Caldwell, Joseph, 1773-1835
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[Chapel Hill, November 8, 1796]
Revd Sir
I arrived at this place on the 31
st of Octo
r and on the second day after my arrival entered into the business of the
class. There has not as yet been a meeting of the
trustees of
the
University, so as formally to appoint me to the professorship, but
there will be one either the last of this month or in the beginning of the next.
M
r Harris
will then present his resignation and
propose me as his successor. The
university is almost entirely in
infancy. The place appears to have been cut out of the woods. Only one of the
buildings and that of the smaller kind is finished. The
trustees are endeavouring
to engage an undertaker for the largest which will be 115 feet long and 56
broad. It will stand at right angles to the two smallest. The foundation is laid
for a chapel, but when it will be completed is entirely uncertain, as the mason
and his negroes have spent the favorable fall they have had in raising the
foundation to the surface of the ground. The agreement specified that the
building is to be finished on the first of July. The sum of money which the
trustees offer for the largest building is 10 or 12000 £ .
There are upwards of 100 students here. A majority of them, however, belong to
the preparatory school. The school is connected with the
university,
and is kept
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in it. The President's house is well
finished. It will be 100 yards distant from the nearest building of the
university.
I went to the city of
Raleigh two or three days ago, and had an opportunity of
seeing the
legislature. In numbers it appeared
respectable. There were about 120 members in the
house of
commons and more than 60 in the
senate.
Evan Alexander was one
of the members. General
Davie
stands foremost and an almost unrivalled leader in every capital enterprise.
After having spent some time in conversation for the greater part of two
evenings, and from every information, he appears to be a man of good abilities,
and ever active in every measure for promoting the honor and interest of the
state. In the
Legislature he seems like a parent struggling for
the welfare and happiness of his children. No doubt however he frequently finds
them refractory. The state appears to be swarming with lawyers. It is almost the
only profession for which parents educate their children. Religion is so little
in vogue, and in such a state of depression that it affords no prospects
sufficient to tempt people here to undertake its cause. In
New-Jersey it has the public respect
and support; But in
N.
Carolina and particularly in that part of the state which lies east
of us, every one believes that the first step which he ought
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to take to rise into respectability is to disavow
as often and as publicly as he can all regard for the leading doctrines of the
scriptures. They are bugbears very well fitted to scare the mass of the ignorant
and the weak into order and obedience to the laws; but for men of letters and
cultivated reason, the laws of morality and honor should and will be sufficient
for the regulation of their conduct. How unhappy is it for these men and how
instructive to the rest of mankind that the whole tenor of their lives and the
wretched state of their society combine to exhibit their doctrines in all their
haggardness and shocking deformity. One very principal reason why religion is so
slighted and almost scouted from the most influential and informed part of
society is that it is taught only by
methodists and ranters with whom it seems to
consist only in the powers of their throats, or the wildness and madness of
their gesticulations and distortions. If it could be taken out of the hands of
these men who are often guilty of flagrant vices, and regularly taught and
supported by men of prudence, real piety & improved talents, it would
claim