Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 1

by Andrew Dickson White

But the locomotive-driver was none the less a personage, and I must confess that my old feeling of respect for him clings to me still. To this hour I never see him controlling his fiery steed without investing him with some of the attributes which I discerned in him during my childhood. It is evident to me that the next heroes whom poets will exploit will be the drivers of our railway trains and the pilots of our ocean steamers. One poet has, indeed, made a beginning already,—and this poet the Secretary of State of the United States under whom I am now serving, the Hon. John Hay. Still another poet, honored throughout the world, has also found a hero in the engine-driver, and Rudyard Kipling will no doubt be followed by others.

But my dream of becoming a locomotive-driver faded, and while in college I speculated not a little as to what, after all, should be my profession. The idea of becoming a clergyman had long since left my mind. The medical profession had never attracted me. For the legal profession I sought to prepare myself somewhat, but as I saw it practised by the vast majority of lawyers, it seemed a waste of all that was best in human life. Politics were from an early period repulsive to me, and, after my first sight of Washington in its shabby, sleazy, dirty, unkempt condition under the old slave oligarchy, political life became absolutely repugnant to my tastes and desires. At times a longing came over me to settle down in the country, to make an honest living from a farm—a longing which took its origin in a visit which I had made as a child to the farm of an uncle who lived upon the shores of Seneca Lake. He was a man of culture, who, by the aid of a practical farmer and an income from other sources, got along very well. His roomy, old-fashioned house, his pleasant library, his grounds sloping to the lake, his peach-orchard, which at my visit was filled with delicious fruit, and the pleasant paths through the neighboring woods captivated me, and for several years the agricultural profession lingered in my visions as the most attractive of all.

As I now look back to my early manhood, it seems that my natural inclination should have been toward journalism; but although such a career proves attractive to many of our best university-bred men now, it was not so then. In those days men did not prepare for it; they drifted into it. I do not think that at my graduation there was one out of the one hundred and eight members of my class who had the slightest expectation of permanently connecting himself with a newspaper. This seems all the more singular since that class has since produced a large number of prominent journalists, and among these George Washburne Smalley, the most eminent, by far, among American newspaper correspondents of our time; Evarts Greene, a leading editor of Worcester; Delano Goddard, late editor of the ``Boston Advertiser''; Kinsley Twining, for a considerable time an editor of the ``Independent''; Isaac Bromley, who for years delighted the Republican party with his contributions to the editorial page of the ``Tribune''; Dr. James Morris Whiton, a leading writer for the ``Outlook''; and others. Yet in those days probably not one of these ever thought of turning to journalism as a career. There were indeed at that time eminent editors, like Weed, Croswell, Greeley, Raymond, and Webb, but few college-bred men thought of journalism as a profession. Looking back upon all this, I feel certain that, were I to begin life again with my present experience, that would be the career for which I would endeavor to fit myself. It has in it at present many admirable men, but far more who are manifestly unfit. Its capacities for good or evil are enormous, yet the majority of those at present in it seem to me like savages who have found a watch. I can think of no profession in which young men properly fitted—gifted with ideas and inspired by a real wish to do something for their land and time—can more certainly do good work and win distinction. To supplant the present race of journalistic prostitutes, who are making many of our newspapers as foul in morals, as low in tone, and as vile in utterance as even the worst of the French press, might well be the ambition of leading thinkers in any of our universities. There is nothing so greatly needed in our country as an uplifting of the daily press, and there is no work promising better returns.

But during my student life in Paris and Berlin another vista began to open before me. I had never lost that respect for the teaching profession which had been aroused in my childhood by the sight of Principal Woolworth enthroned among the students of Cortland Academy, and this early impression was now greatly deepened by my experience at the Sorbonne, the College of France, and the University of Berlin. My favorite studies at Yale had been history and kindred subjects, but these had been taught mainly from text-books. Lectures were few and dry. Even those of President Woolsey were not inspiring; he seemed paralyzed by the system of which he formed a part. But men like Arnould, St. Marc Girardin, and Laboulaye in France, and Lepsius, Ritter, von Raumer, and Curtius in Germany, lecturing to large bodies of attentive students on the most interesting and instructive periods of human history, aroused in me a new current of ideas. Gradually I began to ask myself the question: Why not help the beginnings of this system in the United States? I had long felt deeply the shortcomings of our American universities, and had tried hard to devise something better; yet my ideas as to what could really be done to improve them had been crude and vague. But now, in these great foreign universities, one means of making a reform became evident, and this was, first of all, the substitution of lectures for recitations, and the creation of an interest in history by treating it as a living subject having relations to present questions. Upon this I reflected much, and day by day the idea grew upon me. So far as I can remember, there was not at that time a professor of history pure and simple in any American university. There had been courses of historical lectures at a few institutions, but they were, as a rule, spasmodic and perfunctory. How history was taught at Yale is shown in another chapter of these reminiscences. The lectures of President Sparks had evidently trained up no school of historical professors at Harvard. There had been a noted professor at William and Mary College, Virginia,—doubtless, in his time, the best historical lecturer in the United States,—Dr. William Dew, the notes of whose lectures, as afterward published, were admirable; but he had left no successor. Francis Lieber, at the University of South Carolina, had taught political philosophy with much depth of thought and wealth of historical illustration; but neither there nor elsewhere did there exist anything like systematic courses in history such as have now been developed in so many of our universities and colleges.

During my stay as resident graduate at Yale after my return from Europe in 1856, I often discussed the subject with my old friend and companion Gilman, now president of the Carnegie Institution, and with my beloved instructor, Professor Porter. Both were kind enough to urge me to remain at New Haven, assuring me that in time a professorship would be established. To promote this I wrote an article on ``German Instruction in General History,'' which was well received when published in the ``New Englander,'' and prepared sundry lectures, which were received by the university people and by the New York press more favorably than I now think they deserved. But there seemed, after all, no chance for a professorship devoted to this line of study. More and more, too, I felt that even if I were called to a historical professorship at Yale, the old- fashioned orthodoxy which then prevailed must fetter me: I could not utter the shibboleths then demanded, and the future seemed dark indeed. Yet my belief in the value of better historical instruction in our universities grew more and more, and a most happy impulse was now given to my thinking by a book which I read and reread— Stanley's ``Life of Arnold.'' It showed me much, but especially two things: first, how effective history might be made in bringing young men into fruitful trains of thought regarding present politics; and, secondly, how real an influence an earnest teacher might thus exercise upon his country.

While in this state of mind I met my class assembled at the Yale commencement of 1856 to take the master's degree in course, after the manner of those days. This was the turning-point with me. I had been for some time more and more uneasy and unhappy because my way did not seem to clear; but at this commencement of 1856, while lounging among my classmates in the college yard, I heard some one say that President Wayland of Brown University was addressing the graduates in the Hall of the Alumni. Going to the door, I looked in, and saw at the high table an old man, strong-featured, heavy-browed, with spectacles resting on the top of his head, and just at that moment he spoke very impressively as follows: ``The best field of work for graduates is now in the WEST; our country is shortly to arrive at a switching-off place for good or evil; our Western States are to hold the balance of power in the Union, and to determine whether the country shall become a blessing or a curse in human history.''

I had never seen him before; I never saw him afterward. His speech lasted less than ten minutes, but it settled a great question for me. I went home and wrote to sundry friends that I was a candidate for the professorship of history in any Western college where there was a chance to get at students, and as a result received two calls—one to a Southern university, which I could not accept on account of my anti-slavery opinions; the other to the University of Michigan, which I accepted. My old college friends were kind enough to tender me later the professorship in the new School of Art at Yale, but my belief was firm in the value of historical studies. The words of Wayland rang in my ears, and I went gladly into the new field.

On arriving at the University of Michigan in October, 1857, although I had much to do with other students, I took especial charge of the sophomore class. It included many young men of ability and force, but had the reputation of being the most unmanageable body which had been known there in years. Thus far it had been under the charge of tutors, and it had made life a burden to them. Its preparation for the work I sought to do was wretchedly imperfect. Among my duties was the examination of entrance classes in modern geography as a preliminary to their admission to my course in history, and I soon discovered a serious weakness in the public-school system. In her preparatory schools the State of Michigan took especial pride, but certainly at that time they were far below their reputation. If any subject was supposed to be thoroughly taught in them it was geography, but I soon found that in the great majority of my students there was not a trace of real knowledge of physical geography and very little of political. With this state of things I at once grappled, and immediately ``conditioned'' in these studies about nine tenths of the entering class. At first there were many protests; but I said to my ingenuous youths that no pedantic study was needed, that all I required was a preparation such as would enable any one of them to read intelligently his morning newspaper, and to this end I advised each one of them to accept his conditions, to abjure all learning by rote from text-books, to take up simply any convenient atlas which came to hand, studying first the map of our own country, with its main divisions, physical and political, its water communications, trend of coasts, spurring of mountains, positions of leading cities, etc., and then to do the same thing with each of the leading countries of Europe, and finally with the other main divisions of the world. To stimulate their interest and show them what was meant, I gave a short course of lectures on physical geography, showing some of its more striking effects on history; then another course on political geography, with a similar purpose; and finally notified my young men that they were admitted to my classes in history only under condition that, six weeks later, they should pass an examination in geography, full, satisfactory, and final. The young fellows now took their conditions very kindly, for they clearly saw the justice of them. One young man said to me: ``Professor, you are entirely right in conditioning me, but I was never so surprised in my life; if there was anything which I supposed I knew well it was geography; why, I have taught it, and very successfully, in a large public school.'' On my asking him how he taught a subject in which he was so deficient, he answered that he had taught his pupils to ``sing'' it. I replied that if he would sing the answers to my questions, I would admit him at once; but this he declined, saying that he much preferred to accept the conditions. In about six weeks I held the final examinations, and their success amazed us all. Not a man failed, and some really distinguished themselves. They had all gone at the work cordially and heartily, arranging themselves in squads and clubs for mutual study and examination on each physical and political map; and it is certain that by this simple, common-sense method they learned more in six weeks than they had previously learned in years of plodding along by rote, day after day through text-books.

Nor was this mere ``cram.'' Their geographical knowledge lasted and was increased, as was proved at my historical examinations afterward.

I soon became intensely interested in my work, and looked forward to it every day with pleasure. The first part of it was instruction in modern history as a basis for my lectures which were to follow, and for this purpose I used with the sophomores two text-books. The first of these was Robertson's ``Philosophical View of the Middle Ages,'' which forms the introduction to his ``Life of Charles the Fifth.'' Although superseded in many of its parts by modern investigation, very defective in several important matters, and in some things—as, for example, in its appreciation of medieval literature—entirely mistaken, it was, when written one hundred years ago, recognized as a classic, and it remains so to this day. It was a work of genius. Supplemented by elucidations and extensions, it served an admirable purpose in introducing my students to the things really worth knowing in modern history, without confusing them with masses of pedantic detail.