Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 1

by Andrew Dickson White

UNIVERSITY LIFE IN THE WEST—1857-1864

It must be confessed that all was not plain sailing in my new position. One difficulty arose from my very youthful, not to say boyish, appearance. I was, indeed, the youngest member of the faculty; but at twenty-four years one has the right to be taken for a man, and it was vexatious to be taken for a youth of seventeen. At my first arrival in the university town I noticed, as the train drew up to the station, a number of students, evidently awaiting the coming of such freshmen as might be eligible to the various fraternities; and, on landing, I was at once approached by a sophomore, who asked if I was about to enter the university. For an instant I was grievously abashed, but pulling myself together, answered in a sort of affirmative way; and at this he became exceedingly courteous, taking pains to pilot me to a hotel, giving me much excellent advice, and even insisting on carrying a considerable amount of my baggage. Other members of fraternities joined us, all most courteous and kind, and the d<e'>nouement came only at the registration of my name in the hotel book, when they recognized in me ``the new professor.'' I must say to their credit that, although they were for a time laughed at throughout the university, they remained my warm personal friends.

But after I had discharged the duties of my professorship for a considerable period, this same difficulty existed. On a shooting excursion, an old friend and myself came, and, being very hungry, asked for bread and milk. My companion being delayed outside, cleaning the guns, the farmer's wife left me and went out to talk with him. I continued eating my bread and milk voraciously, and shortly afterward they entered, he laughing heartily and she looking rather shamefaced. On my asking the cause he declined for a time to state it, but at length said that she had come out to warn him that if he did not come in pretty soon ``that boy would eat up all the bread and milk in the house.'' This story leaked out, and even appeared in a local paper, but never, I think, did me any harm.

Another occurrence, shortly afterward, seemed likely for a time to be more serious. The sophomore class, exuberant and inventive as ever, were evidently determined to ``try it on'' their young professor—in fact, to treat me as they had treated their tutors. Any mistake made by a student at a quiz elicited from sundry benches expressions of regret much too plaintive, or ejaculations of contempt much too explosive; and from these and various similar demonstrations which grew every day among a certain set in my class-room, it was easy to see that a trial of strength must soon come, and it seemed to me best to force the fighting. Looking over these obstreperous youths I noticed one tall, black-bearded man with a keen twinkle in his eye, who was evidently the leader. There was nothing in him especially demonstrative. He would occasionally nod in this direction, or wink in that, or smile in the other; but he was solemn when others were hilarious, unconcerned when others applauded. It was soon clear to me that in him lay the key to the situation, and one day, at the close of the examination, I asked him to remain. When we were alone I said to him, in an easy-going way, ``So, F——, I see that either you or I must leave the university.'' He at once bristled up, feigned indignation, and said that he could not understand me. This I pooh-poohed, saying that we understood each other perfectly; that I had been only recently a student myself; that, if the growing trouble in the class continued, either he or I must give it up, and added, ``I believe the trustees will prefer your departure to mine.'' At this he protested that he had made no demonstrations, to which I answered that if I put him on his honor he would not deny that he was the real center of the difficulty; that the others were, comparatively, men of small account; and that, with him gone, the backbone of the whole difficulty would be broken. He seemed impressed by this view—possibly he was not wholly displeased at the importance it gave him; and finally he acknowledged that perhaps he had been rather foolish, and suggested that we try to live together a little longer. I answered cordially, we shook hands at parting, and there was never any trouble afterward. I soon found what sort of questions interested him most, took especial pains to adapt points in my lectures to his needs, and soon had no stronger friend in the university.

But his activity finally found a less fortunate outcome. A year or two afterward came news of a terrible affair in the university town. A student was lying dead at the coroner's rooms, and on inquiry it was found that his death was the result of a carousal in which my friend F—— was a leading spirit. Eight men were concerned, of whom four were expelled—F—— being one—and four suspended. On leaving, he came to me and thanked me most heartily for what I had done for him, said that the action of the faculty was perfectly just, that no other course was open to us, but that he hoped yet to show us all that he could make a man of himself. He succeeded. Five years later he fell as a general at the head of his brigade at Gettysburg.

In addition to my regular work at the university, I lectured frequently in various cities throughout Michigan and the neighboring States. It was the culminating period of the popular-lecture system, and through the winter months my Friday and Saturday evenings were generally given to this sort of duty. It was, after its fashion, what in these days is called ``university extension''; indeed, the main purpose of those members of the faculty thus invited to lecture was to spread the influence of the university. But I received from the system more than I gave to it; for it gave me not only many valuable acquaintances throughout the West, but it brought to Ann Arbor the best men then in the field, among them such as Emerson, Curtis, Whipple, Wendell Phillips, Carl Schurz, Moncure Conway, Bayard Taylor, and others noted then, but, alas, how few of them remembered now! To have them by my fireside and at my table was one of the greatest pleasures of a professorial life. It was at the beginning of my housekeeping; and under my roof on the university grounds we felt it a privilege to welcome these wise men from the East, and to bring the faculty and students into closer relations with them.

As regards the popular-lecture pulpit, my main wish was to set people thinking on various subjects, and especially regarding slavery and ``protection.'' This presently brought a storm upon me. Some years before there had settled in the university town a thin, vociferous lawyer, past his prime, but not without ideas and force. He had for many years been a department subordinate at Washington; but, having accumulated some money, he had donned what was then known as senatorial costume— namely, a blue swallow-tailed coat, and a buff vest, with brass buttons—and coming to this little Michigan town he had established a Whig paper, which afterward became Republican. He was generally credited, no doubt justly, with a determination to push himself into the United States Senate; but this determination was so obvious that people made light of it, and he never received the honor of a nomination to that or any other position. The main burden of his editorials was the greatness of Henry Clay, and the beauties of a protective tariff, his material being largely drawn from a book he had published some years before; and, on account of the usual form of his arguments, he was generally referred to, in the offhand Western way, as ``Old Statistics.''

In a public lecture based upon my Russian experiences, I had incidentally attacked paternal government, and especially such developments of it as tariffs for protection. The immediate result was a broadside from this gentleman's paper, and this I answered in an article which was extensively copied throughout the State. At this he evidently determined to crush this intruder upon his domain. That an ``upstart''—a ``mere school-teacher''— should presume to reply to a man like himself, who had sat at the feet of Henry Clay, and was old enough to be my father, was monstrous presumption; but that a professor in the State university of a commonwealth largely Republican should avow free-trade opinions was akin to treason, and through twelve successive issues of his paper he lashed me in all the moods and tenses. As these attacks soon became scurrilous, I made no reply to any after the first; but his wrath was increased when he saw my reply quoted by the press throughout the State and his own diatribes neglected. Among his more serious charges I remember but one, and this was that I had evidently come into the State as a secret emissary of Van Burenism. But I recalled the remark of my enemy's idol, Henry Clay, to the effect that no one should ever reply to an attack by an editor, a priest, or a woman, since each of them is sure to have the last word. This feeling was soon succeeded by indifference; for my lecture-rooms, both at the university and throughout the State, were more and more frequented, and it became clear that my opponent's attacks simply advertised me. The following year I had my revenge. From time to time debates on current topics were held at the city hall, the participants being generally young professional men; but, the subject of a tariff for protection having been announced, my old enemy declared, several weeks beforehand, his intention of taking part in the discussion. Among my students that winter was one of the most gifted young scholars and speakers I have ever known. Not long after his graduation he was sent to the United States Senate from one of the more important Western States, and nothing but his early death prevented his attaining a national reputation. He was a man of convictions, strong and skilful in impressing them upon his hearers, of fine personal appearance, with a pleasing voice, and in every way fitted to captivate an audience. Him I selected as the David who was to punish the protectionist Goliath. He had been himself a protectionist, having read Greeley's arguments in the ``New York Tribune,'' but he had become a convert to my views, and day after day and week after week I kept him in training on the best expositions of free trade, and, above all, on Bastiat's ``Sophisms of Protection.'' On the appointed evening the city hall was crowded, and my young David having modestly taken a back seat, the great Goliath appeared at the front in full senatorial costume, furbished up for the occasion, with an enormous collection of books and documents; and, the subject being announced, he arose, assumed his most imposing senatorial attitude, and began a dry, statistical oration. His manner was harsh, his matter wearisome; but he plodded on through an hour —and then my David arose. He was at his best. In five minutes he had the audience fully with him. Every point told. From time to time the house shook with applause; and at the close of the debate, a vote of the meeting being taken after the usual fashion in such assemblies, my old enemy was left in a ridiculous minority. Not only free-traders, but even protectionists voted against him. As he took himself very seriously, he was intensely mortified, and all the more so when he learned from one of my students that I now considered that we were ``even.''[4]

[4] The causes of my change of views on the question of ``protection'' are given in my political reminiscences.

The more I threw myself into the work of the university the more I came to believe in the ideas on which it was founded, and to see that it was a reality embodying many things of which I had previously only dreamed. Up to that time the highest institutions of learning in the United States were almost entirely under sectarian control. Even the University of Virginia, which Thomas Jefferson had founded as a center of liberal thought, had fallen under the direction of sectarians, and among the great majority of the Northern colleges an unwritten law seemed to require that a university president should be a clergyman. The instruction in the best of these institutions was, as I have shown elsewhere, narrow, their methods outworn, and the students, as a rule, confined to one simple, single, cast-iron course, in which the great majority of them took no interest. The University of Michigan had made a beginning of something better. The president was Dr. Henry Philip Tappan, formerly a Presbyterian clergyman, a writer of repute on philosophical subjects, a strong thinker, an impressive orator, and a born leader of men, who, during a visit to Europe, had been greatly impressed by the large and liberal system of the German universities, and had devoted himself to urging a similar system in our own country. On the Eastern institutions—save, possibly, Brown—he made no impression. Each of them was as stagnant as a Spanish convent, and as self-satisfied as a Bourbon duchy; but in the West he attracted supporters, and soon his ideas began to show themselves effective in the State university over which he had been called to preside.