The University of Michigan Part 1

The University of Michigan.

by Wilfred Shaw.

PREFACE

It has not been the purpose of the author to write a history of the University of Michigan. Several predecessors in this field have done their work so well that another book entirely historical in character might seem superfluous. Rather it is the aim of this volume to furnish a survey--sketching broadly the development of the University, and dwelling upon incidents and personalities that contribute movement to the narrative.

Those familiar with the history of the University will recognize the sources of much that appears in the following pages. The author must acknowledge an especial debt to Professor Ten Brook's "History of State Universities," and the two histories of the University, written by Elizabeth Farrand, '87_m_, and Professor Burke E. Hinsdale. Much of the material in the early chapters is based directly upon Professor Hinsdale's painstaking and authoritative work. Other works which have been consulted are Judge Cooley's "History of Michigan," Professor C.K.

Adams' "Historical Sketch," published by the University in 1876, Professor A.C. McLaughlin's "History of Higher Education in Michigan"

(Contributions to American Educational History, Number II, Bureau of Education, 1891), the reports of the Fiftieth and Seventy-fifth Anniversaries and Dr. Angell's Quarter Centennial Celebration, and Dr.

Angell's "Reminiscences." The files of _The Michigan Alumnus_ and the _Michiganensian_, the records of the Regents' meetings and the calendars of the University have likewise proved extremely valuable. For the material in certain chapters, "The Michigan Book," published in 1898, by Edwin H. Humphrey, '97, an article ent.i.tled "The University of Michigan and the Training of Her Students for the War," by Professor Arthur L.

Cross, in the _Michigan History Magazine_, for January, 1920, and Andrew D. White's "Autobiography" have been freely consulted.

It is unfortunate that our information concerning the earliest days of the University is comparatively meager. The collections of old newspapers and other original sources in the University Library have been utilized, but these are not as extensive as they should be.

Undoubtedly not a little material in the form of letters and diaries is still to be found among the papers of the earliest officers of the University and the graduates of the '40's and '50's. The writer would appreciate any information regarding such doc.u.ments.

Acknowledgment is also due to the many friends who have offered suggestions and helpful criticism. Especially is grateful recognition due to Professor F.N. Scott, Judge V.H. Lane, President Emeritus Harry B. Hutchins, Dr. G. Carl Huber, Dean John R. Effinger, Professor Evans Holbrook, Professor Arthur L. Cross and the late Professor Isaac N.

Demmon; their encouragement and counsel have been invaluable.

An apparent inconsistency in references to the major divisions of the University may be noted by some readers. These are sometimes referred to as "Departments" and sometimes as "Schools" or "Colleges," as the case may be. This arises from the fact that the official nomenclature was changed about ten years ago. In general the author has referred to these divisions as "Departments" in discussing the period before 1910.

W.S.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

One early June day some fourscore years ago, it was 1837 to be precise, a party of distinguished visitors arrived in what was then the little backwoods community of Ann Arbor. The interest of the loiterers at the country tavern and the corner grocery was no doubt aroused by their coming, for Ann Arbor we may suppose was not different from other small places; and this curiosity could hardly have been lessened by the fact that the newcomers were all men who figured prominently in the affairs of the State, which had been admitted to the Union only four months before. Whatever the speculation aroused by the personnel of the party, however, the business that called them to Ann Arbor caused little comment, if we are to judge from contemporary reports. Yet this unpretentious gathering of notables was charged with the inauguration of what was to become one of the most significant developments in the history of American education,--the establishment and successful maintenance of a University by the people of a State.

Thus met for their first session the Regents of the future University of Michigan. Unfortunately we do not know the particulars of this meeting; not even in what country lawyer's office or public hall it was held; still less are we able to profit from any of the illuminating details or personal comments a modern observer would have given us. Our knowledge of the character of the men, and the official report of what they did, is all we have to reveal the spirit in which they set themselves to their task.

Of the nineteen members of the Board at that time eleven were present at this first session, which lasted three days. Included among the number, as ex-officio members, were the boy Governor of the State, Stevens T.

Mason, then only twenty-five years old, the Lieutenant-Governor, Edward Mundy, and the Chancellor of the State, Elon Farnsworth; while among the members by appointment were Michigan's first Congressman and author of the law under which the University was to be organized, General Isaac E.

Crary, and two well-known Detroit physicians, Dr. Zina Pitcher, afterward to be known as the founder of the Medical School, and Dr.

Samuel Denton, destined to be a professor in the same Department.

Their first action was the appointment of a committee to select the forty acres offered as an inducement to bring the University to Ann Arbor. Measures were then taken for the organization of the inst.i.tution; the Legislature was pet.i.tioned to give the Board the power to appoint a Chancellor; four professorships were established until more were needed; salaries were limited to not less than $1,200 or more than $2,000; and a Librarian was appointed for a library not yet in existence.

Thus the University began its career. The men who were responsible for it in its early years were, for the most part, lawyers and politicians, lacking even the actual experience in educational matters which the clergymen of that time were supposed to have; but there is evidence of an idealism and confidence in the future on their part which must explain the eventual success of the University,--a vision which enabled it to become the model for all succeeding state inst.i.tutions.

The task before this Board and its immediate successors was not an easy one. They saw, in their mind's eye, a university with thousands of students, forming the cap-stone of a great educational system which was to rest on the little log schoolhouses which were so rapidly rising in the wilderness about them. Their immediate resources, however, proved almost ridiculously inadequate, while their best efforts were often nullified by the selfishness and lack of foresight of many of their contemporaries. Land set aside for the University by the Government was sold for a song to satisfy speculators. An elaborate building program had, perforce, to be abandoned and even the simple buildings erected were criticized as extravagant. The Faculty was far from being a harmonious little family, and dissensions arose between the students and teachers over the establishment of fraternities; while the jealousy of rival religious denominations and the lack of a strong executive multiplied the difficulties which made the first years of the University far from happy.

Nevertheless the University came through it all, not unscathed, but sufficiently strong and vigorous, and with great possibilities for the future in the rising fortunes of the Commonwealth, which gradually came to take a great pride in this child of its first years. To the State, no less than to the Regents and Faculty, belongs the credit of Michigan's great achievement in American educational history,--the first proof that a university, maintained by the people of a state as part of its educational system, could be made a practical success.

The idea of a state university, or rather a state educational system, was not in itself strikingly new; in fact two interesting experiments in Detroit had preceded the University. But none of the original thirteen colonies, or the new states so rapidly being carved out of the lands brought in by the addition of the Northwest Territory, had been able to make really practical that provision in the Ordinance of 1787 which, from its place above the stage in University Hall, has sunk into the consciousness of so many student generations of the University of Michigan.

Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

The actual success of the University was Michigan's first great contribution to the Nation. The inauguration of practical laboratory work in science, as well as the speedy organization of Medical and Engineering Departments, was the second step. This led to a new relationship between education and practical life; others besides candidates for the ministry began to come in greater numbers to seek degrees. Hardly less revolutionary in the third place was Dr. Tappan's effort to make Michigan a real University,--the introduction of true graduate study which, though not immediately successful, made Michigan once more a pioneer among American schools. Again, the establishment of the chemical laboratory, the introduction of co-education, and the creation of a Department of Education, bringing with it a correlation of the University with the high schools of the State, are all matters now so generally taken for granted that it is somewhat difficult nowadays to give the University proper credit for leading the way.

In recent years other state universities have overtaken Michigan in their development. Some states are supporting their universities even more liberally than Michigan. Many have gone so far as to do away with student fees, an item which has a large place in Michigan's annual income. Whether this is entirely desirable is perhaps a question. One of the University's greatest a.s.sets is the interest and support of her former students. They have shown less of the spirit which is more or less inevitable in all state inst.i.tutions,--a feeling that once they have received their educational bargain, their responsibility to the inst.i.tution ceases. The loyalty of Michigan's alumni body may arise in some part from the very fact that the education given has not been entirely free, as well as through a justifiable pride in the prestige and academic traditions which the years have brought.

Other universities also have developed further means of maintaining friendly relations with the people of their states, through affiliating the state agricultural colleges with the university and offering elaborate programs of extension courses. In this direction Michigan has made haste slowly, for there is danger to true academic ideals in such a course. The result has been that there is no instruction given in the University that cannot be considered of proper academic character under present-day standards.

Our university system has progressed so far and so fast, however, that the educators of the first half of the nineteenth century would find little they could recognize in the wide range of human knowledge included in our modern university curricula. When the University was founded, the schools of America were really closer to the great universities of the Middle Ages than to those of the present day. The comparatively brief period covered by the life of the University of Michigan has seen a greater change in educational ideals and practices than anything which took place during the preceding thousand years, for we have added to their heritage all the great developments of the past century in science and the arts.

Michigan has done her part in this transition from the old to the new; and in carrying on her work she has acquired a life of her own, an academic atmosphere, and a characteristic student life which have a peculiar interest to all Michigan men and women. To chronicle in brief the main events in Michigan's history; to suggest their significance; to picture the life of the students and Faculties; and to set forth the University's real measure of success, in order that all who are interested in the University may know her and understand her ideals and traditions, is the aim of the following chapters.

CHAPTER II

THE FOUNDATION OF THE UNIVERSITY

The history of the University of Michigan might properly be said to begin in 1817. It is true that the University seal proclaims 1837 as the year of its birth, but the present inst.i.tution is only a successor of two previous incarnations in Detroit, which were its direct predecessors. The State Supreme Court, in fact, held in 1856 that the corporate existence of the University began with the Act of the 26th of August, 1817, and has been continuous throughout all the subsequent changes of the organic law.

It would be difficult, however, to recognize the present University in that curiosity of educational history established by the Act of 1817 under the sonorous t.i.tle of the "Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania." This inst.i.tution, in effect designed to be a university, was to be composed of thirteen _didaxiim_, or professorships, of such branches as _Catholepistemia_ or Universal Science, _Anthropoglossica_ or Literature, _Physiosophica_ or Natural Philosophy, _Polemitactica_ or Military Science, and _Ennoeica_ or Intellectual Sciences, which embraced all the _Epistimiim_ or "Sciences relative to the minds of animals, to the human mind, to spiritual existences, to the Deity, and to religion." It is worthy of note also that Chemistry, Medicine, and Political Economy were provided for under the names of _Chymia_, _Iatrica_, and _Oeconomica_. This scheme, which was prepared by Augustus B. Woodward, Presiding Judge of the territorial Supreme Court, went further than this provision for the University, however, for it contemplated as well a complete state educational system, with subordinate colleges, academies, schools, libraries, museums, athenaeums, botanical gardens, laboratories and "other useful literary and scientific Inst.i.tutions consonant with the laws of the United States and of Michigan." These the President and the Didactors were to provide for, as well as for Directors, Visitors, Curators, Librarians, Instructors and "Instructrixes" throughout the various counties, cities, towns, townships, or other geographical divisions of Michigan.

To support this grand scheme, the public taxes were to be increased fifteen percent, and a provision, which seems strangely unacademic to the college community of a century later, was made for four successive lotteries from which the Catholepistemiad might retain fifteen percent of the prizes for its own use. Two of these lotteries apparently were drawn.

The inst.i.tution which arose in the shade of this immense growth of pseudo-cla.s.sical verbiage was a very modest undertaking indeed and developed little beyond the primary school and cla.s.sical academy first established. These were housed in a little building in Detroit, twenty-four by fifty feet, on the west side of Bates Street near Congress, afterward occupied by one of the branches of the University.

Scarcely more ambitious was the faculty of two men, the Rev. John Monteith, a Presbyterian clergyman who was President and seven-fold _didactor_, and Father Gabriel Richard, a Catholic priest who was Vice-President and inc.u.mbent of the other six _didaxiim_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CATHOLEPISTEMIAD, OR UNIVERSITY, OF MICHIGANIA A photograph of the original outline in Judge Woodward's handwriting; now in the University Library]

Absurd as was the terminology and ridiculous as were its vast pretensions in view of the little French-Canadian community it served, nevertheless, the educational scheme which the act outlined was of great significance in the future development of education in the State.

It was one of the first plans in America for a complete educational program to be supported by the people of a state.[1] Its sources were to be found, undoubtedly, in the strong influence of French thought on contemporary American life, for this scheme was but a copy of the highly centralized organization of state instruction which Napoleon gave to France in the Imperial University of 1806-08. As Professor Hinsdale says, "the ponderous name belonged to organized public education." Four years later, another act established in Detroit "an University for the purpose of educating youth" as the successor of the Catholepistemiad, with little change in the broad and liberal outline of the plan save in two particulars,--a change from cla.s.sical to English nomenclature and the subst.i.tution of a Board of Trustees for the self-governing President and Didactors of the earlier scheme.

[Footnote 1: No one of the old states had what we would now call a State University, although two or three states had inst.i.tutions that bore that name, while several of the states had voted money or wild lands to promote higher education; nor had any of the new states, aided by the bounty of Congress, established such an inst.i.tution that was worthy of the name, University.--Hinsdale, _History of the University of Michigan_, p. 16.]

Michigan at this time was on the far edge of civilization; it was not even organized as a territory until the year 1805. In 1800 the total population was only 3,757, while in 1817 it could not have been more than 7,000. The inhabitants of Detroit only numbered 1,442 in 1820.

Aside from the Indians, who for many years were to be a not inconsiderable portion of the population, the early inhabitants were all French settlers whose main business was fur trading. With the first years of the nineteenth century, however, there came a constantly increasing stream of "Bostonians," as the men from the East were called.

They were not welcomed at first, although their enterprise and education were to transform Michigan within a surprisingly short period into one of the most progressive of the new states. Nevertheless this growth was at first slow and it was not until Michigan became a state in 1837 that the rapid increase in settlers from New York and New England changed so completely the character of the people that it became in a few years a predominantly agricultural, instead of a primitive fur-trading community. The rapidity of this movement towards the West, once begun, was most fortunate, as the settlers from the older states in the East were enabled to put into effect immediately their own training in the schools of New York and New England for the benefit of their children. This is one of the underlying causes of Michigan's success; whereas other states, whose settlement began earlier, failed through the lowering of the standards of education inevitable in the hard life of the generation succeeding the first pioneers.

The initial public support of education in Michigan, as in all of the new states west of the Alleghenies, came from the important provision made by the Federal Government in 1785 for a system of surveys of the public lands. These had eventually been deeded to the Government by the different states as the only practicable settlement of conflicting claims which at one time promised to disrupt the new confederation.

Their acquisition by the nation and their eventual division and admission to the Union as states contributed not a little to the strengthening of the central authority at a time when it was a vital necessity. The first survey of these lands provided, as is well known, for division into townships six miles square, to be again sub-divided into thirty-six lots one mile square called sections. The provision of this ordinance of particular interest in this connection is the following: "There shall be reserved the lot Number 16 of every township for the maintenance of public schools within the said township."

In the Ordinance of 1787, providing for the administration of the Northwest Territory, we have only the familiar general declaration that: "Schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged," but an ordinance adopted ten days later provided that in addition to the school lot in every township: "Not more than two complete townships are to be given perpetually for the purposes of a University, to be laid off by the purchaser or purchasers as near the center as may be, so that the same shall be of good land to be applied to the intended object by the Legislature of the State." This was the fundamental action which made possible the foundation of the University of Michigan almost at the same time that the State was admitted to the Union.