Letter from
Dialectic Society Members to the
Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, April 18, 1856
University of North Carolina (1793-1962). Dialectic Society
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Chapel Hill No. Ca.
Apr. 18th /56
To the Executive Committee
of the
University of North Carolina —
We have been appointed by a large and respectable body of the members of the Dialectic Society to ask your permission and assistance in the
formation of a new Society. As the two literary societies exist by virtue of an act of the board of Trustees — and as the board are supreme in all matters relating to the university, we respectfully submit ourselves to their authority and
have no desire to take any step, towards the organization of a literary body without their express
approbation.
The following are our reasons for presenting this petition.
In the first place, the Dialectic Society has become so large and unwieldy that the literary
duties cannot possibly be performed with much advantage to anyone, We think therefore that two
efficient societies may with advantage be formed of one inefficient one.
Secondly the number of students is amply
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sufficient to support three societies.
Thirdly, the Dialectic Hall is composed of members from different sections of the country between
whom the most violent enmity has sprung up which instead of subsiding has been steadily growing
worse and worse for several years, until peaceable union is now no longer possible.
We therefore respectfully submit to the Executive Committee, whether unceasing hostility and bitter hatred
which defeat the most important end of a body constituted for mutual improvement, are preferable to
peaceable separation.
Your committee being members of the Senior class and having no personal interest in the
establishment of a new society, but having a perfect knowledge of things as they exist in college
can say that an expeditious and favorable answer or even a favorable intimation from the Executive Committee, in case no definitive answer can be obtained
before the meeting of the Board at commencement, would do much to prevent disorder among the
students.
Very respectfully —
Clement Dowd
Wm. Bingham}Com.
Stuart White