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The Ante-Bellum College Movement: A Reappraisal of Tewksbury's Founding of American Colleges and Universities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Natalie A. Naylor
Natalie A. Naylor*
Affiliation:
School of Education Faculty of Hofstra University
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Extract

Few Monographs in the history of American higher education have been as influential or as frequently cited as Donald G. Tewksbury's The Founding of American Colleges and Universities Before the Civil War, With Particular Reference to the Religious Influences Bearing Upon the College Movement. Frederick Rudolph, in a bibliographic essay on the history of higher education, calls it “the most durable” and “the most useful” volume among the several hundred titles in the Teachers College series, “Contributions to Education.”

Type
Discussion
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , Fall 1973 , pp. 261 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Tewksbury, Donald G., The Founding of American Colleges and Universities (New York, 1932); and Rudolph, Frederick, The American College and University: A History (New York, 1962), p. 500. Tewksbury wrote his study as a doctoral dissertation under Edward H. Reisner at Teachers College, Columbia. Archon Books reprinted the book in 1965. Google Scholar

2. Thwing, Charles Franklin, A History of Higher Education in America (New York, 1906); Hofstadter, Richard, Academic Freedom in the Age of the College (New York, 1961), pp. 209–210; Rudolph, , The American College and University, pp. 48, 54–55; Crane, Theodore Rawson (ed.), The Colleges and the Public, 1787–1862 (New York, 1963), pp. 3, 18; and Brubacher, John S. and Rudy, Willis, Higher Education in Transition: A History of American Colleges and Universities, 1636–1968 (New York, 1968), p. 77. Google Scholar

3. For example, see Hofstadter, , Academic Freedom in the Age of the College, pp. 211, 214; Rudolph, , The American College and University, pp. 47, 58, 72; Crane, , The Colleges and the Public, p. 1; and Brubacher, and Rudy, , Higher Education in Transition, pp. 61, 72–74. Google Scholar

4. Axtell, James, “The Death of the Liberal Arts College,” History of Education Quarterly, 11 (Winter 1971): 339–352.Google Scholar

5. Tewksbury, , The Founding of American Colleges and Universities, pp. 28–54.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., p. 30n.Google Scholar

7. The defunct colleges are Shurtleff College (Alton, Illinois); Cumberland University (Lebanon, Tennessee); Lombard College (Galesburg, Illinois); Irving Female College (Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania); and St. Ignatius College (San Francisco, California). In addition, Milwaukee-Downer College merged with Lawrence College to form Lawrence University (Appleton, Wisconsin). More extensive research would be necessary to determine if any other of these institutions have merged with other colleges. Tewksbury lists colleges which merged, whether they united before or after the Civil War, as a “unified institution,” providing details on changes in name, location, and mergers. For example, Jefferson College, chartered by Pennsylvania in 1802 and Washington College, chartered in 1806, merged in 1865 to form Washington and Jefferson College and are counted as one institution. Therefore, Tewksbury's method of treatment of colleges which joined with another ante-bellum college is to reduce the total number of permanent institutions. Tewksbury's list was dated even by the time of publication; Irving College had suspended operations in 1929. See Tewksbury, , The Founding of American Colleges and Universities, pp. 211–220; The New York Times Encyclopedic Almanac, 1971 (New York, 1970), pp. 520–536; Russell, Max, ed. The College Blue Book, 13th ed. (New York, 1969), Vol. III; and Sack, Saul, History of Higher Education in Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, 1963), II, 575.Google Scholar

8. Tewksbury, , The Founding of American Colleges and Universities, p. 42.Google Scholar

9. Ibid, pp. 29–30; New York Times Encyclopedic Almanac, pp. 520–536; and Sack, , History of Higher Education in Pennsylvania, II, 746, 748, 750.Google Scholar

10. Tewksbury, , The Founding of American Colleges and Universities, pp. 2n, 5n, 78–79n.Google Scholar

11. Tewksbury erred in his mathematics—the correct percentage is 80. Eighty-one per cent is the average of the percentages of the individual states rather than the percentage of the total. The sixteen state “sample” is skewed because it is overweighted with the more sparsely settled states and excludes the New England states entirely. See Tewksbury, , The Founding of American Colleges and Universities, pp. 27–28.Google Scholar

12. It is interesting that most historians ignore the responsibility of the state governments in chartering institutions while blaming the denominations for the proliferation of colleges.Google Scholar

13. Eells, Walter, “First Directory of American Colleges,” History of Education Quarterly 2 (December 1962): 225–233; Quarterly Register and Journal of the American Education Society 2 (May 1830): 239; American Quarterly Register, 13 (August 1840): 110–116; and American Almanac & Repository of Useful Knowledge for the Year 1860 (Boston, 1860), pp. 204–206.Google Scholar

14. Rudolph, , The American College and University, p. 500.Google Scholar

15. Tewksbury, , The Founding of American Colleges and Universities, pp. 28, 218–19; and Sack, , History of Higher Education in Pennsylvania, II, pp. 742–752. Sack's list includes all institutions of higher education in Pennsylvania through the 1960's. However, this chart excludes colleges which later merged and medical colleges to avoid double-counting and to make the treatment accord with Tewksbury's. Tewksbury may have excluded some of the colleges included by Sack because they were not liberal arts institutions, e.g. the Polytechnic College of the State of Pennsylvania or Harmonica Sacred Music Society, but he apparently overlooked some liberal arts colleges. See above. Google Scholar

Unfortunately, Tewksbury's list of defunct colleges is not now available, despite his intention to deposit it in the Teachers College Library (Tewksbury, The Founding of American Colleges and Universities, pp. 27–28). Tewksbury's book includes only the number of defunct institutions chartered in the sixteen states, not their names. Sack provides not only the charter and date of first degrees, as well as the year of demise for each “dead” college, but also an historical account of each institution. His study is, of course, limited to Pennsylvania institutions.

16. Pennsylvania Female College in Montgomery County did gradually upgrade its curriculum and offered a four-year course beginning in 1856 (awarding a B.A. and M.A.). One can infer, however, from the fact that competition with public high schools and normal schools forced it to close in 1880, that instruction was probably at a sub-college level. Irving Female College, although it conferred a B.A. degree, was recognized by the state as “college rank” in 1912, under a law passed in 1895. Duquesne College conferred degrees despite lack of authorization in its charter to do so. See Sack, , History of Higher Education in Pennsylvania, I, pp. 90–91, 183–186; II, pp. 570–75, 478–82.Google Scholar

17. Chitty, Arthur Ben, “College of Charleston: Episcopal Claims Questioned, 1785—,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 37 (December 1968): 413–416.Google Scholar

18. Tewksbury, , The Founding of American Colleges and Universities, pp. 55–56, 66, 76.Google Scholar

19. For example, an essay extolling the “natural and mutual affinity between religion and learning,” and arguing that the college “was in its origin, and is in its nature, a religious institution” was awarded a prize by the interdenominational College Society in 1855. However, it appears in a collection of documents on higher education in the 1960's under the label “Denominationalism.” (“Denominationalism: Tyler, William S., Prayer for Colleges,” in The Colleges and the Public, ed. by Crane, , pp. 100–111. See also Smith, Timothy L., Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War [New York, 1965], p. 39n.) Google Scholar

20. [Holley, Horace?], “The Sectarian Status of American Colleges in 1813,” in American Higher Education: A Documentary History, ed. by Hofstadter, Richard and Smith, Wilson (Chicago, 1961), I, 189. It should be noted that the excerpt deals primarily with the “sectarian status” not of colleges, but of theological seminaries; the title was assigned by the editors.Google Scholar

21. Baird, Robert, Religion in America (New York, 1844), p. 151.Google Scholar

22. Potts, David B., “Baptist Colleges in the Development of American Society, 1812–1861” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1967); and Potts, David B., “American Colleges in the Nineteenth Century: From Localism to Denominationalism,” History of Education Quarterly, 11 (Winter 1971): 369–373. Potts' characterization of the Baptist colleges as predominantly “secular” in their early years, however, understates the pervasive religious character of these institutions.Google Scholar

23. Potts, , History of Education Quarterly, 11:364–66.Google Scholar

24. Second Report, Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West (New York, 1845), p. 4; and Annual Reports of the S.P.C.T.E.W., 1844–1851.Google Scholar

25. Tewksbury, , The Founding of American Colleges and Universities, p. 77.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., pp. 206, 175, 167–68; and American Quarterly Register, 13 (August 1840): 110–116.Google Scholar

27. Mead, Sidney, The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of Christianity in America (New York, 1963), pp. 60–63.Google Scholar

28. Astin, Alexander W. and Lee, Calvin B. T., The Invisible Colleges: A Profile of Small Private Colleges with Limited Resources (New York, 1972), pp. 13–14. Astin ranks status of colleges on the basis of selectivity (as reflected in the academic ability of students) and size of enrollments.Google Scholar

It is perhaps the second half of the nineteenth century which really represents a retrogression in quality through excessive proliferation of small colleges. Forty-four per cent of the low-status “invisible” colleges were founded in the years from 1850 to 1899. (Ibid., p. 13.)