University of California. 
 
 FROM THK I.IF.KAKV OF 
 
 DR. FRANCIS L I E B K R : 
 
 Professor of History and Law in Columbia College, Now York. 
 
 THK GIFT OF 
 
 MICHAEL REESE 
 
 Of San Francisco. 
 1873.- 
 
AN 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 OF 
 
 COLUMBIA COLLEGE, 
 
 IN THE 
 
 CITY OF NEW-YORK. 
 
 BY 
 
 N . F . MOORE. 
 
 NEW- YORK: 
 
 PRINTED FOR COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 
 1846. 
 
Ml 
 
 LEAV1TT, TROW & CO., PRINT., 
 33 Ann-street. N. Y. 
 
 
COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 
 
 THE settlement of New Amsterdam, under 
 the auspices of a trading company, by men 
 chiefly occupied in the pursuit of gain, stamped 
 on the City of New- York, even from its origin, a 
 character which, though determining its destiny 
 perhaps favored as it is by various circum- 
 stances to become, what it seems fast growing 
 to be, the greatest emporium of the world, was 
 ill-suited to advance the cause of science or of 
 letters, except in so far as the former, by its sub- 
 servience to useful arts, might seem calculated to 
 promote the utilitarian views of men devoted to 
 the acquisition of wealth. 
 
 This colony, it is true, was founded by Hol- 
 land during the most glorious period of her his- 
 tory ; but there was nothing about it of a nature 
 to invite the statesmen, philosophers, scholars, 
 and artists of the parent state ; nor was there 
 any thing in the political or the religious condi- 
 tion of the now free and prosperous republic, to 
 
4 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 compel her citizens to seek elsewhere an asylum. 
 With the exception, therefore, of civil and re- 
 ligious functionaries and among the former 
 Governor Stuyvesant is entitled to especial no- 
 tice our Dutch ancestors were almost entirely 
 absorbed in trade. 
 
 The English, who, on the transfer of the 
 province in 1674, came in, were for the most part 
 as indifferent to learning as the Dutch had been ; 
 and even sixty-seven years afterwards there 
 were, in all the province, to be found but ten 
 men who had received a collegiate education. 
 The Huguenots, and the Germans of the Pala- 
 tinate, who fled hither from religious persecution, 
 were men who might, like our eastern brethren, 
 have turned their thoughts to the foundation of 
 a seat of learning ; but their comparatively small 
 number, and difference of language, made them, 
 for a long time, strangers, as it were, in the land 
 which afforded them a refuge. 
 v This diversity of language for Dutch, Eng- 
 lish, French, and German, were all spoken in the 
 province. and a corresponding difference of re- 
 ligion, either as to doctrine or external forms, 
 were no doubt among the causes which so long 
 retarded the establishment of a college in New- 
 York. For a college was, by our ancestors, 
 rightly regarded as a religious, no less than a 
 scientific and literary institution ; and they may 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 5 
 
 have found it hard to combine the heterogeneous 
 elements of their social system in any harmoni- 
 ous action on a subject of such near concern- 
 ment. It appears, too, that a further reason for 
 this delay was a diversity of opinion as to the 
 most eligible situation for a seminary of learn- 
 ing. The author of a pamphlet written, as is 
 thought, not long before the establishment of our 
 college, says : " It gives me pleasure to under- 
 stand, that the founding of a college in this 
 province, begins now to be seriously considered ; 
 and as this great work seems chiefly retarded by 
 the difficulty of agreeing on a proper place for 
 fixing it, I beg leave to submit my impartial 
 thoughts on this head to the consideration of the 
 public. As to the situation, then, I cannot help 
 being surprised to hear it disputed some retired 
 corner, either within, or close by the City of New 
 York, being certainly the only proper place in 
 this province for erecting a college." 
 
 It was not till 1693, about seventy years after 
 the settlement of our city, that its first printing 
 press was set up, and sixty-one years later still 
 before its college was established. How different 
 in this respect the course of Boston ! Its first 
 settlers being men who understood and felt the 
 importance of education who were, moreover, 
 of one nation, one language, and as to religion, 
 mostly of pne mind we find them, only gix 
 
6 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 years after the first settlement of their city, adopt- 
 ing measures for the erection of a college; at 
 which, two years later, in 1638, the regular 
 course of academic studies was commenced ; and 
 in the following year, 1639, the first, and which 
 for many years continued to be the only printing 
 press in these provinces, was set up at Cambridge 
 as an appendage to its college. 
 
 At what period the design of establishing a 
 college in New- York was first seriously enter- 
 tained does not appear. The earliest intimation 
 that has been discovered of any such design " is 
 contained in the records of Trinity Church. 
 From them it appears, that as early as the year 
 1703, the Rector and Wardens were directed to 
 wait upon Lord Cornbury, the Governor, to know 
 what part of the King's Farme, then vested in 
 Trinity Church, had been intended for the col- 
 lege which he designed to have built."* 
 / Some such plan was thought of again, it 
 seems, in 1729, during Berkeley's residence in 
 this country ; and when disappointed as regard- 
 ed Bermuda, he sought to transfer the establish- 
 ment which had been intended for that island to 
 " some place on the American Continent, which 
 would probably have been New- York. "t 
 
 * Address delivered before the Alumni of Col. Coll., by C. C, 
 Moore, p. 4. 
 
 t Chandler's life of Johnson, p. 53. In this same year, 1729- 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 7 
 
 But Berkeley's benevolent design having al- 
 ytogether failed, we find no mention of this sub- 
 ^ject until near twenty years afterwards, when 
 several laws of the Colony were passed for rais- 
 ing moneys by way of lottery, towards the found- 
 ing of a college therein ; and Bishop Berkeley, in 
 a letter of August 23, 1749, to Dr. Johnson, who 
 resided then at Hartford, in Connecticut, says : 
 " For the rest, I am glad to find a spirit toward 
 learning prevails in those parts, particularly New- 
 York, where you say a college is projected, which 
 has my best wishes." 
 
 The earliest of the laws just now alluded to, 
 ^received the Governor's assent on the 6th of De- 
 cember, 1746, and was entitled " An act for rais- 
 ing the sum of two thousand two hundred and 
 fifty pounds, by a public lottery for this colony, 
 for the encouragement of learning, and towards 
 the founding a college within the same." 
 
 Other similar acts followed, and in November, 
 1751, the moneys raised by means of them, 
 
 the Corporation of New- York, at the suggestion of the Provincial 
 Assembly, provided for the reception of a library of 1000 vol- 
 umes, bequeathed by Dr. Millington to the Society for the Propa- 
 gation of the Gospel, and which the Society proposed to deposit 
 here, for the use of the clergy and gentlemen of the neighboring 
 provinces. The same obvious considerations that led to the se- 
 lection of New-York on this occasion, might naturally have in- 
 clined Berkeley to place his college there. 
 
8 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 amounting then to 3443 IBs. Od., were vested 
 \/ in trustees. Of these trustees, ten in number, 
 two belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church, 
 one was a Presbyterian, but seven were members 
 of the Church of England, arid some of these 
 seven were also vestrymen of Trinity Church. 
 These circumstances the known sentiments of 
 this large majority of the trustees their well un- 
 derstood, and very natural desire, that the pro- 
 posed college should be connected with their 
 church might sufficiently account for the offer 
 v^made to them by Trinity Church, not long after 
 their appointment, " of any reasonable quantity 
 of the Church farm, (which was not let out) for 
 erecting, and use of a college ;" from what has 
 been already stated, however, respecting the first 
 mention of a college in the province from the 
 inquiry addressed by Trinity Church to Lord 
 Cornbury, in 1703 it may not unreasonably be 
 inferred, that the then recent grant of the King's 
 Farm to that corporation, had been made with a 
 view to the advancement of learning as well as 
 of religion ; that some condition to that effect had 
 been at least implied, on occasion of that grant. 
 
 If such were the case, the present offer from 
 the church was but the carrying out, after a lapse 
 of fifty years, of this original design. 
 
 As regards the offer now made to the Trus- 
 tees, it seems highly probable that some such 
 
e F COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 9 
 
 conditions as we find afterwards expressed in the 
 conveyance from the Church to the College, 
 when actually made, were, from the first, in con- 
 templation of the parties, and understood be- 
 tween them ; but neither in the proposal from 
 the Church, on the 8th of April, 1752, nor in the 
 report made thereof by the Trustees to the As- 
 sembly,' more than two years afterwards, is there 
 mention of any conditions whatever. The 
 natural inference, however, which has been sug- 
 gested, as to their existence, and the jealous ap- 
 prehensions entertained of any, the smallest, ap- 
 proach to a church-establishment within the 
 province, caused violent opposition to the plan, 
 as soon as it became known, of obtaining a royal 
 charter for the college. This determined oppo- 
 sition to the plan of the Trustees, was maintained 
 chiefly by one of their number, the only Presby- 
 ian at their Board, Mr. William Livingston ; 
 a gentleman, by his birth, his connexions and 
 his position in society ; by his superior education, 
 his industry and talents as a lawyer, already 
 eminent ; and afterwards, in the various high 
 stations which he filled, greatly distinguished for 
 patriotic devotion to his country. A declared 
 enemy of all church establishments, he, in this 
 matter of the college, was actuated by con- 
 scientious, probably, but mistaken views of the 
 design and tendency of the incorporation which 
 1* 
 
10 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 he so zealously endeavoured to defeat. With this 
 view, he commenced on the 22d of March, 1753, 
 
 ^ in The Independent Reflector, a paper published 
 under his direction, his " Remarks on our intend- 
 ed College." After considering, first, the great 
 importance of the institution, he goes on, in sub- 
 sequent numbers, to discuss the proper mode of 
 its establishment, which he insists should be, not 
 by Charter, but by Act of Assembly : in which 
 case it was taken for granted that the plan of the 
 institution would be more consistent with the 
 views of those who professed themselves advo- 
 cates " for constituting a college on a basis the 
 most catholic, generous, and free." 
 
 \J This controversy, which became on both sides 
 a very angry one, was not terminated by the 
 granting of the charter; but took after that a 
 somewhat different shape, in the resistance then 
 opposed by Mr. Livingston and his associates to 
 the passage of any law transferring the moneys 
 raised for the endowment of a college from the 
 hands of the Trustees to those of the Governors 
 now appointed under the charter ; and, also, in 
 their endeavours to obtain an Act of Assembly, 
 which, notwithstanding this charter to King's 
 College invidiously styled by them a Trinity 
 Church College should establish another a 
 New- York College in its place. They denied 
 the right of the Trustees appointed in 1751 to 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 11 
 
 apply moneys raised by general tax, to the es- 
 tablishment of a college connected with any par- 
 ticular religious denomination. They entertain- 
 ed, however, an especial jealousy of its connexion 
 with the Church of England ; for the Episco- 
 palians, though comparatively few in number, 
 had nevertheless a great ascendency in the prov- 
 ince ; its chief public offices being, in almost 
 every instance, filled by them. Their natural 
 wish, moreover, and their repeated applications 
 for a Bishop, to complete the organization of their 
 church within the colonies, had inspired, and es- 
 pecially about this time, a dread of some design 
 to extend to this country the ecclesiastical estab- 
 lishment of England. 
 
 The Independent Reflect or ', the organ of Mr. 
 Livingston's opposition to the college, ceased 
 with its 52d number, on the 22d of November, 
 1753 ; the printer, Parker, refusing to go on with 
 it. In the month of January following, Mr. Liv- 
 ingston ^reprinted the whole, with a long preface ; 
 and bearing on its title page " Printed until ty- 
 rannically suppressed in 1753." 
 
 Contemporary with this Independent Reflec- 
 tor, but of less note, were several publications 
 relating to the college controversy, and turning 
 upon the same points that Mr. Livingston pro- 
 fessed to have in view. 
 
12 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 In the charter of King's College, which 
 though delayed by the resistance it encountered, 
 was granted finally on the 31st of October, 1754, 
 in spite of it, Mr. William Livingston was 
 named as a governor ; but he refused to take the 
 required oaths, or to act as such, and seems to 
 have been embittered against the college, rather 
 than propitiated by this endeavour, if such it 
 were, to soothe him. 
 
 On the 1st of November, 1754, the day fol- 
 lowing that on which the charter passed the 
 seals, the Trustees before mentioned, in conse- 
 quence of an order to that effect, made by the 
 Assembly a week previous, gave in a report 
 signed by six of their number John Chambers, 
 Daniel Horsmanden, Edward Holland, James 
 Livingston, Benjamin Nicoll and Abraham De 
 Peyster and at the same time Mr. William Liv- 
 ingston presented his counter report, which, to- 
 gether with the other, was entered at large on 
 the journal of the House. Five days afterwards, 
 on Mr. Livingston's motion, it was resolved that 
 the House would not consent to any disposition 
 of the moneys raised by way of lottery for found- 
 ing a college, otherwise than by act or acts of 
 legislature hereafter to be passed; and Mr. Liv- 
 ingston obtained leave to bring in a bill entitled 
 " An Act further to establish and to incorporate 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 13 
 
 a college within this colony, for the education 
 and instruction of youth, in the liberal arts and 
 sciences." 
 
 It seems to have been discovered, however, 
 that this bill could not, at thaUsessionjbe carried 
 through against the opposition made to it, and 
 therefore three weeks after its introduction, on a 
 motion stating that since the advanced season of 
 the year would not allow of its receiving then 
 the attention which its vast importance required, 
 it was resolved that the consideration of it 
 should be postponed until the next meeting of 
 the House, and that it should be printed and 
 published meanwhile, in order that the mem- 
 bers of the House might have an opportunity 
 of learning the sentiments of their constituents 
 on so great and important a concern. 
 
 The bill was printed accordingly, and Mr. 
 Livingston, with a view to prepare and form the 
 public opinion in regard to it, began on the 25th 
 of November, the day preceding this order of the 
 House, a series of essays styled The Watch 
 Tower, which was continued through fifty-two 
 numbers, for about a year. These papers were 
 printed in The New- York Mercury of Hugh 
 Gaine, who had with difficulty, it appears, been 
 induced to publish them. In the last number, 
 which appeared on the 17th of November, 1755, 
 about two months after Governor Hardy's arrival 
 
14 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 in the province, the writer professes to consider 
 himself victorious over the party-college, as he 
 calls it, and expresses his conviction " that big- 
 otry will hide its head in shame, under the ad- 
 ministration of a Sir Charles Harris" 
 
 In the principal aim of their endeavours, and of 
 these essays the defeat of King's College by the 
 passage of the proposed act the opponents of 
 the college failed ; but they so far succeeded as 
 to delay for two years the payment over to the 
 governors of any portion of the moneys raised 
 expressly for a college, and finally to divert the 
 half of them to uses wholly different ; since, by 
 an act of Assembly, approved December 1st, 1756, 
 the amount in the hands of the Trustees was 
 equally divided between King's College and the 
 Corporation of the city of New- York. 
 
 The college was, perhaps, indebted to the 
 friendship of the newly arrived Governor, Sir 
 Charles Hardy, upon whose support its enemies 
 had counted, for even such portion as it did ob- 
 tain of these disputed funds. 
 
 On his arrival the opponents of the college 
 presented to him in writing a virulent address 
 respecting it, of which he took no notice, while 
 he listened to that of the governors of the college, 
 delivered in a speech by the President, with great 
 complacency and kindness. He concluded his 
 reply to them with saying : " You may be as- 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 15 
 
 sured that the college founded by his majesty's 
 royal charter will always have my countenance 
 and protection." He, moreover, expressed a wish 
 to see their subscription paper j and the next day, 
 when the President and Mr. Oliver Delancey 
 waited upon him with it, he received them very 
 courteously, and, unsolicited, subscribed 500 
 towards the erection of the college. " This was 
 such a disappointment and mortification to its 
 opposers, that from that time they were silent, 
 and gave no further molestation."* 
 
 The opposition to the chartered college claim- 
 ed to stand upon the broad ground of resistance 
 against the connexion of a seminary of learning 
 with any religious society whatever ; but it was 
 no doubt greatly animated, if not wholly occa- 
 sioned, by a jealous dread of the Church of Eng- 
 land in particular, and apprehensions of encroach- 
 ment from that quarter on the religious freedom 
 which the colonies enjoyed. Else one might 
 suppose that these assailants of King's College 
 would have proceeded with less intemperate zeal, 
 since they had examples, not only in the few 
 colleges then existing on this continent, of such 
 connexion as they professed to deprecate so 
 greatly; but, in fact, all colleges whatever, at 
 that period, belonged to religious communities, 
 each one to its own ; and there was nowhere 
 
 * Chandler's Life of Johnson, p, 95. 
 
16 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 witnessed any such divorce of education from re- 
 ligion as is now, unhappily, too often seen. 
 
 This controversy, which for a time delayed thu 
 granting of the charter, and threatened after- 
 wards to make it nugatory, did not altogether 
 paralyze, meanwhile, the hearts and hands of the 
 Trustees. On the 22d of November, 1753, they 
 determined to invite the Rev. Dr. Samuel John- 
 son, of Stratford, to accept the presidency of the 
 intended college, with a salary of 250, and Mr. 
 Chauncey Whittlesey, of New Haven, as his as- 
 sistant, with a salary of 200. They were sen- 
 sible, they said, that the salary proposed for Dr- 
 Johnson (though as much as they were able to 
 offer) was inadequate to his merit ; but they ex- 
 pressed their belief, that the vestry of Trinity 
 Church would readily agree to make a sufficient 
 addition thereto ; and such of the Trustees as 
 were also vestrymen, were desired to recommend 
 this measure to the vestry. And that appears to 
 have been done accordingly ; for on the 7th of 
 January, 1754, the Trustees informed Dr. Johnson 
 by letter, that the vestry of Trinity Church had 
 agreed to call him as an assistant minister. In 
 his answer, dated February llth, 1754, he nei- 
 ther accepts nor rejects the proposal, but requires 
 further time to consider of the matter. Several 
 letters on both sides followed, and it seems to 
 have been with some reluctance that Dr. John- 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 17 
 
 son finally consented to gratify the earnest wish 
 of the Trustees, who refused to think of any other 
 than himself as their President. He came to 
 New- York, therefore, but by way of trial only, 
 in the month of April following ; and though he 
 entered about three months afterwards on the 
 duties of the presidency, yet. " he would not abso- 
 lutely accept of it until the charter should be 
 passed, and he could see what kind of college it 
 was likely to prove."* Dr. Johnson was at this 
 time in the 58th year of his age. He had been 
 for above thirty years the faithful missionary at 
 Stratford, in Connecticut, of the Society for the 
 Propagation of the Gospel, and since at the period 
 of his becoming such " there was not another 
 Episcopal clergyman in all the colony, it may be 
 easily imagined that he laboured under great dis- 
 couragements at first among a people who either 
 would not, or could not, at that time make the 
 proper distinction between episcopacy and pope- 
 ry. His prudence, however, and persevering 
 goodness of temper had so prevailed that he was 
 now beloved by his dissenting neighbours them- 
 selves, who had frequent recourse to him in their 
 difficulties, as to one of their own clergy."t 
 
 His sound judgment, his great and varied 
 
 * Chandler's Life of Johnson, p. 89. 
 
 t Preface by Dr. Smith to Dr. Johnson's ' Element's of Phi- 
 losophy." 
 
18 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 acquirements, his amiable temper, his moral 
 worth and piety, his zealous devotion to the in- 
 terests of learning and religion, together with 
 the remarkable circumstances of his earlier life, 
 detailed in the interesting narrative of his friend 
 and pupil, Dr. Chandler all this had, for a 
 long time, fixed on him the favourable notice 
 and high estimation of the public. Eleven years 
 before his appointment to the presidency, he had 
 received the degree of Doctor in Divinity from 
 the University of Oxford ; a high distinction at 
 that period, as, indeed, from that learned body, it 
 has ever been esteemed. He seems to have been 
 regarded by the dignified clergy of England 
 who were in correspondence with him, as repre- 
 senting, in a great degree, their church on this 
 side of the Atlantic, and he had been consulted 
 with,, and looked to here, as the president of their 
 choice, by the projectors, both of the Philadelphia 
 and the New- York college. Dr. Franklin's soli- 
 citude that he should take charge of the former, 
 might suffice to show that he was not regarded 
 as a bigot ; but, indeed, his whole conduct proved 
 that in his endeavours to advance the general 
 interests of science and religion, he rose above all 
 narrow prejudices, and mere sectarian views. 
 Warmly as he was attached to his own church, 
 and widely as he differed on many points of 
 doctrine and discipline from Yale College, yet 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 19 
 
 was it in consequence of his suggestions, and 
 through his interest, that a very valuable contri- 
 bution of books was made by Berkeley and his 
 friends to the library of that institution, and that 
 the Dean afterwards conveyed to it, by a deed 
 transmitted to Dr. Johnson, his Rhode Island 
 farm, for the establishment of that Dearts Boun- 
 ty, to which sound classical learning in Connec- 
 ticut has been much indebted. 
 
 At a meeting of the Trustees on the 16th of 
 May, 1754, about a month after Dr. Johnson's 
 removal to town, was read a draft of the pro- 
 posed charter ; against which Mr. William 
 Livingston offered a formal protest, and at a meet- 
 ing four days after, the petition of the Trustees 
 to the Lieutenant Governor for this charter 
 being read, was approved by all present, except 
 again Mr. Livingston, who protested against it 
 for twenty reasons, which he stated at great 
 length. The substance of them, however, might 
 be comprehended in few words, and may easily 
 be gathered from what has been already said. 
 The Trustees proceeded in their application with- 
 out regard to them ; and, in anticipation of the 
 more formal establishment of their college, gave 
 public notice of an examination of candidates for 
 admission, to be held during the first week of the 
 following July, and on the 17th of that month, 
 Dr. Johnson began, in the vestry-room of the 
 
20 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 school-house belonging to Trinity Church, his 
 instruction of the eight students who were admit- 
 ted at this first examination. These were, Sa- 
 muel Verplanck, Rudolph Ritzema, Philip Van 
 Oortlandt, Robert Bayard, Samuel Provoost, 
 Thomas Marston, Henry Cruger, and Joshua 
 Bloomer ; and whoever has an old acquaintance 
 with our city, will recognize among them several 
 familiar and respected names. 
 
 /The royal charter constituting King's College, 
 passed the seals, as was previously mentioned, 
 on the 31st of October, 1754; but the organiza- 
 tion of the college under it cannot be considered 
 as having taken place before the 7th of May, 
 1755, when, at a meeting of above twenty of the 
 gentlemen named in it as Governors, Mr. Golds - 
 brow Banyar, Deputy Secretary of the province, 
 attending with the charter, the Lieutenant Gov- 
 ernor, James De Lancey, after a suitable address, 
 delivered it to the gentlemen present, and Mr. 
 Horsmanden, one of the Judges of the Supreme 
 Court, qualified them as Governors by adminis- 
 tering the oaths by law required to be taken. 
 After which Mr. Chambers, who presided at this 
 meeting, in a reply to the Lieutenant Governor, 
 on behalf of the Governors of the college, ex- 
 pressed most grateful acknowledgments for the 
 honour he had been pleased to confer on them in 
 their appointment, and hoped their conduct, as 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 21 
 
 Governors of that corporation, would always 
 merit the continuance of his honour's protection, 
 favor, and countenance, and convince the world 
 that they had nothing more at heart than to pro- 
 mote th e glory of God, the true Protestant reli- 
 gion, and a generous education of their youth in 
 the liberal arts arid sciences. 
 
 " We may gather whence arose this delay of 
 above six months, between the date and the 
 delivery of the charter, from a letter written by 
 Dr. Johnson to Bishop Sherlock, on the very 
 day of such delivery, in which he says, " I hum- 
 bly thank your Lordship for the most kind regard 
 you express towards me, in view of my under- 
 taking the care of this young college, which I 
 hope will live in spite of the most virulent oppo- 
 sition it meets with. The charter at last passed 
 the seals in October, while I was returned into 
 the country. But the clamour was so great, that 
 there were some alterations in the draught after 
 I went away, for which I was very sorry, and 
 particularly that the Bishop of London was left 
 out from being one of the Governors." " I was 
 in great doubt whether to accept the presidency : 
 but as I saw that it would come to nothing if I 
 did not, I at length returned and accepted the 
 charge. Mr. Beach has concluded to succeed me 
 at Stratford ; so I am settled here in New-York, 
 being also lecturer in Trinity Church." 
 
22 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 The charter, when delivered, named as gov- 
 ernors of the College, the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, and the first Lord Commissioner for trade 
 and plantations, who were empowered to act by 
 proxy, the Lieutenant Governor and Commander- 
 in-chief of the Province of New York, the eldest 
 Councillor of the Province, the Judges of the Su- 
 preme Court of Judicature of the Province, the 
 Secretary, the Attorney General, the Speaker of 
 the General Assembly, and the Treasurer of the 
 Province, the Mayor of the City of New- York, 
 the Rector of Trinity Church, the Senior Minis- 
 ter of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, 
 the Ministers of the Ancient Lutheran Church, 
 of the French Church, and of the Presbyterian 
 Congregation in the City of New- York, and the 
 President of the college all these ex qfficio, and 
 together with them four and twenty of the prin- 
 cipal gentlemen of the city, who were : Archibald 
 Kennedy, Joseph Murray, Josiah Martin, Paul 
 Richard, Henry Cruger, William Walton, John 
 Watts, Henry Beekman, Philip Ver Planck, 
 Frederick Philipse, Joseph Robinson, John Cru- 
 ger, Oliver De Lancey, James Livingston, Esqrs., 
 Benjamin Nicoll, William Livingston, Joseph 
 Read, Nathaniel Marston, Joseph Haynes, John 
 Livingston, Abraham Lodge, David Clarkson, 
 Leonard Lispenard, and James De Lancey, the 
 younger. Gentlemen. 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 23 
 
 The college being now incorporated, and capa- 
 ble of holding the land previously destined for it 
 by Trinity Church, and mentioned in its charter, 
 at the next meeting of the governors, on the 13th 
 of May, 1755, the corporation of Trinity Church 
 delivered to them deeds of conveyance of a piece 
 of land described therein as situate on the west 
 side of the Broadway, in the west ward of the 
 City of New- York, fronting easterly to Church- 
 street, between Barclay-street and Murray-street, 
 four hundred and forty feet, and thence running 
 westerly along Barclay-street and Murray-street, 
 to the North River. 
 
 The mention of these familiar names of now 
 well-built streets, as boundaries of the land grant- 
 ed to the college, must not be allowed to convey 
 an erroneous idea of the condition of its neigh- 
 bourhood at the date of this conveyance ; for eight 
 years after that, on the 10th of May, 1763, we find 
 the governors appointed a committee to enclose 
 the college ground with a fence of posts and rails, 
 and near six years later still, on the 24th of No- 
 vember, 1768, Mr. Watts, Colonel De Lancey, 
 and Mr. Lispenard, are named as a committee 
 " to lay out and pave the one-half of the streets 
 that divide the lands of the College and those 
 belonging to Trinity Church." These streets, 
 probably, like those of many lithograph cities of 
 recent date, existed only upon paper. 
 
24 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 The conditions of this gift to the college- 
 conditions which, being inserted in its charter also, 
 afforded pretext for the furious opposition it en- 
 countered were, that its President for ever, for 
 the time being, should be a member of and in 
 communion with the Church of England, as by 
 law established ; and that the morning and eve- 
 ning service in the college should be the liturgy 
 of the said church, or such a collection of prayers 
 out of that liturgy, together with a collect pecu- 
 liar for the college, as should be approved by its 
 president and governors. 
 
 All who have any acquaintance with our 
 college, or its history, will know how wholly un- 
 founded has proved the inference from those con- 
 ditions, that towards students who happened to 
 belong to the communion of which its president 
 was required to be, the slightest preference or 
 favor would on that account be shown. 
 
 The charter, indeed, expressly denied to the 
 college the power of making any laws or regu- 
 lations tending "to exclude any person of any 
 religious denomination whatever, from equal 
 liberty and advantage of education, or from any 
 of the degrees, liberties, privileges, benefits, and 
 immunities of said College, on account of his 
 particular tenets in matters of religion." 
 
 To show how little the conditions, which 
 exposed the college to so much obloquy, were 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 25 
 
 considered at the time, by dispassionate men, as 
 stamping the institution with any bigoted or 
 exclusive character, it may suffice to state the 
 very first act arid proceeding of its Governors. 
 
 At their first meeting 1 on the 7th of May, 1755, 
 after the acceptance of the charter, the speech 
 of the Lieutenant Governor, and the reply of 
 Mr. Chambers, the Rev. Mr. Ritzema, senior 
 minister of the Reformed Protestant Dutch 
 Church, among other things addressed by him to 
 the Lieutenant Governor, remarked that he was 
 sorry to have observed the differences and ani- 
 mosities in the Province touching several restric- 
 tions in the charter. He expressed his hope that 
 some means might be fallen upon to heal them ; 
 and his belief that it would conduce greatly to 
 that end if his Honour would be pleased to grant, 
 either by addition to the charter, or in such 
 other manner as should be thought most proper, 
 that there should be established in the college a 
 professor of divinity, for the education of such of 
 the youth of their church as might be intended for 
 the ministry, with a suitable allowance of salary, 
 and to be chosen by the consistory of that church 
 for the time being. The Lieutenant Governor, 
 in reply, expressed his approval of Mr. Ritzema's 
 suggestion, and his willingness to grant any ap- 
 plication in accordance with it that the Governors 
 might address to him. The Governors at once, 
 2 
 
26 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 unanimously adopted Mr. Ritzema's proposal, 
 and appointed a committee to prepare their peti- 
 tion accordingly ; which being reported at their 
 next meeting and approved, the same committee 
 was directed to present it. and at the meeting 
 after, on the 3d of June, Mr. Banyar, Deputy Sec- 
 retary of the Province, delivered to the Governors 
 his Majesty's additional charter, making provision 
 for the establishment of a professor in divinity, 
 according to the doctrine, discipline, and worship 
 established by the National Synod of Dort. 
 
 It does not appear what, if any, further steps 
 were taken in regard to this professorship, or for 
 its actual establishment. Even what was done 
 seems more than would have been expected un- 
 der all the circumstances of the case, and to re- 
 quire some explanation. 
 
 Perhaps the promptitude arid unanimity mani- 
 fested by the Governors on this occasion, may 
 have arisen partly from their wish to defeat a 
 manoeuvre of their skilful and persevering antag- 
 onist, Mr. Livingston; for to his management it 
 was probably to be ascribed, that, about six 
 months before this, on the 25th of October, 1754, 
 a petition of the ministers, elders, and deacons of 
 the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in the 
 city of New- York, was presented to the House 
 of Assembly, stating that unless provision were 
 made in the intended college for a professor of 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 27 
 
 divinity, for the benefit of the Dutch Church in 
 this country, the youth of that church intended 
 for the ministry would be obliged to reside seve- 
 ral years in Holland, or other foreign Protestant 
 countries ; alleging that as the Dutch were the 
 most numerous of any single denomination of 
 Christians in the province, they might reasonably 
 be expected, in all provincial contributions, to be 
 the greatest benefactors to the intended college, 
 and praying that when the matter of the college 
 came under consideration, they might, by the act 
 incorporating it, be entitled to a Divinity Profes- 
 sor, with a reasonable salary, to be nominated by 
 the ministers, elders, and deacons of the Dutch 
 Reformed Protestant Church in the city, and that 
 the said professor might freely and without con- 
 trol teach the doctrines of faith maintained by 
 their churches, as established and approved by 
 the National Synod of Dort, in 1618, 1619. 
 
 On this petition being read, " it was ordered 
 accordingly," by the House. 
 
 Now, what seems to connect this proceeding 
 with Mr. Livingston, is, not only the probability 
 there was, (and on which, as we shall see, he 
 counted,) that it would embarrass the college, by 
 either severing it in some degree from Trinity 
 Church, or else uniting the numerous communion 
 of the Dutch against it ; but also the circum- 
 stance that this petition was presented on the 
 
28 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 same day on which the assembly, no doubt at 
 Mr. Livingston's suggestion, directed the trustees 
 of the college fund to render their account an 
 order preparatory to the proceedings mentioned 
 previously as having taken place about the be- 
 ginning of November, 1754. And a still further 
 proof of the agency of Mr. Livingston in this af- 
 fair, is, that in a letter written seven days before 
 this petition was presented, he speaks of it, and 
 anticipates its good effect, whether granted or 
 rejected ; as in the one case securing to the Dutch 
 a Calvinistic professor, and diminishing the 
 badge of distinction to which the Episcopalians 
 so zealously aspired, or, in the other, animating 
 the Dutch against those sticklers for a party 
 college, who would have caused its failure. 
 
 If, then, this petition of the Dutch church was 
 ascribed by the Governors to Mr. Livingston's 
 contrivance, their ready acquiescence in Mr. Ritz- 
 ema's proposal may be easily accounted for; 
 and was wisely calculated to wrest from the 
 hands of their antagonist the means of annoy- 
 ance which he had counted on, and to render 
 nugatory his design. This is the probable ex- 
 planation to be given of a measure which, (how- 
 ever proper in itself it may have been,) one would 
 not have anticipated as the very first of a corpo- 
 ration projected, constituted, and endowed, as 
 was King's College. 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 29 
 
 This zealous, persevering, and powerful oppo- 
 sition of Mr. Livingston to King's College, arose, 
 no doubt, principally from his dread of whatever 
 seemed to have the slightest tendency towards a 
 legal establishment of the English church within 
 the colonies. Hostility to learning certainly can- 
 not be imputed to him, for he was not only one 
 of the best educated men in the province, but 
 showed himself solicitous to promote the cause of 
 letters. About seven months before the granting 
 of the college charter, we find him associated 
 with his brother Philip, his brother-in-law Mr. 
 Alexander, (afterwards Lord Stirling,) Mr. Scott, 
 and others, in founding the Society Library of 
 New- York. 
 
 If we inquire, now, into the ground of Mr. 
 Livingston's apprehensions, it is undeniable that 
 the greater part of the Governors of the college, 
 as also of the gentlemen chiefly instrumental in 
 originating the design of such an institution, and 
 in forwarding its establishment, were attached to 
 the Church of England. ^ No one who knows the 
 character of Dr. Johnson, and the history of his 
 earlier life, can doubt that he regarded the insti- 
 tution he was persuaded to take charge of, as 
 one intended to promote the cause not only of 
 learning but of religion, and of that church, un- 
 der the control of which, in some degree, it had 
 been placed. From the letters of Bishop Sher- 
 
30 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 lock and Archbishop Seeker to Dr. Johnson, it is 
 plain that they also viewed the matter in this 
 light. The moneys subscribed in England to- 
 wards the college, were contributed expressly as 
 for "the increase and prosperity of the Church 
 of England." Finally, Trinity Church, in contri- 
 buting so largely towards the endowment of the 
 college, and by the conditions of her grant, meant, 
 undoubtedly, that the college should (as was al- 
 together reasonable) be connected in preference 
 with the church to which it owed in so great a 
 measure its support ; and when it gave its first 
 instructions in the vestry room of Trinity Church, 
 it was rightly, and of course, regarded as an in- 
 stitution founded and fostered especially by that 
 church. These are facts, which, even if they 
 were (as assuredly they are not) opprobrious and 
 injurious to the character of the college, its histo- 
 rian could not, if he would, deny. But what 
 does all this prove, except that our college had at 
 its origin what every seat of learning ought to 
 have, and to retain a distinct religious charac- 
 ter. There was nothing about it, however, of 
 exclusiveness or intolerance. When originally 
 opened, and previous to the granting of its char- 
 ter, the plan of its trustees was declared to be 
 " extensive and generous, aiming at the general 
 good of all denominations of people in the pro- 
 vince." The charter, and the Governors who 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 31 
 
 took charge under it, had no intention, and made 
 no attempt, to narrow this original plan, and it is 
 one to which the administration of the college, 
 however designated, ever has been, and is now, 
 conformed. 
 
 If our college were situated in a small town, 
 and its students lived within its walls, then 
 should we regard as indispensable, in order that 
 religion might hold its due place in the education 
 of our youth, that its religious character should 
 be distinctly marked that it should belong not 
 exclusively, but in especial manner and avow- 
 edly, to some one denomination should be what 
 is invidiously styled sectarian. Nor would this 
 form any objection against it with the wise and 
 pious President of a sister institution, who ob- 
 serves that " in this country, where we have no 
 established church, it is difficult to define a secta- 
 rian, unless it be a man who differs from -us in 
 religious sentiments. So that in fact, with the 
 exception of a few who have no opinions or care 
 on this subject, we are all sectarians, and to 
 exclude sectarianism from a literary institution, 
 is to exclude all religion from it. And such is 
 usually the result, when it attempts so to trim 
 its course as to suit all parties. But really, of all 
 kinds of intolerance, that is the worst, which is 
 furious for toleration, and that the worst kind of 
 sectarianism which is fierce for irreligion. The 
 
32 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 only truly liberal and manly course for an insti- 
 tution to adopt, is openly to avow its creed. Such 
 a course does indeed make the institution secta- 
 rian, that is, it shows a preference for some par- 
 ticular system of religion, but it is an honest 
 course, and the only honest course that can be 
 taken."* At the same time, the peculiar religious 
 opinions of students, whatever they may be. 
 should not, in the award of literary honours, be 
 regarded, nor suifered to exercise the slightest 
 influence. All of all denominations should stand 
 here on even ground, and " in this respect the 
 motto of the ancient Tyrian queen should be 
 adopted by every teacher :" 
 
 " Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur." 
 
 But this liberal allowance to others, of a free- 
 dom of opinion which we claim for ourselves, is 
 not to be confounded with, nor to become a care- 
 less indifference, and we should not seek the 
 praise of enlightened toleration at the expense of 
 any timid compromises in religion. The minds 
 of serious men seem to be every where awaken- 
 ing now, to a conviction of the great importance 
 of laying the foundation of human learning in 
 religion. The alarming results to which the 
 statistics of crime in some countries recently have 
 led the fact that the frequency and enormity 
 
 * President Hitchcock's Inaugural Address, at Amherst Col. p. 37. 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 33 
 
 of crimes have been found in direct proportion to 
 the illumination of the people, wherever the 
 lights from which it was derived, instead of 
 being kindled on the altars of religion, flowed 
 from the false glare of infidel philosophy, or 
 mere worldly wisdom: these startling facts 
 have of late drawn forth acknowledgments from 
 various quarters, of the high importance of train- 
 ing up youth, not in science and letters only, but 
 in the nurture and admonition of the Lord of 
 the great necessity of teaching them religion, 
 arid the impossibility of doing so upon the plan 
 of those who either have not any clear and well 
 defined religious faith, or else want the courage 
 to proclaim it. 
 
 To this our college, at its origin, no such fal- 
 tering could be charged ; nor, on the other hand, 
 was it ever administered in a spirit of intolerance. 
 As additional proof of the liberal views which 
 governed in the first regulations of King's College, 
 it is worthy of remark, that at the same meeting 
 at which the deeds of conveyance were received 
 from Trinity Church, a committee being appoint- 
 ed to prepare a device for the seal of the college, 
 a proper collection of prayers for its use, and a 
 body of laws for its government, there were 
 placed on this committee, together with the Rec- 
 tor of Trinity Church, the ministers of the Dutch, 
 the Lutheran, and the French churches also, 
 2* 
 
34 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 who were Mr. Ritzema, Mr. Weygand, and Mr. 
 Carle. These three gentlemen, indeed, and es- 
 pecially Mr. Ritzema, from their frequent attend- 
 ance at the meetings of the Governors, and their 
 active participation in the business of the col- 
 lege, appear to have taken a lively interest in 
 its welfare. 
 
 At a meeting on the 3d of June, 1755, was 
 adopted the device prepared by Dr. Johnson for 
 the seal of King's College, and which continues 
 to be that of Columbia College, with only the 
 necessary alteration of its name. The descrip- 
 tion given of this device deserves notice as show- 
 ing how deservedly pre-eminent a place religion 
 held in education, according to the ideas of those 
 who laid the foundations of our discipline.* 
 
 At this same meeting in June a commit- 
 tee was appointed to prepare addresses to the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, the first Lord Com- 
 missioner of Trade and Plantations, the Bishop 
 of London, and the Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, soliciting aid 
 towards the establishment of the college. It was 
 resolved to send a person to England with these 
 
 * It was, indeed, with a view chiefly to religion that all the 
 earlier literary institutions of our country were established. This 
 was true especially of Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, and 
 Princeton colleges, as is shown by the Rev. Di. Alva Woods, 
 in his Valedictory Address to the University of Alabama, p. 34. 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE- 35 
 
 addresses, and the Lieutenant Governor, and 
 other members of the corporation were desired to 
 recommend this messenger and his object, in 
 private letters to their friends. It was resolved, 
 also, to apply to the West India Islands for as- 
 sistance, and to open a subscription in the city of 
 New- York. It was not, however, till about three 
 years after (May 9th, 1758) that these addresses 
 were prepared and sent ; and at a still later pe- 
 riod, the 16th of November, 1762, additional ad- 
 dresses were ordered to the universities of Ox- 
 ford and Cambridge, the Royal Society, the An- 
 tiquary Society, the Society for the Encourage- 
 ment of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, and 
 others. Several of these addresses (as that to all 
 Patrons of Learning and Knowledge, and Friends 
 of the British Empire in America) lay stress on 
 the importance of establishing a public seminary 
 of learning " in this remote and uncultivated 
 part of the world, where ignorance too generally 
 prevails." 
 
 The Governors, in their letter recommending 
 all these addresses to Dr. Bearcroft's care, allude 
 to the loss of one-half of the moneys raised by 
 public lotteries for the benefit of the College, in 
 consequence of the violent opposition it had met 
 with from the enemies of the church. 
 
 Dr. James Jay, being at this time about to 
 sail for England, on business of his own, and 
 
36 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 offering to take upon himself the charge of so- 
 liciting and collecting contributions for the col- 
 lege, received the instructions of the Governors 
 accordingly, and they united with him in this 
 commission Alderman Trecothick, and Moses 
 Franks, merchants of London, and Robert 
 Charles, the agent of the Province. 
 
 Dr. Jay, on his arrival in England, found 
 there Dr. Smith, Provost of the college in Phila- 
 delphia, soliciting aid for that institution, and as 
 it was thought by Archbishop Seeker, and others 
 who were friendly to both seminaries, that to at- 
 tempt separate collections would prove injurious 
 to both, a brief was obtained in favor of the two 
 together. They made their collection, therefore, 
 jointly, and it produced to King's College a net 
 sum of near six thousand pounds sterling. The 
 king gave, independently of this joint collection, 
 four hundred pounds to the college of New- 
 York, and half that sum to the Philadelphia col- 
 lege ; referring the latter to Mr. Penn as its proper 
 patron. 
 
 King's College had previously received 3282, 
 as its moiety of the moneys raised by lottery a 
 considerable amount subscribed by its friends in 
 New-York 500 sterling from the Society for 
 the Propagation of the Gospel about 1000 ster- 
 ling from Mr. Edward Antill a bequest of 500 
 from Mr. Paul Richard one of 100 from Mr. 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 37 
 
 James Alexander and from Mr. Joseph Mur- 
 ray property worth about 8000, including his 
 library. The Rev. Dr. Bristowe, of London, also, 
 having bequeathed his library of about 1500 vol- 
 umes to the Society for the Propagation of the 
 Gospel, " to be sent to the College of New- York, of 
 which Dr. Johnson is President, or to such other 
 place or places as the Society shall direct," the 
 Society gave it to the College of New- York. 
 
 Among the subscribers were many of the 
 Governors appointed by the Charter, who contri- 
 buted from fifty to two hundred pounds apiece ; 
 and besides Sir Charles Hardy, whose subscrip- 
 tion of 500 has been already mentioned, Gene- 
 ral Shirley gave one hundred, and General Monk- 
 ton two hundred pounds. 
 
 In this manner were obtained, from time to 
 time, during the first eight or nine years of the 
 existence of the College, the means of its support. 
 From the land belonging to it, around the col- 
 lege enclosure, it could not, at that period, have 
 derived any rent worth mentioning. Even in 
 April, 1785, we find a committee of the Regents 
 stating " that if the college lots were let out to 
 the best advantage, they would bring in per an- 
 num about 250." 
 
 With a view to comprehend this whole sub- 
 ject of the college funds under one head, we have 
 anticipated several years, and now go back to the 
 
38 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 summer of 1756, when the Governors, having 
 provided for other exigencies of the College, pro- 
 ceeded to erect a building for its accommodation. 
 The plan for this having, in compliment to Sir 
 Charles Hardy, been submitted to him, and hav- 
 ing received his approbation, was adopted by the 
 Governors on the 13th of July, 1756 ; and on the 
 23d of the following month the first stone was 
 laid by Sir Charles Hardy, and the President ad- 
 dressed the Governors of the College, Sir Charles 
 Hardy, and the Lieutenant Governor, Mr. De 
 Lancey, in a brief Latin speech, congratulating 
 them on this happy event, which had succeeded 
 almost beyond expectation " Per varios casus et 
 tot discrimina rerurn." 
 
 The inscription on this first stone, which is 
 beneath the south-east corner of the central or 
 older portion of the college building, is as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 Hujus Collegii, Regalis dicti, Regio 
 
 Diplomate constituti in Honorem 
 
 Dei O. M. atq: in Ecclesise Reiq: Publics 
 
 Emolumentum, primum hunc lapidem 
 
 posuit Vir prsecellentissimus, Carolus 
 
 Hardy, Eques Auratus, hujus Provincise 
 
 Praefectus dignissimus. Aug u . die 23. 
 
 An. Dom. MDCCLVI. 
 
 Not long previous to this interesting ceremony 
 Dr. Johnson had a letter from Dr. Bearcroft, Sec- 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 39 
 
 retary of the Society for the Propagation of the 
 Gospel, stating that the Society, discouraged by 
 the ill-success of its repeated endeavours to con- 
 vert to Christianity Indians of adult age, had de- 
 termined to attempt the education of their chil- 
 dren, in the hope that if trained up in the right 
 way of salvation, through the divine blessing 
 they might persevere therein. Dr. Bearcroft goes 
 on to say that the Society, very desirous of pro- 
 ceeding in this momentous matter, had directed 
 him to inquire of Dr. Johnson whether, and upon 
 what terms, a number of Indian children might 
 be received into the college, to be there main- 
 tained, and instructed in the Christian religion, 
 under his care and direction, at the expense of 
 the Society. Dr. Johnson, in reply, states that 
 Mr. Barclay and he had written to Mr. Ogilvie, 
 the Society's missionary to the Mohawks, to 
 sound the disposition of the Indians, and see 
 whether any lads could be procured to accept of 
 the Society's charitable offer ; and that until they 
 heard from Mr. Ogilvie they could say nothing 
 further on the subject. Nor do we find any 
 mention of it afterwards. 
 
 During the year 1755, a second class having 
 been admitted into college, an additional instruct- 
 or became indispensable, and Mr. Wm. John- 
 son, A. M., a young gentleman who had received 
 his education at Yale College, was appointed to 
 
40 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 the place which had been originally offered to 
 Mr. Whittlesey. Mr. Johnson, after holding his 
 office for about a year, went to England to take 
 orders, and Mr. Leonard Cutting, of Pembroke 
 Hall, Cambridge, a thorough-bred classical schol- 
 ar, was in 1756 appointed in his stead. 
 
 In November of the following year, 1757, Dr. 
 Johnson was driven from New- York by the 
 small-pox, and remained in the adjacent county 
 of Westchester for above a year, amidst the con- 
 gregation of which his son William was to have 
 taken charge, had he not, a most amiable and 
 promising young man, within seven months after 
 his departure from New- York, and very soon 
 after taking holy orders in England, been cut of^ 
 by that fearful disease from which Dr. Johnson 
 was now flying with his family a disease of 
 which (probably because of the bereavements 
 which in early life his friendship had sustained 
 from it) he entertained such dread, that he ac- 
 cepted the presidency of King's College, and re- 
 moved to New- York, only under the condition 
 " that he should be allowed to retire to some place 
 of safety out of town when the small-pox pre- 
 vailed."* 
 
 Although when Dr. Johnson retired from the 
 city there were not above thirty students alto- 
 gether in the then three classes, yet, Mr. Cutting 
 
 * Dr. Johnson's Autograph Memoir of his Life, p. 36. 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 41 
 
 being unequal to the care of all, the Governors, 
 on the 8th of November, 1757, appointed Mr. 
 Treadwell, a young gentleman of excellent char- 
 acter, educated at Harvard College, and recom- 
 mended by Professor Winthrop as eminently 
 qualified for the station, to be professor of Mathe- 
 matics and Natural Philosophy ; and to aid his 
 instructions an apparatus of instruments for 
 teaching Experimental Philosophy was imported 
 from Europe. It was made a part of Mr. Tread- 
 well's duty to teach also the Latin and Greek 
 languages to the two younger classes. 
 
 Dr. Johnson returned to the city, and to his 
 more immediate care of the college, in March, 
 1758 ; and on the 2lst of June following, was 
 held the first commencement ; at which the de- 
 gree of Bachelor of Arts was conferred on eight 
 students, five of whom were of the number of 
 those admitted in 1754 the other three had been 
 educated either in Philadelphia or at Princeton. 
 At this same commencement twelve gentlemen, 
 who had been elsewhere educated, were created 
 Masters of Arts, or, holding that degree already 
 from some other institution, were admitted ad 
 eundem. 
 
 The year following, there was no public com- 
 mencement ; but the degree of Bachelor of Arts 
 was conferred on two candidates, one of whom 
 had been educated at Princeton, and the other 
 
42 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 was, out of six admitted in 1755, the only one 
 who had completed his four years of study. 
 The remarks made in the Matricula of the Col- 
 lege respecting those who entered the Freshman 
 Class together with him are, of one, that he " in 
 his third year went to Philadelphia College ;" of 
 another, that "about the middle of his second 
 year he went into the army ;" of another, that he 
 " after three years went to merchandise ;" of the 
 fourth, that " after about two years he went to pri- 
 vateering ;" and of the fifth, that he " after three 
 years went to nothing." Similar brief remarks' are 
 found throughout the Matricula of King's Col- 
 lege, on those who left it before the completion of 
 their course. One " left College in his second 
 year, having behaved very indifferently." An- 
 other went away in his third year, "and was riot 
 much regretted." And of another, again, we find 
 " the loss regretted." 
 
 In October of this year, 1759, dread of the 
 small-pox again drove Dr. Johnson out of town, 
 and during his absence, which lasted until the 
 month of May following, the duties of the Col- 
 lege were, for a time, divided between Mr. Cut- 
 ting and Professor Treadwell ; but the declining 
 health of the latter, and his death in 1760, made 
 it necessary to seek some one qualified to take 
 his place ; and such an one, it seems, was not at 
 that period easily found. During the interval of 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 43 
 
 about eighteen months between the death of Pro- 
 fessor Treadwell and the appointment of his 
 successor, Mr. Samuel Giles was for a time em- 
 ployed as an instructor in Mathematics. 
 
 In February, 1760, a committee was appoint- 
 ed to write to the Archbishop of Canterbury, arid 
 such other persons as they might think fit, to 
 procure two proper persons " to assist the Presi- 
 dent in carrying on the education and instruction 
 of the youth of the College." 
 
 This resolution of the Governors, and Dr. 
 Johnson's own desire to provide a successor to 
 himself some one on whom he might within a 
 few years at farthest devolve the duties of the 
 presidency gave occasion for several letters on 
 both sides between him and Archbishop Seeker, 
 who seems to have taken mudi paj**3, though for 
 a long time without success, to obtain such^a^per- 
 son as the College required. 
 
 > Meantime the College building had been so 
 far completed that the officers and students be- 
 gan to lodge and mess there in May, 1760 ; and 
 on the 26th of the following month the proces- 
 sion proceeded thence to St. George's Chapel to 
 hold the third annual commencement. On this 
 occasion the President, in a Latin speech, con- 
 gratulated the Governors assembled for the first 
 time in the College Hall. 
 
 The building thus completed was that older 
 
44 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 portion of the present college edifice which is con- 
 tained between the wings. It constituted one-third 
 part of the original design, and in the minutes of 
 the Governors is repeatedly styled the north side 
 of the Colleg e. An English traveller in the pro- 
 vince at that period, the Rev. Dr. Burnaby, re- 
 marks, " The college when finished will be ex- 
 ceedingly handsome. It is to be built on three 
 sides of a quadrangle fronting Hudson's or North 
 River, and will be the most beautifully situated 
 of any college, I believe, in the world. At pres- 
 ent only one wing is finished, which is of stone, 
 and consists of twenty-four sets of apartments, 
 each having a large sitting-room with a study 
 and bedchamber." The same writer speaks of 
 the president as " a very worthy and learned 
 man ; but rather too far advanced in life to have 
 the direction of so young an institution." > 
 
 In November, 1761, the place of Mr. Tread- 
 well was at length filled by the appointment of 
 Mr. Robert Harpur, a gentleman educated at 
 Glasgow, as professor of Mathematics and Natu- 
 ral Philosophy. It was some time longer, how- 
 ever, before Archbishop Seeker's inquiries suc- 
 ceeded in finding any one fitted to aid Dr. John- 
 son in discharging the duties of his office, and 
 after a while to succeed him in it. The person 
 at length selected for this purpose was the Rev. 
 Myles Cooper, A.M., a Fellow of Qjieen's College, 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 45 
 
 Oxford, who came out in the autumn of 1762. 
 From the Archbishop, who had on several pre- 
 vious occasions, mentioned him, he brought a 
 letter dated Aug. 18th, 1762, which begins, " Good 
 Dr. Johnson. The bearer is Mr. Cooper. God 
 grant he may prove a proper man, and useful 
 among you." In November following, Mr. Coop- 
 er was appointed Fellow of the college, Professor 
 of Moral Philosophy, and to assist the President 
 in his instruction and government. This in- 
 struction, given by the President had, since the 
 regular organization of the college, been confined 
 to Greek, Logic, Metaphysics, and Ethics. 
 
 Archbishop Seeker continued to testify a live- 
 ly interest in Mr. Cooper's success, and the wel- 
 fare of the college, mentioning him repeatedly in 
 subsequent letters ; and on the 30th of March, 
 1763, he writes, in reference to Dr. Johnson's 
 (then, as he thought, only purposed) resignation, 
 " I assure you I will do nothing to retard your 
 retirement, beyond expressing my wishes that 
 you would be so kind to your college, and to Mr. 
 Cooper, as to give him competent time for be- 
 coming, and showing himself in some degree 
 proper to succeed you." But Dr. Johnson had 
 already, on the 1st of March, resigned his office, 
 and on the 12th of April following, Mr. Cooper, 
 upon whom his duties had meantime devolved, 
 was elected to supply his place. Dr. Johnson 
 
46 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 returned to Stratford ; where in the midst of his 
 son's family, surrounded by numerous old friends, 
 he passed the quiet remainder of his days. 
 
 At the same meeting at which Dr. Johnson's 
 resignation was announced, a plan was adopted 
 for the establishment of a grammar school in 
 connexion with the college, and this was opened 
 not long afterwards under the charge of Mr. Mat- 
 thew Gushing, of Charlestown, Massachusetts. 
 A librarian also was appointed, and a new body 
 of laws, better adapted, as was thought, to the 
 actual condition of the college, received the as- 
 sent of the Governors, and on the following day 
 was promulged in their presence in the College 
 Hall. Among the changes which it introduced 
 was a great enlargement of the scheme of studies 
 in the classical department, although these 
 studies were, indeed, from the very first, as they 
 continue to be, regarded by the college as of pri- 
 mary importance. 
 
 Bishop Berkeley, when suggesting to Dr. 
 Johnson various hints respecting the projected 
 seminary, five years previous to its actual estab- 
 lishment, says, " Let the Greek and Latin classics 
 be well taught. Be this the first care as to learn- 
 ing ; but the principal care must be good life and 
 morals, to which (as well as to study) early hours 
 and temperate meals will much conduce." 
 
 Mr. Cooper, whom a writer on the state of 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 47 
 
 education in this country about thirty years ago 
 thinks to have been " the most elegant scholar 
 that America ever saw," was well suited to fol- 
 low out these enlarged views as regarded clas- 
 sical instruction. That he was a more finished 
 classical scholar than his predecessor is highly 
 probable ; but the very active part he took in the 
 political controversies of his time, his literary 
 compositions, as compared with those of Dr. 
 Johnson, and a variety of circumstances in his life 
 and conversation, will not allow of our esteeming 
 him so judicious, moderate, learned, and truly 
 wise a man. Dr. Johnson's opinion of him is 
 briefly given in a letter written soon after his 
 resignation to Doctor (af. erwards Bishop) Home, 
 wherein he expresses his hope that the college 
 will be " well governed and instructed by Mr. 
 Cooper, who is well esteemed, and appears to be 
 an ingenious, industrious, and prudent young 
 gentleman." 
 
 When Dr. Johnson retired from the college 
 he left there four and twenty students ; a very 
 inconsiderable number, it is true, but equivalent, 
 nevertheless, to nine hundred at the present day, 
 if proportionate regard be had to the population of 
 the city at that period and now. Of these twen- 
 ty-four, and the thirteen admitted during the two 
 following years, only twenty-eight in all complet- 
 ed iheir college course, and were graduated ; but 
 
48 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 we find among them a very unsual proportion of 
 distinguished men. The biographer of one of 
 them, Peter Van Schaack, after mentioning that 
 he entered the Freshman class in 1762, remarks, 
 " This was an eventful era in his life. It was 
 here that he formed an interesting and valuable 
 acquaintance with John Jay, Egbert Benson, 
 Richard Harison, Gouverneur Morris, Robert R. 
 Livingston, and many other illustrious men, 
 whose enviable reputations now constitute the 
 richest property of their country." 
 
 The first commencement at which Mr. Cooper 
 presided, was held in St. George's Chapel, on the 
 17th of May, 1763, five weeks after his appoint- 
 ment, when two students were admitted to the 
 degree of Bachelor, and seven alumni of the col- 
 lege to that of Master of Arts. 
 
 The commencement of the following year also 
 was held at St. George's Chapel ; but all the 
 commencements of King's College subsequent to 
 that were in Trinity Church, except those of 
 1767 and 1768, which were at St. Paul's Chapel. 
 Respecting that of 1765, in Trinity Church, we 
 find mentioned, as if it were a novelty, that three 
 anthems, and several other pieces of music were 
 performed ; and so of the following commence- 
 ment, also, it is stated that " the exercises Were 
 intermixed with music." 
 
 For near six months after Mr. Cooper's ap- 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 49 
 
 pointment to the presidency, he had the aid of 
 both Mr, Cutting and Mr. Harpur, as instructors 
 in the college ; but on the resignation of the for- 
 mer in October, 1763, he greatly needed the as- 
 sistance of some other teacher. Negotiations 
 were entered into with Mr. Richardson and other 
 gentlemen of Oxford, and efforts were made in 
 other quarters, but for a long time in vain, to find 
 some suitable person to fill Mr. Cutting's place. 
 At length, on the 24th of October, 1765, Dr. Glossy, 
 a gentleman educated at Trinity College, Dub- 
 lin, and who, before his emigration to America, 
 had attained a high standing in his profession, 
 by the publication of an able work on Morbid 
 Anatomy, was appointed tutor, with a salary of 
 144, and a further salary of 36 was assigned 
 to him as Professor of Natural Philosophy ; Pro- 
 fessor Harpur, to whom this subject had previ- 
 ously belonged, teaching thenceforth only Ma- 
 thematics. 
 
 On the 8th of May, 1764, we find it " Ordered, 
 that a conductor be fixed to the cupola of the 
 college, as a security against lightning," a cir- 
 cumstance which it seems excusable to mention, 
 because of the probability that this lightning rod 
 and that on the Middle Dutch Church, the pre- 
 sent Post Office, which was put up in the same 
 year, were the first two erected in the city of 
 New- York. 
 
 3 
 
50 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 On the 23d of October, in this year, 1764, a 
 committee charged with the erection of a fence 
 along the south side of the college ground, was 
 further empowered to build a porter's lodge, to 
 level the college yard, and to plant trees along 
 the fence. From this we may probably infer the 
 age of the noble lindens and sycamores which 
 adorn the college green. 
 
 The affairs of the college seem to have gone 
 on prosperously now for several years. The 
 classes were taught by Mr. Cooper, Mr. Harpur, 
 and Dr. Glossy, and under such able instructors 
 possessed advantages which, perhaps, no semi- 
 nary of so young a standing in this country had 
 enjoyed. 
 
 In 1766, Dr. Johnson made his last visit to 
 New- York, at the time of the Commencement, 
 and had the satisfaction of finding the college in a 
 flourishing state, and of seeing the public exercises 
 performed in a manner that surpassed his ex- 
 pectation. 
 
 On the 26th of February, 1767, a committee 
 previously appointed to petition Sir Henry Moore, 
 Governor of the province, for a grant of land, 
 made report that they had obtained one of 24,000 
 acres. The same committee was thereupon em- 
 powered to view the lands^and, if it was thought 
 fit, to have them surveyed. From subsequent 
 proceedings of the Governors, in relation to these 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 51 
 
 lands, on the 20th of March, 1770, when measures 
 for their more speedy settlement were adopted, it 
 appears that they were situate in the new county 
 of Gloucester, in the province of New- York ; that 
 they were not only erected into a township, with 
 the usual privileges, but to the great advantage, 
 as was hoped, of the college, were constituted to 
 become the county town. 
 
 , All these anticipations, however, were to be 
 disappointed. Unluckily for the college, its 
 township was comprehended within that tract of 
 country which, after being in dispute for six and 
 twenty years between New- York and New- 
 Hampshire, or settlers claiming under grants from 
 her, was erected into the new State of Vermont, 
 and all grants of lands lying within its limits, 
 made by New- York, were, in consideration of 
 thirty thousand dollars, which it paid to New- 
 York, declared null and void. 
 
 This treaty, which the State of New- York, 
 from weighty considerations of public policy, 
 rather than for the paltry sum of money paid, 
 found it expedient to make, surrendered a proper- 
 ty belonging to the college, which would at this 
 day have been of immense value, and in so doing, 
 may be regarded as having given to the college 
 a claim for retribution, which all that the State 
 has since done for it does not fully satisfy. 
 
 In February, 1767, Mr. Harpur, the professor 
 
52 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 of Mathematics, resigned his office, nor does it 
 appear that any person was appointed in his 
 place. 
 
 The Grammar School, established in 1763, 
 seems not to have succeeded as was hoped. In 
 August, 1767, it was found that the college had 
 sunk by it about 370. Some reforms were there- 
 fore made, and its expenses were reduced by 
 dispensing with one of the teachers until then 
 employed. At the same time the Governors took 
 an important step towards advancing the useful- 
 ness and reputation of the college, by their adop- 
 tion of a scheme proposed by Dr. Glossy, in con- 
 nexion with Drs. Middleton, Jones, Smith, Bard, 
 and Tennent, for the institution of a Medical 
 School within the college. 
 
 The Governors having considered the plan 
 submitted by these gentlemen, and their offer to 
 give courses of lectures during the winter, each 
 on some branch of his profession, expressed a 
 high confidence in their merit, learning, and abil- 
 ities, with a due sense of their generous and dis- 
 interested proposals, and unanimously appointed 
 them to be professors Samuel Glossy, M. D., of 
 Anatomy ; Peter Middleton, M. D., of Pathology 
 and Physiology ; John Jones, M. D., of Surgery ; 
 James Smith, M. D., of Chemistry and Materia 
 Medica ; Samuel Bard, M. D., of the Theory and 
 Practice of Medicine ; John V. Bi Tennent, M. D., 
 of Midwifery. 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 53 
 
 The inaugural discourses of these professors, 
 and the manner in which they acquitted them- 
 selves at their outset, seem to have given great 
 satisfaction ; for, at a meeting of the Governors, on 
 the 25th of November, 1767, it was " Ordered, that 
 Mr. Attorney General, the Rev. Mr. Anchmuty, 
 and the Rev. Mr. Cooper, be a committee to com- 
 municate to the several Medical Professors the 
 high opinion this corporation entertains of the 
 learning and abilities whereby they have respec- 
 tively distinguished themselves, particularly in 
 their introductory lectures to thank them for the 
 zeal they have expressed for the honour of this 
 seminary, and the pains they have taken to pro- 
 mote its interest, and to signify their hopes that the 
 said professors, by a continuance of their services, 
 will render the science of medicine much more re- 
 spectable than it hath hitherto been in this coun- 
 try, to their own honour, the reputation of the col- 
 lege, and the great emolument of the public." 
 
 Three of these professors, the Doctors Middle- 
 ton, Jones, and Bard, were shortly after this the 
 most active promoters of that noble charity, the 
 New- York Hospital, and it appears from a medi- 
 cal discourse delivered by Dr. Middleton, at the 
 college, on the 3d of November, 1769, that the 
 first suggestion relative to the establishment of a 
 hospital in New- York was made by Dr. Bard. 
 " The necessity and usefulness of a public in- 
 
51 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 firmary," says Dr. Middleton, "has been so 
 warmly and pathetically set forth, in a discourse 
 delivered by Dr. Samuel Bard, at the College 
 Commencement in May last, that his Excellency 
 Sir Henry Moore immediately set on foot a sub- 
 scription for that purpose, to which himself and 
 most of the gentlemen present liberally con- 
 tributed."* 
 
 For several years after the organization of the 
 Faculty of Medicine, we find little of importance 
 in the minutes of the Governors, besides what 
 has been already noticed ; nor is there any thing, 
 as regards the college, derived from other quar- 
 ters, that deserves particular remark. The insti- 
 tution seems to have been advancing steadily in 
 a prosperous amd quiet course, except in so far as 
 the daily increasing political excitement of the 
 times may have disturbed it. 
 
 Among papers left in this country by Dr. 
 Cooper (for so he may henceforth be styled, as 
 he received in 1768, both from the University of 
 Oxford, and from the Governors of King's Col- 
 lege, the degree of LL. D.) there is one contain- 
 ing an account of King's College, which is as- 
 cribed to him. This account must have been 
 written, not only after the establishment of the 
 Medical School, but, since Natural Law is men- 
 
 * Account of the N. Y. Hospital, p. 63. Historical Sketch 
 of the Coll. of Phys. and Surgeons, p. 7. 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 55 
 
 tioned in it as among the subjects taught, and 
 there was no professor of that previous to 1773, 
 it is probably to be assigned to some date not long 
 after that. 
 
 This paper, after mentioning the manner in 
 which the college was founded, and some lead- 
 ing provisions of its charter, then goes on to state 
 that " Since the passing of the charter, the Insti- 
 tution hath received great emolument by grants 
 from his most gracious majesty King George the 
 Third, and by liberal contributions from many 
 of the nobility and gentry in the parent country ; 
 from the Society for the Propagation of the Gos- 
 pel in Foreign Parts, arid from several public-spir- 
 ited gentlemen in America and elsewhere. By 
 means of these and other benefactions, the Gov- 
 ernors of the College have been enabled to extend 
 their plan of education almost as diffusely as any 
 college in Europe ; herein being taught, by proper 
 Masters and Professors, who are chosen by the 
 Governors and President, Divinity, Natural Law, 
 Physic, Logic, Ethics, Metaphysics, Mathemat- 
 ics, Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, Geography. 
 History, Chronology, Rhetoric, Hebrew, Greek, 
 Latin, Modern Languages, the Belles Lettres, 
 and whatever else of literature may tend to ac- 
 complish the pupils as scholars and gentlemen. 
 
 " To the College is also annexed a Grammar 
 School, for the due preparation of those who pro- 
 
56 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 pose to complete their education with the arts 
 and sciences, 
 
 "All students but those in Medicine, are 
 obliged to lodge and diet in the College, unless 
 they are particularly exempted by the Governors 
 or President ; and the edifice is surrounded by 
 an high fence, which also encloses a large court 
 and garden, and a porter constantly attends at 
 the front gate, which is closed at ten o'clock each 
 evening in summer, and nine in winter; after 
 which hours, the names of all that come in, are 
 delivered weekly to the President. 
 
 " The College is situated on a dry gravelly 
 soil, about one hundred and fifty yards from the 
 bank of the Hudson river, which it overlooks j 
 commanding from the eminence on which it 
 stands, a most extensive and beautiful prospect 
 of the opposite shore and country of New Jersey, 
 the City and Island of New- York, Long Island, 
 Staten Island, New- York Bay with its Islands, 
 the Narrows, forming the mouth of the harbor, 
 etc. etc. ; and being totally unencumbered by any 
 adjacent buildings, and admitting the purest cir- 
 culation of air from the river, and every other 
 quarter, has the benefit of as agreeable and 
 healthy a situation as can possibly be conceived. 
 
 " Visitations by the Governors are quarterly ; 
 at which times, premiums of books, silver med- 
 als, etc., are adjudged to the most deserving. 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 57 
 
 "This Seminary hath already produced a 
 number of gentlemen who do great honour to 
 their professions, the place of their education, 
 and themselves, in Divinity, Law, Medicine, etc. 
 etc., in this and various other colonies, both on 
 the American continent and West India Islands ; 
 and the College is annually increasing as well in 
 students as reputation." 
 
 The Rev. John Vardill, A. M., appointed in 
 1773 Professor of Natural Law, and soon after 
 of History and Languages also, was an alumnus 
 of King's College, and the first one who was 
 ever appointed to any office therein a pupil of 
 Dr. Cooper, he seems to have agreed with him 
 entirely in politics. He must have left this 
 country very soon after his appointment, if, in- 
 deed, he were not absent when it was made, for 
 the writer of a letter from London, in the begin- 
 ning of 1775, speaks of him as " Parson Var- 
 dill, a native of New- York, who has been here 
 a twelvemonth, a ministerial writer under the 
 signature of Coriolanus, lately appointed King's 
 Professor in the College of New- York, with a 
 salary of 200 sterling." 
 
 Dr. Cooper may have thought himself in 
 duty bound to take an active part in the fierce 
 strife of tongues and pens which, towards the 
 close of his presidency, exercised the utmost 
 powers of all who imagined they could use 
 
58 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 those weapons with effect. He of course " took 
 the side of the British government, and distin- 
 guished himself in the political controversies of 
 the day against Smith, Livingston, and other 
 literary champions of the whig party. In one 
 of these skirmishes, he is said to have been met 
 and worsted by an anonymous antagonist, whom 
 he soon after discovered in the person of one of 
 his own pupils, Alexander Hamilton, then a 
 student in one of the younger classes. It would 
 be injustice to the memory of Dr. Cooper, not to 
 add, that far from betraying any thing like mor- 
 tification or resentment, he uniformly treated his 
 youthful antagonist with good humour and even 
 respect.* 
 
 It may justly be regarded as a proof of the 
 influence which liberal studies exercise upon the 
 minds of youth, in awakening a love of liberty 
 a spirit intolerant of tyranny, injustice, and op- 
 pression, that, notwithstanding the political 
 principles of those who administered the govern, 
 ment of King's College, and especially of Dr. 
 Cooper ; and although the talents and popularity 
 of the President might seem likely to recommend 
 his opinions to his pupils, yet a large proportion 
 of them were so far from adopting his tory prin- 
 ciples, as to be among the foremost champions 
 of liberty, in the cabinet and the field. " There 
 
 * Analectic Mag. v. 14, p. 96. 
 
OP COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 59 
 
 were early found Jay and Livingston, Morris 
 and Benson, Van Cortlandt and Rutgers, and 
 Troup and Hamilton."* 
 
 The name of Hamilton (whom the College 
 has always insisted on reckoning as one of her 
 Alumni), stands conspicuous among those of 
 students matriculated in 1774. Had the circum- 
 stances of the college and those eventful times 
 allowed him to complete his academic course, it 
 would, no doubt, considering his ardor and 
 activity of mind, have been a brilliant one even 
 within the college walls ; but the voice of his 
 country called him to a higher and more extend- 
 ed sphere of action. Abandoning the studious 
 retirement of academic shades, to take part in 
 the struggles of the battle-field, or the delibera- 
 tions of the cabinet, he has made his name the 
 property of the historian, and the theme of a 
 loftier praise than any that these pages are able 
 to award. 
 
 The boldness with which Dr. Cooper main- 
 tained in his writings and his conversation, 
 principles and sentiments highly offensive to a 
 most numerous party, at a time of great popular 
 excitement, at length so roused the indignation 
 of his political opponents, that on the night of 
 May 10th, 1775, his lodgings in the college were 
 
 * Verplanck's Address, delivered before the Philolexian and 
 Peithologian Societies of Col. Coll. p. 13. 
 
60 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 forcibly entered by a mob, to the fury of which, 
 had he been found there, he would probably 
 have fallen a victim. A. few days previous, had 
 been published a letter, dated Philadelphia, 
 April 25, 1775, addressed to Dr. Cooper and four 
 other obnoxious gentlemen of this city, ascribing 
 to them, and to their assurances of the defection 
 of New- York, all the hostile proceedings of Eng- 
 land the blood of their fellow-subjects who had 
 fallen in Massachusetts towns in flames a de- 
 solated country butchered fathers, weeping 
 widows and children, with all the horrors of a 
 civil war. They are denounced as parricides, 
 and told that the Americans, reduced to despe- 
 ration, will no longer satisfy their resentment 
 with the execution of villains in effigy ; and the 
 letter concludes, 
 
 " Fly for your lives, or anticipate your doom 
 by becoming your own executioners. 
 
 " THREE MILLIONS "* 
 
 If those of the three millions who sought Dr. 
 Cooper on this occasion, were animated by the 
 wrathful spirit which breathes through this epis- 
 tle, we may easily imagine the treatment he 
 would have received from them. But their 
 design was frustrated by one of his former pupils, 
 who, preceding the throng of several hundred 
 
 * Amer. Archives, 4th Series, vol. 2. col. 389. 
 
OP COLUMBIA CO.LLEGE. 61 
 
 men, admonished him of his danger just in time 
 to save him. He escaped, only half-dressed, 
 over the college fence ; reached the shore of the 
 Hudson, and wandered along the river bank till 
 near morning, when he found shelter in the 
 house of his friend Mr. Stuyvesant, where he 
 remained for that day, and during the night 
 following took refuge on board the Kingfisher, 
 Captain James Montagu, an English ship of 
 war at anchor in the harbour, in which soon af- 
 terwards he sailed for England. 
 
 On the 16th of May, or six days after this 
 narrow escape of the President, the Rev. Benja- 
 min Moore, an alumnus of the college, who a 
 few months previous had returned from England 
 in holy orders, was appointed by the Governors 
 Prceses pro tempore ; it being supposed that 
 Dr. Cooper might, which he never did, return. 
 
 In consequence of Dr. Cooper's absence there 
 was no public commencement held this year; 
 but the degree of Bachelor of Arts was conferred 
 on seven students, and that of Master of Arts on 
 two alumni of the college ; and eight students 
 were admitted. 
 
 On the 6th of April, in the following year, 
 1776, the Treasurer of the College received from 
 the Committee of Safety a message, desiring 
 the Governors to prepare the College within six 
 days, for the reception of troops. The students 
 
62 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 were in consequence dispersed, the library and 
 apparatus were deposited in the City Hall, or 
 elsewhere, and the college edifice was converted 
 into a military hospital. Almost all the appara- 
 tus, and a large proportion of the books belong- 
 ing to the college, were wholly lost to it in con- 
 sequence of this removal ; and of the books 
 recovered, six or seven hundred volumes were 
 so, only after about thirty years, when they were 
 found, with as many belonging to the N. Y. 
 Society Library, and some belonging to Trinity 
 Church, in a room in St. Paul's Chapel, where, 
 it seemed, no one but the Sexton had been 
 aware of their existence, and neither he nor any 
 body else could tell how they had arrived there. 
 
 Previous to this dispersion of the college 
 library, it contained, besides books purchased by 
 the Governors and those bequeathed by Dr. Bris- 
 towe and by Mr. Murray, many valuable works 
 given by the Earl of Bute and other individuals, 
 and from the University of Oxford, a copy of 
 every work printed at the University Press. 
 
 This forcible seizure of the college build- 
 ing, for as such, in fact, we may regard it, was 
 perhaps suggested by the same feeling of politi- 
 cal animosity that had been manifested with 
 such violence in the attempt to seize on Dr. 
 Cooper's person. The Committee of Safety, 
 when they aimed this blow at an obnoxious in- 
 
OP COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 63 
 
 stitution, which they looked upon as a mere hot- 
 bed of Toryism, were little aware of the fruits 
 their country was about to reap from plants that 
 had been reared in it. 
 
 An eminent jurist has remarked " that until 
 the foundation of King's College, little more than 
 twenty years before the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, there were no seminaries within the 
 colony, in which any other than a very indiifer- 
 ent education could be procured. The influence 
 of that institution on the literary character of the 
 State was truly wonderful ; for though the whole 
 number of students educated in the college prior 
 to 1775, was but one hundred, many of them at- 
 tained to great distinction in their respective pro- 
 fessions and in public life. In reference to them 
 and to their Alma Mater, the language of the 
 Roman poet would scarcely be too strong." 
 
 " Felix prole virum 
 
 Lseta deum partu, centum complexa nepotes, 
 Omnes ccelicolas, omnes supera alta tenentes." 
 
 As a specimen of the elder born of this " Tita- 
 nian progeny," our author names "Robert R. Liv- 
 ingston, Gouverneur Morris, and John Jay, each 
 distinguished, alike by his genius and erudition, 
 and all illustrious in the annals of their country, 
 for their talents as writers and their services as 
 statesmen."* 
 
 * Benj. F. Butler's Anniversary Discourse b the Albany 
 Institute in 1830, p. 54. 
 
64 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 In the year 1776, again, no public commence- 
 ment was held ; but six students, who had just 
 completed their course when the College was 
 broken up, were admitted to the degree of Bache- 
 lor of Arts. The college record of this year re- 
 marks, " The turbulence and confusion which 
 prevail in every part of the country effectually 
 suppress every literary pursuit." 
 
 It would seem, however, that some instruc- 
 tion continued to be given under the auspices of 
 King's College, though not within its walls, for 
 we find in its Matricula the names of William 
 Walton and James De Lancey Walton, entered 
 in the year 1777 ; and the Governors appear to 
 have met occasionally after this, for there exists 
 a certified copy of minutes of a meeting on the 
 17th of May, 1781. These are the only indica- 
 tions, faint as they are, which have been discov- 
 ered of the slumbering existence of the college 
 during a period of eight years from the spring 
 of 1776 to that of 1784 except, that it afterwards 
 appears from the minutes of the Trustees of Co- 
 lumbia College, on the 28th of March, 1788, that 
 Mr. Moore, the President ad interim, occupied 
 during a part of this period a house furnished 
 by Mr. Lispenard for the use of the officers and 
 students of the college, when the college edifice 
 was converted into a hospital. 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 65 
 
 At the end of this period of eight years, during 
 which the college remained in abeyance, as it were, 
 the Legislature of New- York, on the 1st of May, 
 J784, passed " An Act for granting certain privi- 
 leges to the college heretofore called King's Col- 
 lege, for altering the name and charter thereof, 
 and erecting an University within this State." 
 
 The Regents of the University appointed by 
 this Act held their first meeting only four days 
 after the passing of it ; but, for want of a quorum 
 adjourned to the day following, when they or- 
 ganized their Board by the appointment of Gov- 
 ernor Clinton, as Chancellor ; the Hon. Pierre 
 Van Cortlandt, as Vice Chancellor ; Brockholst 
 Livingston, as Treasurer ; and Robert Harpur, 
 as Secretary of the University. Mr. Livingston, 
 who in the office to which he was now appoint- 
 ed continued to serve Columbia College zealous- 
 ly and faithfully during the long period of forty 
 years, being a son of the gentleman who had so 
 bitterly opposed King's College thirty years be- 
 fore ; and Mr. Harpur, the same person who had 
 seventeen years before resigned his professorship 
 therein. 
 
 At this same meeting a committee was ap- 
 pointed " to demand and receive from the late 
 corporation of the college called King's College" 
 whatever property had belonged to it ; and the 
 Regents entered with laudable activity upon 
 
66 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 their task of setting in order the affairs of the 
 revived institution, which by the recent Act was 
 styled Columbia College. Among other measures 
 for that purpose adopted at this first meeting, 
 was the appointment of the Rev. John Peter Te- 
 tard as Professor of the French Language, and 
 the assignment of various important matters to 
 several committees. One was charged with the 
 repair's of the college edifice ; another with the 
 duty of engaging proper instructors ; a third with 
 that of devising a seal for the new coporation ; a 
 fourth with that of preparing by-laws for it ; and 
 a fifth with the care of sending a suitable person 
 to solicit subscriptions in France and other parts 
 of Europe. This last measure, and the appoint- 
 ment of a French Professor before any other, may 
 be viewed as evidence of the more intimate re- 
 lations subsisting between the now independent 
 States and France. 
 
 On the 15th of the same month of May, the 
 Regents resolved to institute a Grammar School 
 in the college, and appointed Mr. William Coch- 
 ran as master thereof, and also to be temporary 
 teacher in the college, of the Greek and Latin 
 Languages ; of which, on the 23d of December 
 following, he was elected Professor. 
 
 On the 17th of May, 1784, the first student of 
 the college, under its new name and government, 
 De Witt Clinton, presenting himself as a candi- 
 
OF COLUMBIA C 4 OLLEGE. 67 
 
 date for admission into the Junior Class, was ex- 
 amined, found qualified, and admitted according- 
 ly by a committee of the Regents consisting of 
 the Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, and Secretary, 
 the Mayor of New- York, and the newly ap- 
 pointed professor Tetard. And in this manner, 
 by a committee of the Regents, do all subsequent 
 examinations appear to have been conducted, for 
 so long as the college continued under their im- 
 mediate care. During this period, which was of 
 about three years, they seem to have been very 
 zealous and active in their endeavours to place 
 the college on a respectable footing to make it, 
 in fact, the nucleus of an institution which might 
 deserve to be styled an University. With this 
 view they applied themselves diligently to ob- 
 tain subscriptions of money towards the mainte- 
 nance of the college ; and making large calcu- 
 lations, probably, on the success of these, they 
 resolved, December 14th, 1784, to organize the 
 four faculties of Arts, Divinity, Medicine, and 
 Law, making the first to comprise seven profes- 
 sorships, the second to consist of such as might 
 be established by the different religious socie- 
 ties within the State, pursuant to the Act insti- 
 tuting the University the third to be com- 
 posed of seven professors, and the last of three. 
 Besides all which there were to be nine extra 
 professors, a president, a secretary, and a libra- 
 
68 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 rian and all this magnificent scheme was 
 adopted when the entire income from the real 
 and personal property of the college did not ex- 
 ceed the sum of twelve hundred pounds. 
 
 From the catalogue of the college it may be 
 seen what professorships were, in fact, establish- 
 ed at this time, or afterwards, while the college 
 remained under the immediate superintendence 
 of the Regents. During this period no president 
 was appointed, but the duties of the office were 
 discharged by the professors, in turn, and at the 
 commencements held in 1786 and 1787, instead 
 of diplomas, there were given under the seal of 
 the corporation, and signed by the secretary, cer- 
 tificates that the parties receiving them were en- 
 titled to the degree. of Bachelor of Arts. 
 
 This delay in appointing a President appears 
 from a report adopted by the Regents, April 4th, 
 1785, to have been because the deranged state of 
 the funds of the college, and the great losses it 
 had sustained, rendered them unable to offer such 
 a salary as would induce a suitable person to 
 accept the office. < 
 
 At length the Regents becoming sensible of 
 the defective constitution of the University un- 
 der the law from which they derived their au- 
 thority ; and a committee appointed to consider 
 its state having, on the 15th of February, 1787, 
 together with their report thereon, submitted the 
 
OP COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 69 
 
 draft of a bill containing provisions calculated, as 
 they thought, to remedy the defects of the actual 
 system, the Regents adopted the report of this 
 committee, and laid their bill, as amended by a 
 subsequent committee, of which John Jay and 
 Alexander Hamilton were members, before the 
 Legislature of the State, which on the 13th of 
 April following passed, accordingly, " An Act to 
 institute an University within this State, and 
 for other purposes therein mentioned." 
 
 By the 8th, and some of the subsequent sec- 
 tions of this Act, which have reference to Colum- 
 bia-College, its original charter, with the necessa- 
 ry alterations, was confirmed, and it was placed 
 under the care of twenty-nine gentlemen named 
 in the Act as its Trustees, who were to exercise 
 their functions until their number should be re- 
 duced by death, resignation or removal from the 
 state, to twenty-four, after which all vacancies 
 in their number were to be filled by their own 
 choice. 
 
 The first meeting of the Trustees of Colum- 
 bia College was on the 8th of May, 1787, when 
 they reappointed Robert Harpur and Brockholst 
 Livingston to their respective offices of Clerk and 
 Treasurer, and adopted, in so far as they were not 
 
70 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 repugnant to the present constitution of the col- 
 lege, the by-laws which had been established by 
 the Regents for its government. 
 
 On the 21st of the same month of May, Wil- 
 liam Samuel Johnson, L. L. D., son of the first 
 president of King's College, was elected Presi- 
 dent, and on the 12th of November following, he 
 signified to the Trustees his acceptance of the 
 office. 
 
 At this time the Faculty of Arts and that of 
 Medicine, consisted, each, of three professors. 
 There were no professors in the Faculties of Law 
 and of Divinity, and the only extra professor 
 was one of the German Language, who received 
 no salary. Of the thirty-nine students, (nearly 
 one-half of them belonging to the Freshman 
 Class,) five lodged and boarded in the college, 
 and five others had rooms and studied there. 
 The yearly income of the Institution was about 
 one thousand three hundred and thirty pounds. 
 
 During the first four or five years after the re- 
 organization of the college, there occurred scarce- 
 ly any thing that deserves mention, except the 
 resignation in 1789 of Mr. William Cochran, Pro- 
 fessor of the Greek and Latin Languages, and 
 the appointment of Mr. Peter Wilson in his place. 
 
 One of the students in college, during these 
 first years of its renewed existence, but who did 
 not finish his course there, was John Randolph, 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 71 
 
 of Mattoax, Virginia, at that time, but better 
 known afterwards as of Roanoke. He and his 
 brother, Theodoric, entered the Freshman Class 
 in 1788, and were promoted to the Sophomore 
 Class in 1789 ; after which Theodoric's name 
 does not again occur ; but John, as appears from 
 the matricula, entered the Junior Class of the fol- 
 lowing year. 
 
 In February, 1792, the Trustees, acting on 
 the suggestion of the Medical Society of the State, 
 and in concert with the Regents of the University, 
 established the Medical School of the college on 
 a more respectable footing than before, by the 
 appointment of a Dean of the Faculty of Medi- 
 cine, and seven Medical Professors. Dr. Samuel 
 Bard, who had been Professor of the Theory and 
 Practice of Medicine in the first medical school 
 established in the college in 1767, and more re- 
 cently had held first the professorship of Chem- 
 istry, and then that of Natural Philosophy arid 
 Astronomy, while the college was governed by 
 the Regents, was now elected Dean of the new 
 Faculty, in which there were associated with 
 him Doctors Bailey, Post, Rodgers, Hamersley, 
 Smith, Nicoll, and Kissam, all eminent in their 
 profession. 
 
 Dr. Romaine, who had been giving lectures 
 at the college on certain branches of medical sci- 
 ence, having, on the organization of this new 
 
72 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 school, resigned his office, the rooms which had 
 been used by him were arranged for its accom- 
 modation, such alterations being made therein as 
 were required. 
 
 In April, 1792, the Rev. Elias D. Rattoon, on 
 the resignation of Professor Wilson, was chosen 
 Professor of the Greek and Latin Languages ; 
 and in May, 1794, received the further appoint- 
 ment of Professor of Grecian and Roman Anti- 
 quities. He resigned both offices on the 9th of 
 June, 1797, and on the 19th of the same month, 
 his predecessor, Dr. Wilson, was re-elected to fill 
 them, as he thenceforth continued to do for three 
 and twenty years. 
 
 Besides the establishment of a medical school, 
 the Trustees gave further evidence, during the 
 year 1792, of their desire to make the college 
 useful and respectable, by filling several other 
 professorships. Dr. Kunze was re-appointed Pro- 
 fessor of Oriental Languages. Dr. Mitchell was 
 chosen Professor of Natural History, Chemistry, 
 Agriculture, and Botany ; and M. de Marcelin, 
 Professor of French. In the following year, 1793, 
 Mr. James Kent was elected Professor of Law, 
 and in 1795, the Rev. Dr. M'Knight was appoint- 
 ed Professor of Moral philosophy arid Logic, the 
 Rev. John Bisset, A. M., of Aberdeen, Professor 
 of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres : and the professor- 
 ship of Geography was assigned to Dj 1 . Kemp, in 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 73 
 
 addition to that of Mathematics and Natural phi- 
 losophy, which he already held. 
 
 Meanwhile the foundation of an additional 
 building was, in conformity with the original plan 
 of the college, laid at right angles to the existing 
 edifice, along the west side of the college green ; 
 and on the northern end of this foundation, in 
 order to supply the more immediate wants of the 
 institution, was begun a superstructure intended 
 to contain a hall and several recitation rooms. 
 
 The Trustees were encouraged to the making 
 of the appointments just now mentioned, the 
 laying of this more extensive foundation than 
 they were able to finish, and the purchase of a 
 large addition to the college library, by a grant 
 obtained from the Legislature in April, 1792, of 
 7,900, and of the further sum of 750 annually 
 for five years. They soon discovered, however, 
 that they had extended their views, and had 
 proceeded in their plan of building, farther than 
 this addition to their means would warrant. In 
 1796, they were obliged again to ask for legisla- 
 tive aid to complete their edifice ; and their appli- 
 cation proving unsuccessful, the committee em- 
 ployed about the new building, was empowered 
 to proceed with it until the money granted for 
 that purpose should be expended, and in June, of 
 the year following, was directed to sell the perish- 
 
74 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 able building materials which then remained on 
 hand. 
 
 /The annual payment of 750 by the State 
 being discontinued on the expiration of the period 
 of five years, for which it had been granted, the 
 additional professors, towards whose salaries that 
 money had been applied, were found too bur- 
 thensome, and consequently, in February, 1799, 
 the duty of teaching Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, 
 Logic and Moral Philosophy, was devolved upon 
 the President. Mathematics, Natural Philosophy 
 and Geography were united under one professor- 
 ship. The Latin and Greek Languages, Roman 
 and Grecian Antiquities, were combined to form 
 another. The professorships of the Oriental Lan- 
 guages, of French, and of Law, were discontin- 
 ued. A professorship, however, of Natural His- 
 tory and Chemistry was instituted, and these 
 studies were made to form part of the regular 
 academic course. 
 
 On the 16th of July, 1800, Dr. Johnson, hav- 
 ing nearly reached his 74th year, and feeling the 
 infirmities of age, resigned his presidency, and 
 retired to Stratford. The tranquil life to which 
 he was there restored, and the air of his native 
 village, re-established in a great degree his bodily 
 health, and in the enjoyment of a leisure so well 
 earned by the professional toils and highly im- 
 portant public services of his previous long career, 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 75 
 
 he lived to enter upon his 93d year, " retaining 
 to the last his vigor and activity of mind, the ar- 
 dor of his literary curiosity, and a most lively 
 interest in whatever concerned the welfare of this 
 country, and of the Christian world." 
 
 On Dr. Johnson's resignation the Trustees 
 empowered the senior professor to preside at the 
 ensuing commencement, and to confer the de- 
 grees that had been ordered. 
 
 On the 25th of May, 1801, the Rev. Dr. 
 Wharton, of Philadelphia, was elected president, 
 and, on the 3d of August, signified, by letter, his 
 acceptance of the office, which, on the llth of 
 December following, he resigned. 
 
 It was now determined that the professorship 
 which for about three years had been annexed 
 to the presidential office, should be detached 
 therefrom, and that the President, in future, 
 should be charged merely with a general super- 
 intendence of the institution, the duty of attend- 
 ing at examinations, presiding at commence- 
 ments, and performing such other acts as are 
 more peculiar to his office. This change was 
 adopted on the 30th of December, 1801, and on 
 the following day the Right Rev. Benjamin 
 Moore was appointed to the office of President, 
 which he had held ad interim on the departure 
 of Dr. Cooper, above six and twenty years before. 
 At the same time the Rev. Dr. Bowden, who, 
 
76 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 like Bishop Moore, was an alumnus of the Col- 
 lege, was appointed to the now distinct profes- 
 sorship of Moral Philosophy, Rhetoric and Belles- 
 Lettres, and Logic. 
 
 Under this new arrangement the President 
 was not expected to reside in the college, nor, on 
 ordinary occasions, to take an active part in its 
 discipline and government ; the chief manage- 
 ment of its daily concerns "being committed to 
 the professors. The plan was not a good one in 
 itself; but, Doctors Kemp, Wilson, and Bowden, 
 being highly respectable and able men, the col- 
 lege, notwithstanding, went on well, increasing 
 in reputation and in number. Its funds derived 
 some augmentation from a grant of lands made 
 to it in 1802 by the Regents of the University ; 
 its real estate in the city was daily becoming 
 more valuable ; the hall and recitation rooms on 
 the north end of the new foundation were com- 
 pleted ; and, though the remainder of that foun- 
 dation (already falling to ruin) and the original 
 college edifice presented a decayed and unsightly 
 appearance, yet the internal condition of the insti- 
 tution, at this period, was not unprosperous. 
 
 And, except that its buildings were yearly 
 growing worse, there was little change about the 
 college, nor does its history offer any thing that 
 deserves especial notice until the 22d of June, 
 1809, when, upon the recommendation of a corn- 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 77 
 
 rnittee, consisting of Mr. Rnfus King, and the 
 Reverend Doctors Mason, Abeel, Hobart, and 
 Miller, a new regulation was adopted, whereby 
 the requisites for admission into college, after the 
 1st of October, 1810, were raised much higher 
 than they had ever been before ; and in February 
 following, the same committee, to which the Rev. 
 Dr. Romeyn had in the interim been added, re- 
 ported, also, a new course of studies and system 
 of discipline within the college, in accordance 
 with the new statute as to admission. 
 
 The adoption of the well-considered plans of 
 this very able committee was calculated, and has 
 had the effect, greatly to elevate and extend our 
 system of collegiate education. The plan then 
 adopted, although it has since, from time to time, 
 undergone various modifications, still continues to 
 form the basis on which our present plans of dis- 
 cipline and study rest. 
 
 In the spring of 1810 the Trustees obtained 
 a new charter from the Legislature of the State, 
 by which certain restrictions in the former char- 
 ter were removed, and some defects therein, 
 which experience had discovered, were supplied. 
 Among other alterations, the limit of the term for 
 which the college may grant leases was extended 
 from twenty-one to sixty-three years. 
 
 From the annual report to the Regents, in 
 February, 1810, it appears, that the number of 
 
73 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 students matriculated for that year was 135. 
 The Trustees remark, that on comparing this 
 with former reports " the Regents will perceive 
 that notwithstanding the many embarrassments 
 with which she has to struggle, Columbia Col- 
 lege not only maintains her ground, but increases 
 her importance." They further observe, that 
 they have prosecuted the theoretical and practi- 
 cal system of the college so far towards its re- 
 sults as " to lay a broader and stronger basis for 
 sound and thorough education than (as they be- 
 lieve) has hitherto been known in these States." 
 The affairs of the institution being, in. some 
 respects, thus hopeful, and a great zeal for its ad- 
 vancement manifested, Bishop Moore, in May, 
 1811, resigned his presidency, in order to make 
 room for some one who would have it in his 
 power to devote himself wholly to the college ; 
 and, in the following month, the Trustees deter- 
 mined to divide the powers and duties of the 
 presidential office between a president and an of- 
 ficer to be styled Provost, who, in the absence of 
 the President, should supply his place, and who, 
 besides exercising the like general superintend- 
 ence with the President, should conduct the 
 classical studies of the Senior Class. The 
 statutes of the college were altered accordingly, 
 and, on the 17th of June, 1811, the Rev. William 
 Harris was elected President, and the Rev. Dr. 
 Mason, Provost. 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 79 
 
 It seems scarce allowable to pass entirely un- 
 noticed here, an occurrence at the ensuing com- 
 mencement, in the month of August, when a 
 generous but mistaken zeal, in support of one of 
 the candidates for the honours of the day, led to 
 a violent resistance of the authority of the col- 
 lege, and a tumultuous interruption of its most 
 solemn exercises, which caused quite a public 
 excitement at the time, and became the subject of 
 much angry controversy. The generous motives 
 to which this disturbance was ascribed, and the 
 disfavour with which many viewed the recent 
 change in the government of the college, caused 
 an unjustifiable rising up against it, to wear, at 
 first, the appearance of a correct expression of 
 indignant public feeling ; but the legal investi- 
 gation to which the matter was subjected, and 
 the powerful mind of De Witt Clinton, whose 
 duty it became to take cognizance of it as a 
 judge, stript it of the character of manly resist- 
 ance to oppression, and placed it in its true light, 
 as an unjust attempt to interrupt a necessary al- 
 though painful act of discipline. The tide of 
 public sentiment was consequently turned, and 
 the college discipline recovered that standing in 
 opinion, which must ever constitute its chief sup- 
 port.* 
 
 * See Renwick's Discourse before the Alumni, p. 28. 
 
80 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 On the 14th of February, 1812, the Legisla- 
 ture, in accordance with the petition of the 
 Trustees, passed an act making the Provost of 
 the college for the time being, eligible as a mem- 
 ber of their Board, and, in May following, the 
 Provost, Dr. Mason, was elected a Trustee. 
 
 On the 25th of November, 1812, Dr. Kemp 
 died, after having, for eight and twenty years, 
 discharged with great ability and fidelity the 
 duties of professor of Mathematics and Natural 
 Philosophy. The resolutions of the Trustees on 
 this occasion manifest their high respect for his 
 memory, and their concern for the loss which 
 the college had sustained. 
 
 During the last illness of Dr. Kemp, and for 
 some time after his decease, the duties of his 
 office were divided between Mr. James Ren wick , 
 whose services were voluntarily and gratuitously 
 rendered, and Mr. Henry Vetake, who had been 
 engaged by the Trustees, but, on the 3d of May, 
 1813, Mr. Robert Adrain was elected to fill the 
 vacant professorship. The purchase by the col- 
 lege of the late professor's books made a valua- 
 ble addition to its library. 
 
 On the 1st of November, 1813, the Trustees 
 agreed to incorporate their medical school with 
 that of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, 
 a new institution which the Regents of the Uni- 
 versity had established in the city of New- 
 York. 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 81 
 
 On the llth of July, 1816, Dr. Mason resigned 
 his office of Provost, and, on the 7th of Novem- 
 ber following, the Trustees determined that the 
 powers and duties of that office should devolve 
 upon the President, except that the duty of con- 
 ducting the classical studies of the Senior Class 
 should be restored to the Professor of the Greek 
 and Latin Languages. 
 
 On the 27th of February, 1817, a proposition; 
 which at the time excited a very lively interest, 
 and much discussion, was received from the 
 Regents of the University. It was in the form of 
 a resolution of their Board, enclosed in a letter 
 from the Vice President of the United States, 
 Daniel D. Tompkins, to the Trustees of the 
 College, and recommended, as that gentleman, 
 in his own name, also, did, a consolidation of the 
 college property and funds with those of a new 
 institution, which it was proposed to establish on 
 Staten Island, and to which, under the name of 
 Washington College, a charter had been granted. 
 
 The source whence this proposal came, and 
 the channel through which it was received, en- 
 titled it to much consideration. It was referred 
 to a most respectable committee, consisting of 
 Richard Harison, Rufus King, Brockholst Liv- 
 ingston, Bishop Hobart, and William Johnson, 
 who on the 27th of the following month, made a 
 report, in which they stated at length the rea- 
 4* 
 
82 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 sons why, after mature deliberation, they deemed 
 it the duty of the Trustees, not to accede to the 
 proposal of the Regents. 
 
 The mere removal of the college was no new 
 suggestion, nor was the expediency of such a 
 measure considered on this occasion for the first 
 time. On the llth of November, 1802, a com- 
 mittee had been appointed to inquire and report 
 on the subject of finishing the new wing to the 
 college building, " taking into view the proprie- 
 ty of removing the college to some more con- 
 venient situation" The Trustees, it is evident, 
 were then wavering in doubt as to the expedien- 
 cy of expending on the present site of the col- 
 lege, moneys, which would, in case of its removal, 
 have been thrown away. The same uncertain- 
 ty continuing to prevail, a committee, appointed 
 in July, 1813, was afterwards directed to inquire 
 whether an eligible site for a college could be 
 found, " at a distance from the city not great- 
 er than Art-street ;" and, in May 1816, anoth- 
 er was appointed, to negotiate for the purchase 
 of " a piece of ground containing thirty-two 
 lots, belonging to the estate of Anthony Bleeck- 
 er, deceased, not far from Col. Varictfs place" 
 *^This uncertainty as to the continuance of 
 the college in its original location, appears to 
 have exercised, for a period of about fourteen 
 years, a sort of paralyzing influence on the 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 83 
 
 action of the Trustees, in so far as regarded any 
 extensive or effectual repair of the college build- 
 ings. They manifested a constant and very 
 zealous care of the internal condition of the 
 college, and that appears to have been gradually 
 improved ; but, though their attention was from 
 time to time called to the ruinous and deplorable 
 state of its exterior, yet that every year grew 
 worse ; and, " while the institution was gaining 
 new mental vigour and life, its bodily state be- 
 trayed symptoms of great weakness and decay." 
 The reasoning, however, of the well considered 
 and able report now made, and unanimously 
 adopted, seems to have confirmed the minds of 
 the Trustees, for a time at least, as to the perma- 
 nent location of the college, and no longer doubt- 
 ful now of its remaining where it was, they 
 entered at once on measures calculated to re- 
 move that unseemly appearance, and to supply 
 those wants, which, for so long a time, had 
 grieved and mortified its friends. In less than 
 six weeks after the settlement of this question, 
 the visiting committee forcibly pointed out in 
 their report, the apparent neglect and decayed 
 state of the college edifices ; from which the in- 
 stitution greatly suffered in the public estimation ; 
 and the many wants which limited its useful- 
 ness, and prevented its maintaining the rank 
 which it ought to hold among the seminaries of 
 learning in our country. 
 
84 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 An attentive examination hereupon made 
 into the state of their finances, having satisfied 
 the Trustees that they might safely undertake 
 extensive repairs of the old edifice, and the erec- 
 tion of additional buildings ; they, on the 6th of 
 September, 1817, agreed upon the general out- 
 lines of a plan for that purpose, and appointed a 
 committee to carry it into effect. 
 
 Two wings, each fifty feet square, and each 
 containing two houses for professors, were added 
 at the extremities of the original edifice, and of 
 this older building, which underwent very exten- 
 sive alterations, one fourth part being reserved as 
 a dwelling-house, the residue was so arranged as 
 to furnish a chapel, a library, and all the required 
 recitation rooms. 
 
 Shortly before the adoption of this plan, the 
 Rev. Dr. Bowden, who, for about sixteen years 
 had filled the office of Professor of Moral Philos- 
 ophy, Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, and Logic, died 
 much lamented. The Trustees adopted resolu- 
 tions which feelingly expressed their high sense 
 of the long and faithful services of the deceased, 
 and of the learning and ability with which he had 
 discharged his professional duties, together with 
 .their veneration for the example displayed by 
 him of all the moral and Christian virtues ; and 
 neither in this case nor in that of Dr. Kemp's 
 death did they limit to words alone the evidence 
 of their regard. 
 
OP COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 85 
 
 On the 3d of November, 1817, the Rev. John 
 M'Vickar was appointed to the professorship 
 which Dr. Bowden had held, and. at the same 
 meeting, with a view to relieve Dr. Wilson of 
 some portion of the duties which his advancing 
 age began to render burthensome, it was resolved 
 to appoint an adjunct professor of the Greek and 
 Latin Languages. On the 1st day of the follow- 
 ing month Mr. Nathaniel F. Moore was elected 
 to that office, and charged with the duty of teach- 
 ing those languages to the Freshman Class. 
 
 t. Meanwhile the improvements in the exterior 
 of the college, and the additions that had been 
 resolved upon, were going forward ; but it was 
 not until the 2d of October 1820 that, the pro- 
 jected alterations being completed, the building 
 committee handed in their final report. During 
 the progress of the work, the trustees received a 
 valuable contribution towards it, by a grant from 
 the State of $10,000 ; and the same Act, passed 
 February 19th, 1819, added also to the value of 
 the college property, by rescinding the condition 
 of a grant which had been made five years be- 
 fore, of the Botanic Garden a piece of some 
 twenty acres of ground about three miles out of 
 town a condition requiring that the college 
 should be removed to the land so granted with- 
 in the next twelve years. 
 
 But the extensive additions and alterations 
 
86 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 about the college proved so expensive, that not- 
 withstanding this legislative aid, a considerable 
 debt had been incurred. 
 
 The Trustees, however, would not be deterred 
 thereby from assuming new burthens, which 
 either a just regard for the claims of one who 
 had long served the college with fidelity, or the 
 exigencies of its discipline and course of study, 
 seemed to lay upon them. Accordingly, when 
 Dr. Wilson found himself obliged by increasing 
 infirmities wholly to resign his office, as in Feb- 
 ruary 1820 he did, they, in consideration of his 
 "faithful and eminently useful services during 
 eight and twenty years of his advanced age, and 
 the peculiar circumstances of his situation," 
 granted him a liberal annuity for life. Being 
 persuaded, moreover, that the welfare of the col- 
 lege required a division of the professorship of 
 Mathematics and Natural Philosophy into a pro- 
 fessorship of Mathematics and Astronomy, and 
 a professorship of Natural and Experimental 
 Philosophy and Chemistry, they resolved on 
 such division accordingly ; and, leaving Dr. Ad- 
 rain charged with the former, appointed, on the 
 4th of December, 1820, Mr. James Renwick to 
 the latter office. To that which Dr. Wilson had 
 resigned, the adjunct professor, Mr. Nathaniel F. 
 Moore, was, in February, 1820, preferred, and, on 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 87 
 
 the 6th of the following month, Mr. Charles 
 Anthon was appointed to supply his place. 
 
 The college, now for the first time, saw most 
 of her offices filled by her own alumni Profes- 
 sors M'Vickar, Moore, Anthon, and Renwick 
 having all been reared within her walls, while 
 previous to 1817, only three of all who had ever 
 held office in the college, had received their edu- 
 cation there. These were the Rev. John Vardill, 
 who probably never entered on the duties of his 
 office, the Rev. Benj. Moore, and the Rev. John 
 Bowden. 
 
 We find nothing in the history of the college, 
 for a period now of several years, that requires 
 particular notice. The minutes of the proceed- 
 ings of the Trustees afford evidence of an inces- 
 sant and earnest struggle on their part against 
 difficulties which the embarrassed state of the 
 college and its yearly increasing debt opposed to 
 their making it as useful as they wished. Year 
 after year we find them addressing memorials to 
 the Legislature, urging very forcibly their wants, 
 but never obtaining any adequate relief. They 
 appear to be engaged in a perpetual succession 
 of experiments, which might perhaps expose 
 them to the charge of fickleness, but that we per- 
 ceive they are trying, in every way which affords 
 any prospect of success, to solve a problem, 
 which will not perhaps admit of satisfactory 
 
88 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 solution. They are endeavouring, with very lim- 
 ited and daily lessening means, to maintain the 
 reputation, and increase the usefulness of the in- 
 stitution committed to their care. This will ex- 
 plain and reconcile some seeming incongruities, 
 and account for much apparent fluctuation, in 
 the counsels of the Board. 
 
 On the 3d of November 1823, the Honourable 
 James Kent was re-appointed to the professorship 
 of Law, which he had five and twenty years 
 before resigned, after having then held it five 
 years. The present appointment of this accom- 
 plished jurist having given occasion to a course 
 of lectures at the college, which proved the germ 
 of his learned Commentaries, was, consequently, 
 attended with results, which, while they reflect 
 honour on the college, are of inestimable value to 
 the science of jurisprudence, and the whole legal 
 profession. 
 
 On the 5th of September, 1825, was establish- 
 ed, for the first time in the college, a professor- 
 ship of the Italian language and literature ; to 
 which the Trustees appointed Signor Lorenzo 
 Da Ponte, a gentleman of singular talent, a schol- 
 ar and poet of no ordinary merit. 
 
 On the 7th of November, in the same year, 
 Dr. Adrain resigned his professorship of Mathe- 
 matics and Astronomy. In the letter offering his 
 resignation, he, in the warmest terms possible, 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 89 
 
 recommended as his successor Henry J. Ander- 
 son, M. I)., an alumnus of the college, who on the 
 llth of the same month was elected in his place. 
 
 In April, 1826, a proposal was received from 
 Doctors Hosack, Macneven, Mott, and Francis, 
 for the reorganization of a Faculty of Physic in 
 the college. The proposition was referred to a 
 committee, who, with certain qualifications, re- 
 ported in favour of the scheme ; but it was never- 
 theless rejected, 
 
 In October, 1827, a new body of statutes for 
 the government of the college was adopted, and 
 in December of the same year the Trustees re- 
 solved to establish, under their patronage, a 
 grammar school, of which the Board of the col- 
 lege should have the superintendence and con- 
 trol. The plan, however, failed altogether of 
 success, until after it had received some modifi- 
 cations in the month of April following ; nor, 
 even then, did it, for a long time, succeed in any 
 great degree. In the spring of 1829, measures 
 were taken to erect a suitable building for its ac- 
 commodation. This was finished and occupied 
 in the month of October following, and the Trus- 
 tees made an agreement with Mr. John D. Ogil- 
 by, as master of the school, under the control 
 and direction of the College Board. 
 
 In April, 1827, a proposition was made by the 
 New- York Athenaeum and the New-York Soci- 
 
90 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 ety Library, for an union of their libraries with 
 that of the college ; but this scheme, though kept 
 in view, and a subject of negotiation during eight 
 or ten months, failed at length of being so ar- 
 ranged as to suit all parties. 
 
 In October, 1829, Dr. Harris died, after being 
 in the presidential office for above eighteen years ; 
 but, with full charge of the college for only the 
 last thirteen of them ; during all which time he 
 had manifested the most entire and zealous de- 
 votion to its interests. 
 
 On the 9th of December following his de- 
 cease, the Honourable William A. Duer, LL. D., 
 was elected in his place. 
 
 On the 6th of the following month of Janu- 
 ary, 1830, a plan for the establishment of an 
 University in this city, which had, for some time 
 previous, been a subject of conversation, and dis- 
 cussed in private circles, was more fully devel- 
 oped, in a paper read at a public meeting of its 
 friends and soon after printed. The advocates 
 of this scheme disclaimed all thought of inter- 
 fering with " the many respectable colleges situ- 
 ated in different parts of our country ;" for many 
 of which they professed to entertain a high re- 
 spect, "and for none of them a more sincere 
 good will than for Columbia College." But these 
 institutions, "chiefly designed to prepare young 
 men for what are termed the learned professions," 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 91 
 
 were, by no means, suited, as they thought, to 
 supply the want, which they imagined to exist, 
 not only in this city, but throughout the country, 
 of some more general, more liberal, more practi- 
 cal instruction than could at present be obtained. 
 They proposed, therefore, to establish an Univer- 
 sity on a broad and liberal foundation, which 
 should correspond with the spirit and demands 
 of our age and country one, where young men 
 who sought a higher instruction than that 
 which the ordinary schools supply, might be 
 able to obtain it, without possessing any know- 
 ledge of Latin and Greek, without being obliged 
 to "employ a large portion of the most valuable 
 period of their lives in pursuits that will be of 
 no essential service to them." 
 
 The public was urged to remove from the 
 city of New- York, what, if in this age of light 
 and improvement it should be longer tolerated, 
 might well be considered a reproach the want 
 of an institution where an inquiring mind might 
 obtain instruction in the higher departments of 
 knowledge of useful knowledge. 
 
 It was supposed by these gentlemen, that, 
 with the then population of our city, it would be 
 reasonable to count upon eight or ten hundred 
 candidates for instruction in all the courses to be 
 given in such an University. The comprehen- 
 sive scheme of this new institution aimed at an 
 union within itself of all the literary and scien- 
 
92 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 tific bodies in the city, except only Columbia 
 College, which, it was suggested, might, perhaps, 
 more advantageously continue to maintain its 
 separate existence, devoting itself to the higher 
 interests of classical learning, and to the exclu- 
 sive training of young men for the learned pro- 
 fessions. The University was designed to cover 
 a ground not occupied by the College, nor any 
 other institution in the city, and to execute a de- 
 sign, to which "no single denomination of per- 
 sons" was competent ; for which, of course, 
 Columbia College was unsuited, since (as was 
 understood,) " its President must of necessity be 
 selected from one particular denomination of 
 Christians" It was, however, acknowledged as 
 due to that Institution, to say, that no religious 
 instruction, on the peculiar tenets of that denomi- 
 nation, was given there, and that no immunities 
 of any kind were extended to young men of any 
 particular denomination. 
 
 <~ This project, in which many highly respect- 
 able and influential men were zealously engaged, 
 and which appealed to well-known prejudices of 
 the crowd, was, of course, calculated to alarm the 
 friends of Columbia College, and its Trustees 
 were at once aroused to great activity. Exten- 
 sive modifications of the college system were 
 adopted the existing course of study, being pre- 
 served entire, was denominated the Full Course, 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 93 
 
 and another, in addition thereto, was established, 
 which was called the Scientific and Literary 
 Course and this was open to others besides ma- 
 triculated students ; all persons whatever, and 
 to such extent as they thought fit, being permit- 
 ted to attend. The actual professors of the col- 
 lege were encouraged to form classes for the in- 
 struction of others besides matriculated students, 
 and new lectureships were established in all the 
 departments which the friends of the University 
 had insisted on as being of practical import- 
 ance. 
 
 The lecturers were to fix and to receive the 
 fees of admission to their respective courses, 
 which were to be open to all who might think 
 proper to attend. With a view to silence un- 
 founded clamours and the objections urged against 
 Columbia College, as being a sectarian institu- 
 tion, the Trustees adopted several new statutes of 
 a very liberal character, which still continue in 
 force, and, in substance, declare that every reli- 
 gious denomination shall be entitled to have al- 
 ways one student, designed for the ministry, 
 educated in the college free of all charges of tui- 
 tion ; that 
 
 Any person who founds a scholarship to the 
 amount of $1000, shall be entitled to have always 
 one student educated in the college, free of all 
 charges of tuition. This right being transferable, 
 
94 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 and the scholarships to bear such names as their 
 respective founders designate ; that, 
 
 Any religious denomination, or any person or 
 persons who shall endow a professorship in the 
 classics, in political, mathematical, or physical 
 science, or in the literature of any of the ancient 
 or modern languages, to the amount of $20,000, 
 shall forever have the right of nominating a pro- 
 fessor for the same, subject to the approbation of 
 the Board of Trustees ; and such professor shall 
 hold his office by the same tenure as the other 
 professors of the college ; the nomination to be 
 made by the authorized representatives of the re- 
 ligious community, or by the person or persons 
 who shall make the endowment, or such 
 person or persons as he or they may designate ; 
 the proceeds of the endowment to be appro- 
 priated to the salary of the professor. 
 
 As further proof of the liberality of the college, 
 and her desire to show herself identified with 
 the interests of the community, which, it was 
 alleged, she had not been, it was resolved, that 
 the Corporation of the City of New-York, the 
 Trustees of the New- York Public School Society, 
 the Trustees or Directors of the Clinton Hall 
 Association, of the Mercantile Library Associa- 
 tion, of the Mechanic and Scientific Institution, 
 the General Society of Mechanics and Trades- 
 men of the City of New- York, and such other 
 
OP COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 95 
 
 Societies as the Trustees may from time to time 
 designate, shall each be entitled to have always 
 two students educated in the college free of all 
 charges of tuition. 
 
 And these statutes have not been suffered to 
 remain a dead letter, or without effect, but have 
 afforded to a number of youths the means of 
 obtaining a liberal education, which straitened 
 pecuniary circumstances would have denied to 
 them. The college is at this moment educating, 
 gratuitously, seventeen students, who have been 
 preferred to various of these scholarships. 
 
 Under this state of things, the friends of Co- 
 lumbia College, with good reason, denied the 
 necessity of a new institution, which must divide 
 the already scanty patronage of the public ; see- 
 ing that Columbia College was not only willing 
 to undertake all that the advocates of the new 
 scheme professed to have in view, but being al- 
 ready endowed and organized, was better able to 
 accomplish it, and would be rendered vastly 
 more so if aided with even a small portion of the 
 funds that must be needed for the adequate en- 
 dowment of an University. 
 
 On the part of the college, it was plainly in- 
 timated by her friends, that, unable to contend 
 with an institution which should enjoy the con- 
 centrated patronage of our city, she might find 
 herself compelled to become, in fact, what she 
 
96 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 was, as yet, only by injurious imputation, an 
 Episcopal College ; and the citizens of New- York 
 were invited to avail themselves of the opportu- 
 nity they then had, to prevent for ever her being 
 thus devoted to sectarian purposes, and to make 
 her absolutely a city college. 
 
 On the 2d of February a committee was ap- 
 pointed, on the part of the Trustees, to confer 
 with one on the part of the proposed University ; 
 but their conference resulted in no agreement. 
 On the following day a plan was approved by 
 the Trustees, which had been already, in an in- 
 formal way, submitted to the Common Council 
 of the city, and which, had it been agreed upon 
 and carried out, would have made the college, to 
 all intents, a city institution. At this same meet- 
 ing, the Trustees further resolved to offer to the 
 Navy Department of the United States, upon cer- 
 tain specified terms, the use of Columbia College 
 and the services of its professors for the instruc- 
 tion of the midshipmen and other naval officers on 
 this station. This proposal was favourably re- 
 ceived by Commodore Chauncey, who then com- 
 manded here, and was by him communicated to 
 the Department at Washington ; but like the last 
 mentioned proposition to the City Council, it re- 
 sulted in nothing of advantage. 
 
 At this same meeting, too, the freshly en- 
 kindled zeal of the Trustees was further shown 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 97 
 
 in the appointment of several new professors. 
 The Rev. Samuel H. Turner. D. D M was elected 
 Professor of the Hebrew Language and Litera- 
 ture Mariano Velasquez de la Cadena, Profes- 
 sor of the Spanish Language and Literature the 
 Rev. Manton Eastburn, Lecturer on Poetry, and 
 Wm. H. Ellet, M. D., Lecturer on Elementary 
 Chemistry. 
 
 During the height of this excitement a very 
 great improvement in the College grounds on 
 Chapel-street, as it was then called, an improve- 
 ment which the Trustees had for a long time 
 had in contemplation, was finally resolved on, 
 and soon afterwards completed, with a result 
 which cannot be appreciated fully but by those 
 who are able to recall to mind the narrow shabby 
 street, with the beggarly hovels along both sides 
 of it, which were cleared away to make room for 
 (he present College Place. 
 
 In November, 1830, Professor Anthon took 
 charge of the College Grammar School, as its 
 Rector, under an agreement which was variously 
 modified from time to time until the 1st of May, 
 1833, when the arrangement was concluded 
 which is still in force. Upon the appointment of 
 Professor Anthou as Rector of the Grammar 
 School, Mr. J. L. O'Sullivan was employed as 
 classical instructor of the Freshman Class, and 
 Dr. Ellet as instructor of the Sophomore Class in 
 5 
 
98 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 Elementary Chemistry ; and in May, 1832, a dis- 
 tinct professorship of this department being es- 
 tablished, Dr. Ellet was appointed to fill it. He 
 held this appointment, however, for only one 
 year, when new arrangements, dictated by the 
 necessity of reducing the expenses of the college, 
 determined the Trustees to discontinue his pro- 
 fessorship. They did not do so, though, without 
 expressing their high sense of the skill and as- 
 siduity with which he had discharged its duties, 
 and adding a handsome gratuity to his stipulated 
 salary. 
 
 In October, 1835, Professor Moore having re- 
 signed his office, Dr. Anthon, the Jay-Professor, 
 (as since February, 1830, he had been styled,) 
 was elected in his place, and Mr. Robert G. Ver- 
 milye, an alumnus of the College, was appointed 
 classical instructor of the Freshman Class, Li- 
 brarian, and Secretary of the College Board. 
 
 On a revision of the statutes, in the year 1836, 
 both courses of study pursued in the college, 
 were further enlarged; and the Scientific and 
 Literary Course in particular, was defined arid 
 materially extended. And in order that this 
 course, as well as the scientific branches of the 
 Full Course, might be conducted in the most ef- 
 ficient manner, the Trustees appropriated the 
 sum of $10,000 for the purchase of additional 
 
OP COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 99 
 
 apparatus, as well as for adding to the library 
 the requisite books of reference and illustration.* 
 u On the 13th of April, 1837, was celebrated, 
 with much solemnity, the semi-centennial anni- 
 versary of the re-organization of the College un- 
 der Trustees of its own. The Trustees, Presi- 
 dent, Professors, Alumni, and Students of the 
 College, united in measures calculated to give in- 
 terest to the day. In the morning, at St. John's 
 Chapel, an Oration and a Poem were delivered, 
 before a numerous audience, by Alumni of the 
 College previously appointed. Odes in several 
 languages, composed and arranged to music for 
 the occasion, were sung ; there were suitable re- 
 ligious services, and appropriate music, and hon- 
 orary degrees were conferred on several distin- 
 guished gentlemen, selected by a committee 
 specially appointed for that purpose. In the 
 evening the college was decorated, illuminated, 
 and thrown open for the reception and entertain- 
 ment of a large number of invited guests. :> 
 
 In January, 1838, the Trustees made a valua- 
 ble addition to the College Library by purchasing 
 that of their former professor, Moore, whom they 
 
 * During the preceding year, 1835, the Trustees had increased 
 the means of instruction belonging to the college by the purchase 
 of two collections of minerals, at an aggregate cost of $2,300, 
 and since then there has been added to their cabinet a valuable 
 geological collection, presented by the State. 
 
100 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 also appointed Librarian, and as such he was, 
 for about a year, busily employed in making a 
 new arrangement and a catalogue of the whole 
 library, and placing this department of the col- 
 lege on a better and more serviceable footing 
 than before. On his resignation Mr. George C. 
 Schaeffer was appointed in his place. 
 
 In February, 1839, a proposal for the re-es- 
 tablishment of a school of medicine connected 
 with the college was received from the professors 
 who had then recently constituted the Medical 
 Faculty of the New- York City University. This 
 proposal was fully considered, and rather favour- 
 ably viewed by the Trustees ; but resulted finally 
 in no agreement. 
 
 In May, 1842, President Duer found himself 
 obliged, by severe and long continued illness, to 
 resign his office ; and on the 1st of August fol- 
 lowing, Nathaniel F. Moore, LL. D., was ap- 
 pointed in his place. 
 
 In April, 1843, a professorship of the German 
 Language and Literature was established on an 
 endowment of $20,000, bequeathed for that pur- 
 pose by Frederick Gebhard, Esq., and in the 
 month of June following, John Louis Tellkampf, 
 J. U. D., of Gottingen, was appointed Gebhard 
 Professor. 
 
 On a revision of the statutes in July, of this 
 year, the Scientific and Literary Course, after 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 101 
 
 an unsuccessful experiment of thirteen years, 
 was finally abolished. As distinguished from 
 the Full Course it had never found much favour 
 with the public. There was not a single student 
 engaged in it at this time, and during the last 
 two years there had been, in all, but four. 
 
 Another change now made, and an important 
 one. was the adoption of the German Language 
 and Literature as part of the ordinary academic 
 coarse. 
 
 The Trustees were determined to this step, 
 not only by the great and daily increasing value 
 of the German language, but also by their per- 
 suasion that the mere study of it may be regard- 
 ed as a mental discipline of the highest value, 
 and consequently as subserving the principal de- 
 sign of the college, which is rather to educate 
 than to instruct. 
 
 Since the appointment of a Gebhard Profes- 
 sor, several other changes have been made, as 
 regards the persons engaged in conducting the 
 sub graduate college course. 
 
 Upon the resignation, in 1843, of the Rev. 
 Robert G. Vermilye, Mr. Henry Drisler, jun., an 
 alumnus of the College, received a temporary 
 appointment, as classical instructor of the Fresh- 
 man Class, and was afterwards retained in office, 
 with the title of Adjunct Professor, which his 
 predecessor had when he resigned. 
 
102 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 In June, 1843, Dr. Anderson resigned the 
 professorship of Mathematics and Astronomy, 
 and in the following month, the Rev. Charles 
 W. Hackley, S. T. D., was appointed in his 
 place. 
 
 In December, 1844, Mr. J. W. S. Hows was 
 appointed professor of Elocution, with the duty 
 of giving instruction therein, to the Freshman 
 Class. 
 
 As regards the present state and prospects of 
 the college, they are such as may encourage its 
 friends. The Trustees have lately entered upon 
 measures, which, with some sacrifice of that 
 ornament hitherto derived to the college edifice 
 and its vicinity, from the free space and open 
 grounds behind it, promise to relieve the institu- 
 tion, after a few years, from the pecuniary em- 
 barrassments which have, for a long time, im- 
 peded in some degree its useful action. 
 
 The great extension of our city towards the 
 North, and the so general removal of its inhabit- 
 ants in the same direction, have threatened such 
 serious injury to the college, that the question of 
 its own removal was not long ago revived ; but 
 the number of students it already receives from 
 Brooklyn, Jamaica, and Staten Island, the 
 rapidly growing population, more especially of 
 Brooklyn, and the increasing facility of commu- 
 nication between the neighbouring islands and 
 
OP COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 103 
 
 the college, authorize the hope that the patronage 
 it will obtain from those quarters will, in a great 
 measure, countervail the inconvenience of its 
 location, considered merely as regards the city of 
 New- York, and that the number of its students, 
 which has been gradually advancing for the last 
 three years, will hereafter be better proportioned 
 to its just claims, and to the great advantages 
 which its academic course holds out to studious 
 youth. 
 
 The college has the greater reason to expect 
 support from the quarters mentioned, because 
 students who come thence will experience in 
 greater degree than those residing in New-York ? 
 the benefits of a system which, leaving students 
 to the comfort, the security, and the salutary in- 
 fluences of their home, unites parental discipline 
 and supervision with that which the college 
 exercises. 
 
 A writer on the state of education in New- 
 York, about thirty years ago, viewing this mat- 
 ter in a different light, supposes one cause of the 
 small number of students resorting to Columbia 
 College, may he the preference given to institu- 
 tions which require residence within their walls. 
 There may be truth in this conjecture, since this 
 preference is not unusual, but there is reason to 
 believe that the grounds for it are often such as" 
 will not bear examination. A father who finds 
 
104 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 his son difficult to manage, is easily persuaded 
 to send him abroad for his education ; and, wil- 
 ling to flatter himself that all is going well, so 
 long as he neither sees nor hears any thing to 
 the contrary, he quiets his conscience by this 
 endeavour to devolve on others the great respon- 
 sibility that he ought to leai\ or at least to share 
 himself. 
 
 The reverend and learned head of a neighbour- 
 ing University, a profound writer and thinker on 
 subjects of morals as well as education, in his 
 " Thoughts on the Present Collegiate System of 
 the United S.'ates," argues very forcibly against 
 the plan of residence within the college, even for 
 students sent to it from abroad. 
 
 The plan which he prefers may perhaps be 
 suited for a country town ; but neither residence 
 within the college, nor, at the student's choice, 
 without it, would be safe for those sent from a 
 distance to the city of New-York. Yet the 
 temptations and dangers even of this great city, 
 are less to youths who live under the anxious 
 watch of a parent's eye at home, than are those 
 of the smallest village to young men abandoned 
 to themselves and unrestrained, as experience 
 shows they are, and as they must inevitably be, 
 when sent to any college whatever in this coun- 
 try to reside. 
 
 We think it therefore an inestimable advan- 
 
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 1U5 
 
 tage attending the system here adopted, that 
 youth may obtain a collegiate education without 
 a separation from their natural friends, or any 
 check to the expansion of those virtues and 
 affections which are the peculiar growth of the 
 domestic circle of the family which, with all 
 its sympathies of relationship and society, is 
 the natural situation for the young. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 IN the Historical sketch that has been given 
 of Columbia College, the Minutes of the Govern- 
 ors, the Regents and the Trustees, who succes- 
 sively had charge of the Institution under its 
 different names, and the College Matricula, have 
 been regarded as of paramount authority, and 
 adhered to whenever, as in some few particulars, 
 there appeared to be a discrepancy between 
 them and other respectable memorials of facts 
 relating to the college. From one of these 
 Chandler's Life of Johnson and from the source 
 which chiefly it was taken, the Rev. Dr. John- 
 son's autograph memoir of himself, kindly com- 
 municated by his venerable grandson, the author 
 has had much assistance ; and he desires here 
 to make a general acknowledgment to various 
 other persons, whose very words he is conscious 
 that he has sometimes adopted as his own, al- 
 though he could not now in every instance point 
 them out. 
 
 He is indebted for several interesting facts to 
 the "Address delivered before the Alumni of 
 
APPENDIX. 107 
 
 Columbia College in 1825, by C. C. Moore," and 
 has been greatly guided by it in his narrative. 
 
 To the Hon. Gulian C. Yerplanck his obliga- 
 tions are numerous, and more especially through- 
 out this Appendix, since a great portion of it is 
 derived from that gentleman's Address delivered 
 before the Philolexian and Peithologian Societies 
 of Columbia College ; from the Biographical 
 Notice of the Rev. Dr. Johnson in the Church- 
 man's Magazine, that of Dr. Cooper in the Ana- 
 lectic Magazine, and an Obituary Notice of Dr. 
 Wm. Samuel Johnson, communicated to the 
 author by his son, which are all ascribed to the 
 pen of Mr. Verplanck. What is stated, however, 
 in this Appendix of the last named Dr. Johnson, 
 is derived in part from Mr. Irving's Address 
 delivered before the Alumni of Columbia Col- 
 lege. 
 
 The author is under obligations also to Mr. 
 Sedgwick's "Memoir of William Livingston," 
 and especially for that it first led him to consult 
 the Journals of the Colonial Assembly, where 
 much relating to Mr. Livingston's controversy 
 with King's College, is contained. 
 
 At several important periods of his narrative 
 the author has confined himself to the mere sur- 
 face of affairs, as well from unwillingness as 
 from inability to explore the intricate and trou- 
 bled passages that will present themselves before 
 
103 APPENDIX. 
 
 the minds of readers who remember the estab- 
 lishment of the City University; the appoint- 
 ment of a Provost in the college, and the next 
 following commencement ; or of the few, if in- 
 deed there shall be any, who are able to recall 
 the organization of the Medical Faculty in 1792. 
 The biographical notices which follow, were 
 embodied in the preceding sketch, as originally 
 drawn out ; but it has been thought better now 
 to place them here. 
 
 PAGE 46. 
 
 * * " surrounded by numerous old friends, he passed 
 the quiet remainder of his days." 
 
 Dr. Johnson, on his return to Stratford, re- 
 sumed the duties of a parish priest, and devoted 
 himself to study and to his clerical functions 
 with the same zeal as forty years before. " Oc- 
 cupied in works of piety and usefulness, his 
 virtuous and venerable age glided peacefully 
 along, until the 6th of January 1772, when after 
 a very short and apparently slight indisposition, 
 he expired in his chair without a struggle or a 
 groan." 
 
 The following inscription on a neat monu- 
 ment erected over his remains, in the Episcopal 
 bury ing-ground at Stratford, is from Dr. Cooper's 
 pen: 
 
APPENDIX. 109 
 
 fit. S. 
 
 SAMUELIS JOHNSON, D. D. 
 
 Coliegii Regalis, Novi Eboraci, 
 
 Prsesidis primi, 
 Et hujus Ecclesise nuper Rectoris. 
 
 NATUS DIE 14 to OCTOB. 1696. 
 OBIIT 6 to JAN. 1772, 
 
 If decent dignity, and modest mien, 
 
 The cheerful heart, and countenance serene ; 
 
 If pure religion and unsullied truth, 
 
 His age's solace, and his search in youth, 
 
 In charity, through all the race he ran, 
 
 Still wishing well, and doing good to man ; 
 
 If learning free from pedantry and pride; 
 
 If faith and virtue walking side by side; 
 
 If well to mark his being's aim and end, 
 
 To shine through life the father and the friend ; 
 
 If these ambition in thy soul can raise, 
 
 Excite thy reverence, or demand thy praise, 
 
 Reader, ere yet thou quit this earthly scene, 
 
 Revere his name, and be what he has been. 
 
 Dr. Johnson " was remarkable for a very uni- 
 form and placid temper, which was displayed in 
 habitual beneficence and hospitality." He is 
 said to have been of a mild and pleasing coun- 
 tenance, and such, indeed, he appears in the 
 portrait of him, presented to the college by the 
 painter Kilbourn, and which hangs in its library. 
 
110 APPENDIX. 
 
 The different views which, in the result of his 
 studious investigations, he had come to entertain 
 on several important points, and the fact that 
 many of his early friends, from whom in after 
 life he differed, did but adhere to opinions which 
 had originally been his own, contributed, together 
 with his gentle character, to give to his contro- 
 versial pieces, which were numerous, a tone of 
 mildness and urbanity not often found in writ- 
 ings of that sort. 
 
 Dr. Johnson published in 1746 a brief system 
 of morality, and soon afterwards a Compendium 
 of Logic and Metaphysics ; which two treatises 
 were so approved by Dr. Franklin that he re- 
 printed them together in an octavo volume in 
 1752. This led to a correspondence between 
 him and Dr. Johnson, whom he repeatedly con- 
 sulted as to a plan of education for the college of 
 Philadelphia, of which he would gladly have 
 persuaded him to accept the Presidency. 
 
 The work so approved by Dr. Franklin was 
 soon after reprinted in London, where also a 
 third edition, corrected and enlarged by the au- 
 thor, with a preface by Dr. Smith (afterwards 
 Provost of the University of Pennsylvania) ap- 
 peared in a very neat form in 1754. 
 
 A little work of Dr. Johnson's was publish- 
 ed in London in 1757, entitled, "An English and 
 Hebrew Grammar, being the first short rudiments 
 
APPENDIX. Ill 
 
 of the two languages taught together, to which 
 is added a Synopsis of all the Parts of Learning." 
 
 PAGE 48. 
 
 * * " many other illustrious men, whose enviable 
 reputations now constitute the richest property of their 
 country." 
 
 Among those alluded to in this general way, 
 there were even of the five graduated at the 
 same time with Peter Van Schaack and Gouv- 
 erneur Morris three at least who seem entitled 
 to particular mention. 
 
 One of them, Benjamin Moore, was the last 
 president of King's College, having been appoint- 
 ed to that office ad interim, during the tempora- 
 ry absence (as it was supposed to be) of Dr. 
 Cooper. On the revival of the college under its 
 new name, and while its affairs were adminis- 
 tered by the Regents, he was professor of Rhet- 
 oric and Logic ; and in 1801, being then Bishop 
 of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Dio- 
 cese of New-York, he was again, after an inter- 
 val of six and twenty years, appointed to the 
 presidency of Columbia College, which he held 
 until his resignation in 1811. As Bishop he suc- 
 ceeded to Samuel Provoost, who also was an 
 alumnus of King's College, graduated at its first 
 commencement. 
 
112 APPENDIX. 
 
 Bishop Moore was distinguished for an un- 
 affected simplicity of character, accompanied, 
 however, with uniform prudence and an accu- 
 rate knowledge of mankind for a meekness 
 " not easily provoked," but which pursued the 
 dictates of duty with persevering firmness, and 
 for an ardent piety, yet free from ostentation, 
 and ever under the control of sober judgment. 
 
 Another of these three was John Stevens, who 
 by "his agency in the invention, introduction, 
 and gradual improvement of steam-boats, from 
 the early and imperfect experiments made upon 
 the Hudson and Delaware, between 1785 and 
 1800, up to the admirable mechanism and models 
 of the boats constructed by his sons, is well 
 known to all who have paid any attention to the 
 history of steam navigation." Colonel Stevens 
 has, a however, other less known claims to distinc- 
 tion, for the enlightened foresight with which in 
 another instance he anticipated the progress of 
 improvement. Nothing now occupies a larger 
 portion of the capital, enterprise, and useful sci- 
 ence of the civilized world, than railroads. But 
 many years before their adoption and use upon 
 any extensive scale, and long before the combi- 
 nation of steam-carriages with them had been 
 suggested elsewhere, Colonel Stevens, in a me- 
 moir addressed to the Canal Commissioners of 
 New- York, pointed out the practicability and 
 
APPENDIX. 113 
 
 advantages of railroads on the largest scale. 
 This memoir, and the correspondence with De 
 "Witt Clinton, Robert R. Livingston, and Gouver- 
 neur Morris, which resulted from it, he published 
 in 1812, under the title of " Documents tending 
 to prove the superior advantages of railways 
 and steam-carriages over canal navigation." In 
 1819 he again brought this subject before the 
 public, in another form, and with the additional 
 lights which the experience of eight years had 
 supplied. In an elaborate and able memorial, 
 he recommended to the Legislature of New- York 
 the combining of railroads with the great sys- 
 tem of internal improvement, in which the State 
 was then engaged. He was, however, still too 
 far in advance of the times, and though his me- 
 morial received a respectful reference, and was 
 ordered to be printed, yet it led to no immediate 
 practical result.* 
 
 The remaining one of these three was Guliau 
 Verplanck, a gentleman who, in stations of great 
 trust and high distinction, commercial or political, 
 acquitted himself with ability and honour. He 
 was the second President of the Bank of New- 
 York, after its incorporation, and was Speaker of 
 the House of Assembly of the State. Accom- 
 plished by education and by travel, he was dis- 
 
 
 
 * See Verplanck's Address delivered before the Philolexian 
 and Peithologian Societies of Col. College. Note 3d. 
 
114 APPENDIX. 
 
 tinguished for his refined literary taste, and even 
 as a graceful poet. 
 
 The following specimen of his talent as such, 
 which, its date and other circumstances taken 
 into view, possesses a peculiar interest, was 
 copied from the window of an inn in England : 
 
 Hail happy Britain ! Freedom's blest retreat, 
 Great is thy power, thy wealth, thy glory great. 
 But wealth and power have no immortal day, 
 itfor all things only ripen to decay ; 
 And when that time arrives, the lot of all, 
 When Britain's glory, wealth, and power must fall ; 
 Then shall thy sons for such is heaven's decree- 
 In other worlds another Britain see, 
 And what thou art America shall be. 
 
 GULIAN VERPLANCK, 1775. 
 
 PAGE 61. 
 * * * in which soon afterwards he sailed for England." 
 
 Dr. Cooper does not appear to have been dis- 
 gusted with politics in consequence of the trouble 
 and banishment which his active participation in 
 them had thus brought upon him. About eighteen 
 months after his return to England, on the 13th 
 of December. 1776, - being the day appointed 
 for a public fast on account of the troubles in 
 America," he preached a political sermon before 
 the University of Oxford, which was published 
 at the request of the Vice Chancellor and Heads 
 of Houses. This called forth soon after " a letter 
 to the Rev. Dr. Cooper on the Origin of Civil 
 
APPENDIX. 115 
 
 Government," which the Monthly Reviewers style 
 " a poignant antidote to the poison contained in 
 Dr. Cooper's high-flying tory sermon. They think 
 the author of the letter rather too acrimonious in 
 his language, but say, " We approve, however, 
 the principles on which this defender of liberty 
 enters the lists with a person of Dr. Cooper's abil- 
 ities, and the reasons which he has assigned for 
 encountering this formidable champion of despo- 
 tism, will, no doubt, be satisfactory to the active 
 and vigilant friends of freedom."* 
 
 Dr. Cooper afterwards became minister of the 
 first Episcopal Chapel in Edinburgh, where he 
 continued to officiate for a very respectable con- 
 gregation until his death, which was very sud- 
 den, in 1785. He was interred there in the 
 English burying-ground. His epitaph, written 
 by himself, is liable to Johnson's just censure of 
 all endeavours at liveliness and humour in this 
 kind of composition, as being " attempts to be 
 jocular upon one of the few things which make 
 
 Here lies a priest of English blood, 
 Who, living, liked whate'er was good : 
 Good company, good wine, good name, 
 Yet never hunted after fame ; 
 But, as the first he still preferred, 
 So here he chose to be interred, 
 
 * Monthly Review, vol. 56, p. 473. 
 
116 APPENDIX. 
 
 And, unobserved, from crowds withdrew, 
 To rest among a chosen few ; 
 In humble hope that sovereign love 
 Will raise him to be blest above. 
 
 Dr. Cooper had published at Oxford, the year 
 before he left it for America, an octavo volume of 
 miscellaneous poetry, which was regarded as 
 affording evidence of classical refinement and 
 correct taste, rather than of genius or any re- 
 markable poetic talent. A judicious critic re- 
 marks of the whole collection, that it " denotes a 
 mind capable of much higher things, in a differ- 
 ent application of its powers." Dr. Cooper's 
 political pieces were distinguished for strength 
 and elegance of style, as well as for a boldness of 
 satire and severity of sarcasm that has seldom 
 been surpassed. " His moral character was with- 
 out any serious reproach, although grave men 
 were occasionally offended by the freedom and 
 conviviality of his social habits. The memory 
 of one of the peculiarities of his conversation has 
 been preserved by a sarcasm of a rival wit of the 
 opposite party : 
 
 * And lo ! a cardinal's hat is spread 
 O'er punster Cooper's reverend head.' "* 
 
 That the idea of making Dr. Cooper, not a 
 cardinal, indeed, but a bishop, was entertained, 
 
 * Trumbull's Mac Fingal. This notice of Dr. Cooper is 
 chiefly taken from the Analectic Magazine, vol. 14. 
 
APPENDIX. 117 
 
 appears from a letter, real or pretended, from an 
 American in London, about two months before 
 his flight from the College. The writer of this 
 letter speaks of the appointment of a bishop for 
 America as a thing resolved on, and says, that 
 Dr. Cooper, of New- York, " the ministerial writer 
 there," is the person intended for that office. 
 
 As a further sample of Dr. Cooper's poetic 
 talent, and as possessing some interest from their 
 close connexion with his personal history, the 
 following verses have been taken from the Gen- 
 tleman's Magazine for July 1776, where they are 
 styled, "Stanzas written on the evening of the 
 10th of May, 1776, by an Exile from America." 
 
 To thee, O God, by whom I live, 
 The tribute of my soul to give 
 
 On this eventful day, 
 To thee, O God, my voice I raise ; 
 To thee address my grateful praise, 
 
 And swell the duteous lay. 
 
 Now has this orb unceasing run 
 Its annual circuit round the sun. 
 
 Since when the heirs of strife, 
 Led by the pale moon's midnight ray, 
 And bent on mischief, urged their way, 
 
 To seize my guiltless life. 
 
 At ease my weary limbs were laid, 
 And slumbers sweet around me shed 
 The blessings of repose : 
 
118 APPENDIX. 
 
 Unsconcious of the dark design, 
 
 I knew no base intent was mine, 
 
 And therefore feared no foes. 
 
 When straight, a heav'n directed youth, 
 Whom oft my lessons led to truth, 
 
 And honour's sacred shrine, 
 Advancing quick before the rest, 
 With trembling tongue my ear addrest, 
 
 Yet sure in voice divine : 
 
 ' ; Awake ! awake ! the storm is nigh 
 This instant rouse this instant fly 
 
 The next may be too late 
 Four hundred men, a murderous band, 
 Access, importunate, demand, 
 
 And shake the groaning gate." 
 
 I wake I fly while loud and near, 
 Dread execrations wound my ear, 
 
 And sore my soul dismay. 
 One avenue alone remained, 
 A speedy passage there I gained, 
 
 And winged my rapid way. 
 
 That moment, all the furious throng, 
 An entrance forcing, poured along, 
 
 And filled my peaceful cell ; 
 Where harmless jest, and modest mirth, 
 And cheerful laughter* oft had birth, 
 
 And joy was wont to dwell. 
 
APPENDIX 119 
 
 Not e'en the Muses' hallowed fane* 
 Their lawless fury can restrain, 
 
 Or check their headlong haste ; 
 They push them from their solemn seats, 
 Profane their long revered retreats, 
 
 And lay their Pindus waste. 
 
 Nor yet content but hoping still 
 Their impious purpose to fulfil, 
 
 They force each yielding door ; 
 And while their curses load my head 
 With piercing steel they probe the bed, 
 
 And thirst for human gore. 
 
 Meanwhile along the sounding shore, 
 Where Hudson's waves incessant roar, 
 
 I work my weary way ; 
 And skirt the windings of the tide, 
 My faithful pupil by my side, 
 
 Nor wish the approach of day. 
 
 At length, ascending from the beach, 
 With hopes revived, by morn I reach 
 
 The good Palemon's cot ; 
 Where, free from terror and affright, 
 I calmly wait the coming night 
 
 My every fear forgot. 
 
 * He alludes to the college edifice converted into a military 
 hospital, and which a note on this passage intended for his Eng- 
 lish readers describes as " an elegnnt edifice, since converted 
 into common barracks." 
 
120 APPENDIX. 
 
 'Twas then I scaled the vessel's side,* 
 Where all the amities abide, 
 
 That mortal worth can boast ; 
 Whence, with a longing, lingering view, 
 I bade my much loved York adieu, 
 
 And sought my native coast. 
 
 Now, all composed, from danger far, 
 I hear no more the din of war, 
 
 Nor shudder at alarms ; 
 But safely sink each night to rest, 
 No malice rankling through my breast, 
 
 In Freedom's fostering arms. 
 
 Though stript of most the world admires, 
 Yet, torn by few untamed desires, 
 
 I rest in calm content ; 
 And humbly hope a gracious Lord 
 Again those blessings will afford 
 
 Which once his bounty lent. 
 
 Yet, still, for many a faithful friend, 
 Shall, day by day, my vows ascend 
 
 Thy dwelling, O my God ! 
 Who steady still in virtue's cause, 
 Despising faction's mimic laws, 
 
 The paths of peace have trod. 
 
 Nor yet for friends alone for all, 
 
 Too prone to heed sedition's call, 
 
 Hear me, indulgent Heav'n ! 
 
 * The Kingfisher, Captain James Montagu. 
 
APPENDIX. 121 
 
 " O may they cast their arms away, 
 To Thee and George submission pay, 
 Repent, and be forgiven. 
 
 PAGE 63. 
 
 * * " the whole number of Students educated in the 
 College prior to 1775, was but one hundred." 
 
 The degrees conferred by the College while 
 it was styled King's College, including those 
 granted in 1775 and 1776, were the following : 
 viz. 
 
 Ill of A.B. 6 of M.D. 
 
 98 A.M. 3 " S.T.D. 
 
 12 M.B. 2 LL.D. 
 
 Those granted subsequently, down to and 
 including the Commencement of 1845, were as 
 follows, viz. : 
 
 1232 of A.B. 35 of M.D. 
 
 425 A.M. 87 " S.T.D. 
 
 41 LL. D. 
 
 The three on whom the degree of Doctor in 
 Divinity was conferred by King's College, were 
 the Rev. Dr. Samuel Auchmuty, the Rev. Dr. 
 Thomas B. Chandler, and the Rev. Dr. John 
 Ogilvie, who all held the same degree previously 
 the two former from the University of Oxford, 
 the last named, from that of Aberdeen. 
 6 
 
122 APPENDIX. 
 
 The only two on whom King's College con- 
 ferred the degree of Doctor of Laws, were its 
 President, Dr. Cooper, who had the same degree 
 from Oxford, and His Excellency William Try- 
 on, Governor of the Province of New York. 
 
 PAGE 74. 
 
 * * " the important public services of his previous 
 long career." 
 
 That we do not overrate the public services 
 of Dr. Johnson, and that this first President of 
 Columbia College was no less distinguished as a 
 jurist and statesman, than his father, the first 
 President of King's College had been as a divine, 
 will appear from the following brief memoranda 
 of his life. 
 
 After his graduation at Yale College, in 
 1744, he continued his studies at Harvard Uni- 
 versity, where he took his second degree in 
 1747. He then applied himself to the study of 
 the law, and with such success so endowed in 
 mind, in voice, in person, and by instruction as 
 an orator that his first appearance at the bar is 
 regarded as forming an epoch in the legal history 
 of his native State the very low condition of 
 legal science, of general literature, and of taste, at 
 this period in the colony, serving to exhibit in 
 
APPENDIX. 123 
 
 still higher relief a superiority, which, under any 
 circumstances, would have shown itself. 
 
 He soon attained the highest professional 
 reputation, and after repeatedly representing his 
 -county in the Colonial Assembly, was sent in 
 1765, as delegate of Connecticut to a Congress of 
 the Colonies assembled in this city. The address 
 of that body to the king, which feelingly por- 
 trayed the situation of the colonies, and firmly 
 but respectfully asserted their rights, as forming 
 a portion of the British Empire, was prepared by 
 a committee, in which Mr. Johnson was associ- 
 ated with Robert R. Livingston, of New- York, 
 and William Murdoch, of Maryland, but was 
 principally written by him. In the following 
 year he was sent to England as the agent of 
 Connecticut, and especially in the management 
 of a cause of high importance to the colony, as 
 involving not only its title to an extensive tract 
 of land, but even its chartered rights. 
 
 This cause, removed from Connecticut by 
 appeal to the King and Lords in Council, he 
 defended before that high tribunal with singular 
 ability and zeal. Detained in England for above 
 four years by this important litigation, he made 
 acquaintance with many of the brightest lumina- 
 ries of the period. Seeker, Berkeley, Lowth, 
 Home, Porteous, Newton, and Lord Mansfield 
 were among his warmest friends Johnson took 
 
124 APPENDIX. 
 
 a particular liking to his transatlantic namesake, 
 and maintained a correspondence with him for 
 several years after his return. The University 
 of Oxford conferred on him the degree of Doctor 
 of Civil Law, and he was elected a Fellow of 
 the Royal Society, on the recommendation of 
 Sir John Pringle, who was then its President. 
 The year after his return from England, he was 
 appointed a Judge of the Superior Court of Con- 
 necticut, and two years later, a delegate to the 
 Congress, whose labours eventuated in the De- 
 claration of Independence ; but highly important 
 professional engagements preventing his attend- 
 ance, another delegate was chosen in his place. 
 
 In 1780, he was re-elected a member of the 
 Council of Connecticut, now an independent 
 State ; and in 1783, he was employed to plead 
 at Trenton, before Commissioners appointed by 
 Congress, the cause between his State and Penn- 
 sylvania, in which the former claimed, under 
 her charter, lands which now form a portion of 
 Ohio. In this important cause, which engaged 
 the greatest legal talents of the country, Dr. 
 Johnson's eiforts are said to have been unri- 
 valled. 
 
 In 1784, he was elected to the Congress, 
 which in December of that year removed to this 
 city, and in which he continued until chosen a 
 delegate to the Convention which formed the 
 
APPENDIX. 125 
 
 Constitution of the United States. As such he 
 contributed greatly to reconcile conflicting inter- 
 ests, and was in several instances the happy in- 
 strument of conciliation between the jealousies 
 and fears of the smaller, and the demands of the 
 larger States. 
 
 In January, 1788, being then President of 
 Columbia College, he was chosen by Connecticut 
 as one of her Senators in Congress, under the 
 new Constitution. To him and his colleague, 
 Oliver Ellsworth, was committed the important 
 duty of framing a judiciary system for the United 
 States, and the bill which they reported, was 
 adopted with little alteration. On the removal 
 of Congress from New- York, Dr. Johnson re- 
 signed his seat in the Senate, and devoted him- 
 self wholly to the duties of his presidency, until 
 the year 1800, when, as has been stated, he 
 sought the repose to which he was so well en- 
 titled, and which he was permitted to enjoy in 
 this life for a period of above nineteen years 
 " His age, so far extended beyond the ordinary 
 lot of man, the purity of his life, the kindness 
 and humility of his disposition, and the unshaken 
 confidence of his religious faith, all conspired to 
 invest his character with a sacredness, which 
 almost made him regarded by his family and 
 friends as a being of another world still linger- 
 ing among them." 
 
126 APPENDIX. 
 
 The writer of the Obituary Notice of Presi- 
 dent Johnson, from which the above has for the 
 most part been taken, remarks that he had fre- 
 quently applied to him the following noble lines 
 of Samuel Johnson ; and that no language could 
 more happily describe his virtuous and venera- 
 ble age : 
 
 " The virtues of a temperate prime, 
 
 " Bless with an age exempt from scorn and crime, 
 
 " An age that melts with unperceived decay, 
 
 " And glides in pious innocence away ; 
 
 " Whose peaceful day benevolence endears, 
 
 " Whose night congratulating conscience cheers, 
 
 " The general favorite as the general friend, 
 
 ' f Such age there is, and who shall wish its end ?" 
 
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