The second year Carnes sold his farm and mill, and invested the money in building brick dormitories for the growing student body, who came during his presidency from all the Southern states except Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, older States which had good colleges. His greatest problem was drunkenness, for which many students were expelled. Finally Carnes went to Nashville and with the assistance of organized temperance forces he secured the enactment of a law by the legislature prohibiting the sale of intoxicants within four miles of a chartered institution of learning except in incorporated towns and cities. This aroused a great deal of feeling against him. One of the distilleries in the vicinity of Spencer is said to have been owned by a preacher. Carnes’ home, including the girls’ dormitory, was burned. At this time he was invited by the board of trustees of East Tennessee University to become president of that institution. They assured him that a gymnasium would be built, that the sentiment in favor of coeducation was growing, and that the municipal government of Knoxville would prevent the sale of liquor to students. He accordingly accepted the invitation, and resigned the presidency of Burritt College, a position he had held for eight years.
Carnes was succeeded by John Powell who continued to be president of Burritt until 1861, when most of the male students left to join the armies in the War between the States. During the war the college premises were used as an encampment for soldiers, and the buildings were greatly abused and damaged, the dormitories being used for stables for horses.
At the close of the war the College was reopened under the presidency of Martin White. He was a relative of the John White for whom White County was named. The family was from Virginia, where Martin White was educated. After three years his health was impaired and his physician advised him to leave the high altitude of Spencer. He was succeeded by John Powell, who became president for a second time. He, in turn, after two years, was followed by Carnes for a second term which lasted for six years.
As president a total of fourteen years of the first twenty-three years of Burritt College’s history. Carnes was largely responsible for setting its standards, intellectual, moral, and religious. The school day was a long one, extending from five in the morning to nine in the evening. The schedule required the students to awake and leave their beds at the ringing of the bell at that early hour during all seasons. There was no daylight saving in those days. An hour of study was required before breakfast. The students marched into the chapel at eight o’clock for a short religious service. This was followed by recitations interspersed with study periods until about four o’clock in the afternoon, except for an intermission of an hour and a half for the noon meal and two brief periods for exercise during the morning and afternoon. Two hours of study were required in the evening. All lights were to be extinguished at the ringing of the bell at nine o’clock. There were strict rules and regulations against fighting and carrying deadly weapons; against swearing and the use of obscene language; against gambling, card playing, and other behavior “calculated to corrupt the morals of youth”; against using tobacco and drinking intoxicating liquor. There were many other rules regulating the relationship between the male and female students, behavior on Sunday, the care of College property, and the avoidance of indebtedness.
Life at Burritt was somewhat austere and simple but it was on a very high intellectual and religious plane,—a good example of the ideal of “the Attic soul in a Spartan mould,” a combination of what was best in the two somewhat contrasting Spartan and Athenian cultures of ancient Greece. The most important extracurricular activity centered around the two literary societies, Philomatheian and Calliopean, founded early in the history of the College. They afforded the students opportunities for development in written and oral expression. Many later eloquent and effective public speakers thus secured their first experience and training. The programs of these societies were composed of recitations, orations, and debates. Girls were admitted to membership in 1884, and it then became apparent that they were a healthful factor in the social as well as intellectual development of these organizations. Later in the new college building each society was given a special room for its meetings and for housing its library, each having as many as 800 volumes by 1895. The College curriculum also provided for weekly exercises in public speaking on Friday afternoons, and in later years introduced a department of elocution, or expression as it was also called.
When Carnes retired from the presidency in 1878 at the age of 78, he was succeeded by Dr. T. W. Brents. Like Elihu Burritt, Brents when a young man became a blacksmith by trade and developed a robust, powerful physique. He later studied medicine, and taught anatomy and surgery in Macon Medical College in Georgia previous to the War between the States. Then he returned to Tennessee where he divided his time between the practice of medicine and preaching and the mercantile business. During his four years as president of Burritt he completed the raising of money for the construction of a new three-story building. This was a large, commodious, elegant building which stood for twenty-eight years until it was destroyed by fire in 1906. After rendering this great service to Burritt, Dr. Brents retired from the presidency to devote himself to writing and preaching, becoming widely known as the author of The Gospel Plan of Salvation and as a very successful debater who exposed scriptural error with merciless logic. I recall hearing him preach at Spencer only once, when I was impressed with his scholarship and forceful delivery, his dignity, and his long beard which gave him a patriarchal appearance.
Dr. Brents was followed, in turn, by A. T. Seitz, A. G. Thomas, and W. H. Sutton, who served as president for four, one and two years respectively. Seitz, a native of Warren County and a lawyer by profession, was baptized into the church by President Carnes. After leaving Burritt, Seitz went to Italy, Texas where he established a successful school and also devoted himself to preaching. Thomas came from Georgia and brought his faculty with him. He was unsuccessful, the student body of seventy being reduced to thirty-five by the middle of the fall term. One of his students characterized him and his faculty as being “kid glove.” William Howard Sutton had been a student at the College of Manchester, Tennessee, while Carnes was its president just prior to his return to the presidency of Burritt. He then had studied in the Business Department of Cumberland University and had later taught there and in Bryant and Stratton’s Business College in Nashville. Before becoming president of Burritt, he had been a professor in that institution for six years. He resigned the presidency after two years to devote his life to preaching, in which he was eminently successful. As H. Leo Boles has written, “Every one who knew him called him ‘Brother Sutton.’ He had a kind word for everybody and his friends were numbered by his acquaintances. For the length of time that he lived, labored, and loved, possibly no other man ever did more good than did Brother Sutton. Many who were blessed by this good man are still living and cherish sacred memories of him.” As one who was “blessed by this good man” through whose preaching I became a member of the Church of Christ, I wish to pay tribute to his warm friendliness, his spontaneous humor, his earnest eloquence, and his practical Christianity.
In 1890, William Newton Billingsley became president of Burritt College, where he had graduated in 1873. Never were the man and the position better suited for each other. Since his graduation at Burritt, he had taught at Eaton Institute and Onward Seminary in White County, whose Superintendent of Public Instruction he had been for four years. President Billingsley was an excellent scholar and an extraordinarily skillful teacher, also a careful administrator and disciplinarian. He was an eloquent and effective lecturer and preacher. He taught his students much more than the subject matter in the textbooks and the courses of study. He taught them by precept and example the fundamental moral and religious principles of right living and honest thinking—the best preparation that young people can have for the battle of life. I owe to him as teacher and friend a debt of gratitude for knowledge and inspiration which for many years I have attempted to repay by trying to pass on to others the lessons I learned from him,—the kind of repayment which would be most pleasing and satisfying to such a man.
The period of the twenty-one years of Billingsley’s presidency was the most noteworthy during the history of the College. Upon the solid foundations already laid, he built with a sure hand a beautiful and imposing superstructure. For many years I have preserved a copy of his address to the graduating class of Burritt on May 22, 1903, of which I was a member. It is entitled, “No Excellence without Great Labor,” a theme on which he often spoke, as it was the keystone in the arch of his philosophy of education and of life. May I quote the concluding paragraph as an example of his eloquent, sincere, and inspiring leadership?
“You have all heard,” he declared, “the story of the stone-cutter in a strange city who had no greater ambition than to earn a humble living for his dear ones. This was his joy, his life. Faithfully and conscientiously he does his allotted work with patience and care. Today he carves a leaf, the next a flower, hour by hour bringing some new beauty out of the rough stone or marble before him, not knowing what was to be its use. One day, however, when walking quietly along the street, he came to a large building of stone rising loftily and grandly above its surroundings. He stopped to admire it and, on drawing nearer, recognized his own work. All unconsciously he had helped to rear a monument that would be as lasting as time, that would be an example and joy in ages to come. So it is with our lives; if we are engaged in honest work, we shall go on from day to day, all unconscious of the monuments which we are building, the fabrics which we are weaving. The day may often close and leave us discouraged and dissatisfied, feeling that little, if any, good has been accomplished; but let us remember that, if we have worked faithfully and honestly, in the fabric we have woven there will be many bright shining threads—threads of gold and silver, mingled, they may be, with the darker ones of sorrow, disappointment, and failure, yet all so interwoven as to form a pattern of grace and beauty. In cheerfully, patiently doing what our hands find to do with Christ for our foundation, we can build monuments of worth,—yea, of eternal glory.”