American Men of Mind

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

He was succeeded in 1886 by Timothy Dwight, grandson of the elder president Dwight, who, for many years has been closely associated with the University, its financial growth being largely due to his efforts. Under his management the growth of the institution was unprecedented, the number of students increasing nearly fifty per cent within five years. He was also prominently identified with the general educational movement throughout the country, and his "True Ideal of an American University," published in 1872, attracted much attention.

Princeton has also had its share of eminent men, among them Jonathan Edwards, John Witherspoon, and James McCosh. Jonathan Edwards was one of the most remarkable characters in American history. Born in 1703, he was the fifth of eleven children and the only son. As a mere child, he developed uncommon qualities, entered Yale College at the age of twelve and graduated at the age of seventeen. His father was a clergyman, and the boy had been brought up in a household and community intensely religious, so that he very early began to have "a variety of concerns and exercises about his soul." It was inevitable, of course, that he should become a minister, and, at the age of nineteen, was ordained and began to preach at a small church in New York City. Edwards seems to have been afflicted from the first with what is in these days irreverently called an in-growing conscience, and early formulated for himself a set of seventy resolutions of the most exalted nature, which, however praiseworthy in themselves, were too high and good for human nature's daily food, and must have made him a most uncomfortable person to live with. He developed, however, into a powerful preacher, and his services were much sought, especially at revivals. One of his sermons, called "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," is said to have created a profound impression wherever delivered.

A difference with his congregation at Northampton caused him to resign his pastorate there, and, declining a number of calls to established parishes, he went as a missionary to the Housatonick Indians, at so small an income that his wife and daughters were forced to labor with the needle to support the family. It was while engaged in this work, that an unexpected call came to him to take the presidency of Princeton. He accepted and was installed as president early in 1758. At once he began a series of reforms in the college administration, but an epidemic of small-pox broke out in the neighborhood, and Edwards, exposing himself to it fearlessly, contracted the disease and died thirty-four days after his installation.

Jonathan Edwards probably came as near to the old idea of a saint as America ever produced. Self-denying, stern, of an exalted piety, and intensely religious, he lived in a world of his own, and was regarded with no little awe and trembling. That he was a power for good cannot be doubted, and his sermons are still read, where those of his contemporaries have long since been forgotten.

Much more important to Princeton, was John Witherspoon, who came to the presidency in 1768, after a distinguished career in Scotland, one of the incidents of which was being taken a prisoner while incautiously watching the battle of Falkirk. He never wholly recovered from the effects of the imprisonment which followed. He brought with him from Scotland a valuable library which he gave to the college, and, finding the college treasury empty, he undertook a vigorous campaign to replenish it, making a tour of New England, and even extending his quest as far as Jamaica and the West Indies. Through his administrative ability and the changes and additions which he made in the course of study, the college received a great impetus.

The service to his adopted country by which Witherspoon will be longest remembered, was the course he followed at the beginning of the Revolution. From the first, he took the side of the colonies, and by precept and example, held not only the great body of Presbyterians true to that cause, but also the Scotch and Scotch-Irish, who were naturally Tories by sympathy. He was a member of the Continental Congress, urged ceaselessly the passage of the Declaration of Independence, was one of its signers, and as a member of succeeding Congresses, distinguished himself by his services. After the close of the war, he returned to Princeton and devoted the remainder of his life to its administration.

Greatest of the three as an educator was James McCosh. A Scotchman, like Witherspoon, a student of the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, a pupil of Thomas Chalmers, he was ordained to the ministry in 1835, and was a leading spirit in the movement which culminated in the establishment of the Free Church of Scotland. His publications on philosophical subjects brought him the appointment as professor of logic and metaphysics in Queen's College, Belfast, where he remained for sixteen years, drawing to the college a large body of students, and publishing other philosophical works of the first importance. In 1868, he was chosen president of Princeton, and his administration, lasting for nearly a quarter of a century, was remarkably successful. Under him, the student attendance nearly doubled, the teaching staff was more than doubled, and the resources of the college enormously increased. During these years, too, he continued his philosophical work, publishing a series of volumes which are the most noteworthy of their kind ever produced in America.

The temptation is great to dwell upon other educators connected with the great universities: Ira Remsen, and his contributions to chemistry; David Starr Jordan, and his great work on American fishes; Woodrow Wilson, and his contributions to the study of American history; Jacob Gould Schurman, and his work in the field of ethics;—to mention only a few of them—but there is not space to do so here. However, this chapter cannot be closed without some reference to the career of a remarkable woman, an educator in the truest sense, whose influence for good can hardly be estimated—Jane Addams.

John Burns, the English cabinet minister and labor leader, has called her "the only saint America has produced." Her sainthood is of the modern kind, which devotes itself by practical work to the alleviation of suffering and the uplifting of humanity, as opposed to the old fashioned kind of which we were speaking a moment ago in connection with Jonathan Edwards.

Graduating at Rockford College, in 1881, Miss Addams, then a delicate girl, spent two years in Europe. The sight which impressed her most, and which, to a large extent, determined her future career, was that of Mile End Road, the most crowded and squalid district of London, where she beheld a dirty and destitute mob quarreling over food unfit to eat. This vision of squalor and sin never left her, and the result was the establishment, in 1889, of the Social Settlement of Hull House, in the slums of Chicago. For Miss Addams had come to the conclusion that the only way to reach the destitute and despairing was to dwell among them.