Erika Lindemann
Though the cornerstone for
Old East had
been laid on October 12, 1793, the
trustees had difficulty securing faculty for the new university. No one
had applied for the position by December 1793. Rev. Dr.
Samuel Eusebius McCorkle
, a highly regarded educator who
in 1784 had initiated the bill to establish the
University, might have been an excellent choice, but
William Richardson Davie
opposed him on several grounds.
McCorkle
was a
Presbyterian minister, and
Davie
distrusted the influence of preachers, even though
he understood that clergymen had the most respectable academic credentials of
his day. More important,
McCorkle
and
Davie
disagreed on the nature of a university curriculum.
McCorkle
supported a traditional classical curriculum,
based on a knowledge of Latin and Greek and supporting a philosophy of mental
discipline that was as fashionable in education as was the doctrine of original
sin in theology.
Davie
, on the other hand, held much more liberal views of
a university education. For him, the curriculum should be practical, grounded
in the sciences, and conducted primarily in English.
Though
McCorkle
was among the seven men nominated to head the new
university,
1 on
January 10, 1794, the trustees elected
Rev. David
Ker
.
Ker
was a
graduate of
Trinity College, Dublin, who had recently emigrated to
Fayetteville,
NC, where he was pastor of a
Presbyterian congregation and headmaster of a local
academy. He was thirty-six, married to
Mary, who
also had been educated in
Ireland, and the
father of at least one child by the time the family moved to
Chapel
Hill. Called the "presiding professor" and serving as the
professor of humanities, he received a salary of $300 per year,
two-thirds of the tuition receipts,
2 and the
use of the president's house. By April 1795,
Ker
was
joined by
Charles
Wilson Harris
, a 1792 graduate of the
College
of New Jersey (
Princeton) who was appointed the tutor of mathematics at a
salary of $100 per year, the remaining one-third of tuition receipts,
free board at commons, and the use of a room in
Old East.
Presiding professor
Ker
lasted
only eighteen months. Student disorders and sectional politics forced his
resignation in July 1796.
Harris
reports that
Ker
was
"a furious
Republican," and other sources imply that he became
an outspoken infidel, though the nature of his religious views is unclear.
Offending both
Christians and
Federalists on the
board of
trustees,
Ker
lost
their support, and as
Battle
reports, "much against his inclination he was
constrained to send in his resignation" (
1:100). Turning to
Samuel McCorkle
, the
trustees elected him professor of moral philosophy hoping
that he would replace
Ker
as
presiding professor. When
McCorkle
requested a housing allowance, should he later be
replaced as presiding professor, the
board
refused his terms. Instead, they asked
Harris
to take charge for the five months remaining in
1796.
Harris
had given notice that he would leave the
University in December 1796 to become a lawyer, but he
recommended
Joseph
Caldwell
, a twenty-three-year-old
Presbyterian minister who had been a student at the
College
of New Jersey (
Princeton) in the class ahead of
Harris'
. On being invited to head the
University,
Caldwell
accepted "with great reluctance."
Though
Caldwell
remained at the
University until his death in 1835, he much preferred
teaching mathematics to being an administrator. In 1797, the year in which the
chapel was completed,
Caldwell
threatened to leave unless he could relinquish
the duties of presiding professor. To induce him to stay, the
trustees agreed to let him teach mathematics, retitled the
presiding professor's position, and appointed
James
Smiley Gillaspie
as "principal" of the
University.
Gillaspie
, who also taught natural philosophy, proved
especially unpopular with students, and rebellions against him and the rest of
the faculty took their toll on enrollments, which dropped from 115 students to
about 70 in 1799. Unable to restore order, all of the faculty resigned.
Caldwell
was the only professor to be rehired, and once
again he became the chief administrative officer. In 1804 the trustees changed
his title from principal of the
university to president. In 1812
Caldwell
again resigned to become a fulltime professor of
mathematics.
Robert
Hett Chapman
, a Peace
Federalist, became president and almost immediately began
to be in trouble with the state's
Republicans. In the eyes of many students and their
parents, his opposition to the
War of 1812 made him a traitor. Students harassed him in 1814 and again in 1816,
when he moved to suspend a student for delivering a speech without
accommodating the president's corrections. The speech, published in a several
North
Carolina newspapers, and the
University's response to it appear here. After
Chapman's
resignation in 1816,
Caldwell
was reelected president, a position he held until
his death in 1835.
Between 1800 and 1818, the size of the faculty remained relatively
stable at two professors and two or three tutors.
Caldwell
remained professor of mathematics throughout this
period, but the professorship of languages changed frequently.
3 In 1818
two new professors joined the faculty,
Denison
Olmsted
as professor of chemistry and
Elisha
Mitchell
as professor of mathematics and natural philosophy.
Olmsted
and
Mitchell
were both
Yale
graduates. In 1819
Shepard Kosciusko Kollock
, a graduate of the
College
of New Jersey (
Princeton) at the age of sixteen, became the
University's first professor of rhetoric and logic. Despite
persistent difficulties in recruiting and retaining qualified teachers
throughout the early years of the institution's history, the faculty quickly
had grown from one to five professors (four of them
Presbyterian, one an
Episcopalian). With the addition of these new faculty
members, the institution and its curriculum were poised for a decade of
growth.