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American Colleges in the Nineteenth Century: From Localism to Denominationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

David B. Potts
David B. Potts*
Affiliation:
Union College
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Extract

The general contours of nineteenth-century collegiate development, as found in the histories of American higher education, probably need substantial reexamination and extensive reshaping. Traditionally, colleges associated with various denominations are characterized largely in terms of sect-like religious zeal and are assigned the early nineteenth century as their period of importance. The few monographic studies of late nineteenth-century colleges and the more numerous works on the emergence of universities are correspondingly cast in a framework of increasing secularism in higher education. It seems more likely, however, that the current historical conception of the denominational college more closely coincides with realities of institutional development after rather than before 1850. In terms of support, control, and functions, there is evidence of a strong and increasing denominationalism in a large majority of late nineteenth-century colleges. For most of the institutions with founding dates prior to 1850 this degree of denominationalism is a departure from the primary role played by localism in founding and nurturing these educational enterprises during their earliest years. Although additional research will be necessary to confirm this contrast, there is good reason to anticipate that the traditional generalization concerning a basic trend from sectarianism toward secularism, when applied to American collegiate history during the nineteenth century, will have to be inverted.

Type
The Liberal Arts College in the Age of the University
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , Winter 1971 , pp. 363 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © 1971 History of Education Quarterly 

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References

Notes

1. See, for example, Daniel Boorstin's brief chapter on “the booster college” in The Americans: The National Experience (New York, 1965), pp. 152–61.Google Scholar

2. Wayland, Francis, Report to the Corporation of Brown University on Changes in the System of Collegiate Education; Read March 28, 1850 (Providence, R.I., 1850), p. 11; Wayland, Francis, Thoughts on the Present Collegiate System in the United States (Boston, 1842), pp. 78–80, 54–55.Google Scholar

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4. Adams, C. K., review of “American State Universities… By Andrew Ten Brook. Cincinnati… 1875,” North American Review 121 (October 1875) : 366–93; Barnard, F. A. P., Annual Report of the President of Columbia College, Made to the Board of Trustees (1866), pp. 20–23; (1870), pp. 36–65, 79–83; (1871), pp. 52–62, 73–91.Google Scholar

5. Wayland, , Report pp. 22–30; Potts, David B., “Baptist Colleges in the Development of American Society, 1812–1861” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1967), pp. 316–32.Google Scholar

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8. Barnard's conclusions in his Report of 1866 concerning “the declining favor with which collegiate education is regarded” (p. 21) in the United States is modified in the Report of 1870 to specify a reduction in popular demand for traditional classical and literary college studies. By the Report of 1871 the collegiate group that he finds lagging behind population growth is narrowed down to include only A.B. degree candidates at non-Catholic white male colleges, and his emphasis throughout is on the Northeast, the only region for which he has substantial data. In the Report of 1870 he makes a devious and unpersuasive attempt to dismiss the factor of immigrants, who contribute by the millions to population growth from 1840 to 1860 but are rarely potential college students. Enough data are given in the Report of 1871 with regard to excluded categories of college students (and he even omits the many enrolled in B.S. degree programs) to suggest for a skeptical reader that the total college population may easily be twice the figure used by Barnard to establish his student-population ratios for 1860 and 1870. Despite the limited and flawed nature of his statistics and arguments, Barnard's data has been used, from the previously cited article of Adams, C. K. to the present, as evidence “that since about 1830 the number of students [relative to the total population] seeking a collegiate education has steadily diminished” (Adams [review], p. 389). A more careful and comprehensive study by Comey, A. M.: “Growth of the Colleges of the United States,” Educational Review 3 (1892) : 120–31, shows that “the increase in college students has far exceeded that of the population” during the years between 1850 and 1890. Barnard's “evangelical approach to reform” can be seen in his Annual Reports and is delineated by Lazerson, Marvin in “Barnard, F. A. P. and Columbia College: Prologue to a University,” HISTORY OF EDUCATION QUARTERLY 6 (Winter 1966) : 49–64. Prominent objectives of Barnard's evangelism were more scientific studies and an elective system to counteract declining liberal arts enrollments at Columbia. His zeal for collecting statistics and his subsequent use of them in Annual Reports should be understood within this context.Google Scholar

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10. Potts, , “Baptist Colleges,” chs. 1–4.Google Scholar

11. Smith, Timothy L., “Congregation, State, and Denomination: The Origins of the American Religious Structure,” William and Mary Quarterly 25 (April 1968).Google Scholar

12. See, for example, LeDuc, Thomas, Piety and Intellect at Amherst College, 1865–1912 (New York, 1946); Peterson, George E., The New England College in the Age of the University (Amherst, Mass., 1964); Barnard, John, From Evangelicalism to Progressivism at Oberlin College, 1866–1917 (Columbus, Ohio, 1968).Google Scholar

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14. Potts, , “Baptist Colleges,” ch. 5.Google Scholar

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16. See, for example, Paschal, George W., History of Wake Forest College 2 (Wake Forest, N.C., 1943), pp. 167–69, 188, 251; Yager, Arthur, Historical Sketch of Georgetown College, Georgetown College Bulletin, vol. 1, no. 1 (Georgetown, Ky., 1904), pp. 14–15; Cady, John F., The Centennial History of Franklin College (1934), pp. 111–12.Google Scholar

17. Mercer University moved from Penfield to Macon, Georgia in 1871. For the denominational factor in this move, see “Georgia Baptist Convention,” Christian Index and Southwestern Baptist, April 28, 1870, and Dowell, Spright, A History of Mercer University, 1833–1953 (Macon, Georgia, 1958), pp. 171–72; Howard College moved from Marion to Birmingham, Alabama in 1887. For the role of denominational interests in this removal, see Mitchell B. Garrett, Sixty Years of Howard College, 1842–1902, Howard College Bulletin, vol. 85, no. 4 (Birmingham, Ala., 1927), pp. 102–7.Google Scholar

18. Denison, in 1867: Shepardson, Francis W., Denison University, 1831–1931: A Centennial History (Granville, , Ohio, 1931), p. 137; Union in 1869: Inman, W. G., “The History of Union University, Continued as Southwestern Baptist University,” Baptist and Reflector, October 29, 1891; Furman in 1878: Daniel, Robert N., Furman University: A History (Greenville, S.C., 1951), p. 90; Cook, Harvey T., Education in South Carolina Under Baptist Control (ca. 1912), p. 139; Bucknell, in 1882: Orin Oliphant, J., The Rise of Bucknell University (New York, 1965), pp. 142–47; “University at Lewisburg,” National Baptist, July 6, 1882. Comparison of the trustee list in the Bucknell catalog of 1881–1882 with the list of new trustees in the catalogue of 1882–1883 reveals that the Lewisburg area's representation suffered a drastic reduction to make room for trustees coming from distant areas of the state, especially from Philadelphia and environs.Google Scholar

19. Examination of charters granted to thirteen of the fifteen Baptist-affiliated colleges incorporated between 1820 and 1850 reveals that only four stipulate a denominational quota or role in selection of trustees. From 1850 to 1890, a requirement regarding Baptist control of governing boards was found in eight of the ten charters examined.Google Scholar

20. Fleming, Sanford, “American Baptists and Higher Education,” six-volume typescript, ca. 1963, on deposit in the American Baptist Historical Society, Rochester, N.Y., vol. 3, pp. 438, 468, 633, 640, 807–16; Johnson, Charles D., Higher Education of Southern Baptists: An Institutional History, 1826–1954 (Waco, Texas, 1955), p. 48.Google Scholar

21. Whereas non-Baptists were on the antebellum faculties of at least several colleges such as Georgetown, Shurtleff, and Wake Forest, the totally Baptist faculties at Colby and Colgate in the 1870s are probably typical for the two or three decades immediately following the Civil War. Enrollment of students from Baptist families apparently reached a peak of almost fifty percent at Colby in the 1880s and Hillsdale in the 1890s. As late as the early 1920s, fifty-five percent of the students at Shurtleff and sixty-one percent of those at Denison, were reported to be Baptists. Instruction in Biblical literature was initiated at Colgate in 1887, departments were organized at Colby, and Furman, in 1892, and chairs were established at Mercer and Wake Forest in the mid-1890s. Although this activity was largely stimulated by the new scholarship of higher criticism, an observer of the movement to institute Bible courses in colleges of all denominations found motives ranging “all the way from an effort at scientific interpretation of Biblical literature and history to the defense and buttressing of the particular brand of faith to which the people who support the college subscribe” (The Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook, The Teaching Work of the Church [New York, 1923], p. 244). A strong tendency toward the latter motive is suggested by responses from 163 church-related liberal arts colleges to a questionnaire distributed in the early 1930s. Almost 64 percent admitted bringing their denominational views to students through their Bible courses (Baugher, Charles A., “A Determination of Trends in Organization, Finance, and Enrollment in Higher Education in Church-Related Colleges Since 1900” [Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1937], p. 58).Google Scholar

22. “A Sad Yet Cheering Incident,” Alabama Baptist, December 19, 1929; “Baptist Press,” Biblical Recorder, December 5, 1934; Fleming, , “American Baptists,” pp. 840–66; Northern Baptist Convention, Annual, 1921, pp. 61–65.Google Scholar

23. Duvall, Sylvanus M., The Methodist Episcopal Church and Education up to 1869 (New York, 1928); Harve Geiger, C., The Program of Higher Education of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1940); Yanagihara, Hikaru, “Some Attitudes of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America: A Historical Study of the Attitudes of the Church and Churchmen Toward the Founding and Maintaining of Colleges and Schools Under Their Influence Before 1900” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1958); Limbert, Paul M., Denominational Policies in the Support and Supervision of Higher Education (New York, 1929).Google Scholar

24. Duvall, , Methodist Episcopal Church pp. 123, 106–7, 66–67, 82, 37, 116–20.Google Scholar

25. Geiger, , The Program of Higher Education pp. 79, 39, 48, 83–84, 111–12, 109–10.Google Scholar

26. Yanagihara, , “Some Attitudes,” pp. 2–5. Of the three permanent Episcopal-related colleges founded in the early nineteenth century, Hobart most closely resembles the Baptist trend from localism to denominationalism. See ibid., pp. 181–89. The considerable number of Episcopal-related colleges that failed prior to 1860 have a common characteristic of staunch denominationalism. See ibid., pp. 314–404, 542.Google Scholar

27. Limbert, , Denominational Policies pp. 10–13; Gaius G. Atkins and Frederick Fagley, History of American Congregationalism (Boston, 1942), pp. 237–39.Google Scholar

28. Limbert, , Denominational Policies pp. 235–36, 168.Google Scholar

29. This was determined from a compilation of the institution-by-institution statistics presented in the United States Commissioner of Education Report for 1898–1899. Students in religiously affiliated colleges and universities, including 5,341 in those operated by the Roman Catholic Church, totaled 44,601, as compared with 51,868 students in institutions listed as nonsectarian, national, state, territorial, or municipal.Google Scholar

30. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Second Annual Report of the President and Treasurer, 1907, tabular survey between pp. 52–53. For data on the colleges breaking denominational ties and obtaining admission to the pension group, see the annual reports for 1907–1910 and 1919–1920.Google Scholar

31. General Education Board, The General Education Board: An Account of Its Activities, 1902–1914 (New York, 1915), pp. 142–43, 156–59; Hollis, Ernest V., Philanthropic Foundations and Higher Education (New York, 1938), p. 141; Fosdick, Raymond B., Adventure in Giving: The Story of the General Education Board, a Foundation Established by John D. Rockefeller (New York, 1962), p. 135.Google Scholar

32. General Education Board, The General Education Board, pp. 156–59.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., p. 113–18.Google Scholar

34. Geiger, , The Program of Higher Education pp. 105–6; American Baptist Education Society, Annual, 1889, p. 19; Reeves, Floyd et al., The Liberal Arts College: Based Upon Surveys of Thirty-five Colleges Related to the Methodist Episcopal Church (Chicago, 1932), pp. 519–28.Google Scholar

35. Carnegie Foundation, Fourth Annual Report, 1909, pp. 41–42; Fifteenth Annual Report, 1920, p. 5; Seventeenth Annual Report, 1922, p. 5.Google Scholar