LABORS FOR THE COLLEGE.
I entered upon my duties as President of Cumberland College, at Princeton, Kentucky, the second Monday in September, 1858. Of the commencement of my labors there I wrote as follows:
Cumberland College, Princeton, Kentucky, October 12, 1858.
Rev. James H. McNeill, Secretary of the American Bible Society,
New York.
My dear Brother: I have been very anxious to write you ever since I reached here, but have been so very busy that I could not get the time. I have had a great deal to do here in the commencement of my duties, and then I have been absent every Sabbath, and a portion of each week, attending presbyteries, synods, etc., to promote the interests of the college. Its friends are very sanguine in regard to its prospects. They think they have not been as good for many years. All the religious bodies that I have visited, the newspapers, and the public at large, seem interested in my success, and are doing all that they can for the college. I hope that I may do a great deal of good in this work.
Yours as ever,
H.W. Pierson.
My labors here until 1861 were not less exhausting than they had been since I entered upon my Bible work in 1853. In addition to my duties in the college, I traveled extensively, "electioneering" for students, as was the custom in that region. Their numbers increased to such an extent that we needed an additional building. I appealed to the people of the village and the county, and they responded most nobly by subscribing twenty thousand dollars, and erecting a college edifice, with a large assembly hall, library, recitation and all other needed rooms. I had the pleasure of taking my esteemed friend, the Right Rev. B.B. Smith, D.D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Kentucky, through the building, on one of his annual parochial visits to the village, and he pronounced it the most perfect and beautiful specimen of architecture in the State.
The attack on Fort Sumter, and the events that followed it, compelled the suspension of this, as they did of nearly or quite every other college in the Southwest and South, and terminated my labors there. Wishing to engage in similar educational work elsewhere, I asked for testimonials from a few of my friends, including Bishop Smith. He kindly gave the following, with which, as I at that time terminated my labors in the State, I will close this very personal volume, descriptive of my always pleasantly and gratefully remembered life and labors in the Southwest:
Louisville, Kentucky, September 19, 1861.
... I first knew Dr. Pierson (then Mr. Pierson) when acting as Bible agent in the waste places of Kentucky, and our hearts were strongly drawn toward each other in consequence of our having been "companions in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ"—I having labored and suffered in behalf of the same class of persons as Superintendent of Public Instruction, traveling for the greater part of two years over the roughest portions of Kentucky. To elevate our fellow-creatures so that they can read the Bible for themselves, and then to give to all such a Bible in their own tongues, is a noble work, and great suffering may well be cheerfully endured in the prosecution of it.
His exertions in behalf of the college at Princeton have attracted more of my attention, and elicited my most cordial admiration, beyond anything of the kind in this State for thirty years. The difficulties to be overcome were of no common kind, and the means at his disposal very limited; the skill with which he met the one, and the wisdom and energy with which he drew forth the other, have rarely been exceeded. And I have it from the lips of the most intelligent persons in the village, during my periodical visits, that no person they ever knew could have awakened equal enthusiasm in so good a cause. For myself, I should have looked upon the task of raising half the sum of twenty thousand dollars in such a village, for such a purpose, as altogether impracticable; and yet Dr. Pierson seemed to succeed with perfect ease.