enviable position of intellectual and moral power-we remembered some of those matchless appeals and arguments and vindications in favor of the higher learning as the nucleus of all that was great and good which for twenty- six years Nashville had never failed to hear. The predic- tions were all fulfilled or fulfilling, though the eloquent tongue that spoke them was now silent. And we felt that if Nashville should ever erect a public monument to any man, the honor was due to her eminent educator Philip Lindsley .*

JUDGE J. C. GUILD.

Judge J. C. Guild was born in Virginia; his parents were Scotch-Irish. ITis father, Walter Guild, was a native of Scotland, and was educated in Edinburgh ; his mother, Elizabeth Conn, was of Irish descent. Their children were Dr. James Guild, a distinguished physician and surgeon of Tuscaloosa, Ala., now living at the advanced age of eighty- one, and Josephus Conn Guild, his brother, four years younger.

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History of Davidson County, Tennessee, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 103

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford) Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Philadelphia, J.W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1013

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia, J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1013