Colleges in America

by John Marshall Barker

The American people owe much to the colleges for training capable and worthy men to fill the posts of honor and power in the nation. The men who have given shape and character to the early political organizations and spirit have been mostly collegians.

These institutions for higher education have trained men in history, philosophy, and the principles of government, who have become the right hand of strength to the nation. Their extensive knowledge and thoroughly disciplined and comprehensive minds have been largely instrumental in perfecting our system of government, and in elevating the nation to the rank of one of the greatest political powers.

The colleges have trained the intellect and conscience of the majority of students so that they have gone forth as leaders, and have exerted a prodigious influence among the people for right thinking and right acting. They have not only disciplined the powers of the masterly statesmen, but have fostered among them a sense of fraternity concerning our civil destinies. The students that have been gathered into the colleges from the different portions of the nation have become imbued with one sentiment, and entered upon public life linked together by the bonds of a common intellectual life and strong friendships, which have resulted favorably for the republic.

Some of the colonial colleges have richly repaid the nation for all the effort and sacrifice it cost to found them. William and Mary College has sent out twenty or more members of Congress, fifteen United States Senators, seventeen Governors, thirty-seven Judges, a Lieutenant General and other high officers of the Army, two Commodores to the Navy, twelve professors, seven Cabinet officers; the chief draughtsman and author of the Constitution, Edmund Randolph; the most eminent of the Chief Justices, John Marshall, and three Presidents of the United States.

Harvard has furnished two Presidents, one Vice President, fifteen Cabinet officers, twenty Foreign Ministers, twenty-nine United States Senators, one hundred and four Congressmen, and nineteen Governors.

Princeton has beaten the Harvard record in everything except the first and fourth items. It has given to the country one President, two Vice Presidents, nineteen Cabinet officers, nineteen Foreign Ministers, fifty-five United States Senators, one hundred and forty-two Congressmen, and thirty-five Governors.

The collegians have ranked among the principal leaders in the political life of the nation. Fifty-eight per cent. of the chief national offices have been filled by them. Thomas Jefferson, author of the "Declaration of Independence," was a college man. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, who took such a prominent part in the framing of the Constitution of the United States, were college-trained men. Three-fourths of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were college graduates. These and other superior men in public life, at this period, were educated and possessed a scholarship that was in compass and variety more than abreast with the learning of the time. George Washington was a self-made man, but he had recourse to America's greatest statesman, Alexander Hamilton, a graduate of Columbia College, in preparing his state papers.

The counsellors of Abraham Lincoln, during the stormy days of the Rebellion, were men of trained minds. "All the leaders," says Professor S. N. Fellow, "in that Cabinet were college-trained men. William H. Seward, the shrewdest diplomatist, who held other nations at bay until the Rebellion was throttled; Salmon P. Chase, whose fertile brain developed a financial system by which our nation was saved from national bankruptcy, and made national bonds as good as the gold in foreign markets; Edwin M. Stanton, that man of iron, who organized a million of raw recruits into an army equal to any in the world; Gideon Welles, who, almost from nothing, created a navy sufficient for our needs,—each of these, and every other member of Lincoln's Cabinet, save one, was a college graduate. So, also, in the army. It was not until thoroughly trained and disciplined men filled the chief places in command that the Federal forces overwhelmed and destroyed the Rebellion. We repeat, the law is, and it is believed to be universal, that the higher the rank or position, the larger per cent. of college graduates are found in it."

Education was an important factor in deciding the issues of our Civil War. Thoroughly trained and disciplined men filled the chief places in command in the Federal Army. The Northern soldiers were better educated than those of the South. It has been said that "in the German Army that fought the battles of the Franco-Prussian war, those who could neither read nor write amounted to only 3.8 per cent., while in the French Army the number amounted to 30.4 per cent." According to the admission of the defeated, the universities conquered at Sedan. Perhaps it is not too much to say that the great number of colleges in the Northern States conquered at Appomattox.

A large per cent. of the leaders in the American Congress, during the trying period of our country's history from 1860 to 1870, were either college graduates or had taken a partial course in college and gained its inspiration.