University (1884). Mr. Winsor said Harvard College "grew upon a foundation of books." The University of Michigan grew upon a founda. tion of land, but books have quickened it to higher life. The new library and its new treasures have given strength to every department, but especially to the department of Historical and Political Science, which was planted anew in library soil, where it began to flourish as never before. The sum of $4,300 was given to Professor C. K. Adams by a personal friend, upon condition of secrecy as to the name of the donor, to expend for books in the interest of his new school of original investigation. He purchased at discretion the most needed works of history and political science, acquiring 2,600 volumes of great serial publications and the special literature relating to municipal government in the various countries of Europe. Such are the historic foundations for the study of history in the University of Michigan.

CHAPTER V.

HISTORY AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY.'

The genesis of a great university is always an interesting subject of historical inquiry, especially when the creative process is so clearly a matter of record as is the foundation by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White. These two names are inseparably connected with the beginnings of Cornell University. While there were many other influences, educational and political, State and national, which entered into the life of that institution, it was pre-eminently a creation by these two individuals, the first of whom was the material founder, the second the intellectual upbuilder.

THE UNIVERSITY IDEA.

If one were to trace the genesis of the idea of a great university in Central New York, he would find it in the mind of that young citizen of Syracuse who, in 1857, returned home from prolonged studies in European universities and offered the greater part of his income for the endowment of a university library in his native town, provided Gerrit Smith (an avowed friend of the higher education) would establish in that place a real university. Failing in this project, Andrew D. White accepted a professorship of history in the University of Michigan. There, during a sojourn of six years, was acquired that practical expe. rience, that American adaptation of a German ideal, which finally shaped Cornell University. Institutionally speaking, Cornell is the offspring of Michigan. To one who has read with care the documentary history of both institutions, nothing is clearer than this genealogy.

1In preparing this chapter, which is a sketch of Cornell University in connection with its historical department, the writer has enjoyed the use of a large collection of original documents, reports, registers, &c., kindly lent him by Mr. George William Harris, acting librarian of the institution, and also of a full set of President White's educational addresses. Two manuscript histories of Cornell University, prepared by Professor Russel and Mr. Huffcut, and now in the possession of President Charles Kendall Adams, did not come to the writer's notice until after the present article was completed. These two important sources of information, which the author has examined with care, will probably be utilized in some future history of Cornell University. The only pioneer in the writer's special field of investigation is President White's brief notice of the theory and practice of historical instruction in the course of History and Political Science at Cornell University, contributed to Dr. G. S. Hall's Pedagogical Library, Vol. I, pp. 73–76.

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In 1862 Mr. White, without immediately withdrawing from the University of Michigan, after spending a year in Europe, returned home to Syracuse, where he came into the possession of a large property left him by his father. Mr. C. K. Adams was left in charge of the work at Ann Arbor. In 1864 Mr. White entered the State senate of New York from the district of Syracuse and began a promising political career, from which he was soon to be diverted by the project for Cornell University. One cannot read those vigorous speeches, made in war time by the young senator, without realizing that a good politician, competent to force the lessons of history into American politics, was lost when Mr. White became a college president. But his original purpose of fostering history and political science through university education for American youth was, after all, the more feasible idea.

THE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE LAND GRANT.

There arose in the legislature of New York, in 1864, a bitter controversy respecting the final disposition of the agricultural college land grant, made by Congress in 1862. This grant, which Mr. White afterward called "a far-reaching measure of peace" in the midst of civil war, gave to each State in the Union 30,000 acres of public land, to every Senator and Representative in Congress, for the "maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts."

By the New York legislature, in 1863, the national land grant, amounting to nearly 990,000 acres, had been conferred upon the People's College, at Havana, in Schuyler County, upon condition of securing within three years a competent faculty, a library, the necessary apparatus, implements, buildings, etc. Although agents of this college and others had labored in Washington to secure the passage of the agricultural college act, nothing had been really done at Havana to deserve the land grant, and there was no prospect of meeting the required conditions. Other and sectarian colleges began to press their claims upon the legislature, and, at one time, there seemed danger of a division of the fund. Against this policy Andrew D. White, chairman of the committee on education, resolutely set himself, and he carried with him into the struggle for a redemption and concentration of the national grant Ezra Cornell, senator from Ithaca, together with a small but aggressive party of able and far-sighted men. Mr. Cornell's purpose, declared in this session, to give half a million dollars to found a university for the people, is inseparably connected with the idea of saving and utilizing the agricultural college grant. With other friends of agriculture he had been interested in pushing the agricultural college bill through Congress. It is not clear, however, that he had any real university project until he came in contact with Mr. White. Indeed, it is

evident from Mr. Cornell's own words' that he once favored the People's College, at Havana, and the State Agricultural College, at Ovid, in about equal measure.

EZRA CORNELL.

The senator from Ithaca was a man of the people. He was of hardy New England stock. His mother's family came from Nantucket, and his father was a native of Bristol County, Massachusetts. Heredity may have influenced Ezra Cornell to favor industrial education, for his father was a potter by trade and a school teacher in the winter season. Born at Westchester Landing, N. Y., 1807, Ezra Cornell, between that date and the year of his death, 1874, lived through all the phases which characterize American economic development. He cleared timber land for planting and became a successful farmer. Before he was twenty years old he was a good carpenter and joiner, thus adding mechanic arts to a knowledge of agriculture. At the age of twenty-one he came to Ithaca and began to work in a machine shop in connection with a cotton mill; two years later he was manager of a large flouring mill. He then became a builder of mills and a practical engineer, constructing dams and tunnels. To scientific agriculture and the industrial arts he soon added an interest in practical inventions, in patent plows, and the electric telegraph. He, himself, by a wonderful continuity of ideas, first applied a combination of the agricultural plow and the revolving drum of the machine shop to laying down in the earth Morse's telegraphic wires, encased in lead pipe, along that first experimental line between Washington and Baltimore. The underground method failing at first, only to succeed at last in our own day, Cornell proposed stringing the wires on poles. He became a telegraph superintendent and actually completed the first successful lines between Washington and Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia, New York and Albany, Troy and Montreal. He cleared many thousand dollars by these contracts. The Western Union Telegraph Company was largely the result of his masterly enterprise, and at the same time the economic consolidation. of his life-work, as well as the financial basis of Cornell University. The pioneer boy, farmer, carpenter, miller, and inventor was now a capitalist. What a wonderful process of evolution! From a wood-chopper to a wealthy electrician perfecting the invention of Morse and uniting a continent by his practical genius! In 1863 Ezra Cornell became a philanthropist by founding the Cornell public library, in Ithaca, at a final cost of $80,000. The next year he was senator from Ithaca in the New York Legislature.

The Cornell public library was the corner stone of Cornell University. One good deed always deserves another. His adopted town appears to have had as strong a hold upon Ezra Cornell's heart-strings as did Baltimore upon George Peabody or Johns Hopkins. An attempt was

1 Laws and documents relating to the Cornell University, p. 76.

made to influence Mr. Cornell, after he had once conceived the idea of founding a great university, to plant the institution in Syracuse; but "no"; the man remained loyal to Ithaca. President White, in the friendly abandon of an after-dinner speech among his old neighbors in Syracuse, tells the whole story of Mr. Cornell's inception of the university idea: "I found myself in the senate of this State sitting near a man never before known to me, but to whom I soon became attached by the largeness and nobleness of his views. On his informing me that he had half a million of dollars to give to some good object, and asking my advice as to the dispssal of it, my answer was that charities would always be cared for by asylums and hospitals, that the public school system and the intermediate school system would be taken care of by the States and mu nicipalities, but that advanced instruction-the crown of all, without which all the rest could have but a dwarfed life-must be cared for in these Eastern States, at least, by individuals. He decided to establish an institution for advanced learning. I made every effort to have it placed in Syracuse. Our friends, who have since established an university here, have chosen the very site which I had selected. I brought my honored and lamented friend, Mr. Cornell, to this city, took him to yonder hill, on which now stands the beautiful edifice of the Syracuse University, showed him the neighboring castellated mansion as the place which he might select as his residence, and offered him the half of such fortune as I possessed for the institution, if it could be placed here. His answer was, 'I think a smaller town is better and safer for young men, and I will do more in addition to what I have done if it remains where it is than you will do for it here.' Reluctantly I was obliged to yield that point."

CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

The bill for the incorporation of Cornell University was brought forward by Mr. White and supported in a speech which marks the crisis in the controversy. Against the policy of dividing the national endowment he took the firm ground of historical experience. "The State of Michigan having received from the General Government public lands for a university, at first followed our policy and divided the fund among several colleges. It was so much money thrown to the winds. At last wiser counsels prevailed. A son of New York was made president of the State university; the fund was concentrated upon this. The result was most striking. To-day are in attendance there over nine hundred students and a body of more manly, enthusiastic, earnest young men can be found nowhere."

Concentration of resources for universities and distribution for common schools have always been cardinal principles in Mr. White's educational philosophy. "To him that hath shall be given, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." This sound