JOHN HANNON'S SKETCH OF DR. DUNCAN.
"In the autumn of 1868 upon the train I first met Dr. James A. Duncan, as I was going to Ashland. Full-orbed, approaching his zenith, this pulpit star thus came into my sky. Though he has years since set behind the grassy hills of Hollywood, the light of his great character still lingers in the valleys and on the high places of my being.
"It is impossible in a sketch like this to give the full spectrum of a character so rich as that of Dr. Duncan. There were X-rays, delicate gleamings of light from his presence, that could be felt, but do not photograph themselves upon the plates of a biography. He was not a man easy to forget.
"There is a sense in which every man is a word of God, or a syllable of the word. But in some the divine articulation is not so distinct. Regarding humanity as a written word, such characters are what scholars would call a 'disputed text.' Not so with James A. Duncan. Looking upon him no man could doubt the authorship. The divine autograph was there in capital letters. A look at him shook our faith in man as an evolution. We felt that that man was a creation.
"Would I had a presence,' said one of our brainiest men to me. A lady of my congregation asked a friend in a Boston dining parlor who a certain man was, remarking that she knew he must be a distinguished person, for she said, 'He has a presence.' The man was Phillips Brooks.
"Dr. Duncan had a presence. Who will ever forget that Napoleonic build? That physique, the very motion of which was silent music.
[Illustration: REV. J. W. COMPTON, R. M. C. 1867-'68—1868-'69. Removed with College from Boydton to Ashland. Pioneer preacher Pacific Coast for twenty-three years.]
[Illustration: REV. W. WADSWORTH, D. D., Author and Minister
North-Georgia Conference.]
"Tremendous was to be the draft on this superb physique during the ten years that followed the day I first looked on it. The College with its endowment had gone down amid the ruins of the Confederacy. The outlook was gloomy; but it was resolved to remove the tree to Ashland. Here the railway system of the South would renew its roots and make it bud and bloom again. Jefferson Davis was thought of for the presidency, but in a happy hour Dr. Duncan was chosen to lead the forlorn hope in its rebuilding. Without funds, without laboratory, without proper buildings, he addressed himself to the task. Providence came to his rescue. By one of those flashes of common sense, which not always light up church enterprises, a Faculty pre-eminently adapted to the work had been chosen. Professor Thomas R. Price, a name synonymous now with scholarship, was in the chair of Ancient Languages. Harry Estill filled the chair of Mathematics. Professor Richard M. Smith brought the ripe wisdom and experience of his distinguished life to the chair of Natural Sciences. W. W. Valentine held the keys of the Modern Languages.
"It has been said that what a university needs is not so much an endowment as a man. Randolph-Macon had men, and Dr. Duncan, a man among men. The Faculty itself was an endowment. Good material gathered around them as students. 'Facile princeps' among these were Wm. W. Smith, now LL. D., and President of the Randolph-Macon System of Colleges and Schools; Charles Carroll, now a brilliant lawyer of the Crescent city; Rhodes, since a judge in Baltimore; J. F. Twitty, of blessed memory, and a number of others.
"Dr. Duncan, while not technically trained as a teacher, yet showed himself a great teacher. What an inspiration he imparted to the band that gathered around him! How he lit up every dreary field of text! Blessed, yea, thrice blessed, was that school of young prophets. While himself the finest of models, nothing was farther from his thought than to make little 'Duncans' of every student. Bring up a boy in the way he should go, according to his bent, this was his idea. He would never have been guilty of putting the toga of Cicero upon Charles Spurgeon. With him good 'pork and beans' was not to be made into bad 'quail on toast.' 'Sing your own song,' only let that song be the best possible to you. Broad, Catholic-hearted Duncan!
"Making a great teacher did not spoil a great preacher in Duncan's case. On a 'star-map' of the pulpits of that day, the pulpit in the old ball-room chapel at Ashland would shine as a star of 'the first magnitude.' His sermons were not like Robertson's eruptions of internal volcanic fires lifting up new heights of thought; they were not Munsey's great, gorgeous cathedrals of polished words; neither were they Keener's cyclones filling the air with boulders of logic, cutting a pathway through forests of prejudice as old as our being. His eloquence was not the glacial magnificence of Wilson's great icebergs floating in polar seas with grassy shores; it was not Galloway's mountain torrent with 'optimism,' that music of heaven in its splash and the swiftness of redeeming love in its rush to the low places of earth. Very different was it from Sam Jones' wild tanglewood of tropic forest of mingled fruit and flowers and thorns. His sermons were the expression of what Carlyle would style a healthy nature. There was nothing wild or abnormal. They were like landscapes in a civilized land—great, like the movement of the seasons, like the coming of the tides—as the processes of nature are great; great as a summer day is great. The introduction was morning!—sunrise! not striking, not surprising. The thoughts not larks soaring heavenward, were rather sparrows on the sward. But we could see great stretches of thought before us. Now the morning changes into high noon. It is the sermon proper. We are now in the midst of vast grain-fields of ripe thought. Divisions barely visible above the heads of the choicest of the wheat waving now in the zephyrs of pathos. Shouts at times among the listeners, as like reapers they garner ripe sheaves into their bosoms; orchards now growing with ripe fruit.
"The peroration comes naturally, as evening follows noon. We hardly know when it comes. A splendid sunset, often tears like the dewdrops in the flowers of new resolves, now springing in the soul; solemn impressions, like shadows, growing larger; a deep hush upon everything. The sermon closes. It is night. But stars of hope are shining in the sky of the soul.
"At Haslup's Grove, in the seventies, in a great sermon, the rush to the altar was so great that the enclosure had to be torn down. It was pentecostal.
"I heard him on two great occasions. In 1876, along with Dr. Landon C. Garland and Lovick Pierce, he was fraternal delegate from our church to our sister Methodism at the General Conference in Baltimore. After years of estrangement the two Methodisms were meeting again. It was an occasion. You could feel it. The great building was thronged. When the time came for Duncan to speak he threw his soul into the 'God speed you!' of seven hundred thousand Southern Methodists. The audience for awhile it seemed would go wild. The day was a great triumph.
"During that same Conference the princely 'Jeff. Magruder' organized a great mass-meeting of the Sunday-schools of the Southern Methodist churches in Baltimore. Bishop Vincent, Secretary of the Sunday-School Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church, then in the prime of his powers, General Clinton B. Fiske, and Dr. Duncan were to speak. The speeches of Vincent and Fiske had been so superb that a gifted minister remarked to me, 'I am sorry for Duncan.' I responded, 'I am sorry for any man who has to follow two such speeches.' But I found that I did not yet know him. He pulled out new organ stops in his great soul that afternoon. His speech was a brilliant improvisation. The audience was captured. Southern Methodists who gloried in the flesh were radiant.
"When going to New Orleans, in 1877, I met him going to Washington City to preach the first sermon to the President-elect, R. B. Hayes. It was not long before wires flashed to me the startling news of his death. Duncan, Marvin, A. T. Bledsoe, Doggett, in a single year. Heaven was drawing heavily upon our beloved church. Duncan's old pupil, President Smith, took up the work he and the sainted Bennett laid down.
"The Randolph-Macon System of Schools and Colleges is a worthy monument to the memory of our dead Duncan. May the graduates of these schools be living stones in the living shaft, ever rising higher and higher to the memory of Olin, Garland, Smith, and their successors, who spent their best days for the advancement of Christian education at our alma mater."
The number of students matriculated the first session was 67. Under all the embarrassments and difficulties of the situation, this number was as great as could have been expected. The income from such a small number was insufficient to meet the expenses, and here ensued the old trouble, which had been such a clog in the past, that is, straitened finances. The condition of the country was anything but favorable to any effort to raise funds for the College. Various plans were proposed, some of which were adopted, but none of them brought speedy relief, and the embarrassment became very onerous and trying. By the efforts of the Agent, Rev. W. B. Rowzie, and the securing of a loan by D'Arcy Paul, Esq., the College was carried through the first session.
The first annual report of the President was made June 21, 1869. The following synopsis is given:
Congratulates the Board on the increase of patronage; the zeal and efficiency of the Faculty; the diligence and good order of the students; the general healthfulness and pleasant harmony of all connected with the institution, and the increased confidence of the public in the permanency and success of Randolph-Macon College; expresses the conviction that the only condition prerequisite to complete success, under the providence of God, is a determined and energetic purpose to succeed; affirms that the demand for such an institution to secure important interests of Methodism is imperative;…. refers to his visit to the Baltimore and North Carolina Conferences and the cordial reception given by these Conferences; recommends a fiscal secretary or director, whose duty it shall be to take entire control of the financial interests of the College, except as to matters in the hands of the Proctor, and to do all he can by travelling and speaking for the College.
The following degrees were conferred, on the recommendation of the Faculty, viz.: LL. D., on Professor Francis H. Smith, of the University of Virginia; D. D., on Rev. James L. Pierce, of the Georgia Conference, Rev. William G. Connor, of the Texas Conference, and Rev. John C. Granbery, of the Virginia Conference. The commencement in June was well attended, especially by visiting Trustees and others from the Baltimore Conference.
An excellent dwelling for the President had been erected by the liberal aid of a friend in Richmond. At an adjourned meeting of the Board, held in Richmond, Va., next November, there were several causes for encouragement. The Agent reported subscriptions amounting to over $13,000. Of this Samuel O. Moon, Esq., of Albemarle, gave $5,000 in Virginia bonds; the Society of Alumni, $1,200; Major W. T. Sutherlin, of Danville, $1,500 ($300 per annum for five years to meet current expenses). But the most important action taken was on the suggestion of Rev. W. H. Christian, an alumnus of the College (class of 1851.) In response to this suggestion, the following resolutions were adopted:
"Resolved, That we request the Virginia Conference to order that the deficiency in the yearly revenues of the College (which shall be reported by the Board to each annual session of the Conference) shall be divided among all the districts of the Conference, and sub-divided among all the stations and circuits by the district stewards, as in case of the Conference collection, and shall be raised by collections in every congregation, and embraced in the annual report of the recording steward of every charge to the Financial Board of the Conference.
"Resolved, That when the Virginia Conference shall have adopted the plan proposed, all its ministers shall be entitled to send their sons of proper age and acquirements to College without payment of tuition fees; that the Baltimore Conference, by adopting the same plan, shall be entitled to the same privilege, and that $2,500 be fixed as the amount to be raised by each of these Conferences for the next year."
This action has been considered, and rightly so, to have been for the time and under the embarrassments of the surroundings the most important and efficient ever taken by the Board. With a small assessment of about five cents on each member of the church in the two Conferences, the annual income was in a short time increased by the sum of $4,000, which was equal to the dividends on an endowment of about $70,000. The Conferences adopted the plan, and have annually raised a large percentage of the assessment, the Virginia Conference having in 1882 increased its assessment to $3,500.
[Illustration: REV. W. H. CHRISTIAN, D. D., Virginia Conference.]
In looking back on the period since, nearly thirty years, it really looks as if, without this action, the College could not have continued its work. Certainly this work would have been greatly narrowed and restricted. Great honor, therefore, should be bestowed on the name of William H. Christian as the mover of this plan, and the friends of Christian education in the State should render to the Conferences grateful thanks for having, under the promptings of the good Spirit, acted so promptly on the suggestion and carried it out for so many years.
[Illustration: JOHN HOWARD, A. M.]
The year 1869 was otherwise a notable year. In the latter part of the year the first general election for State officers and a Legislature was held since the close of the war. With the inauguration of the Governor elected at this election and resumption of the legislative functions by the General Assembly, the State resumed its normal condition, and military rule ceased to exist.
At the meeting of this first Legislature, a committee, which had been charged with that duty, appeared before the body and asked and obtained the change of the charter, and the sanction to the removal of the College from its original site to Ashland. The amended charter reads as follows:
"[Section] I. That the removal of the aforesaid College is hereby ratified and confirmed, and that there be, and is hereby, established at Ashland, in the county of Hanover, in this Commonwealth, a seminary of learning for the instruction of youth in the various branches of science and literature, the useful arts, agriculture, and the learned and foreign languages."
The suit which was instituted to enjoin the removal of the College never came to an issue. It was ably defended on the part of the majority of the Board by John Howard, Esq., of Richmond (class of 1844), and the argument was printed. It is worthy of reprinting here, but space will not permit.
The second session of the College had a larger attendance than the first by fifty, of which number twenty-five were ministerial students.
About the close of the first term of the second session (1869-'70) one of the professors was taken from the College by death—Richard M. Smith, Professor of Natural Science. He was the oldest man of the Faculty.
The following preamble and resolutions, drafted by Professor Price and adopted by the Faculty, was endorsed and adopted by the Trustees at an adjourned meeting held in Richmond, February 23, 1870:
"Upon us as friends who loved and honored him, upon the College whose faithful officer he was, upon the classes he taught with self-sacrificing zeal, upon the community and the church in which his virtues made him eminent, an overwhelming sorrow has, under God's will, fallen in the death of our late colleague, Professor Richard M. Smith. Even those who had not the pleasure of knowing, from intimate association, the beauties of his private character, may from the knowledge of his career form some conception of the vigor of his mind and the unspotted virtue of his life. For us, who had in him the closer and tenderer interests of a common work and an undisturbed friendship, his sweet temper, his wise conversation and lofty unselfishness, will ever be a source of blended sorrow and consolation; be it, therefore,
"Resolved, 1. That we tender, as a body, to the widow and family of our dearly beloved colleague, our respectful sympathy in their bereavement.
"2. That we request our President to publish this expression of our heart-felt sorrow for the friend whom we have lost."
Professor Smith had been a prominent man in his native State, first as an educator, then as editor of the Alexandria Sentinel, afterwards of the Richmond Enquirer. He was the first Professor to die at his post.
[Illustration: PROF. WM. A. SHEPARD, A. M., Class 1857; Major
Confederate States Army.]
The Board, after paying tribute to his memory, proceeded to supply the vacant chair.
On the first ballot Professor William Arthur Shepard, of the Southern Female College of Petersburg, was elected to the place. He was no stranger to the College, having served as Professor prior to the war, and having resigned his place to go into the service. Though a Northern man by birth, he threw his heart and energies into the Southern cause, and was so true and faithful that, after having been disabled for field service by wounds, he was promoted to be Major and Assistant Commissary.
It would be safe to say that the College never had a warmer friend or a truer man in its service than he proved himself to be for over thirty years. He entered at once on the duties of his chair.
At a meeting of the Board held in Baltimore, March, 1870, at the session of the Baltimore Conference, that Conference was requested to make an assessment to aid the College, on the same plan as that adopted by the Virginia Conference. This the Conference agreed to make.
At the annual meeting, June, 1870, the President made the annual report, which gave the attendance as 110; total earnings from fees for the session, $5,040. A preparatory school was recommended to take charge of students unable to take College courses; recommended employment of assistants in the departments of Mathematics and Ancient Languages, particularly the latter, so that Prof. Price might initiate the School of English, as described in the Catalogue. Reference was made to the old trouble of financial embarrassment; also, to his efforts during the last summer's vacation to arouse interest in the College, which efforts he proposed to continue the coming summer as far as practicable.
[Illustration: JAMES M. BARROW, A. M., Superintendent of Public
Schools, Columbus, Miss.]
The Executive Committee reported that they had appointed as instructor in the Introductory Department, as authorized, Col. Henry W. Wingfield (A. M. Randolph-Macon College), at a salary not to exceed $800.
The Finance Committee reported as follows: Liabilities, $26,475; assets (outside of College buildings and lots), $31,375. On some of the bills payable a discount of 12 per cent. had been charged.
At this meeting Rev. W. E. Munsey, D. D., was elected Financial
Secretary. This position Dr. Munsey declined to accept.
Dr. William W. Bennett resigned the place of Agent, and Rev. George W.
Nolley was elected in his place.
[Illustration: CHARLES CARROLL, A. M. 1872. Washington Hall Builder.]
On the recommendation of the Faculty, the following degrees were conferred: Master of Arts, on James M. Barrow, of Virginia; Doctor of Divinity, on Rev. James W. Wightman, of Kentucky.
Rev. David Thomas was appointed as Agent to attend to subscriptions and collections within the bounds of the Baltimore Conference.
Richard Irby resigned the office of Treasurer, which he had held for two years, and William Willis, Jr., was elected in his stead.
[Illustration: H. C. PAULETT, One of the builders of Library Hall.]
In the third session (1870-'71) the effort to build the Library building for the halls and libraries of the two literary societies was inaugurated. Up to this time the two societies had occupied the ante-rooms attached to the chapel, which were very cramped and inconvenient. Who was the first to suggest the building of the new edifice is not known to this writer, but it is well known who the parties were who did the main work in raising the funds. They were, on the part of the Washington Society, Charles Carroll, of North Carolina, and H. C. Paulett, of Virginia; and on the part of the Franklin Society, William W. Smith and Jordan W. Lambert, of Virginia.
An old alumnus offered to give to the Society which should raise the largest amount a copy of Audubon's Birds of America.
[Illustration: JORDAN W. LAMBERT, Franklin Hall Builder.]
This enterprise was prosecuted with great zeal and skill, and the building devised by the young men, let to contract by them, and paid for by them (in most part), went on to completion. It was the first brick building ever erected on the campus, and the first ever built in the town. More will be said of this in due time.
At a called meeting of the Board, held in Richmond, February, 1871, the committee appointed to make sale of the buildings and property near Boydton reported the sale of the same to Henry G. McGonegal, of New York city. The sum of the purchase money was $12,500. This included the claim on the United States government, which was transferred with the property to the purchaser.
This sale was a great sacrifice, embracing as it did the two large College buildings, the Steward's Hall, Hotel, and President's residence, all brick structures, and, in addition, the old Preparatory School building (also brick), and three other dwellings, and several hundred acres of land. But the pecuniary obligations of the College were heavy and pressing, and the rate of interest, even on bonds secured by real estate, ten per cent. Under these circumstances, the sale was ratified, and the Board parted with the old premises, built, for the most part, in 1830-'32, at a cost largely over $50,000.
At the annual meeting in June, 1871, the President, in his report, spoke in high terms of the studiousness and good deportment of the students. The whole number in attendance was 142. The prospects for further increase were encouraging.
Prof. W. W. Valentine resigned the chair of Modern Languages, chiefly on account of delicate health. He was a faithful officer and a nice gentleman; he enjoyed the respect and regard of his colleagues and the Board.
Great embarrassment had been experienced on account of want of funds to meet promptly the salaries of the Faculty.
The appointment of a "fiscal executive officer, competent to execute the plans of the Board, and also to invent schemes of his own for obtaining funds," was strongly pressed. This recommendation was promptly adopted, and a committee appointed to define his duties and to nominate a suitable man for the place.
During the session this committee made report, defining the duties of the Financial Secretary, and placing all the business matters and financial interests in the hands of said officer. He was also to travel as much as practicable through the Conferences to influence patronage, secure donations and bequests, and also to encourage the Conference educational collections. The salary of the officer was fixed at $2,000 per annum.
[Illustration: REV. A. G. BROWN., D. D.]
To fill the office the committee nominated Rev. A. G. Brown, of the Virginia Conference. He was not a stranger to the College, having served as chaplain there in former years. He was duly elected, and a resolution adopted asking the Virginia Conference to assign him to this work.
This was a fortunate appointment. The Financial Secretary, after entering on his duties, proceeded promptly to adjust the matters of the College, and soon got them into manageable shape.
Prof. Thomas R. Price appeared before the Board and explained his views in regard to the "School of English."
On motion, it was—
Resolved, That the Faculty be, and they are hereby, authorized to establish, if they find it possible, "a School of English and Literature."
This most important move was on the same general plan adopted in 1835, and carried out for several years by Prof. E. D. Sims after his return from Europe, where he had spent several years studying Anglo-Saxon and other languages preparatory to this course.
It does not seem, however, that Prof. Price was aware that such a course had been previously established, and it was as original with him as it was with the first mover in it. Fortunately, in this second movement it became a permanent course, and the influence of the move has spread far and wide.
[Illustration: REV. W. W. ROYALL, D. D., (R. M. C., 1872-'75.) Missionary to China. Member Virginia Conference, M. E. Church South.]