Reconstruction of the State University

The Board then tried to reconstruct the University. After the appearance of the lone student in 1865, the efforts of the trustees had been directed only towards completing the buildings. In 1868, after the constitution of 1867 had failed of adoption, the old trustees met, elected a president and faculty, and ordered the University to be opened in October, 1868. A few weeks later Congress imposed the constitution on the state, and the Board of Education as regents took charge of the University. Their first act was to declare null and void all acts of any pretended body of trustees since the secession of the state. This was done in order to repudiate a debt made by the University with a New York firm in 1861. No suitable candidate for the presidency was presented, and the regents chose for that position Mr. Wyman, the acting president.[1723] He declined, and the position was then sought for and obtained by the Rev. A. S. Lakin, a Northern Methodist preacher, who had been sent to Alabama in 1867 by Bishop Clark of Ohio, to gather the negroes of the Southern Methodist Church into the northern fold.[1724] Lakin, accompanied by Cloud, went to the University to take charge. Wyman, who was then in charge, refused to surrender the keys, and a Tuscaloosa mob, or Ku Klux Klan, serenaded Lakin and threatened to lynch him if he remained in town. It is said that he was saved from the mob by Wyman, who hid him under a bed. The next morning Lakin decided that he did not like the place and left.[1725] He did not resign, however, and three years later still had a claim pending for a full year’s salary. On this he collected $800 from the Board of Regents.[1726]

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[From the Independent Monitor, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, September 1, 1868.]

A PROSPECTIVE SCENE IN THE CITY OF OAKS, 4TH OF MARCH, 1869.

“Hang, curs, Hang! * * * * * Their complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good
fate, to their hanging! * * * * * If they be not born to be hanged, our case is miserable.”

The above cut represents the fate in store for those great pests of Southern society—the carpet-bagger and scalawag—if found in Dixie’s land after the break of day on the 4th of March next.