Mississippi were sent to the older states of the east and of the north for their education. But not far from the year 1840 arose a strong sentiment for the education of the sons of these families in their own institutions. The chief cause of the origin of this feeling lay in the growth and increasing dominance of the demand for the abolition of slavery. In 1833 the American Anti-Slavery Society was organized. Six years after was formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. These organizations and other movements designed to promote immediate abolition swept aside the theory of gradual abolition which had for many years prevailed. A feeling of resentment was aroused. The aggressiveness of the abolition movement was regarded as an insult to the South and a menace to the perpetuity of the Union. A sentiment of bitterness against all northern states was created and quickened. As a result the expediency of sending the sons of southern families into northern colleges for their education was questioned. Governor McNutt said in 1839: " Patriotism, no less than economy, urges upon us the duty of educating our children at home. In early life the strongest impressions are made. Those opposed to us in principle, and alienated in interest, cannot safely be entrusted with the education of our sons and daughters." In the same year a debating society discussed the question whether" It is more advisable to have the youth of Mississippi educated at the literary institutions within the State than to send them abroad."1 In 1844 Governor

Brown, in a message which dealt with the incorporation of the State University, said: "The practice of sending the youth of the country abroad to be educated ought to be discouraged. Instead of sending our youth abroad to be educated, where they sometimes contract unfortunate habits, and grow up with false prejudices against home institutions and laws, they may be kept at home comparatively under the advisory care of their parents, surrounded by those institutions and protected by those laws which it is proper they should be early brought to love and reverence."1

A feeling of alarm and indignation prevailed. The fear of the danger of the propagandism of immediate abolition was re

1 "History of Education in Mississippi," by Edward Mayes, p. 127.

garded as an argument sufficient for the state itself to educate its sons. Notwithstanding these growing sentiments many families continued to send their children to the colleges of the north.

But the statistics of attendance at the three colleges of the North, best known in Southern states, in the middle and preceding decades of the century fail to indicate that argument and oration served their purpose in keeping Southern students at home. In the year 1830 three students were enrolled at Princeton as coming from Mississippi; a similar number was also found in attendance in 1840; but in 1850 the number had increased to seventeen, and even in 1860 to nineteen. In Yale the number in attendance upon the last year of the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth decades from Mississippi were respectively four, six, two, five, and two. At Harvard the numbers were in 1820 three, in 1830 nine, in 1840 two, in 1850 four, and in 1860 six. The chief time which shows a marked change in the number of students coming to the Northern colleges from the South is found in the third decade of the century. The number of students at Harvard College from Southern states in 1820 was fifty; the number in 1830 had fallen to sixteen; in 1820 Princeton had forty-two students from the South, in 1830 only seventeen. But the number at Yale, meantime, had increased from forty-seven to sixty-nine. Though at Harvard the number from South Carolina fell off from twenty-two to two, and in Princeton from three to none, yet in Yale College the number increased from nine to sixteen.

The facts in detail are stated on the following pages.

Out of the condition of state rights arose the University of Mississippi. It was incorporated in February, 1844. The first meeting of the Board of Trustees was held in the first month of 1845, the first appropriation for buildings was made in 1846, and in the autumn of 1848 the formal work of instruction began.

The history of the dozen years of the University of Alabama up to the outbreak of the Civil War was a record of prosperity and enlargement. Its prosperity was due in a large degree to one man in whom the history of the University of Alabama and the history of the University of Mississippi are united. Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard was professor of several sciences

NUMBER OF STUDENTS AT HARVARD FROM THE SOUTHERN STATES.

NUMBER OF STUDENTS AT YALE COLLEGE FROM THE SOUTHERN STATES.

1820

1830 1840 1850 1860

Total number of students at Yale College

421

502 574 555 521

NUMBER OF STUDdents at College oF NEW JERSEY (PRINCETON) FROM THE SOUTHERN STATES.

and of mathematics for seventeen years, from 1837 to 1854 in the University of Alabama, and from 1854 to 1861 he served the University of Mississippi, either as professor or as its chief executive. Barnard's career in Alabama succeeded his retirement from a tutorship at Yale, and his retirement from the chancellorship of the University of Mississippi was, after three years, followed by the beginning of a service of about a quarter century as President of Columbia College in the city of New York.

Bar

nard was among the great scholars and teachers of the two decades previous to the beginning of the Civil War. He was also for the last third of this period an efficient executive. His scholarship was broad, his industry unflagging, his heart warm, and his judgment sound. In the years immediately previous to the beginning of the war he had succeeded in making the new University of Mississippi of commanding importance and wide usefulness. The scientific equipment was unusually adequate both in apparatus and in collections. The people had begun to take great pride in their State University. Despite the lack of the feeling of "peace, tranquility, permanence" which Barnard expressed himself as realizing in 1859, yet the University of the State represented the elements of the highest worth in and for the commonwealth. But this prosperity and the hopefulness of increasing power and enlarging opportunity, were presently and suddenly brought to an end.2

1

Each of the great churches was administering its colleges in

"Memoirs of Frederick A. P. Barnard," p. 240.

2 "With the accession to the presidency of Barnard in 1864, there came to the service of the University one of the greatest figures, in many ways the greatest figure, in the whole history of our American education. His active and restless mind, which grew neither old nor tired, planned unceasingly and saw with astounding clearness of vision. Barnard is the greatest prophetic figure in the history of modern education. He first saw that the traditional college course was no longer adequate to meet the needs of modern youth; that it must be supplemented, extended, readjusted, and made more elastic, if it would serve under new conditions the same ends that it had served so well in the past. He exalted science and scientific research to their place of honor, and he swept with his keen vision the whole field of education and called upon the university to enter upon it as a subject of study and to treat teaching as a serious profession and not merely as an occupation. He gave his powerful influence to the movement for the opening of educational opportunities to women, and he felt keenly the limitations under which they suffered in his day. He looked out into new fields of inquiry and saw the significance of those studies in language, in archæology, in history and political science, in the physical and mathematical sciences, in experimental medicine, and in the science of life that are now gladly included in the wide circle of our University's care. What this generation has done Barnard planned and urged. Much of what remains for the next generation to accomplish he foresaw and exhibited."-Nicholas Murray Butler, "From King's College to Columbia University 1754-1904." Educational Review, vol. xxviii, Nò. 5, pp. 515, 516.