agriculture and mechanics; (2) School of civil engineering; (3) Normal school. In each of these instruction was to be given by professors of the "departments." The board elected Professor Matthews chairman of the faculty, fixed salary of each professor at $1,500, and the chairman of the faculty had in addition the use of the president's house and grounds. The opponents of this plan claimed that it violated the organic law of the institution. The legislature, by act of January 14, 1860, swept out the board of curators and the faculty, and elected a new board for the purpose of reorganizing the university. RETURN TO ORIGINAL ORGANIZATION. The new board of curators, on March 15, 1860, upset the plan of organization of October 10, 1859, by resolving that the university should be reorganized with a faculty of 5 regular professors-(1) English language and literature, (2) mathematics, (3) natural sciences and natural philosophy, (4) Latin and Greek languages, (5) moral and mental philosophy and political science—one of whom shall be elected by the board president of the university. A committee was appointed to correspond with a view of filling the professorships. On May 15, 1860, professors were elected to the chairs: (1) John H. Lathop, * (2) E. T. Fristo, (3) Abram Litton, (4) G. H. Matthews, with A. G. Wilkinson assistant professor and instructor in German and French, salary, $1,100. J. J. Searcy was elected principal of the primary department. Professor Matthews was elected ex officio president of the university, salary $2,500, with use of president's house, etc. The salary of the professors was fixed at $2,000, and the term of office four years, except the principal of primary department, whose term was one year and salary $1,000. B. B. Minor, esq., then of Richmond, Va., was elected president on July 2, 1860, and installed 2d of October following. During the dreary period of the civil war, from 1861 to 1865, the university barely survived. With small incomes from the seminary fund and no State aid, it was constrained to depend largely upon tuition fees. Her students had so generally obeyed their country's call to arms that in the spring of 1862 the attendance had run down to 40. Hence, on March 20, 1862, the curators, then owing the president, professors, and tutors $7,000 on salary account and with no present or prospective means for paying, discontinued all the offices of the university-president, professors, tutors, and closed the university. *Dr. Lathrop now came back to his first love after serving ten years (1849 to 1859) as president of Wisconsin University and one year (1859–60) as president of Indiana University. November 24, 1862, the university was reopened with 2 chairs-English language and literature, Prof. John H. Lathrop; ancient languages and literature, Prof. George H. Matthews. Dr. Lathop was to be chairman of the faculty. Professors Lathrop and Matthews were required to distribute among themselves such other subjects as the wants of the students might require. The United States troops, by request, vacated the east end of the university building. The motive for reopening the university in November, 1862, was the probable disposition by the coming general assembly of the 330,000 acres of land granted to this State for endowment of a "College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts." August 11, 1863, the university was reorganized for the session of 1863-64 by election of the faculty following: John H. Lathrop, chairman of the faculty and professor of mental and moral science; G. H. Matthews, professor of ancient languages and literature; J. G. Norwood, professor of natural sciences and natural philosophy; J. V. C. Karnes and H. N. Ess, tutors. June 28, 1864, Professors Lathrop, Matthews, and Norwood agreed to continue in their chairs for the session of 1864-65. June 27, 1865, the university was reorganized by the election of John H. Lathrop president and Carr W. Pritchett professor of mathematics, and the reelection of Professors Matthews and Norwood. Professor Pritchett declined, and Acting Prof. Joseph Ficklin was elected to the chair. Under this organization the work of the session was conducted. The university, the alumni, education throughout the nation, mourned their loss in the death of Pres. John H. Lathrop August 6, 1866. Then passed away the polished, popular, Christian gentleman, the finished scholar, the true educator, the university's first and fifth president, the mind and heart which organized, dedicated, vitalized this university, molded, inspired, shaped its growth during the first seven years of its scholastic existence. To save the university from wreck in the civil war, and moved by a paternal devotion, he returned to it in 1860 in the capacity of a professor. His great head and heart and strong arm kept it afloat during those troublous times. It was suspended in 1862, but he resuscitated it and died with his hand upon its helm. Had President Lathrop been spared, it is certain that he would have built the university on the same lines along which Presidents Read and Laws have directed and shaped its growth toward a full and true American university. The evidence for this is to be found, explicit and repeated, in his published reports, his speeches and his acts, for he articulated McDowell's Medical School with the university in 1846, and in 1863 suggested to the curators to engraft the "college of agriculture and mechanic arts" on the university. The average yearly enrollment of academic students and the number of academic graduates from 1842 to 1866 was: Years. 1841 to 1849 (President Lathrop's administration) 1849 to 1850 (Acting President Hudson's administration) 1850 to 1856 (President Shannon's administration). 1856 to 1859 (President Hudson's administration). 1859 to 1860 (Chairman and Ex Officio President Matthews' administration) 1860 to 1862 (President Minor's administration) 1862 to 1865 (Chairman Lathrop's administration). 1865 to 1866 (President Lathrop's administration). Although the institution flourished under Presidents Lathrop, Shannon, Hudson, and Matthews, yet comparatively few academic students reached the attainments required for graduation. This is, in fact, a usual condition in our Western institutions of higher education, nor is the amount of good which they accomplish to be measured by the number of those who complete full courses and graduate. With President Lathrop's last official term ends the history of the university under its organization for a period of twenty-five years as a college of arts, or old-fashioned college, including preparatory students and students in partial courses, such as were necessary in a new Western institution. Prof. Daniel Read, of Wisconsin University, was, on August 29, 1866, unanimously elected president for four years, at a salary of $2,500, with usual perquisites. Dr. Read, looking over the ground, saw war's blight and desolation. The university buildings were dingy, dilapidated, hastening to decay; the library was despoiled; apparatus scanty, broken; president's house in ashes; teaching force, 6 professors; total number of students, 104; perplexing pecuniary embarrassments; its sole endowment $123,000 of bank stock, paying small dividends occasionally; the total annual income, $7,132.50; a debt of $20,000; teachers poorly paid in warrants, hawked on the street at 60 cents on the dollar; *the warfare raging between local factions, social and political; the apathy, the inertia of the public mind on education; even the legislators doubting seriously that this was the university intended by the constitution. It was proved by facts and figures to the curators in a report and to the legislature in an address before it that the university must surely suspend from debt, from downright starvation, and inanition unless it came to the * R. L. Todd's address, July 5, 1876. The convention which formed the constitution of 1865 refused, by a direct vote, to recognize the university at Columbia as the university contemplated by that constitution, even despite the most strenuous efforts of Hon. William F. Switzler, the member of the convention from Boone County. The constitution of 1875 recognized this as the State university and pledged the State to support it. Wil liam F. Switzler was the author of the university clauses in the constitution of 1875, as chairman of the convention's committee on education. rescue with aid for support and maintenance. Professor Read returned to his former field of labor to await the action of the legislature, and with the understanding and pledge that if there should be favorable action toward the support of the university and its proper recognition he would in that case make his acceptance final and take charge of the institution. The action of the legislature was favorable. An act, March 11, 1867, gave $10,000 for rebuilding the president's house, which had been consumed by fire, and made also an annual grant of 14 per cent of the State revenue, after deducting therefrom 25 per cent already appropriated for the support of common schools, and his acceptance thereupon was made final before the board of curators April, 1867. This law added to the annual income of the university over $16,000. From this time commences the history of the university under new and, it is to be hoped, better conditions; from this period dates the first State aid in the way of support ever rendered the institution. It is henceforth to be the University of the State of Missouri, established and maintained according to the requirements of the constitution upon, however, and only upon, this supreme condition: That the university's presiding head has successful experience in public life, in statecraft, in financial matters, also in university administration and organization, and, at the same time, tact, prudence, courage, indomitable perseverance, and unwearying industry. Such men were Presidents Read and Laws. REORGANIZATION OF THE UNIVERSITY. LOCATING THE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND MECHANIC ARTS. To President Lathrop is due the honor of originating the idea of locating at Columbia and engrafting on the university the College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, provided for by the act of Congress of July 2, 1862. As early as 1863 he called the attention of the board of curators to that important subject.* To Hon. L. M. Lawson, an alumnus, class of 1853, belongs the honor of inducing the board of curators to make their first move toward securing the location of the agricultural college at the university. On his motion, July 26, 1865, it was Resolved, That a committee of five members of this board be appointed to consider this subject, and in behalf of the board to memorialize the general assembly at its next meeting in favor of connecting the proposed agricultural college with the State University. This resolution was adopted nem. con., and Messrs. Lawson, Clark, Esteb, Robinson, and Russell were appointed the committee to memorialize the general assembly on the subject. This committee pre *Switzler's History of the University, p. 294. sented to the legislature a memorial to that end, which formed the basis of all that has been said and written on the subject. R. L. Todd was the author of this memorial. In this struggle the question at issue was whether the State should disperse her means for higher education upon different institutions in different parts of the State or concentrate these means upon one university with different colleges or departments. This question arose upon the disposition of the Congressional land grant of July 2, 1862, for the "benefit of colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts," and was most zealously discussed from the time of the acceptance of the grant by the State legislature, March 17, 1863, until the final vote on the act of location, February 24, 1870, a period of seven years. The advocates of concentration, the university forces, were led by President Read before the public and by Senator J. S. Rollins and Representative F. T. Russell on the floor of the general assembly. The advocates of dispersion came from leading men on the floor of both houses and from different parts of the State. After a four years' bitter struggle, Rollins, Russell, and Read heartily cooperating and leading the university forces, the act of February 24, 1870, located the "college of agriculture and the mechanic arts" at Columbia "as a distinct department of the university." For this location Boone County paid to the university for the use of said college a cash bonus of $30,000 and 640 acres of land. This 640 acres of land cost the county $60,000, which, with the cash gift of $30,000, makes the total $90,000. Of this Boone County paid $80,000 and Columbia $10,000. Thus ended a greater struggle than that had by any other State as to the disposition of the Congressional land grant. This struggle, just at the close of the civil war, was a godsend to Missouri. The discussions which this seven years' contest occasioned in the newspapers, in journals of education, in pamphlets, in lectures, on the stump, the hustings, before the legislature, aroused the apathy of the public mind on education, molded public thought, educated the people toward the full and true idea of an American university. To this discussion President Read was the ablest, most persistent, most generous contributor. The corner stone of the scientific building of the College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts was laid June 28, 1871, in the presence of 3,000 persons. In this stone was deposited a hermetically sealed copper box, containing university records, St. Louis and Columbia periodicals, a national flag, fractional currency, coins, etc. Rev. E. S. Dulin led in prayer; Thomas E. Garrett, M. W., made short and appropriate remarks; President Read delivered a concise, inspiring address, pointing out the practical lessons of American educational history. Governor B. Gratz Brown's speech was brief, forcible, convincing, reviewing the growth and progress of the university, and |
