Reconstructing the Campus

Higher Education and the American Civil War

Michael David Cohen

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780813933184
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

The Civil War transformed American life. Not only did thousands of men die on battlefields and millions of slaves become free; cultural institutions reshaped themselves in the context of the war and its aftermath. The first book to examine the Civil War's immediate and long-term impact on higher education, Reconstructing the Campus begins by tracing college communities' responses to the secession crisis and the outbreak of war. Students made supplies for the armies or left campus to fight. Professors joined the war effort or struggled to keep colleges open. The Union and Confederacy even took over some campuses for military use.

Then moving beyond 1865, the book explores the war's long-term effects on colleges. Michael David Cohen argues that the Civil War and the political and social conditions the war created prompted major reforms, including the establishment of a new federal role in education. Reminded by the war of the importance of a well-trained military, Congress began providing resources to colleges that offered military courses and other practical curricula. Congress also, as part of a general expansion of the federal bureaucracy that accompanied the war, created the Department of Education to collect and publish data on education. For the first time, the U.S. government both influenced curricula and monitored institutions.

The war posed special challenges to Southern colleges. Often bereft of students and sometimes physically damaged, they needed to rebuild. Some took the opportunity to redesign themselves into the first Southern universities. They also admitted new types of students, including the poor, women, and, sometimes, formerly enslaved blacks. Thus, while the Civil War did great harm, it also stimulated growth, helping, especially in the South, to create our modern system of higher education.

Notes

Abbreviations

BL	Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
CCA	Cornell College Archives
DML	Charles Franklin Doe Memorial Library, University of California, Berkeley
GL	Monroe C. Gutman Library, Harvard Graduate School of Education
HUA	Harvard University Archives
MHCA	Mount Holyoke College Archives
PMFA	Phi Mu Fraternity Archives
SCL	South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina
UCA	University of California Archives
UMA	University of Missouri Archives
UMSC	University of Missouri Special Collections
USCA	University of South Carolina Archives
WCA	Wesleyan College Archives
WHMC	Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri, Columbia
WML	Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, Harvard College

Introduction

1. Margaret Mitchell’s book tells us that Scarlett attended a female academy but makes no mention of colleges for women. Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, 4.

2. Harriman, “Bachelor’s Degree,” 301–2; Stout, “University Men,” 377, 394–400; Gummere, “Colonial Reactions,” 55–59, 63–67, 71–72; Herbst, From Crisis to Crisis, 1–2; Robson, Educating Republicans, 7, 12; Hoeveler, American Mind, 32, 54; Herbst, “Professional Education,” 139.

3. Burke, Collegiate Populations, 54.

4. Trow, “Comparative Perspectives,” 280.

5. Rothblatt and Trow, “Government Policies,” 174–87; Trow, “In Praise of Weakness,” 10–14, 16–20; Roche, Colonial Colleges, chaps. 2–7, esp. 165–71; Hoeveler, American Mind, chaps. 10–11; Herbst, From Crisis to Crisis, 144–48, 204–5, 237–43; Robson, Educating Republicans, 143, 227–51. John S. Whitehead argues that state control continued through the antebellum years, though state patronage ceased. Whitehead, Separation of College and State, esp. 88 and chap. 3.

6. Trow, “In Praise of Weakness,” 13–16; Curti and Nash, Philanthropy, 46–47, 50–52; Boorstin, Americans, chap. 20; Rudolph, American College and University, 53–57; Blodgett, “Finney’s Oberlin,” 41–44.

7. Heywood, Cornell College, 13–23, 29–30.

8. Edu. B. Walsworth and J. A. Benton, extract from records of Presbytery of San Francisco and Congregational Association of California, 10–12 May 1853, Documents of the College of California, folder 7f, UCA; Samuel H. Willey, Farewell Discourse Delivered in the Howard Street Presbyterian Church, on Sabbath Morning, April 27th, 1862 (San Francisco: Towne & Bacon, 1862), 16–19, in California Miscellany, BL.

9. Burke, Collegiate Populations, 25.

10. Thelin, Higher Education, 42, 79; Malkmus, “Small Towns,” 34–35; Ogren, State Normal School, 1–2; Herbst, “Professional Education,” 139–40.

11. Rothblatt and Trow, “Government Policies,” 181–83; U.S. Department of the Interior, Statistics, 509.

12. Rudy, Building America’s Schools and Colleges, 16–17; Hollis, University of South Carolina, 1:22; Stephens, University of Missouri, 4, 13–14, 23–24; Burke, Collegiate Populations, 299–318.

13. Michigan, in 1838, gave its new state university $100,000 in the form of a loan rather than a gift. Geiger, “Introduction,” 19–20; Peckham, University of Michigan, 20.

14. This figure, from the national census, may exaggerate the number of colleges. Other pages of the same census report give slightly lower figures. The historian Colin B. Burke’s finding of 241 colleges founded between 1800 and 1860, while probably incomplete, suggests that the actual total lay somewhere in between. By 1870 the federal Bureau of Education had identified 369 colleges. U.S. Department of the Interior, Statistics, 505, xiv, 503; Burke, Collegiate Populations, 14; U.S. Bureau of Education, report, 1870, 506–17.

15. American Almanac, 232–35.

16. Calculating the proportion of Americans who attended college is extraordinarily difficult. The federal government tabulated little data before 1870 and imperfect data thereafter. The figure 1% is an average of Burke’s estimate for men in 1860 (1.33%) and Barbara Miller Solomon’s estimate for women in 1870 (0.7%). It probably excludes students who attended only colleges’ primary or preparatory departments. Burke, Collegiate Populations, 55; Solomon, Educated Women, 64.

17. Gummere, “Colonial Reactions,” 59.

18. Ogren, State Normal School, 16–25; Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, 127–31; Allmendinger, Paupers and Scholars, chap. 1; Geiger, “Introduction,” 20–21; Burke, Collegiate Populations, 119, 124–26; Glover, Southern Sons, 55–57; Wagoner, “Honor and Dishonor,” 167–68, 170; Wakelyn, “Antebellum College Life,” 109–10, 112; Sugrue, “ ‘We Desired Our Future Rulers,’ ” 92.

19. Fletcher, History of Oberlin, 1:169–78, 120, 375–77, 2:524–36; Malkmus, “Small Towns,” 39; McGinnis, Wilberforce University, 36, 39; Gems, Borish, and Pfister, Sports in American History, 123; Cornelius, “When I Can Read,” 18, 32–34, 37–42; Sears, Kentucky Abolitionists, chaps. 5–6; Peck, Berea’s First 125 Years, 12–19; Sugrue, “ ‘We Desired Our Future Rulers,’ ” 97; E. Smith, From Whence Cometh My Help, 11–12; Schwalbe, Remembering Reet and Shine, 18; Moss, Schooling Citizens, chap. 2.

20. Malkmus, “Small Towns,” 33–39; Bishop, History of Cornell, 55; Geiger, “ ‘Superior Instruction of Women,’ ” 183, 187–88; Farnham, Southern Belle, 3–4, 11–12, 72; Akers, Wesleyan College, 10–11, 45; Rable, Civil Wars, 18–22; Heywood, Cornell College, 23.

21. Nash, Women’s Education, 5–7; U.S. Department of the Interior, Mount Holyoke, 10, WML; Nash, “ ‘Salutary Rivalry,’ ” 169–70; Catalogues of the College of California and of the Seminary for Young Ladies, 20, 24, 2, 19, Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard Divinity School.

22. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, 120–21, 193; Trow, “Comparative Perspectives,” 288; Tyack and Hansot, Learning Together, 121–22.

23. Rudolph, American College and University, 281–82; catalogue of Cornell College, 1858–59, 1860–66, CCA; J. W. Lathrop, B. McAlester, and Henry Sheeny, commission report, 16 Feb. 1863, 1–2, Civil War Damage by Federal Troops Folder, UMA.

24. Rudolph, Curriculum, 54–85; Farnham, Southern Belle, 68–74, 92–93; Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak, 28, 37, 39; Nash, Women’s Education, 82–87; Nash, “ ‘Salutary Rivalry,’ ” 177–78; U.S. Department of the Interior, Mount Holyoke, 14–15; catalogue of Wesleyan Female College, 1860–61, 27, in [Bass], Catalogues. Wesleyan Female College, 1848 to 1881, WCA; Burke, Collegiate Populations, 70–71. For the small number of seniors relative to freshmen, see also the antebellum catalogues for all colleges in this study.

25. Herbst, “Professional Education,” 139–40; Pace, Halls of Honor, 12–13.

26. Pangle and Pangle, Learning of Liberty, 166–67, 159–61; Wagoner, Jefferson and Education, 130, 137–39; Frost, Thinking Confederates, 20–21.

27. The Substance of Two Reports of the Faculty of Amherst College to the Board of Trustees, with the doings of the Board Thereon (Amherst, MA: Carter & Adams, 1827), quoted in Guralnick, Science, 27 (quotation); Rudolph, American College and University, 123–24.

28. Pak, “Yale Report of 1828,” 30, 34–35, 45–47; Guralnick, Science, 29–33; Rudolph, American College and University, 130–35, Yale Report quoted on 132.

29. Herbst, “Professional Education,” 139–40; Geiger, “Useful Knowledge,” 155, 158–59.

30. Curti, “American Scholar,” 257–58, 250–51, 256 (quotation).

31. This figure excludes 134 commercial or business colleges. U.S. Bureau of Education, report, 1877, pt. 1, 487–543, 366–75.

32. Emerson, Journals, 194.

33. On the continuities between antebellum and postbellum reform, see Geiger, “Multipurpose Colleges,” 128; Guralnick, Science, 150–51; and Thelin, Higher Education, 82, 87–88. On the Morrill Land-Grant College Act of 1862 as a break with the past, see Eddy, Colleges, chap. 2, esp. 44–45; Nevins, State Universities, 22, 136; Edmond, Magnificent Charter, chap. 2; and Cross, Justin Smith Morrill, 77, 87–89. On the Morrill Act as less than a ...