Raymonds seem not to have been able to accept, but Professor Conant and Pharcellus Church were on the campus and participated in the exercises. Professor A. C. Kendrick and other former Removalists who were present at the Jubilee Celebration in 1869 could join Professor Eaton in rejoicing that amity and good will between Madison and Rochester prevailed and that the friends of each exchanged “hearty congratulations on the success of their favorite enterprises.”
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Tagged Asahel Clark Kendrick, Pharcellus Church, Thomas Jefferson Conant
capital. Brown and Judd had tapped a reservoir of emotion.
The transition of control in the University Board from the Rochester supporters to the Anti-Removalists was another dramatic episode of the 1850 commencement week. Thanks to the fact that Removal men had been appointed to vacancies, friends of Hamilton failed to constitute a quorum. In case the Removalists should refuse to meet, the University would be forced to suspend operations. That a quorum of any kind could be gathered after August, 1850, seemed improbable.
When the Trustees met on the 19th they were three short, and it was not until their third session, the afternoon of the 20th, that a quorum of nine was present. Knowing that a committee of Anti-Removalists was prepared to negotiate with the Board, five Removalists present agreed to resign and resolved:
that we pledge ourselves to elect substitutes on the nomination of Dea. Wm. Cobb, of Hamilton, provided a written pledge be first given by responsible individuals, that the professors who shall resign shall be paid in full on or before the 10th of September next, and that the bill of the Legal Committee at Albany … be paid by 1st of November next.*
The condition meant that friends of Hamilton, already staggering under a heavy deficit and hard-pressed to raise the endowment, would immediately have to secure $2,700 for faculty salaries and $265 for lawyers’ fees incurred by the Removalists. Though willing to pay the salaries, they regarded the legal expense as unjust and declined the condition. As the Board was about to dissolve without having surrendered control to the Hamiltonians, Professor Spear volunteered to assume responsibility for providing the money and Deacon Cobb, Alvah Pierce and three others joined in signing the bond. The Board accepted the document and six members withdrew one by one as Anti-Removalists took their seats. The crisis was passed and it was now possible to proceed with arrangements for carrying on the work of the University.
The newly constituted Board turned at once to the most urgent matter, that of reorganizing the faculty. Professors Maginnis, Conant, Raymond, A. C. Kendrick, and Richardson had resigned two days previously to accept appointments at Rochester, leaving only Eaton
*Colgate University, Board of Trustees, Minutes, Aug. 20, 1850.
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Tagged Asahel Clark Kendrick, George Washington Eaton, John Howard Raymond, John Sharp Maginnis, Thomas Jefferson Conant, University Trustees
that the Boards had not been consulted officially before the bill was introduced. The faculty, with the exception of Dr. Kendrick, Eaton and Spear, sought its enactment and Professors Raymond and A. C. Kendrick presented their views at Albany.
When the bill came before the appropriate committee of the Assembly, Smith Sheldon, who seems to have been the chief lobbyist, persuaded several members of both houses to attend its meetings to hear the arguments for his side. As a sop to the Anti-Removalists Ira Harris had proposed to their counsel, Judge Charles Mason of Hamilton, that the University Board be authorized to change the location only if the residents of the village failed to obtain the endowment by August, 1848. Following acceptance of the compromise by the Hamiltonians, the Legislature passed the bill and the Governor signed it on April 3, 1848.
Professor Eaton and Dr. Kendrick were pleased with the outcome, and the citizens of Hamilton also until they began to appreciate the strenuous effort required to raise the $50,000. Smith Sheldon, who doubted their ability to do so, believed nevertheless that any attempt at removal without giving them a chance to keep the University would mean litigation and possible negative action by the Boards. He counted on their failure to force them to agree to a new location. Dr. Conant, who feared they might succeed, wrote Professors Raymond and A.C. Kendrick that in such an event “we must contrive some way of escape before it is too late.”
During the spring and summer of 1848 the citizens of Hamilton
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thought the faculty should take a neutral stand leaving the decision to the Boards. When a majority of his colleagues became active partisans for the change he at first felt that they were injudicious and later, convinced by the arguments against removal, that they were wrong. All the faculty except Dr. Kendrick and Professor Philetus B. Spear joined in a letter urging Eaton not to prejudice Wilder’s efforts in New York. They pointed out that the Rochester brethren were the first to take effective steps to raise an endowment, which was so sorely needed, and that Madison County citizens had acted only when faced with the prospect of losing the University:
Nothing but necessity has prompted their effort & let that necessity be withdrawn & the subscription falls through & we are thrown farther back than ever from the attainment which we consider vital to the Institution’s prosperity. On the other hand let the enterprise go forward, unchecked by untimely interference, & then when the question comes up for final decision, we have at least an alternative, & a strong argument for endorsement to those who would retain it here.*
As a further check on Eaton, Professors A. C. Kendrick and Conant followed him to New York to talk with Deacon Colgate and others. In Eaton they had an impulsive, emotional antagonist who was to make anti-removal the great crusade of his life. Motivated by what he
*Faculty of Madison University to George W. Eaton, New York, N.Y., Dec. 27, 1847.
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Tagged Asahel Clark Kendrick, Nathaniel Kendrick, Philetus Bennett Spear, Thomas Jefferson Conant
teaching he occupied the pulpit in the village Baptist Church. Following his transfer from languages to theology in 1835, he went to Germany to study at Halle, Leipzig, and Berlin. Less than a year after his return in 1835 he resigned to join the Newton Faculty. Professors, students and townspeople greatly regretted his leaving. He subsequently became President of Newton, Horace Mann’s successor as Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, President of Brown, and the first General Agent of the Peabody Fund.
Another young faculty member destined to make a prominent place for himself was Asahel C. Kendrick who succeeded Sears as Professor of Languages. The son of the Rev. Clark Kendrick of Vermont, he had come to Hamilton at the age of thirteen to live with his father’s cousin, Nathaniel, while he prepared for Hamilton College at the Academy. On his graduation from Hamilton in 1831, he became an instructor in the preparatory department of the Institution. After two decades of able teaching he was to continue his career at the University of Rochester.
For a few years in the 1820’s the Executive Committee hired upperclassmen and recent graduates as tutors to assist with the instruction of beginning students. Beriah N. Leach, Class of 1825, was employed while a senior with the understanding that he should have “sabbaths to himself, and … the privilege of attending the theological lectures….” When he left at the end of a year to take a pastorate, his classmate, Chancellor Hartshorn, succeeded him but after a two-year
As the Trustees reviewed the progress of the Institution to 1833, they took courage from the evidence they found that it “had been raised up by special providence of God, amidst the prayers and efforts of his people.” They could point to a widening patronage from churches and friends, an able and self-sacrificing faculty, an extensive campus and substantial buildings, and a growing student enrollment. The latter called for new facilities, and an expanded curriculum, which the Board was prepared to provide in the expectation that increased contributions to the treasury would cover the cost. Both the Trustees and Executive Committee could agree that the Institution had become “too important to the interests of Zion to be neglected and left to wither.”*
* Baptist Education Society, Annual Report, 1833, pp.3, 11.
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