University of Virginia Library

XLI. Distinguished Alumni, Continued

Of the one hundred and fifty men who occupied seats
on the bench of Virginia in 1870, forty were graduates
of the School of Law at the University,—at least eighteen
members of the upper judiciary of the State had
won their diplomas in the departments of that school.
In the Supreme Court of the commonwealth at this
time, several of its graduates were interpreting the law.
In 1894, there were eighty-one judgeships in Virginia,
and twenty-five of them were filled by alumni of the University
of Virginia. Eleven of the eighteen corporation
judges were graduates of its different schools; so also
were ten of the judges who occupied seats on the circuit
bench, and five of those who sat in the Court of Appeals.
One alumnus held the commission of a Federal circuit
judge.

An examination of the list of judges and attorneys belonging
to the other Southern States will show for this
period an equally extraordinary number of graduates of

the same institution. They were to be found in the
Supreme Courts of Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina,
and Tennessee. Seven of the judges of Florida, in 1897,
were alumni; and so were many of the most distinguished
attorneys at its bar. The same fact was to be observed
in Texas,—not only was one of the justices of its Supreme
Court a graduate, but there was not a bar of importance
in that commonwealth which did not number
alumni of the University of Virginia on its rolls. This
was equally true of Missouri, where this institution was
represented at one time by at least fifty members of the
bar and judges on the bench. And in a modified degree,
it was also true of California and Colorado, and other
States in the Far West.

Between 1866 and 1895, the University of Virginia
was represented in Washington by many of its alumni.
In the Fifty-second Congress, that institution could point
to three graduates in the Senate, Daniel, Hunton, and
Irby, and to thirteen among the members of the Lower
House; in the Fifty-third, to three senators, and thirteen
representatives; in the Fifty-fourth, to four senators and
eight representatives; in the Fifty-fifth, to six senators
and fifteen representatives. The proportion of members
that could be claimed by the principal colleges of the
country was recorded as follows: Harvard, one of every
twenty-two; University of Virginia, one of every twenty-nine;
Yale, one of every forty; Princeton, one of every
eighty-eight. The governors of Virginia who were
alumni of the Seventh Period were Swanson, Montague,
Stuart, and Davis. Senators Martin and Daniel also
graduated at the University after 1865; and so did Senators
John Sharp Williams, of Mississippi, Irby, of South
Carolina, Faulkner, of West Virginia, Joseph E. Bailey
and Culberson, of Texas, and Oscar W. Underwood, of

Alabama. Of the men who served as ministers or ambassadors
in the diplomatic corps of the United States, there
belonged to the roll of alumni of the Seventh Period,
Charles P. Bryan, accredited in turn to Brazil, Portugal,
Belgium and Japan; Robert S. McCormick, to Austria-Hungary,
and subsequently to Russia; and Thomas Nelson
Page, to Italy. One alumnus of the same period,
Woodrow Wilson, was elected President of the United
States.[40] Perhaps, the most accomplished of all the Assistant
Secretaries of State was also an alumnus of this
period, John Bassett Moore, the foremost American authority
on international law.

In 1886, a contributor to the Virginia University Magazine
asserted with some feeling, "It is hardly to be expected
that many great literary names should be found
among the alumni of an institution whose honors and rewards
rather withdraw the student from, than attract
him to, his own language. He goes out to the world familiar
with Homer, Virgil, Horace and Plato, but knows
but little about the great body of English letters."
These words sound like an echo of the strictures by Professor
Lomax, or Professor George Tucker, half a century

earlier. In reality, there was as much reason at this
time, as during the preceding periods, to criticize the
University of Virginia for its failure to produce even a respectable
number of literary men of distinction. Indeed,
the Seventh Period could not offer a single author who had
won one-tenth of the fame which irradiated the name of
Edgar Allan Poe; and it is doubtful also whether there
was one to whom, with accuracy, could be attributed a
higher degree of literary merit than could be claimed for
John R. Thompson.

As a matter of fact, the circumstances that usually encourage
a literary career were perceptibly fewer in the
Southern States after the war than before it. There was
no publisher, for instance, with ample capital, in that part
of the Union, to furnish printing facilities to authors who
were able to voice the local genius of its people. Moreover,
there would have been a very limited number of
readers to encourage such writers, even if they had been
able to secure such a publisher. But above all, the pecuniary
resources of the community were so impoverished by
the war that the possessors of talent, however strong their
literary bent, were constrained to give up their time to the
uninspiring task of earning a livelihood in some other
province. In all the countries where the literary spirit
has flourished, it is talent rather than genius that has done
the bulk of the work which has formed the solid basis of
the contemporary literary reputation of those countries.
There was no independent field for such talent in the
South, and its people, during these years of reconstruction,
were too much out of harmony with the mind and
soul of the North to discover one in that part of the
Union. Genius, it is true, recognizes no physical boundaries
and scorns or ignores all obstacles in its perfect contentment
with its own utterances. Sidney Lanier and

Timrod smilingly looked ghastly poverty in the face from
day to day, and continued to write, happy in their own fecundity,
whether they found an audience or not. But
such poets as these have only rarely appeared in the history
of the South.

The alumni of the Seventh Period, 1865–95, who won
literary reputation, whether national or local, were men
who relied either upon law or pedagogics for their primary
support. It could not be correctly said of one of
them that he was as distinctly a man of letters as Poe
or Thompson,—a man who depended upon the industry
of his pen alone to obtain a livelihood. John S. Wise,
Armistead C. and James L. Gordon, Daniel B. Lucas,
and Thomas Nelson Page, were members of the bar,
and wrote their best volumes in the intermission of their
practice; Woodrow Wilson, William P. Trent, Henry E.
Shepherd, W. Gordon McCabe, Lyon G. Tyler, James A.
Harrison, Virginius Dabney, and Alcee Fortier followed
the teacher's vocation, and it was only during the brief
intervals of leisure that broke the current of their duties
in the class-room that they were able to gratify their taste
for research or exercise their talent for composition.[41]

While the Seventh Period, 1865–95, was hardly more
remarkable than the Fifth, 1842–61, in the distinction of
its literary alumni, yet it was not until that period that
the University of Virginia, for the first time, fully manifested
its appreciation of the genius and celebrity of the
greatest of all its authors,—Edgar Allan Poe. This
change of attitude was principally due to the influence
of Professor James A. Harrison, the editor of a standard
edition of Poe's romances and poems. It was he
who suggested that the name of the poet, with an appropriate

legend, should be inscribed above the door of the
dormitory which he had occupied; and that an alcove
in the library should be reserved for his works. At a
mass meeting of the students held on April 13, 1897,
in the Jefferson Hall, it was decided to inaugurate a campaign
for raising a permanent memorial to Poe at the
University of Virginia. The proposal that this should
take the form of a bust seems to have originated with
James W. Hunter, Jr. The order was awarded by the
Poe Memorial association to Zolnay, who completed his
artistic task in 1899. In October of that year, his very
remarkable work, which was of imposing size, with a countenance
of a life-like though extremely melancholy cast,
was presented by one of the students, and received by
Professor Barringer, the chairman of the Faculty at that
time. The occasion was celebrated with an address by
Hamilton W. Mabie, and a poem by Robert Burns Wilson.

In the ecclesiastic sphere, during this period, the University
of Virginia possessed in one denomination alone
—the Protestant Episcopal—eight representatives at
least who had risen to the most conspicuous office in their
church. These were Bishop Sessums, of Louisiana,
Bishop Reese, of Georgia, Bishop A. S. Lloyd, of the
Mission Board, Bishop Kinsolving, of Texas, Bishop Kinsolving,
of Southern Brazil, Bishop H. St. George Tucker,
of Tokyo, Bishop Funston, of Idaho, and Bishop Horner,
of Asheville. Among the journalists, John Hampden
Chamberlayne, of Virginia, and Henry W. Grady, of
Georgia, occupied a position in popular esteem of exceptional
distinction.

In 1881, the records disclose that thirty of the alumni
of the University of Virginia were the incumbents of professorships
in the academic institutions of the State; seventeen,

in its purely vocational ones, like the Agricultural
and Mechanical College at Blacksburg, Miller Manual
Labor School, Richmond Medical College, and the Union
Theological Seminary; and seventy-four, in the higher
seats of learning scattered throughout the South, from
Maryland to Texas. Many of these instructors had
graduated at the University of Virginia before the war.
During the same year, a contributor to the pages of its
magazine made the statement that, at that time, not less
than nine of the most distinguished professors in Southern
colleges had been graduates of the School of Applied
Chemistry in that institution. In 1887, John L.
Marye, the rector, averred that at least one hundred
and fifty of the alumni were occupants of chairs in the
various seats of learning situated in the South; and this
did not take in the large number of graduates who were
teaching in high schools and private academies. In
1896, the number of alumni associated with the secondary
and advanced institutions approximated two hundred
and fifty-six. The independent universities in
which they held professorships were the Johns Hopkins,
Washington and Lee, Southwestern Presbyterian, Columbia,
Tokyo, Vanderbilt, Chicago, Sewanee, Miami, Harvard,
and Princeton; the State universities, those of Missouri,
Georgia, Mississippi, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia,
Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Texas,
North Carolina, Kentucky, and Wisconsin.

A writer in 1910,—some years after the close of the
Seventh Period, 1865–95, now under review,—thus summarized
the additions which the University of Virginia
had, down to that time, made to the roll of instructors
employed in the United States: "Beside the large number
of alumni who have served as teachers in public and
private high schools or as assistant professors, instructors,

and tutors, four hundred and eleven alumni have occupied
chairs in one hundred and fifty-one universities,
colleges, and professional schools, located in thirty-three
States and four foreign countries. Of these, one hundred
and seventy-one are now in positions. Sixty-five
have been presiding officers of fifty-one institutions located
in nineteen States. Alumni of the University of
Virginia have been chosen in ninety-nine institutions located
in sixteen Southern States (including Missouri).
Of these, one hundred and forty are at present serving in
sixty-six institutions located in fourteen States, including
nearly all the State universities, and technical schools,
and the leading private foundations of the South.
Alumni have had chairs in fifty-seven institutions located
in seventeen Northern and Western States. Of these,
thirty are now serving in eighteen institutions located
in eight States."[42]