3. In addition to the foregoing, he would grow up with habits of industry, economy and morality, and, what is of little less importance, a firm and vigorous constitution; with a head to conceive and an arm to execute—he would emphatically possess a sound mind in a sound body.
After much correspondence Capt. Partridge decided to carry out his principles of education in an institution organized on his own plan and conducted by himself, with such assistance as he could command, in his native village of Norwich, Vermont. Here he opened, on the 4th of September, 1820, the American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy, on which the pupils or their parents had their choice of studies, out of a course as extensive as that of any academy and college in New England combined—in which military training formed a prominent feature, and the mathematics, especially as applied to surveying and engineering, received special attention. During the four years and half of its continuance in Norwich the Academy was attended by 480 pupils, representing twenty-one out of the twenty-four states, and of these, and especially of such as continued on an average two years at the institution, a large proportion became distinguished in military, public, and business life—as large it is believed as the records of any other institution for the same period of time can show. Its success demonstrated beyond cavil, that military exercises and duties are not inconsistent with ardent devotion, and the highest attainments in literary and scientific studies.
In 1824, the citizens of Middletown, Connecticut, made a liberal subscription to secure the location there, of a college about to be established in that State, under Episcopal auspices. Failing in that object, by the location of the institution at Hartford, where it now exists under the name of Trinity College, they invited Capt. Partridge to remove his Academy to their city, and offered to erect and place at his disposal suitable buildings for his accommodation. This invitation and offer were accepted, and on the 1st of April, 1825, he closed his institution at Norwich, and on the 1st of September following, opened his new course of instruction at Middletown, with an attendance of two hundred and ninety-seven pupils in the first year. During the three years—up to September 1828, the American Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy at Middletown remained under his superintendence, there were nearly twelve hundred pupils representing every State and Territory of the United States, the British Provinces, Mexico, several of the South American States, and the West Indies. This attendance shows conclusively, that the military and scientific element, together with an optional course of study, and a term of residence limited by the ability of the pupil to complete the course, met a want not provided for in existing colleges. Of those who completed the full course of study begun at Norwich, as large a proportion, as the corresponding graduates of any American college, attained a high degree of usefulness and eminence in widely diversified fields of labor. Among its graduates are to be found the founders or professors of several State Military Institutes, many officers of the highest rank in the military service of the United States, several eminent civil engineers, superintendents, of railroads, members of Congress, lawyers, and men of practical efficiency and success in every line of business.
One of the characteristic features of Captain Partridge’s system of instruction and discipline at Middletown, was the military marches and pedestrian excursions for scientific and recreating purposes conducted under his personal command, or in his company. Several of these excursions occupied three or four weeks, extending in one instance to Washington. The military marches amounted in the aggregate to over two thousand miles, and these and the various pedestrian excursions, included visits to nearly all points of military and historical interest in New England and New York. The immediate and controlling reasons which induced Capt. Partridge to leave Middletown, are not known to the writer of this memoir. He has however, understood it was owing partly to a desire for temporary relief from the cares and confinement of immediate superintendence, that he might start a similar institution in the neighborhood of New York, and partly from disgust at the refusal of the Legislature of Connecticut in 1828, to grant to the institution at Middletown, the usual privileges and powers of a college.
In 1833,1834, 1837, and 1839, Capt. Partridge was elected representative from the town of Norwich, to the Legislature of Vermont, and in that capacity labored to give efficiency to the military system of the State. In 1834, he secured for certain petitioners a charter for the Norwich University, in which the Trustees are required “to provide for a constant course of instruction in military science and civil engineering,” and are “prohibited from establishing any regulations of a sectarian character, either in religion or politics.” Of this corporation, consisting of twenty-five trustees, Capt. Partridge was a member, and in organizing the institution in 1825, he was elected president of the Faculty. He continued to instruct in his own department of military science and engineering, and administered the affairs of the university till 1844, when owing to some difficulties arising out of the use of the building, arms, and accourtrements, which were his private property, he resigned.
In 1838, he was influential in calling together a convention of military officers and persons interested in giving greater efficiency to the organization of the militia of the several states, to meet for consultation. This convention met at Norwich on the 4th of July; and continued to meet annually for many years, to discuss plans for the organization and discipline of the militia, for the dissemination of a knowledge of military science, for the defense of the coast, &c. Many reports of this body were drawn up by him, and the proceedings were forwarded to, and printed by order of the Congress of the United States.
In 1839, on the request of many influential citizens, he visited Portsmouth, Virginia, to establish a Military School, which he did, and which was soon after recognized by the Legislature of the State as the Virginia Literary, Scientific, and Military Institute, and aided by an appropriation out of the Literary Fund. This Institute, with an Institute of a similar character at Lexington, in the western part of the State, has been greatly instrumental in diffusing widely in Virginia a knowledge and taste for military affairs. The success of this institution, and the personal influence of many of his own scholars at Norwich and Middletown, led to the establishment of similar schools in other southern states.
In May, 1842, Capt. Partridge accepted the position of Camp Instructor for a large body of officers and men of the Pennsylvania volunteer militia in encampment at Reading, Berks County. Each evening he delivered a lecture to officers assembled in the General’s marquee, and during the day exercised the troops in the manual of arms, and in company, regimental, and brigade movements in the field. On this, and many similar occasions, he demonstrated the correctness and practicability of his theory of national defense, so far as testing the qualifications of officers for command, and giving accuracy, rapidity, and steadiness of exercise and movements to troops, by assembling officers and men of the State Militia, once or twice in the year, in convenient numbers and places, under instructors properly qualified for the work. A few instructors, themselves trained in the best military institutions, and familiar with every improvement in military organization, equipment, and movement, and especially when clothed with the reputation of success in actual service, would soon bring the entire militia of the states into a uniform system, and give respectability and efficiency to this department of the public service. This result would be more speedily realized if a number of educational institutions similar to those which he had organized under many disadvantages and against many prejudices, could call out and cultivate military taste and accomplishments among a portion of the young men of each state.
In 1853, he opened at Brandywine Springs, near Wilmington, in the State of Delaware, another institution in which he fondly hoped his ideal of a National school of education would be realized—an institution in which physical training in connection with military exercises and movements, should accompany the acquisition of practical knowledge of the great principles of science that underlie all the arts of peace and war, and resorted to by students from every state of the American Union. His plan as developed in conversation with those directly interested, embraced his old ideas of scientific, and literary studies with systematic pedestrian excursions,[21] and marches in vacations to the great objects of natural, economical, and historical interest in different parts of the country. In this latter particular, he unconsciously applied the suggestion of Milton in his letter to Samuel Hartlib, that “the students of his Academy should go out in companies with prudent and staid guides to all quarters of the land, learning and observing all places of strength, and all commodities (facilities) of building and of soil, for towns and tillage, harbors and ports of trade,—even sometimes taking sea as far as to our navy to learn there also, what they can in the practical knowledge of sailing and sea-fight.” Arrangements were made for a class of ten or twelve of the most advanced and matured cadets to accompany him to Europe to study the strategy of the great battles of the world, and the armies, armories, and resources of the great nations of Europe—thus again realizing Milton’s plan of gratifying “the desire of the more hopeful youth” “to see other countries at three or four and twenty years of age, not to learn principles, but to enlarge experience and make wise observation.” But these hopes were darkened for a time by a great disaster, and soon extinguished in the sudden death of the great projector. In the autumn of 1853, the buildings at Brandywine Springs, were consumed by fire, and although arrangements were at once made to secure suitable accommodations at Bristol, Pennsylvania, and upwards of one hundred pupils enrolled their names to attend for a year at that place, still the great motive power of the enterprise was stricken down.
At the close of the year, 1853, Capt. Partridge returned to Norwich, where his family still resided, in apparently good health and the best spirits. A few days after he reached home, he was attacked by sharp and excruciating pains in his back, which were soon subdued by anodynes, but from the prostration and the cause, which proved on a post-mortem examination to be an aneurism near the base of the spine, and which had been exhausting his vitality for years—he never rallied, and on the 17th of January, 1854, he breathed his last—widely and deeply mourned by troops of friends, who loved and admired him as their teacher, or looked up to him as the best expounder of principles of military science and education, and of national defense.