wide. The War of 1812 gave the Territory a distinctly new place in the national consciousness, and brought in a few valued families, but the years succeeding were nevertheless years of depression, stagnation and discouragement.

But finally the new day dawned. Internal conditions began to change for the better; while the introduction of the steamboat to the great lakes, and the opening of the Erie Canal, gave to emigration from the East facilities for travel and transportation far surpassing anything that it had previously enjoyed. Still more, the construction of railroads, which began in the West about the time that Michigan came into the Union, cancelled most of what still remained of the early advantages of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois growing out of the Ohio River and its tributaries, so far as emigration was concerned. With all the rest, the cheap lands that had been more accessible were rapidly passed into private hands, either to be cultivated or to be held for a rise in price. The whole Northwest, and particularly Michigan, began to respond to these influences. Population increased to 31,639 in 1830, and to 212,267 in 1840. The influx of the new population at once changed the whole economical and social economy of the Territory. The trapper began to disappear from the streams, and the fur trader from the towns and posts, while the habitants were engulfed in the new emigration, and everything began to move forward.

Naturally enough, the coming of the new population brought up the question of statehood. In 1832 the people, at a popular election, cast a large majority of votes in favor of entering into state government. A census taken two years later enumerated 87,278 inhabitants. Proceeding upon the theory that the Ordinance of 1787 was an Enabling Act, and that no special legislation by Congress was necessary, the Territorial Legislature took the necessary steps leading to a state organization. A constitution was framed by a duly elected convention, which sat in Detroit in May and June 1835, and was duly ratified by the people in November following. But an unfortunate controversy with Ohio over the

common boundary delayed the consummation two years: an Act of Admission to the Union was not approved until January 26, 1837. No other one of our states has had so long a territorial tutelage as Michigan; but New Mexico, when her turn comes to enter the Union, will have surpassed her. The civic organization of Michigan was now rounded out, and her characteristic institutions were completed or founded. A glance at the growth of the state and a closer scrutiny of the population, together with some incidental remarks on local institutions, civic character, and the early schools will complete this survey.

The growth of population can best be shown by giving the number of inhabitants reported to the Census Office at the decennial censuses: 1800, 3,757; 1810, 4,762; 1820, 8,765; 1830, 31,639; 1840, 212,267; 1850, 397,654; 1860, 749,113; 1870, 1,184,059; 1880, 1,636,937; 1890, 2,093,889; 1900, 2,420,982. It will be seen that the one-million line was crossed just before 1870, the two-million line just before 1890.

Michigan lies in the northern zone of population that stretches westward across the United States. The stream of emigration, which became so marked in 1830-1840, is mainly traceable to New England. Every state of the group, and notably Vermont, helped directly to swell the volume of the stream. New Englanders at one remove were also numerous. These were composed of the sons and daughters of earlier emigrants to Ohio, and particularly to Western New York, who, imitating their fathers and mothers, plunged farther into the wilderness. It must be said, too, that a considerable proportion of the New Englanders proper had not, in the first instance, started on so long a journey: they now gave up the homes that they had made for themselves in New York and Ohio, commonly perhaps because they could not hold them, to seek the cheaper lands and the harder life of a newer country. Most of the emigration, therefore, reached the territory by Lake Erie, but some came by land through the northwestern gateway of Ohio. The main fact is that this Eastern population gained an immediate ascendency in all the affairs of life, — an ascend

ency that, notwithstanding the later emigration of a more diversified character, it has never lost.

Some of the subordinate elements in the population may also be named. Michigan opposes to the Dominion of Canada a much longer front than any other state in the Union, which goes far towards explaining the unusual proportion of British-born people within her boundaries. This British-born population may be divided into four classes: the English, the Scotch, the French Canadians, and the Irish; such traces of influence on the present life of the state as these nationalities exert, being due far more to the later emigration than to the earlier one when the French or the British were masters of the country.

Some of the main facts of Michigan history are written plain upon the face of the map. The great number of Indian and French names tells of the aboriginal and French possession and occupancy; the British-American names. proclaim the final ascendency of this race in the struggle for the hegemony of the continent; the counties in the north central part of the Southern Peninsula that bear Irish names suggest an Irish emigration, or at least a strong Irish influence, while the cluster of Dutch names found south of Grand Rapids is an enduring record of the remarkable Dutch emigration to that part of the state which took place at the middle of the century. Again, the names of Jackson, Calhoun, Van Buren and Cass, and their prominent party associates, that are found so plentifully in the central and the southwestern parts, teach the lesson that this region was taking on a civil organization at the time when these statesmen were directing national affairs, and that a majority of the pioneers, with their local leaders, belonged to the same political party. Bare mention can be made of the Germans, the Scandinavians, the Welsh, the Poles, and other nationalities who have been attracted to Michigan by her diversified advantages.

The character of the population that has been in the ascendency since the new trend was entered upon, at the close of the last century, suggests at once the political and social, industrial and economical, civil, religious, and

educational ideas that constitute the substratum of Michigan life and culture. The state is New England over again, but with modifications. For example, the Governor and Judges gave to the Territory, as to Ohio and Indiana, the Pennsylvania system of local government; but the people who brought the state into the Union threw this system aside and set up the New York system, which again is a modification of the New England town government. Local powers of government are divided between the county and township, but the county board is composed of representatives of the townships. In religion and education, the same influence predominated when the state was forming its permanent character. The New England church system and school system were reproduced in their larger features. New England men placed in the Ordinance of 1787 the words, "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged;" and these words are emblazoned upon the archway over the platform in the auditorium of the University Hall.

Such a population as that of French Michigan could hardly be expected to show much interest in education, and the facts justify the inference. Still there are some things that deserve to be noted. Cadillac, describing in 1700 the plan of his colony, spoke of the instruction of "the little savages" in the French language, as being “the only means of civilizing and humanizing them, and infusing into their minds religious and monarchical principles." "One takes wild beasts at their birth, birds in their nests," he said, "to tame and free them." Three years later he wrote to the minister Ponchartrain urging the establishment of a seminary at Detroit for the teaching of the Indian and the French children. alike in piety and the French language. But nothing is heard of a school until 1755, when one Rocaux is identified in the marriage register of St. Ann's Church as "director of the Christian schools" Christian schools" a record that suggests the gentle La Salle and his famous Institute. Well-to-do families sometimes sent their sons and daughters to Montreal and Quebec to be

taught. Mention is made of a school near the Fort in 1775, an old account book that has been preserved belonging to the year 1780-1781 contains charges for tuition, and we have the names of two French schoolmasters of the year 1790. As Judge Burnet remarks, at the opening of the American period a great majority of the habitants were illiterate. Father Richard, soon to be more fully dealt with, when he came, did what he could to foster schools in connection with the Church. In a memorial that he addressed to the Governor and Judges in 1808 he mentions, besides the English schools in the town of Detroit, "four primary schools for boys and two for our young ladies, either in town or at Spring Hill, at Grand Marais, even at River Hurons." Reading, writing, arithmetic, knitting, sewing, spinning, etc., were taught the young ladies. In the two town schools for ladies there were already three dozen spinning-wheels and one loom, while to encourage and please the students. he had ordered from New York a spinning machine of one hundred spindles, one air pump, and an electrical apparatus. He had purchased a house in which to establish an academy for young ladies. "It would be very necessary," he said, " to have in Detroit a public building for a similar academy in which the higher branches of Mathematics, the most important languages, Geography, History, Natural and Moral Philosophy, could be taught to young gentlemen of our country, and in which should be kept the machines the most necessary for the improvement of the useful arts for making the most necessary physical experiments, and framing the beginnings of a public library." He therefore prayed that one of four lotteries which had been authorized as means of promoting literature and improvement in Detroit might be handed over to him as the administrator of the two academies, to be used for their support. Mention is made also of an early church school on the church farm at Hamtramck, which finally developed into St. Philip's College.

During the period of their ascendency, the British did even less for education and schools than the French had done. In fact they did nothing at all. To them Detroit was a trading

post still more completely than it had been to their predecessors. Perhaps the English and Scotch families depended mainly for instruction for their children, as far as they were instructed, upon private tutors and teachers, but we hear of prominent residents sending their boys to Albany to be taught.

The coming of the Americans gave education an impulse that it never really lost. It became stronger as the tide of emigration rose higher. We hear of private teachers in schools for boys and girls in 1797, and such teachers and schools continued to increase in number until the public-school period was reached. Still there is no mention made of an incorporated school in Detroit until 1830. In 1802 the inhabitants of Wayne county petitioned Congress to grant them a township of land, with which to found and carry on an academy. In February 1809, the Governor and Judges enacted a school law that had some enlightened features. It directed the Overseers of the Poor in the several judicial districts to divide such districts into school districts, to enumerate the children between the ages of four and eighteen, and to levy township taxes amounting in the aggregate to not less than two dollars or more than four dollars for each such child, to be collected and handled like other taxes, and to be appropriated for the schools. But school legislation, like other legislation, comes to nothing, unless enforced, and in this case there was nothing to enforce the law; neither a public opinion nor a central authority. This law stood long on the statute book, but it was wholly inoperative from the day of its enactment. In 1832 a number of ladies organized a free-school society in Detroit, which continued in the field a number of years. They said in one of their public notices: "It cannot escape the observation of any citizen that in our midst are many children that are growing up not only in poverty but in ignorance. The object of our society is to take these children and bring them under the culture and moral restraint of the schools." A special Act providing common schools for Detroit was passed in 1833, but it accomplished nothing. It was stated in a public meeting held in December of that year that

there was not in town a single common school where a boy could obtain an education in the common branches. The free school system of Detroit dates from the year 1842. We have now reached, however, a time when

forces were beginning to work energetically that soon put a very different face upon matters.1

Such is the historical background to our picture of the University of Michigan.

T

HE University of Michigan is so important a part of the State System of Public Instruction, and its history is so inextricably bound up with it, that we must take a view of the larger subject in order to understand the smaller one. In fact, for a term of years the history of the University was practically the history of public instruction in the state.

I. THE TERRITORY

This history begins in the first period of the territorial government, as sketched in the introductory chapter. The prospective land grants for common schools and an institution of higher learning had served to keep those important subjects before the American part of the population. The territory was recovering from the wasting effects of the War of 1812. It was slowly increasing in population and in wealth; the first increase rendering the need of schools more evident, and the second giving promise of ability to maintain them. Impending industrial and commercial changes in the East were beginning to quicken the Northwestern pulse. On July 4 preceding the first act in the corporate history of the University, the construction of the Erie Canal was begun, and the following year the "Walk in the Water," the first steamboat on the Lakes, arrived at Detroit. There were beginning to be signs of a distinct Michigan consciousness. One evidence of this is seen in the fact that the new activity felt in popular education throughout the country began to show itself in the Territory. In the early summer of 1817, the first number of The Detroit Gazette appeared, a weekly newspaper printed partly in English and partly in French, the columns of which bear evidence to the fact just stated. Race

enmity, or at least race rivalry, was not without influence, as this paragraph, translated from a French editorial that appeared in The Gazette of August 8 shows:

"Frenchmen of the Territory of Michigan! You ought to begin immediately to give an education to your children. In a little time there will be in this Territory as many Yankees as French, and if you do not have your children educated the situations will all be given to the Yankees. No man is capable of serving as a civil and military officer unless he can at least read and write. There are many young people of from eighteen to twenty years who have not yet learned to read, but they are not yet too old to learn. I have known those who have learned to read at the age of forty years." 2

The first answer to the new interest in education came in a piece of legislation so remarkable that only a full summary can do it justice.

On the 26th day of August, 1817, the Governor and Judges enacted that there should be established a Catholepistemiad, or University, to be denominated the Catholepistemiad, or University, of Michigania. It should be composed of thirteen Didaxiim, or Professorships, viz.: Catholepistemia, or Universal Science; Anthropoglossica, or Literature, embracing all the Epistemiim, or Sciences Relative to Language; Mathematica, or Mathematics; Physiognostica, or Natural History; Physiosophica, or Natural Philosophy; Astronomia, or Astronomy; Chymia, or Chemistry; Iatrica, or Medical Sciences; Economica, or Economical Sciences; Ethica, or Ethical Sciences; Polemitactica, or Military Sciences; Diegetica, or Historical Sciences, and Ennoica, or Intellectual Sciences, embracing all the Epistemiim, or

1 The facts given in this chapter in regard to schools are taken from The History of Detroit and Michigan. Silas Farmer.

2 American State Universities; Their Origin and Progress, etc. Andrew Ten Brook. Cincinnati, 1875. P. 94.

Sciences relative to the minds of animals, to the human mind, to spiritual existences, to the Deity, and to religion. The Didactor or Professor of Catholepistemia should be President of the institution, and the Didactor of Ennoica Vice-President. The Didactorim or Professors, to be appointed and commissioned by the Governor of the Territory, should be paid from the public treasury, in quarterly payments, annual salaries to be fixed by law. More than one Didaxia or Professorship might be held by

the same person. The President and Didactors, or a majority of them, should have power to regulate all the concerns of the institution, and to that end were clothed with the usual powers of bodies corporate and politic. They should provide for and appoint all such officers and teachers under them as they might deem necessary and expedient; establish colleges, academies, schools, libraries, museums, atheneums,

be paid from the treasury quarterly salaries to be determined by law. The Didactors, it will be seen, were quite as much a Territorial Board of Education clothed with ample political powers as a University Faculty.

To support this grand scheme the Governor and Judges were empowered to increase the existing public taxes fifteen per cent, and it was

provided that this

proportion of all such taxes, for the present and future, should be appropriated to that end. The Catholepistemiad might propose and draw four successive lotteries, retaining fifteen per cent of the prizes in the same for its own benefit. The proceeds of these sources of reve

nue, and of all

subsequent ones,

should be first applied to the procurement of suitable lands and buildings and to the establishment of a library or libraries, and afterwards to such purposes as should by law

be directed. The honorarium for a

ful literary and scientific institutions consonant to the laws of the United States and of Michigan, and provide for and appoint Directors, Visitors, Curators, Librarians, Instructors and Instructrixes among and throughout the various counties, cities, towns, townships, or other geographical divisions of Michigan. The subordinate instructors and instructrixes should

dollars; for classical instruction ten dollars a quarter, for ordinary instruction six dollars a quarter; and if a majority of the Judges of a court of any county should certify that the parent or guardian of any person had not adequate means to defray the cost of the suitable instruction of such person, then such cost should be paid out of the treasury of the Terri