University of Virginia Library

VI. The Presidency—George W. Miles

About five years afterwards, the rumor was bruited
abroad that the Board of Visitors had at last decided
to elect a President of the University, and that their
choice had already fallen upon a specific individual. The
name of this person was soon revealed. It was Colonel
George W. Miles, of Radford, Southwest Virginia.
Colonel Miles had been a member of Governor Tyler's
official staff, and had also occupied a seat on the
Board of Visitors. When appointed to the latter position
in February, 1898, the number of students in attendance
on the lectures was in the neighborhood of four
hundred only; and there had been a deficit of ten thousand
dollars for the last fiscal year. The amount devoted
to the cost of advertisement was limited to three
hundred dollars. A resolution was submitted by Colonel
Miles, which provided for an appropriation of three
thousand dollars for that purpose; and it was afterwards
said that it was due to this more liberal expenditure
that one hundred students were added to the roll of
matriculates, and that a surplus of ten thousand dollars
took the place of the former deficit. Friction had arisen

at once when the chairman of the Faculty asserted his
exclusive right to lay out the advertisement fund in
harmony with the suggestions of his own judgment. But
causes for irritation, it seems, had existed before this
conflict of authority,—as a matter of fact, the Faculty
had not been working in complete accord with the Board
of Visitors since the debate over the creation of the
office of President began in 1896.

The existing bad feeling, joined to a decline in number
of students, with the consequent falling off in financial
resources, appears to have drawn the thoughts of
the Board, with renewed interest, to the election of a
President. On the motion of Colonel Miles, the incumbency
of the projected office was offered to Woodrow
Wilson, of Princeton University, whose reason for declining
then was, no doubt, precisely the one which he expressed
privately as follows at a later date: "I understood
the situation perfectly," he wrote Professor R.
H. Dabney in November, 1902, "namely, that while
they (the Faculty) were unwilling to have any President,
if a President was to be given to them I would be more
acceptable to them than any other person who could be
chosen. It was my knowledge of that attitude on their
part, more than anything else, that inclined me to take
the matter seriously under consideration; and the reason
why it did not go further was simply that the men here
were so overwhelmingly opposed to it, and were so immeasurably
gracious to me, that I felt that it would
be mere ingratitude to leave them."

So keen was Colonel Miles's interest in the subject,
that, during the next few years, he endeavored to influence
the Board of Visitors to offer the position to other
men of equal prominence, but this body declined to do so.
It seems that his own name was first suggested for the

office by Daniel Harmon, a member of the Board at
that time. He was informed of this fact by Carter
Glass,—also a member of the Board,—when the
Visitors assembled in June, 1902. Other members of
that Board were equally friendly to his candidacy. It
was known, to Colonel Miles's credit, that he had built
up the excellent school of St. Albans at Radford; that he
had been successful in the management of large business
affairs; that he possessed a wide acquaintance among the
public men of the State; that he was a speaker of decided
ability; and that, as one of the Visitors, he had been
most active in discharging the duties of the position.
All these were weighty qualifications for an exacting
executive office.

In the beginning, he refused to permit his name to
be used, on the ground that his business interests demanded
his attention exclusively. Afterwards, he disposed
of these interests to advantage, and thus was at
liberty to accept the overture of the Board, should it
be renewed. Having previously visited the chairman
of the Faculty in his office, he, in August (1902), informed
the rector, Charles P. Jones, that he was a
candidate for the position of executive head of the
University and then forwarded the resignation of his
membership in the Board to the Governor of the State.
The first public reference to his candidacy appeared in
the columns of the Richmond Times in the course of the
following September. Colonel Miles found earnest
supporters among the members of the Faculty; especially
in Colonel Peters, Professor Thornton, and Professor
Kent; but a majority of the remaining members were so
warmly opposed to his success, that they met and drew
up a statement of objections to his candidacy.

On October 13, before these objections had been considered

by the Board of Visitors, the Faculty assembled
and adopted as their own a paper of exceptional ability
which had already been drafted by one of the members in
exposition of a plan of government for the University.
The substance of this paper was as follows. Under
the system which then existed, the Board of Visitors,
through their constitutional advisers and agents, were
called upon to weigh and adopt measures with respect
to (I) dealings with students; (2) dealings with
professors and employees; (3) University expenses; (4)
administration of funds; and (5) intercourse with the
public. The Faculty declared that they themselves were
the most efficient advisers and agents of the Board in
regard to all branches of the subject of dealings with
the students. They admitted that, as to the other four
heads, they would not be in a position to counsel as
effectively as a single executive could do. There were,
they said, three choices confronting the Board: (I) to
retain the present system unaltered; (2) to elect a
President, who would take over all the executive functions;
or (3) to confer some of these functions on the
Faculty and some on the President.

It was the Faculty's conviction that the third
alternative was the one which it would be wisest to
adopt, provided that their own powers were confined to
dealings with the students. By "dealings with the
students" was meant all questions involving the conduct
of the latter, their attendance upon class, their application
to their books, their pursuit of athletics, the scope
of lectures and examinations, the standards of instruction,
the number of studies, the character of degrees,
and the choice of volumes for the library and of
apparatus and materials for the laboratories. The
Faculty thought that there were distinct advantages in

reserving this province for their own supervision: first,
it would increase the importance of the professor as an
individual and of the Faculty as a body, in the eyes of
the students; and second, it would preserve the independence
of the schools as originally designed.

The Faculty acknowledged the superiority of a
President as the agent of the Board in managing every
other department of the University's affairs, both external
and internal,—such as the selection of professors
and employees; the determination of the students' fees
and the professors' salaries; the investment of University
funds; the acquisition of State appropriations and
private benefactions; the supervision and improvement
of the University grounds; the calculation of the annual
budgets; the creation of new chairs and scholarships; the
intercourse with colleges and universities; the attendance
at public meetings; the communications with alumni;
and the entertainment of strangers.

In substance, the plan proposed by the Faculty divided
the advisory and executive functions into two groups,
—over one, the Faculty was to be subordinate only to
the Board of Visitors; and over the other, the President
was to be subordinate only to that Board also. They
were convinced that, relieved from the larger part of
their executive control of the University, they would have
more time to give up to the performance of their duties
as professors and to original research; that the University
funds would be periodically distributed among the
various departments with a more discriminating understanding
of the best interests of all; and that the new
instructors would be selected after more intelligent
inquiry into their merits and claims. The Faculty
advised that the General Assembly's consent should be
obtained to an enactment, in amendment of the code,

allowing the office of President to be created, and
authorizing the Board to fill it. Provision should also
be made that the right of nomination was to be possessed
by a committee of three members of the Board,
three of the Faculty, and three of the alumni society.
The Board as a body should have the right to reject any
nomination submitted by these three committees.

This thoughtful plan of the Faculty was adopted by
the voices of all the members who were present, seventeen
in number. Professors Smith, Peters, N. K.
Davis, Thornton, Kent, Buckmaster, and Page were
absent, but cast their votes by letter. Buckmaster and
Page wrote in approval of the plan; but Professor
Thornton was opposed to it, on the ground that it
divided the executive responsibility, while Professor
Kent considered the discussion of any plan whatever to
be inopportune. In the meanwhile, a copy of the
statement of objections to the candidacy of Colonel
Miles had been sent to him.

A canvass at once began, marked by intemperate opposition
on one side, and by very vigorous support on the
other. Many letters were addressed to the newspapers
advocating or deprecating the proposed action of the
Board. The response of the hostile alumni was immediate,
—formal objections were lodged by many of the
chapters, and vehement resolutions were adopted by the
students in mass-meeting. Colonel Miles too was backed
by numerous partisans, and one of the most pertinent of
these was the Richmond News-Leader. "He came
from a new country, the Southwest," said that journal,
"a country occupied by a new people palpitating with
eagerness and striving to go ahead. He entered a
settled, old, peaceful establishment, where the methods
were easy-going and leisurely. With sharply opposed

forces, methods, sentiments, and purposes in the Faculty
and Board of Visitors, antagonism was inevitable.
Accustomed to deal in a hurry, and by clean-cut decisions,
with large issues and properties and wide principles,
Colonel Miles was impatient of the things that loomed
so large to men living and thinking in seclusion. It
was inevitable that he should be thoroughly disliked by
the Faculty, which he was always nagging, goading,
urging, stirring, and pushing."

It seems that the intention of the members of the Board
of Visitors, all of whom favored Colonel Miles, was to
elect him to an office to be known as the "Permanent
Chairmanship of the Faculty," for, without an act of the
General Assembly, it was impossible to establish legally
the office of President. He was also to deliver a course
of lectures on the subject of economics, for which he was,
at that time, not fully equipped, as he had received
no scientific education. He had, in fact, spent but
two years at the University of Virginia as a student,
and, during his stay there, had won diplomas only in
the Schools of Latin, German, and French Languages.
Among the members of the Board of Visitors, at this
time, were Charles P. Jones, who was the rector,
Carter Glass, afterwards Secretary of the Treasury and
Senator in Congress, Henry C. Stuart, destined to become
Governor of the State, R. Walton Moore, afterwards
a member of the House of Representatives, R.
Tate Irvine, who was rector subsequently, Judge A. W.
Wallace, Eppa Hunton, Jr., H. H. Downing, and Daniel
Harmon. All these members, with the exception of
Carter Glass, were alumni of the University.

The Board convened on October 17, at three o'clock,
but did not turn to the objections to Colonel Miles's
candidacy, submitted by certain members of the Faculty,

until late at night. The paper was then read, and
this was followed by the reading of similar communications
from the alumni chapters of Norfolk, Richmond,
and Baltimore, and handed in personally by
their appointed representatives. There was also read
a resolution which had been adopted by the Executive
Committee of the Society of Alumni, which urged that
action in filling the projected permanent chairmanship
should be suspended "in view of the overwhelming importance
of the matter, and of the uncertainty of the
power, under the present law, to create such an executive
head." The ensuing discussion clearly demonstrated that
the only objection which could be brought against Colonel
Miles was that his experience as the head-master of an
academy, however excellent, was perhaps insufficient to
fit him for the novel and difficult duties of the Presidency.
It was debatable whether even this objection had not
been suggested partly by opposition to that office, however
experienced and distinguished the incumbent might
be.

After lending an attentive ear to the discussion which
took place at the meeting on that day, the 18th, the
Board first passed an unanimous resolution highly
commendatory of Colonel Miles, and then decided that,
instead of filling the permanent chairmanship at once,
it would be advisable to appoint a committee of three
to urge upon the General Assembly the expediency of
permitting the Visitors to create the office of executive
head. The same committee were instructed to report
as to the title to be borne by the incumbent, and the
scope of his powers. They were also enjoined to obtain
the views of the great body of the alumni. The elaborate
plan drafted by the Faculty for the division of
powers between their own body and a President seems

to have been passed over in silence, under the influence,
perhaps, of the reason mentioned by Professor Thornton;
namely, that such a division would be likely to lead to
friction and confusion. Receiving attention quite as
scant was a resolution passed by a group of alumni,
which would have barred from the office of President
any one who was a member of the Board of Visitors,
or had been a member within an interval of four years.

The Visitors did not reassemble until April 28 of the
ensuing year (1903), by which time an enabling act had
been passed by the General Assembly; they then adopted
a resolution calling for the election of a President at the
next meeting of the Board, which was to be held on June
13. The chairmanship was to be abolished so soon as
a President was chosen. When June 13 arrived, the
election was postponed until July 28, and on that date,
it was postponed for the second time. The Board,
however, had now reached the conclusion that however
high the undoubted qualifications of Colonel Miles
in experience, ability, and character might be, it would
be unwise to elect any one to the office of President unless
he was shown to be practically the unanimous choice
of Visitors, Faculty, and alumni combined; and this
seems to have been the opinion of the citizens of the State
at large as reflected in the press.