CHAPTER XXIV
ROCKS, STORMS, AND PERIL—1868-1874 Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Volume I | ||
24. CHAPTER XXIV
ROCKS, STORMS, AND PERIL—1868-1874
THUS far I have dwelt especially upon the steady development of the university in its general system of instruction, its faculty, its equipment, and its daily life; but it must not be supposed that all was plain sailing. On the contrary, there were many difficulties, some discouragements, and at times we passed through very deep waters. There were periods when ruin stared us in the face—when I feared that my next move must be to close our doors and announce the suspension of instruction. The most serious of these difficulties were financial. Mr. Cornell had indeed endowed the institution munificently, and others followed his example: the number of men and women who came forward to do something for it was astonishing. In addition to the great endowments made by Mr. Cornell, Mr. Sage, Mr. McGraw, Mr. Sibley, and others, which aggregated millions, there were smaller gifts no less encouraging: Goldwin Smith's gift of his services, of his library, and of various sums to increase it, rejoiced us all; and many other evidences of confidence, in the shape of large collections of books and material, cheered us in that darkest period; and from that day to this such gifts have continued.
Some of the minor gifts were especially inspiring, as showing the breadth of interest in our work. One of them warmed my heart when it was made, and for many years afterward cheered me amid many cares. As Mr. Sage and myself were one day looking over matters upon the
But while all this encouraged us, there were things of a very different sort. Could the university have been developed gradually, normally, and in obedience to a policy determined solely by its president, trustees, and faculty all would have gone easily. But our charter made this impossible. Many departments must be put into operation speedily, each one of them demanding large outlay for buildings, equipment, and instruction. From all parts of the State came demands—some from friends, some from enemies—urging us to do this, blaming us for not doing that, and these utterances were echoed in various presses, and reêchoed from the State legislature. Every nerve had to be strained to meet these demands. I remember well that when a committee of the Johns Hopkins trustees, just before the organization of that university, visited Cornell and looked over our work, one of them said to me: "We at least have this in our favor: we can follow out our own conceptions and convictions of what is best; we have no need of obeying the injunctions of any legislature, the beliefs of any religious body, or the clamors of any press; we are free to do what we really believe best, as slowly, and in such manner, as we see fit.'' As this was said a feeling of deep envy came over me: our condition was the
In this condition of things Mr. Cornell had installed, as "business manager,'' a gentleman supposed to be of wide experience, who, in everything relating to the ordinary financial management of the institution, was all-powerful. But as months went on I became uneasy. Again and again I urged that a careful examination be made of our affairs, and that reports be laid before us which we could clearly understand; but Mr. Cornell, always optimistic, assured me that all was going well, and the matter was deferred. Finally, I succeeded in impressing upon my colleagues in the board the absolute necessity of an investigation. It was made, and a condition of things was revealed which at first seemed appalling. The charter of the university made the board of trustees personally liable for any debt over fifty thousand dollars, and we now discovered that we were owing more than three times that amount. At this Mr. Cornell made a characteristic proposal. He said: "I will pay half of this debt if you can raise the other half.'' It seemed impossible. Our friends had been called upon so constantly and for such considerable sums that it seemed vain to ask them for
Then took place one of the things which led me later in life, looking back over the history of the university, to say that what had seemed to be our worst calamities had generally proved to be our greatest blessings. Among these I have been accustomed to name the monstrous McGuire attack in the Assembly on Mr. Cornell, which greatly disheartened me for the moment, but which eventually led the investigation committee not only to show to the world Mr. Cornell's complete honesty and self-sacrifice, but to recommend the measures which finally transferred the endowment fund from the State to the trustees, thus strengthening the institution greatly. So now a piece of good luck came out of this unexpected debt. As soon as the subscription was made, Mr. George W. Schuyler, treasurer of the university, in drawing up the deed of gift, ended it with words to the following effect: "And it is hereby agreed by the said Ezra Cornell, Henry W. Sage, Hiram Sibley, John McGraw, and Andrew D. White, that in case the said university shall ever be in position to repay their said subscriptions, then and in that case the said entire sum of one hundred and sixty thousand dollars shall be repaid into a university fund for the creation of fellowships and scholarships in the said university.'' A general laugh arose among the subscribers, Mr. McGraw remarking that this was rather offhand dealing with us; but all took it in good part and signed the agreement. It is certain that not one of us then expected in his lifetime to see the university able to repay the money; but, within a few years, as our lands were sold at better prices than we expected, the university was in condition to make restitution. At first some of the trustees demurred to investing so large a sum in fellowships and scholarships,
So far as the university treasury was concerned, matters
thenceforth went on well. Never again did the university incur any
troublesome debt; from that day to this its finances have been so
managed as to excite the admiration even of men connected with the most
successful and best managed corporations of our country. But financial
difficulties far more serious than the debt just referred to arose in
a different quarter. In assuming the expenses of locating and
managing the university lands, protecting them, paying taxes upon
them, and the like, Mr. Cornell had taken upon himself a fearful
load, and it pressed upon him heavily. But this was not all. It was,
indeed, far from the worst; for, in his anxiety to bring the
university town into easy connection with the railway system of the
State, he had invested very largely in local railways leading into
Ithaca. Under these circumstances, while he made heroic efforts and
sacrifices, his relations to the comptroller of the State, who still
had in his charge the land scrip of the university, became exceedingly
difficult. At the very crisis of this difficulty Mr. Cornell's hard
work proved too much for him, and he lay down to die. The university
affairs, so far as the land-grant fund was concerned, seemed
hopelessly entangled with his own and with those of the State: it
seemed altogether likely that at his death the institution would be
subjected to years of litigation, to having its endowment tied up in
the courts, and to a suspension of its operations. Happily, we had as
our adviser Francis Miles Finch, since justice of the Court of Appeals
of the State, and now dean of the Law School—a man of noble
character, of wonderfully varied gifts, an admirable legal adviser,
devoted personally to Mr. Cornell, and no less devoted to the
university.
Cornell University, 1878
[Description: Photograph of the author, 1878, by Sarony, New York]
A few years later came another calamity, not, like the others, touching the foundations and threatening the existence of the university, yet hardly less crushing at the time; indeed, with two exceptions, it was the most depressing I have ever encountered. At the establishment of the university in Ithaca, one of the charter trustees who showed himself especially munificent to the new enterprise was Mr. John McGraw. One morning, while I was in the midst of the large collection of books sent by me from Europe, endeavoring to bring them into some order before the opening day, his daughter, Miss Jenny McGraw, came in, and I had the pleasure of showing her some of our more interesting treasures. She was a woman of kind and thoughtful nature, had traveled in her own country and abroad to good purpose, and was evidently deeply interested. Next day her father met me and said: "Well,
A few years later she married one of our professors, an old friend of mine, and her marriage proved exceedingly happy; but, alas, its happiness was destined to be brief! Less than two years after her wedding day she was brought home from Europe to breathe her last in her husband's cottage on the university grounds, and was buried from the beautiful residence which she had built hard by, and had stored with works of art in every field.
At the opening of her will it was found that, while she had made ample provision for all who were near and dear to her, and for a multitude of charities, she had left to the university very nearly two millions of dollars, a portion of which was to be used for a student hospital, and the bulk of the remainder, amounting to more than a million and a half, for the university library. Her husband joined most heartily in her purpose, and all seemed ready for carrying it out in a way which would have made Cornell University, in that respect, unquestionably the foremost on the American continent. As soon as this munificent bequest was announced, I asked our leading lawyer, Judge Douglas Boardman, whether our charter allowed the university to take it, calling his attention to the
In view of the fact that Judge Boardman had long experience and was at the time judge of the Supreme Court of the State, I banished all thought of difficulty; though I could not but regret that, as he drew Mrs. Fiske's will, and at the same time knew the restrictions of our charter, he had not given us a hint, so that we could have had our powers of holding property enlarged. It would have been perfectly easy to have the restrictions removed, and, as a matter of fact, the legislature shortly afterward removed them entirely, without the slightest objection; but this action was too late to enable us to take the McGraw-Fiske bequest.
About a fortnight after these assurances that we were perfectly safe, Judge Boardman sent for me, and on meeting him I found that he had discovered a decision of the Court of Appeals—rendered a few years before—which might prevent our accepting the bequest.
But there was still much hope of inducing the main heirs to allow the purpose of Mrs. Fiske to be carried out. Without imputing any evil intentions to any person, I fully believe—indeed, I may say I know—that, had the matter been placed in my hands, this vast endowment would have been saved to us; but it was not so to be. Personal complications had arisen between the main heir and two of our trustees which increased the embarrassments of the situation. It is needless to go into them now; let all that be buried; but it may at least be said that day and night I labored to make some sort of arrangement between the
Beside these financial and other troubles, another class of difficulties beset us, which were, at times, almost as vexatious. These were the continued attacks made by good men in various parts of the State and Nation, who thought they saw in Cornell a stronghold-first, of ideas in religion antagonistic to their own; and secondly, of ideas in education likely to injure their sectarian colleges. From the day when our charter was under consideration at Albany they never relented, and at times they were violent. The reports of my inauguration speech were, in sundry denominational newspapers, utterly distorted; far and wide was spread the story that Mr. Cornell and myself were attempting to establish an institution for the propagation of "atheism'' and "infidelity.'' Certainly nothing could have been further from the purpose of either of us. He had aided, and loved to aid, every form of Christianity; I was myself a member of a Christian church and a trustee of a denominational college. Everything that we could do in the way of reasoning with our assailants was in vain. In talking with students from time to time, I learned that, in many cases, their pastors had earnestly besought them to go to any other institution rather than to Cornell; reports of hostile sermons reached us; bitter diatribes constantly appeared in denominational newspapers, and especially virulent were various addresses given on public occasions in the sectarian colleges which felt themselves injured by the creation of an unsectarian institution on so large a scale. Typical was the attack made by an eminent divine who, having been installed as president over one of the smaller colleges of the State, thought it his duty to denounce me as an "atheist,'' and to do this especially
Perhaps the most comical of these attacks was one made by a clergyman of some repute before the Presbyterian Synod at Auburn in western New York. This gentleman, having attended one or two of the lectures by Agassiz before our scientific students, immediately rushed off to this meeting of his brethren, and insisted that the great naturalist was "preaching atheism and Darwinism'' at the university. He seemed about to make a decided impression, when there arose a very dear old friend of mine, the Rev. Dr. Sherman Canfield, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Syracuse, who, fortunately, was a scholar abreast of current questions. Dr. Canfield quietly remarked that he was amazed to learn that Agassiz had, in so short a time, become an atheist, and not less astonished to hear that he had been converted to Darwinism; that up to that moment he had considered Agassiz a deeply religious man, and also the foremost—possibly, indeed, the last—great opponent of the Darwinian hypothesis. He therefore suggested that the resolution denouncing Cornell University brought in by his reverend brother be laid on the table to await further investigation. It was thus disposed of, and, in that region at least, it was never heard of more. Pleasing is it to me to chronicle the fact that, at Dr. Canfield's death, he left to the university a very important part of his library.
From another denominational college came an attack on Goldwin Smith. One of its professors published, in the Protestant Episcopal "Gospel Messenger,'' an attack upon the university for calling into its faculty a "Westminster Reviewer''; the fact being that Goldwin Smith was at that time a member of the Church of England, and had never written for the "Westminster Review'' save in reply to one of its articles. So, too, when there were sculptured on the stone seat which he had ordered
We also owed some munificent gifts to this same cause. In two cases gentlemen came forward and made large additions to our endowment as their way of showing disbelief in these attacks or contempt for them.
Still, the attacks were vexatious even when impotent. Ingenious was the scheme carried out by a zealous young clergyman settled for a short time in Ithaca. Coming one day into my private library, he told me that he was very anxious to borrow some works showing the more recent tendencies of liberal thought. I took him to one of my book-cases, in which, by the side of the works of Bossuet and Fénelon and Thomas Arnold and Robertson of Brighton, he found those of Channing, Parker, Renan, Strauss, and the men who, in the middle years of the last century, were held to represent advanced thought. He looked them over for some time, made some excuse for not borrowing any of them just then, and I heard nothing more from him until there came, in a denominational newspaper, his eloquent denunciation of me for possessing such books. Impressive, too, must have been the utterances of an eminent "revivalist'' who, in various West-ern cities, loudly asserted that Mr. Cornell had died lamenting his inability to base his university on atheism, and that I had fled to Europe declaring that in America an infidel university was, as yet, an impossibility.
For a long time I stood on the defensive, hoping that the provisions made for the growth of religious life among the students might show that we were not so wicked as we were represented; but, as all this seemed only to embitter our adversaries, I finally determined to take the offensive, and having been invited to deliver a lecture in the great hall of the Cooper Institute at New York, took as my subject "The Battle-fields of Science.'' In this my effort was to show how, in the supposed interest of religion, earnest and excellent men, for many ages and in many countries, had bitterly opposed various advances in science and in education, and that such opposition had resulted in most evil results, not only to science and education, but to religion. This lecture was published in full, next day, in the "New York Tribune''; extracts from it were widely copied; it was asked for by lecture associations in many parts of the country; grew first into two magazine articles, then into a little book which was widely circulated at home, reprinted in England with a preface by Tyndall, and circulated on the Continent in translations, was then expanded into a series of articles in the "Popular Science Monthly,'' and finally wrought into my book on "The Warfare of Science with Theology.'' In each of these forms my argument provoked attack; but all this eventually created a reaction in our favor, even in quarters where it was least expected. One evidence of this touched me deeply. I had been invited to repeat the lecture at New Haven, and on arriving there found a large audience of Yale professors and students; but, most surprising of all, in the chair for the evening, no less a personage than my revered instructor, Dr. Theodore Dwight Woolsey, president of the university. He was of a deeply religious nature; and certainly no man was ever under all circumstances, more true to his convictions of duty. To be welcomed by him was encouragement indeed. He presented me cordially to the audience, and at the close of my address made a brief speech, in which he thoroughly supported my positions and bade me God-speed. Few things in my life have so encouraged me.
Attacks, of course, continued for a considerable time, some of them violent; but, to my surprise and satisfaction, when my articles were finally brought together in book form, the opposition seemed to have exhausted itself. There were even indications of approval in some quarters where the articles composing it had previously been attacked; and I received letters thoroughly in sympathy with the work from a number of eminent Christian men, including several doctors of divinity, and among these two bishops, one of the Anglican and one of the American Episcopal Church.
The final result was that slander against the university for irreligion was confined almost entirely to very narrow circles, of waning influence; and my hope is that, as its formative ideas have been thus welcomed by various leaders of thought, and have filtered down through the press among the people at large, they have done something to free the path of future laborers in the field of science and education from such attacks as those which Cornell was obliged to suffer.
CHAPTER XXIV
ROCKS, STORMS, AND PERIL—1868-1874 Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Volume I | ||