Erika Lindemann
Establishing a University involved more than locating a site,
constructing a building, and hiring a few teachers. It also required developing
relationships among citizens, politicians, clergymen, faculty members and
tutors, parents, and students. These groups formed a network of social
connections whereby the institution gained its authority and received its
financial support. Building these sustaining relationships was especially
difficult in the 1820s.
The state of North Carolina was perennially caught up in sectional
controversies between citizens living in the eastern part of the state and
those living in the west. Influential eastern planters, most of them
slaveholders, were principally interested in protecting their property and
maintaining their control of the government. They routinely defeated
legislative initiatives supporting tariffs or requiring additional property
taxes—including taxes on slaves as property. The small farmers in the
west, on the other hand, saw "internal improvements"—roads,
bridges, canals—as crucial to improving their lives economically. Without
such improvements, commerce with markets in the east would continue to be
limited. With little industry, few banks, and a single port in Wilmington,
North Carolina would remain a poor, ignorant agricultural state. By the 1820s
North Carolinians also were beginning to struggle with the moral and economic
evil of slavery, which consumed resources in the east that might otherwise have
improved agriculture and developed industry in the west. The North Carolina
delegation to the US Congress split its vote on the Missouri Compromise
(1819-20), the east supporting the extension of slavery, the west opposing it.
Politically speaking, then, the west and east had different priorities, and a
college education had value insofar as it supported these goals—in the
east, conserving a way of life for a powerful elite, and in the west, serving
as an "improvement" whereby people could advance themselves.
If the politicians may have cared too little about the
University,
religious leaders may have cared too much. Some argued that the
University was
"too
Presbyterian"; beginning with
Davie
, most of its founders and
faculty had been educated at
Yale or the
College of New Jersey (
Princeton).
Others, including many
Presbyterians, thought that the
board of trustees
included too few clergymen and that the
University was entirely too secular.
Periodic religious revivals in
North Carolina"produced sharp differences
between those who thought that higher education was a function of the church .
. . and those who feared that religious institutions might again become a
threat to republican government" (
Snider 48). Although religious groups
petitioned the legislature for a second university, they were unsuccessful.
However, their campaigns to promote sectarian higher education eventually
resulted in the founding of
Wake Forest Institute (
Baptist) in 1836 and
Davidson College (
Presbyterian) in 1837. Back in
Chapel Hill, meanwhile,
students attended daily prayers and a service in the Chapel on Sunday. They
also prepared recitations on religious works for Sunday afternoon classes.
Throughout the 1820s the faculty numbered five professors and two or
three tutors. President
Joseph Caldwell
, a graduate of the
College of New
Jersey (
Princeton), taught moral philosophy and metaphysics. In his absence,
Yale graduate
Elisha Mitchell,
professor of mathematics and natural philosophy,
served as acting president. When
Denison Olmsted
, who had joined the
University
faculty in 1818 as professor of chemistry, left
Chapel Hill in 1825 to return
to
Yale,
Mitchell
became professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and geology.
James
Phillips
was appointed to
Mitchell's
old chair of mathematics and natural
philosophy.
William Hooper
, a
University of North Carolina alumnus, taught
Latin and Greek until 1822, when he resigned for reasons of ill health.
Ethan
Allen Andrews
, a graduate of
Yale, succeeded
Hooper
until 1828. The
University's first professor of rhetoric and logic
Shepard Kollock
, a graduate
of the
College of New Jersey (
Princeton), remained on the faculty until 1825,
when he accepted a call to a
Presbyterian church in
Norfolk, VA. At
Kollock's
resignation,
William Hooper
was persuaded to rejoin the faculty as the
professor of rhetoric and logic. Though
Hooper
held the position for three
years, he preferred teaching Latin and Greek. When
Andrews
resigned in 1828,
Hooper
resumed teaching the ancient languages, and
Mitchell
voluntarily added
the duties of teaching rhetoric and logic to his own already significant
responsibilities. In 1826
Nicholas Marcellus Hentz
was appointed to the
professorship of modern languages, teaching primarily French.
The 1820s saw the campus improve in appearance as new buildings and
renovations were begun. The
University had abandoned the old grammar school in
1819 because several private academies in the area had begun preparing students
for college. That same year, however, a shortage of rooms on campus and the
prospect of good returns on the sale of
Tennessee lands prompted the
board of
trustees to authorize $10,000 for the construction of a new dormitory.
In 1822 an additional $20,000 was borrowed "for repairing the
present & erecting new Buildings" (
Henderson 84). On July 24, 1822,
the cornerstone was laid for
Old West, a residence hall facing
Old East and
completed in 1823. A third floor also was added to
Old East, the original
"college," and a new chapel
Gerrard Hall was begun, though it would
not be completed until 1837. The construction was supervised by Capt.
William
Nichols of
New York, the state architect, who also was overseeing renovations
of the capitol building in
Raleigh.
Despite the
trustees' good intentions, Professors
Mitchell
and
Caldwell
thought that the building program misdirected funds urgently needed
for books and scientific equipment. "The first impression of enlightened
strangers is uniformly favorable,"
Mitchell
wrote to the
board. "But
when we show them our library and inform them that we have little or no
philosophical apparatus, we sink even more than is reasonable in their
estimation" (
Battle 1:281). In 1824
Caldwell
successfully petitioned the
trustees for $6,000 to be divided equally between books and scientific
equipment. He pledged to supervise their purchase personally, by traveling at
his own expense to
England,
Scotland, and the
Continent. In May 1824, he left
Chapel Hill and was gone for almost a year. He returned with 979 books and
$3,361.35 worth of equipment (
Battle 1:294). Though he overspent his
budget by $1,238, the
trustees later reimbursed him.
As
North Carolinians migrated westward, the state's declining
population affected enrollments. Between 1790 and 1830, the population of
North
Carolina dropped from fourth to fifth place nationally, and between 1815 and
1850 one-third of its citizens left the state, the 1830s being the decade of
heaviest migration (
Powell,
North Carolina through Four
Centuries 249).
University enrollments were healthy during the first half
of the 1820s, rising to over 170 students by 1823. By 1827, however, only
seventy-six students were enrolled, a decline causing concern among faculty
members and
trustees. Some attributed falling enrollments to a financial panic
in 1825 that made money scarce.
President Caldwell
was inclined to think that
economic pressures were only part of the explanation. He believed that the
decrease was partly attributable to the establishment of other colleges and
universities in the region.
South Carolina College and
Franklin College (later,
the Universities of
South Carolina and
Georgia, respectively) had opened in
1801, and the
University of Virginia began classes in March 1825 with eight
faculty members and sixty-eight students.
Caldwell
and others believed that
some of these students might have attended the
University of North Carolina
were it not for the fact that they now were able to pursue their educations
closer to home.