Category Archives: Chapter 8

50th anniversary celebration (p. 172)

Posted on June 14, 2012 by | Comments Off on 50th anniversary celebration (p. 172)

reunions at commencement time, a new departure at Madison, were instituted by the Class of 1846, in 1852.

The Jubilee Celebration, or Semi-Centennial Anniversary, held the day after the 1869 graduation, was, of course, the great reunion for all alumni and friends of Madison University. Planned for over a year in advance, it attracted a thousand guests. The morning program featured: President Dodge’s address of welcome, Dr. Eaton’s interminable “Historical Discourse,” its sections on Removal illuminated by his kindled feelings, an ode sung to the tune of “The Star Spangled Banner,” and the Jubilee Poem, “Retrorsum.” Following an excellent dinner, served in a tent pitched on the brow of the Hill, came numerous speeches of greeting and affection, one of the most interest­ing from Robert Powell who recalled Hascall, Kendrick, and the other founders. When Treasurer Spear announced that only $8,500 was lacking to complete the Jubilee Fund of $100,000, the audience enthusiastically subscribed $12,000.

The visitors could take pride in their associations with MadisonUniversity as she celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the Education Society from which she sprang. After long years of extreme poverty and the blighting Removal Controversy, the institution not only continued to live but had expanded. The reorganization of the curriculum, wise additions to the faculty, renovated buildings, the greatly improved condition of the treasury, and the leader­ship of the new President augured well. Looking forward to the institution’s second half-century, which he was to have a large part in molding, Dr. Dodge told the Jubilee visitors:

 

Madison University is to have a great future. Our great memories
are more than balanced by greater hopes. The Centennial will witness
larger endowments, larger facilities, larger attendance, higher grades of
study, and more ample accommodations and facilities of instruction.
Let us, then, forgetting the narrowness of our selfish ends, seek to con-
tribute to that grand consummation.*

*The First Half Century of Madison University, 1819-1869 (New York, 1872), 21.


Comments Off on 50th anniversary celebration (p. 172)

Posted in Chapter 8, p. 172, Recovery and Expansion, 1850-1869, timeline

Tagged

Madison University began granting Master of Arts degrees (p. 171)

Posted on June 14, 2012 by | Comments Off on Madison University began granting Master of Arts degrees (p. 171)

unendurably long if the class were large, since each graduate delivered an oration and there might also be inaugural addresses by new professors as well. In the late ’50’s the young ladies from the Female Seminary developed the custom of throwing bouquets from the gallery of the church to the College seniors as each concluded his oration. Some of the floral tributes landed on the heads of the honorable and reverend guests who sat on the platform. The girls’ poor aim had an element of danger as well as humor since bouquets were sometimes weighted with stones.

In 1852, the University began granting Master of Arts degrees, in course, to alumni who engaged in literary pursuits at least three years after graduation. Students completing the Seminary course also received the A.M. provided they already had an A.B. For those who took the shorter course consisting of selected subjects from all three departments of the University, the Bachelor of Philosophy degree was instituted in 1856. The diploma fee was five dollars which presumably included the cost of the slim tin tube in which the parchment was rolled.

Commencement visitors in 1851 rejoiced to find the University in a prospering state after the Removal question had been settled. Those who came in 1852 mourned the loss of Daniel Hascall who had died only recently. To enliven the program in 1854, the seniors hired a brass band to lead the commencement procession and provide music during the exercises. The faculty opposed this innovation and its reappearance was delayed until 1866.

Class customs at commencement were not inaugurated until 1865 when the seniors staged a Class Day similar to those observed at other colleges. Their president conducted the outdoor exercises which consisted of the traditional oration, history, poem, prophecy, and farewells from representatives of the three lower classes, followed by the planting of the class tree, each senior throwing a shovelful of earth on the roots. In 1866 the seniors introduced a new feature on the evening of Class Day-“a comic funeral of the pony, on which the class had ridden through the classics.”

The Alumni Society meetings during commencement week were devoted chiefly to reminiscences of undergraduate days and pledges of loyalty to the University. The speeches, usually impromptu, were often witty and amusing but sometimes they got prosy and dull. Class

Comments Off on Madison University began granting Master of Arts degrees (p. 171)

Posted in Chapter 8, p. 171, Recovery and Expansion, 1850-1869, timeline

Tagged ,

p. 170 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

Posted on May 3, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 170 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

the Grammar School. Professors Beebee and Dodge, though Dem­ocrats, were as ardent for the Union as President Eaton whose oratory was in frequent demand at public mass meetings.

At the commencement of 1864 Dr. Eaton refused to be depressed by “excitements and embarrassments of the hour” and confidently asserted that it was a serious mistake to suppose the University “to be going down on account of the temporary withdrawal of students for soldiers.” The losses, however, had been great and enrollment had fallen to approximately 100. The war had naturally prevented many from entering and large numbers had left the campus to join units from their home localities or had enlisted in those recruited from Hamilton. Though the actual count of students withdrawing from the University to join the army was only 40, it must be remembered that this figure was a large percentage of an enrollment which was never much higher than 200. In addition to 40 students, 70 alumni were also in service, many of them as chaplains. Thus 110 men, ten of whom were casualties, represented Madison University in the Union Army.

Since news of Lee’s surrender arrived during spring vacation, the University was unable to hold an appropriate demonstration. Students and faculty joined with the village, however, in celebrating the Fourth of July, 1865, which was the occasion for a public welcome of the returning local veterans. In anticipation of commencement, the Students Association had already asked Professor Osborn to deliver a memorial discourse on that occasion honoring those who had fallen during the war.

Commencements after 1850 continued to attract large crowds of guests intent on enjoying the week’s festivities, which, in Central New York parlance, have been described as a kind of “intellectual hop­ growers’ picnic.” The bill of fare included meetings of the Education Society, alumni, the Society for Inquiry, and the literary societies, and the College and Seminary graduation exercises. Beginning in 1857, the Grammar School, also, had a commencement. Some of the sessions took place in West Hall chapel where the Latin mottoes on the walls, “God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved” and “No weapon formed against her shall prosper”, reminded audiences of the unhappy Removal struggle. The Baptist Church, however, was usually the scene of the College and Seminary commencements until the auditorium in Alumni Hall was completed in 1861. The ceremony was sometimes

Comments Off on p. 170 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

Posted in Chapter 8, p. 170, Recovery and Expansion, 1850-1869

Tagged , , ,

p. 169 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

Posted on May 3, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 169 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

his native Sweden. They adopted as their uniforms gray jackets trimmed with red, gray caps, and black trousers with red tape along the outside seams. The 0fficers had somewhat finer outfits of gray with generously-padded long-tailed coats. Carrying Springfield muskets supplied by the State Militia, the company drilled through the summer afternoons and evenings. By invitation of a friendly farmer they went to his meadows a few miles from the village on a three-or four-day bivouac. Its most outstanding features were a sham battle and the great quantities of good food contributed by neighboring families.

Town and gown were greatly saddened in the spring of 1862 by the news of the first casualties, Lieutenant William McIntyre and Captain Arthur L. Brooks, son of the Baptist pastor, both favorites with their fellows in the Class of 1861. Another solemn reminder of war came at commencement 1862, when one of the Trustees presented a sword to Charles W. Underhill as he left the platform after delivering his graduation oration. Underhill, then a lieutenant, had assisted in raising the 114th New York Infantry with which he was to serve throughout the war.

Students organized a second company for military drill in 1863. It was in charge of Daniel W. Skinner who had rejoined the Class of 1865 after his discharge from the army because of wounds received at Fair Oaks. His experiences must have given the same realistic quality to his instruction which they did in 1864 to his Aeonian Society oration, “The Value of Our National Struggle,” a “sterling production” unmarred by “eagle flights of oratory.”

Other campus activities during the war years included frequent Glee Club appearances at patriotic meetings at which they gave selections from their songbook The War-Whoop. Students followed the course of the battles as they avidly read the daily papers and then readjusted the colored pins of the war maps which were conspicuous in dormitory rooms. Union victories they duly celebrated by firing a cannon placed in front of East and West Halls. Though the faculty prohibited salutes during recitation hours, “somehow the patriotic old gun would go off of its own accord, in the middle of the morning, when a particularly good piece of news came by telegraph.” A poll conducted on the campus in October 1864, showed that students and faculty overwhelmingly favored Lincoln’s re-election by a vote of 77 to 12; of the McClellan supporters, seven were in the College and five in

Comments Off on p. 169 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

Posted in Chapter 8, p. 169, Recovery and Expansion, 1850-1869

Tagged ,

Students organize the University Corps. (p. 168)

Posted on May 3, 2012 by | Comments Off on Students organize the University Corps. (p. 168)

George Arrowsmith, Class of 1859, Lt. Col., 175th N.Y.S. Volunteers, Alumni Files, p168 William McIntyre, Class of 1861, Lt., 61st N.Y.S. Volunteers, Alumni Files, p168

 

 

Wendell Phillips, Gerrit Smith, and other molders of public opinion who lectured in Hamilton. Lincoln’s call for troops after the fall of Fort Sumter ·cam~ two days before they left for the four-week spring vacation. In their absence George Arrowsmith, Class of 1859, a young man of great promise for whom they all had a cordial affection who was studying in a Hamilton law office, enlisted and raised a company of local volunteers. His example had a sobering effect on the returning undergraduates, not only because of his engaging personality but also because they knew he was a Democrat and had frequently contributed partisan articles to one of the village newspapers. Arrowsmith’s company elected him captain and after a year’s service he became Lieutenant Colonel in the 157th Regiment of which. his friend, Professor Brown, on leave as Principal of the Grammar School, had been made commanding officer. Arrowsmith fell in the first day’s fighting at Gettysburg.

In May 1861, the students organized a company, known as the University Corps, more than 100 strong, for military drill and elected as captain Knut O. Broady, a senior who had seen military service in

Comments Off on Students organize the University Corps. (p. 168)

Posted in Chapter 8, p. 168, Recovery and Expansion, 1850-1869, timeline

Tagged , ,

Madisonensis (Colgate Maroon) and school colors (p. 167)

Posted on May 3, 2012 by | Comments Off on Madisonensis (Colgate Maroon) and school colors (p. 167)

they shall resort to no tavern or other place where intoxicating drinks
are kept for sale . . .
[they] shall not play at cards or any other unlawful game . . . nor
shall they use intoxicating liquor.
The faculty minutes abound with cases which called forth admonition,
suspension, or expulsion.

With the introduction of student publications and athletics, some of this adolescent exuberance was diverted. The ephemeral Madison
University Literary Annual and the Madison University Gazette came
out at commencement time in 1857 and 1858. (later Madisonian ) which first appeared in August 1858, was issued annually for ten years. The first two ran stories, poems, and humorous articles, while the third, which had characteristics of a college year book such as listings of organizations, their officers and members, resembled similar publications at Hamilton and Williams Colleges. There was no regular campus newspaper until the Madisonensis began in August 1868; it continues to the present as the Colgate Maroon .

Croquet enjoyed a large following in the late ’60’s. Quoits, once popular, now attracted few devotees and interest in muscle-building gymnastics had declined notably since the ’50’s when students built a makeshift gymnasium. Primarily to distinguish Madison students from their opponents participating in extramural athletic contests, the first University colors, blue and magenta, were adopted in 1868. General recognition of the wholesome contribution athletics can make to college life, however, did not come until nearly two decades later.

The student generations of the ’60’s seem to have gotten considerable enjoyment from informal singing. In 1863 appeared a 24-page pamphlet, Songs of Madison, the first of its kind, which includes college songs of the period as well those of Madison students. Of particular interest is what must be the first Alma Mater which begins:

 

Alma Mater! Alma Mater!
Heaven’s blessings attend thee;
While we live we will cherish,
Protect and defend thee.

 

The most profound influence on the life of the students in the 60’s was, of course, the Civil War. They watched its approach as they read the newspapers in the library reading-room and listened to speeches of

Comments Off on Madisonensis (Colgate Maroon) and school colors (p. 167)

Posted in Chapter 8, p. 167, Recovery and Expansion, 1850-1869, timeline

Tagged , , , ,

p. 166 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

Posted on May 3, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 166 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

“Ringing the rust” was another college custom Madison students observed each August to mark the close of the freshman year. Pro­longed ringing of the chapel bell from midnight on, and the general disorders which ensued, announced to disturbed sleepers that the first year men had lost their “rust.” There is some indication that sophomores hazed freshmen, but this diversion seems to have been quite innocuous. When the Junior Exhibition was postponed in January 1868, sophomores and juniors arranged an elaborate “burial” service for the third-year men. Wearing white sheets and masks and bearing wooden sticks, each stick representing a junior, they paraded one winter evening, groaning and wailing, to the village park. Here they lighted a pyre and with appropriate eulogies, tossed the “corpses” into the flames.

Common student pranks included driving livestock from adjacent pastures into the chapel or classrooms, burning outbuildings and students’ woodpiles, and mixing up half a dozen student coal heaps outside the dormitories. On one occasion, a few of the boys removed the pipes from the organ and after marching around the campus blowing the tubes, hid them in odd corners; the faculty is said to have identified the culprits from the brass stain on their mouths. Students often attended donation parties, social occasions to which church members brought gifts of vegetables and other staples for their pastor and his family, in surrounding villages, and made the driver of their hired band wagon go through toll gates at full speed to avoid paying the fee. As they returned late at night it was not uncommon for them to take down the rail fences and replace them diagonally across the road so that travelers who followed in the dark would find themselves in the fields. In .1866 the Students Association requested the faculty to suspend classes on a Wednesday in November so that they might observe an expected shower of meteors. On being refused, they voted “that we do all fall asleep in recitation on said Wednesday.”

The faculty, believing that they stood “in loco parentis,” expended great energy in attempting to maintain discipline. Pranks were bad enough; worse were outright violations of the many specific regulations in the University Laws. Among them were these:

 

students, in hours of study, shall abstain from singing, loud talking, playing on a musical instrument, and, at all times, shall withhold themselves from noisy plays in the University buildings…

Comments Off on p. 166 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

Posted in Chapter 8, p. 166, Recovery and Expansion, 1850-1869

Tagged

Delta Upsilon receives charter (p. 165)

Posted on May 3, 2012 by | Comments Off on Delta Upsilon receives charter (p. 165)

maneuvered their brothers into office. By request of a majority of the Society, the faculty intervened to order a new election with the result that the previously defeated candidates were victorious. Three years later the Dekes were involved in an Aeonian Society fight over the selection of speakers for the Junior Exhibition and, apparently unsuccessful, withdrew in a body, taking many others with them and leaving the organization in wrath at their tactics.

To counteract these “evil influences” in Adelphian and Aeonian affairs, a few students under the tutelage of Clark B. Oakley, a theologue who had been a D.U. at the University of Rochester, formed an anti-secret society in November, 1865, which early the next year received a charter as a chapter of Delta Upsilon. Meeting at first in each other’s rooms, the group expanded and at length rented quarters in the village. Aside from the obvious advantages of fellowship, they, like the Dekes, stressed cultural pursuits and spent much effort rehearsing one another to ensure performances creditable to the fraternity when they appeared at the Junior Exhibition and on other public occasions. They frequently invited guests to their own literary programs, which seem to have been of a high caliber. They debated Andrew Johnson’s impeachment, and the elective franchise for women, among other questions, and, in a moment of righteous indignation, suspended one member for plagiarism. The Madison D.U.’s were in frequent communication with their brothers at Hamilton College, and on their own campus they seem to have enjoyed tacit faculty approval.

The growing secular influence during the period, 1850-69, appeared also in other practices characteristic of American undergraduate life of the time. One which perennially plagued the faculty was mock schemes, or false programs, which were surreptitiously circulated at the Junior Exhibitions and similar events. Prepared in secret, usually by sophomores and often scurrilous and vulgar, they burlesqued in cartoons and print those whose names appeared on the bona fide programs. In many ways, the mock schemes were forerunners of college humor magazines and some feature columns in college newspapers. The tittering, giggles, and loud guffaws which they excited made the lot of the lampooned speakers extremely trying. Though producing and distributing these sheets was an expulsion offense and the Students Association sometimes cooperated’ with the faculty to suppress them, the custom persisted into the 1880’s.

Comments Off on Delta Upsilon receives charter (p. 165)

Posted in Chapter 8, p. 165, Recovery and Expansion, 1850-1869, timeline

Tagged

p. 164 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

Posted on May 3, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 164 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

and to refrain from playing politics in the affairs of the literary societies. Unmoved, the faculty proceeded to inform the Dekes that they must either pledge in writing to disband or face expulsion. Fourteen complied in June and were thereupon ejected from the fraternity. The others eventually capitulated, but not before they had perfected a plan to outwit the faculty. The last one delayed signing until the day of his graduation in August, 1857. On the night before, he and the chief officer of the Hamilton College chapter had initiated eight members of the incoming freshman class, who, as students in the Grammar School, knew the struggle of the past year and were ready to carry it on.

To all appearances the anti-secret society rule had been enforced and only gradually did the truth come out. The new members, knowing the penalty if they were discovered, nonetheless exulted in preserving the organization. They usually assembled every two weeks if conditions favored, sometimes in a member’s room, but more frequently at the Eagle Hotel where a brother would take “lodging” for the evening. As partial satisfaction of the requirement that the fraternity be given up, they formally voted at the close of each meeting to disband and then reorganized when they next convened. They initiated some of the best students in the University and gave particular attention to literary programs of orations, essays and debates, then important features of fraternity life which the Greek letter groups had appropriated from the literary societies. In the need for maintaining secrecy they. once deposited their charter with the Hamilton College chapter and for six months stored their records in the bureau drawer of a local Deke sweetheart. Such precautions gradually became needless, and in 1868 a room in the business section of the village was rented for regular use. The prohibition against fraternities still stood but the faculty no longer attempted to enforce it.

The unity which the Dekes maintained in their struggle with the faculty also made itself felt in the two literary societies, the Adelphian and the Aeonian. During the early ’50’s, the rivalries of these enthusiastic and successful organizations was intense and their public meetings and the Junior Exhibitions-for which they elected third-year men in the College to be their representatives-attracted large and responsive audiences from Hill and village. In 1857 the Adelphians fell into a bitter dispute among themselves over an election in which the Dekes

Comments Off on p. 164 – Recovery and expansion, 1850-1869

Posted in Chapter 8, p. 164, Recovery and Expansion, 1850-1869

Tagged , ,

Delta Kappa Epsilon secretly formed on campus (p. 163)

Posted on May 3, 2012 by | Comments Off on Delta Kappa Epsilon secretly formed on campus (p. 163)

Well aware that expulsion awaited them once the faculty learned what they had accomplished, the new Dekes decided to follow the practice of the current Know Nothing party in denying all knowledge of the new organization. They also asked the Parent Chapter not to make known their existence; a request which was granted. They held their meetings late at night and steadily initiated new members without creating suspicion that there was a fraternity on the campus. The first disclosure is said to have been made at the commencement of 1856 when one or two seniors were reported to have worn Deke pins while delivering their graduation orations. By the fall term, however, the existence of a D.K.E. chapter was no longer a secret.

Faculty sentiment, one may judge, was not entirely hostile since three of the professors were fraternity men: Beebee, who in his college days had been initiated into Psi Upsilon at Hamilton College; Dodge, a member of Alpha Delta Phi at Brown; and President Eaton, an ardent Sigma Phi of the Alpha chapter at Union, whose two sons, both members of the Class of 1856, had joined the Hamilton College chapter of their father’s fraternity. Whatever the faculty’s personal feelings may have been, their responsibilities as officers of the University required them to enforce its regulations as ratified by the Trustees. Since none of the latter were college men, they may naturally have felt that potentially disruptive or dangerous customs on other campuses should have no place at Madison University. It is also quite possible that the Trustees believed the condition of the institution as it recovered from the Removal Controversy was too precarious to risk alienat­ing patrons and churches, many of whom still held anti-Masonic prejudices of an earlier day.

The faculty did not take up the problem in a formal way until December 1856, when they agreed that the rule against secret societies should be reaffirmed and strictly enforced. Protracted investigations and discussions lasted on into the spring with every effort being made to induce the Dekes to disband. They countered with the proposal that the faculty should always be represented in the fraternity by a regular honorary member, and elected Professor Gallup, whom they knew to be unfriendly to the chapter; he declined the membership. They also promised to cooperate with the President to improve the academic standing and general conduct of any brothers in danger of expulsion for irregularities, to prohibit the use of liquor at their festive occasions,

Comments Off on Delta Kappa Epsilon secretly formed on campus (p. 163)

Posted in Chapter 8, p. 163, Recovery and Expansion, 1850-1869, timeline