The University of Michigan Part 2

On Sunday the students were obliged to attend service in some one of the churches, and monitors, sometimes not overzealous, were on hand to see that they attended. The expenses are given as from $80 to $100 a year, with an entrance fee of $10 and an annual tax of $7.50 for the use of the room and janitor's services. Students were allowed to leave the Campus for their meals but were expected to be on hand from morning prayers to 7:30 A.M., from 9:00 A.M. to 12:00 noon, from 2:00 to 5:00 P.M. and from 7:00 or 8:00 to 9:00 P.M., after which no student was permitted to leave the Campus. The question of illumination was a serious one in those days, and these periods varied somewhat with the length of daylight. The cost of candles for early recitations and chapel exercises was borne by the students.

The number of students increased each year up to 1847-48, when there were 89 enrolled. After that time, the withdrawal of University support from the branches and their gradual abandonment began to show its effect in the enrolment, which dropped to 57 in 1851-52. Twenty-three students were graduated with the cla.s.s of 1849, while there were only nine in 1852. The struggling little towns of the State found enough difficulty for the time in supporting primary schools. The branches, however, had proved their necessity, and it was not long before the rise of the Union schools began to provide a stream of students which has flowed to the University uninterruptedly since that time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOUR MEMBERS OF THE EARLY FACULTY

George Palmer Williams (1802-1881) Andrew Ten Brook (1814-1899) Abram Sager (1810-1877) Thomas McIntyre Cooley (1824-1898)]

There was another and probably more immediate reason for the falling off in attendance. This was the great struggle between the Faculty and the students over the establishment of Greek-letter societies, a contest which became so bitter that not only the town but the State Legislature was involved. A large number of students were expelled, and eventually the whole relationship between students and Faculty was placed upon a different basis. The trouble began in the spring of 1846, when some student depredations were traced to a small log house situated in the depths of what was then known as the Black Forest, the deep wood which extended far east of the Campus. This building, which probably stood somewhere on the present site of the Forest Hill Cemetery, was discovered to be the headquarters of the Chi Psi fraternity, the first chapter house built by any American college fraternity. When the faculty investigator sought entrance to this building, he found his way barred by resolute fratres. This led to the ultimate disclosure of the fact that two fraternities, Chi Psi and Beta Theta Pi, had been established in the University for at least a year, in direct violation of a regulation known as Rule 20, apparently in force for some time, which provided that:

No student shall be or become a member of any society connected with the University which has not first submitted its Const.i.tution to the Faculty and received their approval.

The students involved, however, were willing enough to give lists of their members, relying upon their numbers and their affiliation with similar organizations in other colleges to avoid any unpleasant consequences. The Faculty thought otherwise; though as events proved their authority was not too well defined. Meanwhile another society, Alpha Delta Phi, had submitted a const.i.tution to the Faculty for approval; but owing to the press of other matters it was not considered and the chapter was organized with no action by the authorities. The greater number of the students in the University thus became members of the three Greek-letter fraternities.

The Faculty was disturbed, but apparently did not take the matter too seriously at first and decided to allow the societies to continue, merely exacting pledges from all new students to join no society without approval by the Faculty; thus providing as they thought, for an early demise of the fraternities. It did not work out that way, however. The chapter of Alpha Delta Phi held that their society existed at least by sufferance of the Faculty, and proceeded to initiate members, a fact that was not discovered until March, 1847. Then followed a series of suspensions and re-admissions of students who had promised not to join these societies. Not only were they obliged to resign their membership, but the original members of Alpha Delta Phi were compelled formally to submit to re-admission to the University, pledging themselves not to consent to the initiation of any members of the University in the society in opposition to Rule 20. The matter rested here until the following November, when the society presented a second const.i.tution, which was received by the Faculty with the announcement that they had no authority to legalize the society. This reply was answered by the students with a plea that if the Faculty had no authority to legalize their fraternity then they had no authority to forbid it. Later another fraternity asked for re-admission with similar results.

Meanwhile these organizations were maintaining themselves. Letters to the Presidents of six Eastern colleges brought replies most unfavorable to the fraternities and seemed to indicate to the Faculty that elsewhere the fraternities were under a strict ban. The students, however, knew that the facts were otherwise and that fraternities were flourishing in most of the inst.i.tutions where they had been established. Finally in December, 1849, a list of members of the Chi Psi fraternity, which included the names of many new students, was found in a University catalogue. The defense set up by the chapter was that they were not members of a society "_in_ the University of Michigan" but "_in_ Ann Arbor," that they did not meet on University grounds, and that they had admitted three members who were not students. One of these members was, in fact, a member of the Board of Regents. The society, therefore, was not connected with the University and did not consist of students. This defense was considered only an evasion and on the last day of the term in 1849 the Faculty announced that the members of Chi Psi and Alpha Delta Phi, whose names had in the meantime been made public, must cease their connection with the University, unless they renounced their connection with their fraternities. Of the members of these two societies seven withdrew their membership; the others were expelled. The members of Beta Theta Pi were not expelled until September, 1850, apparently because the const.i.tution had not yet been signed, to the disgust of one member of the Faculty, who considered this excuse only a legalistic quibble. Some of the students expelled went to other inst.i.tutions, some eventually returned to the University, while others ended their college days.

This action naturally caused an uproar; neither the Faculty nor the Regents were unanimous in approval of these measures; while the citizens of Ann Arbor held an indignation meeting and appointed a committee to ask the Legislature for a change in the administration of the University. The Faculty prepared a report to the Regents stating their case strongly and even bitterly, characterizing the whole history of these three societies as "a detail of obliquities," and their "extended affiliations as a great irresponsible authority, a monster power, which lays its hand upon every College Faculty in our country"; they were also fearful of the "debauchery, drunkenness, pugilism, and duelling, ... and the despotic power of disorder and ravagism, rife among their German prototypes." This report was signed by all the Faculty, though the opinion was not unanimous, nor had all the actions of individual members been consistent.

The Regents also made a report sustaining the Faculty, and both were submitted to the Legislature, accompanied by a reply made by the seven reinstated students, who denied the charges. They even maintained that Rule 20 was a dead letter and that one of the Professors, when consulted at the time one of the fraternities was founded, did not disapprove, or quote this law. A memorial was also submitted by fifteen "neutral"

students sustaining the Faculty and suggesting that the threatened legislation, which was advocated by the committee of Ann Arbor citizens, was the greatest obstacle to harmony. Unfortunately this legislative action was just what seemed inevitable for some time. The Ann Arbor citizens represented that the University was failing, and that the only way to save it was by an entire change in its organic law, the appointment of a new Faculty, and the recognition of that natural right of man--to form secret societies if he so elects.

Their case before the Legislature, however, had been weakened by the action of two students who had circulated a week or so in advance a garbled and caricatured form of the Faculty report, which had been submitted honorably to the students to enable them to make a reply if they so desired. This undoubtedly prejudiced the student case when the truth became known, and the net result was no action by the Legislature on any of the memorials. With the withdrawal of the bill, the Faculty and the Regents were left to handle the question as seemed best to them.

In the meantime, however, the opposition to the suppression of the societies had become so widespread and aggressive that one by one the fraternities were "conditionally" reinstated in October, 1850.

While the upshot of all this hostility was, superficially, only a return to the _status quo_, the students had won their point. The germ of the trouble probably lay in the difference between the paternalistic att.i.tude of the Faculty, traditional in all colleges of the time, and the beginning of a new and progressive spirit in University life. The students had been brought up in an atmosphere which developed individuality and self-reliance and they resented a meticulous regulation of their lives and doubtless contrasted it unfavorably with what they knew of European Universities. The whole fraternity struggle of 1848-50 may then be regarded, in part at least, as a successful effort on the students' part to ensure a different and more liberal policy toward student life and affairs on the part of the authorities.

Not the least of the troubles this contest brought to the University was the revelation of its weakness, not only the plainly evident lack of harmony within the Faculty, but also the practical demonstration it furnished of the Faculty's lack of real power. The reasons for this go back once more to the act establishing the University, which allowed the Regents to delegate to the Faculties only such authority as they saw fit, in practice not any too much, for the Regents maintained apparently a close and personal supervision over the University. This was shown by the habit of some members of the Board, notably Major Kearsley of Detroit, of conducting final oral examinations at the end of the term.

Major Kearsley, a veteran of the War of 1812, was something of a martinet and prided himself upon his learning; so he usually gave the students a very hard time. He was soon dubbed "Major Tormentum" from _majora tormenta_, the name given big guns, or cannon, in a Latin "Life of Washington" then used in the cla.s.ses. His visits finally ceased after the students found out how to deal with him and came loaded with "grape and canister," as one member of the cla.s.s of '48 put it, to return his heavy fire.

From its earliest days the University insisted upon maintaining a non-sectarian character, but this did not imply any lack of religious training or supervision,--quite the contrary, as has been suggested. The scarcity of representatives of the cloth on the first Board of Regents did not pa.s.s unremarked, and it was but a short time before several clergymen, one a Catholic priest, became members of the governing body, to offset the preponderance of lawyers and politicians and to furnish the Board the benefits of their presumably wider experience in educational matters. Every effort was made, however, to keep a proper balance among the different persuasions, and all the Protestant churches came to feel that they had almost a vested right to representation, as the long list of "Reverends" in the first Faculty list shows. Professor Williams was an Episcopalian; Dr. Whedon, a Methodist; Professor Agnew, a Presbyterian; and Professor Ten Brook, a Baptist. Whenever a vacancy occurred, the question of religious affiliations was at least as important in the ultimate selection of the candidates, as any qualifications in the subject to be taught. This situation naturally led to a certain degree of rivalry, partisanship, and lack of co-operation in the Faculty.

To this the lack of a Chancellor during those earlier years only added further confusion. From the first the Regents had proposed the appointment of such an officer, but in the absence of any clear notion of their authority and his precise duties the matter was allowed to lapse, until the financial difficulties of the early years after the University opened made it clearly obvious that such an officer would be something of a luxury. The matter was settled by making each professor in turn President, or Princ.i.p.al, for one year, a practice which continued until the appointment of President, or Chancellor, Tappan in 1852. This alternation in office was approved as eminently democratic and as following the practice of the German Universities, the ideal of the time. In a report submitted by the Board of Visitors in 1850, the plan was commended and it was even urged that the monarchical feature of a Chancellor should be struck out of the Organic Law, and the system then in force thereby fixed for all time.

Nevertheless the plan was none too successful in application. There was too much opportunity for jealousy and too little central authority. This is shown plainly in the contest which arose over the hours of teaching as the numbers in the University grew. The emphasis in the curriculum upon the cla.s.sics has been noted. This threw the burden of almost the whole course of study upon Professor Agnew after the services of a single tutor were dispensed with in 1846. Professors Whedon and Ten Brook were therefore called upon to a.s.sist him, which they did unwillingly, Professor Whedon finally refusing to hear further cla.s.ses in Greek.

The trouble grew and finally resulted in the resignation of Professor Ten Brook in 1851, because of the opposition of three other members of the Faculty. In after years he came to consider this action a mistake; particularly as he had the respect and friendship of the Board of Regents, who brought about the downfall of his opponents within six months. This began in an action against Professor Whedon, who had for some time aroused opposition by his p.r.o.nounced anti-slavery views. As a result of this feeling, on December 31, 1851, at the last session of the Board of Regents by appointment before a new Board elected under the new State Const.i.tution was to take its place, a resolution was introduced requesting the removal of the Rev. D.D. Whedon for the reason that he had--

not only publicly preached, but otherwise openly advocated the doctrine called "the higher law," a doctrine which is unauthorized by the Bible, at war with the principles, precepts and examples of Christ and his Apostles, subversive alike of civil government, civil society, and the legal rights of individual citizens, and in effect const.i.tutes, in the opinion of this Board, a species of moral treason against the Government.

This resolution seems to have expressed the real sentiment of the Regents; but the actual measure pa.s.sed was a resolution declaring, that in view of the fact that a new Board of Regents was to take charge and appoint a President, it was expedient that the terms of Professors Williams, Whedon, and Agnew terminate at the close of the year. This was an out and out partisan matter, as there was no reason for such action inherent in the change of the governing body, particularly as it did not affect two members of the Faculty who had avoided partic.i.p.ation in this family jar. The new Board chose, however, to act upon it and the three resignations were accepted. Professor Williams was later reappointed, as he had apparently taken a minor part in the opposition to Professor Ten Brook. This whole episode was most unfortunate and was brought about by the lack of a strong guiding administrative policy. Professor Ten Brook in his later review generously says of these men: "A stronger body of men of the same number was probably never a.s.sociated in such an opening enterprise," and again, "We should find that their merits would be magnified and their mistakes diminished by a consideration of the complicated, and till then unknown difficulties with which they had to contend."

With a Chancellor to guide and direct the Faculty and to exert, on occasion, a restraining hand, a large part of these troubles might have been avoided. The Regents had early discovered their dependence upon the whims of the Legislature, particularly in financial matters, while the Superintendent of Public Instruction was given too much authority. In fact, a Committee of the Legislature appointed as early as 1840 stated in its report: "A Board of experienced Regents could manage the funds and machinery of the University better than any Legislature; and the Faculty could manage the business of education--the interior of a College--better than any Regents."

This was becoming recognized; the University's difficulties only emphasized what had become a general opinion. Accordingly the sections of the new Const.i.tution of 1850 relating to the University were thoroughly discussed in the Convention; with the result that certain new provisions were incorporated which gave the University of Michigan a unique standing among state universities. Particularly important were the measures relating to the Board of Regents. In the first place, it was provided that they should be elected by the people, one for each judicial district, and at the same time the judges of each circuit were elected. Ten years later the latter provision was changed so that the number of Regents was definitely fixed at eight; two to be elected every two years at the regular election of the justices of the Supreme Court.

In the second place, it was provided that while the Regents should have only general supervision of the University, they should have the direction and control of all expenditures from the University interest fund. These provisions were far-reaching. They made the Board of Regents a const.i.tuent part of the State Government, on an equality as regards powers with the Governor, the Legislature, and the Supreme Court.

From the time this action went into effect we may date the larger growth of the University. The selection of the Regents is as far removed from political influence as it is possible to make it under our electoral system, and they are given absolute control of the income of the University and the appropriations of the Legislature, once they are made; provided of course they are used for the purposes designated.

A further provision of the Const.i.tution specified the immediate appointment of a President. The old plan was not considered suitable for an American college. This sentiment was so strong that the Convention was unwilling to leave this matter to the discretion of the Regents and therefore they made action imperative. All that was necessary now was the adaptation of the organic Act of the University to the new Const.i.tution. This was accomplished on April 8, 1851, when a new Act was adopted, in essentials far simpler and more general in its terms than the old one, which left the University free to enter upon the remarkable growth and expansion which began with the administration of President Tappan.

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST ADMINISTRATIONS

The new University Act had charged the Regents with the duty of electing a President immediately. It was some time, however, before they found the right man, Henry Philip Tappan, LL.D., who was inaugurated as the first President of the University of Michigan on December 22, 1852. Dr.

Tappan's name was first suggested by George Bancroft, the historian, who was also considered for the position, but there was some opposition, which seems to have centered about the fact that Dr. Tappan had once consulted a homeopathic physician, and he was not elected until August 12.

President, or as he was often called, Chancellor Tappan was a man of wide culture, of established reputation as a scholar, and an author on philosophical and educational subjects. His personality was magnetic and commanding, but it was combined with a frank and fatherly att.i.tude toward his students which won their immediate and life-long friendship.

Born at Rhinebeck on the Hudson, of mixed Dutch and Huguenot ancestry, on April 18, 1805, he came to Michigan in time to give his best years to his new work. Many of his friends may well have been astonished at his acceptance of a post in a tiny college far on the outskirts of a village in the Western wilderness, which carried with it the munificent salary of $1,500, together with a house and an additional $500 for traveling expenses. Yet he came. The principles of the University agreed with the ideals he had received in his long study of European methods and his personal experiences in German schools. He determined to make a real university in the West; he fixed his glance upon the opportunities for future development rather than the bareness and inevitable crudity of pioneer life. For the first time he found his cherished ideas embodied in the provision for a state university; and though he realized they had not been made effective, he believed that in the West, if anywhere, was his opportunity to put them into actual practice, unhampered by the traditions which had grown up everywhere in the East.

The new President, in the first catalogue issued under his administration, let the world know in no uncertain terms what the University was to become as long as his was the guiding hand. He traced the succession of state schools up to and through the University, where, he declared, it was his purpose "to make it possible for every student to study what he pleases, and to any extent he pleases."

Some of his proposed measures must be regarded as prophecies for the future; they could hardly have been taken seriously at the time. They are not all realized even now; but they show the breadth of his conception of a real university. He emphasized openly the correspondence between the Michigan and the German systems of education, and declared that;

It is the cardinal object to make this correspondence as complete as possible. Hence, it is proposed to make the studies here pursued not only introductory to professional studies, and to studies in the higher branches of science and literature, but also to embrace such studies as are more particularly adapted to agriculture, the mechanic arts, and to the industrial arts generally. Accordingly, a distinct scientific course has been added, running parallel to the cla.s.sical course, extending through the same term of four years, and embracing the same number of cla.s.ses with the same designations.

These ideas he put into practice at once and Michigan became the first university in the country to introduce practical scientific courses within the regular arts curriculum, and, following Harvard by only a few years, was the second university in the country to break away from the accepted hard and fast course in which the humanities were the beginning and the end of education, acknowledging the claims of science by granting the degree of Bachelor of Science. He was likewise a pioneer in other ways; for the University was the first to recognize the needs of special students who, while not seeking a degree, were anxious to pursue studies in special subjects.

President Tappan was wise enough not to seek the establishment of his grand object at once, but he did announce in that first catalogue that he proposed--

at as early a day as practicable, to open courses of lectures for those who have graduated at this or other inst.i.tutions, and for those who in other ways have made such preparation as may enable them to attend upon them with advantage.

Here was the germ of a Graduate School, though for many years the lectures were more in evidence in the catalogue of the University than in the cla.s.s room. He was sufficiently practical to realize that the collegiate course, "with its schoolmaster methods and discipline," of his time must be retained for a period, though he aimed eventually to transfer its work to the high school, gradually swinging the University to "true university methods, free and manly habits of study and investigation." He also aimed to gather about him a Faculty in which every chair was filled by a man of exceptional ability and thorough training, "not a picked up, but a picked out man," to quote Professor Frieze in his Memorial Address on Dr. Tappan.

These are the cardinal principles which guided Michigan's first President throughout his career in the University, and, as ideals, have been a powerful factor in its growth since his time. More apparent to his contemporaries were the immediate benefits of his strong administration. He saw at once the urgent need of more funds for the library and obtained a subscription from Ann Arbor citizens of some $1,515, to which the Regents added $300, resulting in an increase of 1,200 volumes. From that time dates the steady and consistent growth of the University Library. Even more pressing appeared to him the need for an astronomical observatory. From the very day of his inauguration, he made the raising of sufficient funds for this purpose one of his first tasks and so effective were his efforts that the Observatory was opened in 1855; the result of a gift of $15,000 by citizens of Detroit, to which the University had added an appropriation of $7,000. This gave Michigan one of the three well-equipped observatories in the country at that time. The telescope, a thirteen-inch objective, was purchased in this country, but other items of equipment were obtained in Berlin under the advice of Professor Encke, the Director of the Royal Observatory, whose a.s.sistant, Dr. Brunnow, came to America as Michigan's first Professor of Astronomy.

It was during Dr. Tappan's administration also that the professional departments, as they were long called, came into their own. The Medical School had been organized since 1849, when the first building was completed at a cost of about $9,000; but the work was only fairly under way when he came. The new department was opened in October, 1850, with ninety matriculates and grew with extraordinary rapidity, so that for the first years the enrolment exceeded that of the Literary Department.

When Dr. Tappan left the University in 1863 there were 252 students in the Medical Department and by 1866-67 their number increased to 525, the largest enrolment in the history of the School. The creation of a Law Department was considered at the same time the Medical Department was organized, but lack of resources as well as any enthusiastic support from the legal profession in the State postponed its opening for ten years. The growing number of pet.i.tions for its establishment, however, finally led to the opening of the School in 1859 with a Faculty of three, and ninety-two students. Hardly less important was the establishment in 1855 of a course in civil engineering. It was organized in connection with the Department of Physics, however, and did not attain to the dignity of a separate department with its own head for many years. Even so modest a beginning as this for technical courses in the University found precedent in those days only at Harvard. Lack of funds and co-operation from the Legislature seems to have been the only reason which led to the abandonment of plans for the creation of departments of Agriculture and Military Science which were seriously considered at that time.

The inauguration of these different schools was all a part of Dr.

Tappan's scheme for the development of a true university. Though he deplored their necessarily lowered requirements, he saw the day when they would be graduate departments, as in effect the Law and Medical Schools are in the way of becoming now, at least insofar as they require a minimum of two years' work in the Literary College before the student is permitted to enter upon his professional studies. They formed, as it was, with the various scientific courses established in the Literary Department, a significant departure from the single "cast iron" course of the Eastern colleges. By very reason of this innovation Michigan, in President White's words, "stands at the beginning of the transition of the old sectarian college to the modern university."

In all this President Tappan's influence was vital. He entered whole-heartedly into the life of the University, displaying a remarkable shrewdness and charity in his dealings with the students, and sympathizing heartily with the work of every professor. One of his students, Byron M. Cutcheon, '61, afterward a Regent of the University, thus describes him:

As I remember him, he was fully six feet tall, with a grand head set upon ma.s.sive shoulders. A full suite of dark brown hair, worn rather long and considerably disordered, crowned and adorned his head. His face ... was pleasant and attractive though never exhibiting levity, and rarely, humor. The nose was large and somewhat Roman. The rather long side beard had not yet turned gray.

His carriage was upright and dignified. I never saw him in a hurry.

He was always approachable, but never familiar nor invited familiarity.

The powerful frame and compelling presence of Chancellor Tappan are well portrayed in the magnificent bas-relief by Karl Bitter, now in Alumni Memorial Hall, a fitting tribute to his influence upon the University on the part of his former students. Especially noteworthy is his representation here with his favorite mastiff, "Leo," his inseparable companion. No reminiscence of a student of that time is complete without mention of "Leo" and his later companion "Buff," an only slightly less huge animal acquired during the later years of Dr.

Tappan's administration. So when, in the popular air of the sixties, his students asked:

"Where, O where, is Dr. Tappan?"