was contingent, failed to discharge their trust properly in that they had not met together to examine the legal difficulties. Judge Gridley by permanent injunction, issued April 23, 1850, therefore decreed that Madison University should remain in Hamilton and that the compact of 1847 between the Education Society and the University Trustees should be binding. A milestone had been reached.
The Removalists charged that the Gridley decision was based on technicalities and that it thwarted the wishes of a large proportion of Baptists of New York State. Professor Eaton reminded them that a judicial opinion does not “ordinarily take within its scope the great principles involved in a contested case when technicalities present themselves at the threshold which wholly invalidate the legality of the project proposed and resisted.”
In Eaton’s opinion the judge, though avoiding a discussion of principles, had shown his knowledge of them.
Meanwhile, the Removalists had set about drafting plans for a new institution to be named the “University of Rochester”
and appointed committees to obtain funds and a charter. Especially active were Ira Harris, Friend Humphrey, John N. Wilder, and David R. Barton. On January 31, 1850, the Regents of the University of the State of New York issued a provisional charter. The next May, the Removalists held an educational convention in Rochester to found the New York Baptist Union for Ministerial Education, a counterpart to the Education Society, which was soon to establish a seminary in connection with the University.
The friends of Hamilton, believing that Judge Gridley’s decision would not be reversed even if the Rochester supporters saw fit to appeal it, now set about to secure the financial resources which Madison University so desperately needed. Many prospective donors had withheld their contributions pending settlement of the question of location. The Education Society’s Treasurer, Alvah Pierce, confronted by a diminishing annual income, had been forced to sell some of the organization’s real estate and use bequests to reduce the heavy floating debt. The University, dependent entirely on income from tuition, contributions, and some state aid, had a deficit also. Under the leadership of Eaton, Hascall, Spear, and others, the Baptists of the village and fellow citizens, meeting on May 2, 1850, decided to raise an endowment of $60,000.
