Students were required to attend some one of the village churches, to be chosen by their parents. The character of the discipline is well shown by two or three paragraphs that appear under the heading "Government" in successive catalogues. In the government of the institution the Faculty ever keep it in mind that most of the students are of an age which renders some substitute for parental superintendence absolutely necessary. It is believed that no College in the country can secure public confidence without watching over the morals of its students, and making strict propriety of conduct, as well as diligent application to study, a condition of membership. Considering the government of the students as a substitute for the regulations of the home, the Faculty endeavor to bring it as near to the character of parental control as possible; they do not

and the welfare of other students require, from the institution. Such is the substance of these paragraphs.

The religious atmosphere of the institution. was the subject of much solicitude to the people of the state. As we have seen, nearly all the Professors were clergymen. Moreover, the reports of the Board of Regents and of successive Boards of Visitors point to the prevalent interest in the subject. For example, the report of the Regents for 1842 shows that they were trying to steer between religious

indifference on the one

side and sectarianism on the other. Nothing but a Christian institution, they say, would satisfy the people of the state. There is common ground enough now occupied by the various religious bodies to furnish a basis for cooperation in an institution. of learning, and to secure the presence of a religious influence, devoid of any sectarian forms and peculiarities, so essential, not only as an efficient belief, but also for the development of the most valuable traits of youthful character and the qualifications for future usefulness. The only security in the conduct of a collegiate institution intended to be the common property of the state, must be sought in the character and principles of the men who are placed over it and held responsible for its administration. In all the Christian sects, men of expanded views, liberal spirit, and enlightened mind, devoid of the spirit of bigotry, could be selected and deputed for such a work. The Board itself, while consisting of members from almost, if not all, the principal Christian sects in the state, had never been disturbed in its deliberations or debates, or any of its official acts, by the expression or the existence of jealousy or

seek to attain this aim wholly or chiefly by constraint and the dread of penalty, but by the influence of persuasion and kindness. Respecting the perverse, whom nothing but the fear of penalty will influence, the Faculty consider themselves bound as standing in the place of parents or guardians; first to see that the student is kindly and faithfully advised and admonished, and that the parent is fully informed of any improper conduct in his son; but secondly, if such correction prove insufficient, to remove him, as his own best interests A System of Public Instruction, etc. F. W. Shearman. p. 107.

The doors of the mother institution had no sooner been set open than there began to be signs, fortunately false signs, that they must be closed again. In 1843 the Regents reported that a deep and thickening gloom had settled around the affairs of the Univer

sity; they had been more embarrassed and perplexed in regard to its moneyed concerns than they had contemplated; they had felt constrained to make known the facts to the Professors of the University and the principals of the branches, in order that they might seek other spheres of usefulness, and had been assured by them that they were willing to endure privations and hardships so long as there were hope of ultimate success. The finances were, indeed, in a sad state. The overdue interest on lands sold amounted to nearly $60,000, and the Legislature had extended the time for its payment; the income from the fund was small, and often paid in depreciated state scrip; the interest on the state loan to the Board consumed two-thirds of the

stant drain. The expenses for the ensuing year were estimated at $8,700, of which $6,150 was interest and $2,550 salaries and contingent expenses. The Professors' salaries were rated at the ludicrous figure of $1,260. The Board appealed loudly to the Legislature for help; not indeed for an appropriation from the treasury, all they desired was the necessary power to accomplish their trust and measures, to render the revenue of the University regularly available. But the Legislature did noth

ing, and the next year the Regents renewed their plaint. The unavoidable expenses of the University and branches for the ensuing year, they estimated at $2,922.55. The funds had suffered severely from bank failures. Still the Regents repelled the idea of closing the doors. The condition of the institution, both as to its reputation and numbers, had exceeded the expectations of the most sanguine, and it was confidently believed that it would afford the means of a thorough education to the sons of Michigan. and other states who might seek its advantages. If once closed, even for the shortest period, they said, years must elapse before it could regain the confidence and prosperity it now possessed. Rather than close the University, they would lop off the branches. So they appealed once more to the Legislature for help, recommending such changes in the organic law as would allow them to assess reasonable tuition fees upon the students. To increase the gloom, just at this time some citizens of Berrien county petitioned the Legislature to close up the University and transfer its property to the state common school fund.

1A System of Public Instruction, etc. F. W. Shearman. pp. 86-87.

"On the first organization of the Board of Regents, it included no clerical members. For this reason the University, then in futuro, was stigmatized as an 'infidel affair,' which it was predicted would fail to perform the functions for which it had been endowed. This prediction was uttered with much confidence in certain quarters, and an Act for the Incorporation of a Sectarian College was urged through the Legislature, partly by the force of an appeal to the religious feeling of the members, based on this accusation. Partly with a view to disarm that kind of opposition, and more especially because they believed it to be a duty irrespective of it, the Board was careful to introduce the elements of religion into the branches, which they did by the appointment of clergymen of the different denominations as Principals thereof."- Memoir Adopted by the Board of Regents, 1852. A System of Public Instruction, etc., p. 313.

2 A System of Public Instruction, etc. F. W. Shearman. p. 109.

The University, they said, was of little or no benefit to the state or the people.1

The nadir had now been reached, and the upward movement began. The Legislature passed the relief measures mentioned in the third chapter which eased the financial situation. Accordingly the Regents, in 1845, held a more cheerful tone than in the two previous years. The fears once entertained have given place to sanguine hopes, and they utter the determination to make the University what its ample resources are abundantly capable of making it, an ornament as well as a blessing to the The next year their language is similarly congratulatory. The worst had now been passed.2

state.

The Act of June 21, 1837, directed the Board of Regents to elect a Chancellor of the University, and to prescribe his duties. This subject was often before the Board, but no Chancellor was ever appointed. For one thing, the Regents had no money with which to pay him, and no very clear ideas concerning his duties. George Duffield, D.D., Chairman of the Board of Visitors in 1849, and author of its report, went into a learned philological and historical argument to show that the University Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge had no analogues in American Colleges. It was a title wholly unsuited to democratic simplicity. Such an officer would either be a perfect sinecure or excite jealousies and prove a cumbrous clog in the operations of the University. "We cordially approve of the policy and views of the Board, therefore, in abstaining from the appointment of a Chancellor." 3 The method of conducting the University was the one employed at the German Universities. The Professors regularly engaged in the business of instruction, acted as President or Principal for the term of one year, according to an established rule of rotation, performing all the duties that were commonly discharged by the President of a College. This plan the visitors commended, and urged that the monarchical feature of a Chancellor should be

1 A System of Public Instruction, etc. F. W. Shearman. p. 120.

2 Ibid. p. 126. 8 Ibid. p. 187.

Still this plan There was a

struck out of the Organic Law. worked but indifferently well. sad want of strong central authority. Furthermore, the plan that the Regents, owing to fear of offending the religious scruples of the churches, consistently followed of putting clergymen representing the leading religious denominations in the Professors' chairs not unnaturally led to some sectarian feeling within the Faculty, and to the sharpening of dissensions that originated in other causes. One of these causes, it may be observed, was the distribution of the extra work that, in the embarrassed state of the treasury, the Professors were called upon to perform.

The years 1837-1850 disclosed two sources of serious weakness in the organization and working of the University. working of the University. One was in the Board of Regents; the other in the Faculty. Both topics will come before us in the next chapter; but it becomes necessary here to deal briefly with the most serious difficulty that taxed the wisdom of the Faculty in this period.

The following rule appears to have been in force from the time that the University opened her doors, as a part of the unwritten law, and was finally printed in 1847. "No student shall be or become a member of any society connected with the University which has not first submitted its Constitution to the Faculty and received their approval." Originally this rule had reference only to such organizations as literary societies, but it was ultimately pressed into another service. In the spring of 1846 it was accidentally discovered that Chapters of two Greek Letter fraternities had been established about a year before and were in full operation. About the same time some students applied to the Faculty for permission to organize a third fraternity, and, when the Faculty could not give the matter immediate attention, proceeded to effect such an organization without regard to the views of that body. Such conduct was held to be in derogation of the rule in regard to societies. It may well be doubted whether the Faculty, left to itself, could have successfully managed the resulting controversy,

See the memoir prepared by Dr. Zina Pitcher and adopted by the Board of Regents in 1851. A System of Public Instruction, etc. F. W. Shearman. pp. 312-326.

or rather have prevented it; but with the Board of Regents, the citizens of Ann Arbor, the general public, the Board of Visitors, the secret society interest in the country, and the Legislature to help it, that task was a hopeless one from the beginning.

The Faculty concluded to recognize the existing Chapters for the time, but to prevent their being recruited in the future, and proceeded to exact from students pledges looking to the second of these ends. The Faculty confidently expected that thus the three chapters would quietly die out in two or three years and that things would go on as before. Vain expectation! The members of the societies went on recruiting their numbers, clandestinely as before, although considerable time elapsed before that fact was definitely known. When the disclosure came, the Faculty stood firmly by its earlier decision, and expelled a number of students from the University, of whom some obtained admission to other Colleges and some abandoned College studies forever. Unfortunately, but perhaps not unnaturally, the subject was brought to the attention of the Legislature; and it was not without difficulty that legislation relative to the subject was prevented. Unfortunately, too, the Regents were unable to render the Faculty any real assistance, because they were divided among themselves. Nor was the Faculty itself firmly united at last, but tended. to divide into two parties. Finally a modus vivendi was reached, in October 1850. It had immediate reference to only one fraternity, but it was soon made applicable to the others. While it was in progress, the Faculty called upon distinguished College Presidents at the East for their views relative to the general secret society question, and received in reply a chorus of adverse opinions. These opinions were duly published in a report of the Faculty to the Regents, covering, from their point of view, the history of the case. For the time, this controversy materially weakened the University, fomenting dissension among students and Professors within, and friends of the institution without. It contributed, no doubt, to promote

1 The foregoing account of the secret society contest is drawn from Ten Brook, pp. 191-196, 402-404, and Miss Farrand, pp. 73-82.

the important reforms that will be considered in the next chapter.

The close of this period had been nearly reached before steps were taken to establish the second of the three departments that the Organic Act contemplated. Instruction in medicine was first given in the autumn term of 1850-1851. The Department of Medicine and Surgery will receive treatment in another chapter, but the fact should be here recognized that the department immediately drew to itself a large number of students. The enrolment, the very first year, exceeded anything that the older department had yet seen.

How small the scale of work in those days. was, is well shown by the aggregate expenditures for the different years: 1841-42, $10,142.96; 1842-43, $2,681.76; 1843-44, $3,109.56; 1844-45, $5,177-77; 1845-46, $7,075.50; 184647, $18,810.78; 1847-48, $9,816.62; 1848-49, $10,693.24; 1849-50, $19,683.85; 1850-51, $15,024.22.

The number of students increased but slowly. The following table will show the total number in attendance for the years named:

The first graduating class left the University in 1845, eleven in number. At the close of the period 1852, 101 students had been graduated.

All things considered, these results were gratifying. Michigan counted but 212,267 inhabitants in 1840, and but 397,654 in 1850. It is true that a number of other states sent a few students, Ohio leading the way. The maximum number of foreign students was reached in 1851, when it was seventeen in a total of 64. The above table takes no account of the preparatory school, which was first taught by the University Faculty,

but afterwards by its own proper teachers. It was discontinued in 1848. Most of the students roomed in the College buildings, but

there were no commons. The existence of two literary societies is duly announced in 1849.

T

HE Regents of the University had hardly entered upon their work when they began to discover that the Organic Act from which they derived their powers had serious defects. They discovered, for example, that it was marked by the one radical defect of unduly limiting their powers, or of making them too dependent upon the Legislature. Furthermore, the Act gave some powers to the Superintendent of Public Instruction that were at least questionable. One or two particulars may be mentioned. The Act did not give the Regents the management of the University fund, but only of the income from it, and it associated the Superintendent with them in establishing such branches as the Legislature itself from time to time should authorize. Conviction as to these defects in the law deepened as difficulties multiplied. Nor was this conviction by any means confined to the members of the Board; for instance, the Committee that the Legislature appointed in 1840 to investigate the affairs of the University, handled the subject in this vigorous fashion: "That the Legislature should attempt in reference to the University to put the whole subject into the hands of competent men, leaving them with undivided responsibility on their shoulders, and then the Legislature should not meddle with it again except to protect as guardians, not to destroy as capricious despots. The duties of the Regents, in their turn, would be mostly to provide the means and apparatus and the like, and fill the various Faculties with able men, and throw the undivided responsibility of carrying on the work of education on them. The further duties of the Regents were only to watch and defend, and not to interfere with the growth of what they had

planted. 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."1

The Regents brought the subject to the attention of the Legislature more than once but without securing the desired action. Thus in 1841, responding to a call for its views. from that quarter, the Board said: "The first change in the Organic Law deemed essential was the proper restriction of responsibility to the Board of Regents, and the second change related to the trust and management of the funds of the University. Under the existing law it was impossible for the Board to adapt their measures to their means, to project or execute such plans as the interests of education, the wants of the state, and the resources of the University demanded. The duties of the Superintendent in connection with the University were unnecessary and onerous." But the Legislature did nothing in the premises.

2

Time, however, was working a slow cure. The opinion was becoming common, if not general, throughout the state that the University would never take its proper place in the educational world unless there should be important changes made in its constitution. Still more, the opinion was getting abroad that a firmer administration was needed in the University itself. The immediate result was that when the second constitutional convention convened in 1850, the time was found to be ripe for helpful innovation. Nor

1 A System of Public Instruction, etc. of Michigan. F. W. Shearman. p. 54.

2 Ibid. p. 66.