JAMES PATRICK MCCARTHY, JR. Commerce and College

JAMES PATRICK MCCARTHY, JR. Commerce and College: State Higher Education and Economic Development in North Carolina and Georgia, 1850-1890 (Under the Direction of EMORY M. THOMAS) From 1850 to 1890, the Universities of Georgia and North Carolina undertook significant structural and curricular reform in an effort to hasten the economic development of their states and region. Led by trustee William Mitchell, the University of Georgia adopted a reform plan in the 1850s that was both comprehensive and far-reaching. The plan did not survive the Civil War, but Mitchell and his supporters used it as their guide in expanding the university in the 1860s, obtaining the Morrill Land Grant funds in the 1870s, and continuing to expand and diversify the university’s offerings against opposition in the 1880s. The trustees and faculty at the University of North Carolina began more modest reforms in the 1850s that survived the war. Deterred considerably by Reconstruction, Kemp Battle and the trustees grew the university’s curriculum immensely in the late 1870s and early 1880s, alongside other state institutions designed to improve the economy through education. The Watauga Club and the North Carolina Farmer’s Alliance took the Morrill Funds away from the university, but it had already taken the rough form of a modern university and consequently become a font of Southern Progressivism. The shifting educational policies and practices at these two universities between 1850 and 1890 reveal several things about these schools and Southern higher education. Substantial curricular reforms began quite early; they continued through the Civil War, Reconstruction and beyond; and they were just as diverse and comprehensive as reforms elsewhere in the nation. Despite dismal funding and enrollments compared to other universities more commonly associated with nineteenth century reform, the trustees were determined to offer students as many educational options as at any other university— options that would serve what the trustees hoped was a new, emerging economy in the South. INDEX WORDS: Southern higher education, College reform, University reform, Southern colleges, New South, Southern culture, University of Georgia, University of North Carolina, Nineteenth century colleges, Curriculum reform, William Mitchell, Kemp Battle COMMERCE AND COLLEGE: STATE HIGHER EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN NORTH CAROLINA AND GEORGIA, 1850-1890 by JAMES PATRICK MCCARTHY, JR. B.A., The University of Virginia, 1993 M.A., The University of Georgia, 1996 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2002 © 2002 James Patrick McCarthy, Jr. All Rights Reserved COMMERCE AND COLLEGE: STATE HIGHER EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN NORTH CAROLINA AND GEORGIA, 1850-1890 by JAMES PATRICK MCCARTHY, JR. Approved: Major Professor: Emory M. Thomas Committee: Thomas G. Dyer William F. Holmes James C. Cobb John C. Inscoe Electronic Version Approved: Gordhan L. Patel Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2002 PREFACE My interest in the relationships between Southern higher education and economic development in the nineteenth century began with an interest in Progressivism and the economic changes from roughly the 1880s to 1920. In preparing several seminar papers, however, my research took me farther back into history. Rather than studying the generation that thrived and was in power around the turn of the century, I ended up studying their fathers and grandfathers whose adult lives straddled the Civil War. My attention focused on how their antebellum hopes for higher education and the southern economy persisted through the Civil War, grew to become a part of the economic boosterism of the 1870s and 1880s, and helped form the intellectual basis of change in the Progressive era. While finishing research in the Spring of 2000, I had the opportunity to hear Zell Miller speak at the Institute of Higher Education in Athens, Georgia. As Governor of Georgia, he championed the Hope Scholarship program that is being closely watched by other states and the federal government for its impact on state education. Georgia’s most recent “education governor,” Miller’s views on higher education offer as good an example as any of the opinion that modern state politicians and higher educators have on the roles and goals of state-sponsored higher education. Miller confidently claimed that “the universities are the basic infrastructure of economic development.” In the digital, knowledge economy this may seem self-evident. Like any point of view or idea, iv v however, this notion that the state can and must supply the training and knowledge requisite for economic growth and change has a history. In Universities and the Capitalist State, Clyde Barrow asserted that this relationship was essential in the development of universities, the industrial economy, and the capitalist state in the very late 1800s and early 1900s. Civic and business leaders, according to Barrow, ensured that universities would provide a great deal of the training and the research and development demanded by a capitalism hungry for knowledge and growth.1 Before this could occur, though, another important and related change had to take place. A slower transformation began before the Civil War in which higher education went from being perceived as preparation for the literary and omni-competent leaders of society (clerics, lawyers, doctors, and politicians) to training for specialized, scientific professionals in several areas of business. All three of these conceptions about the relationship between higher education and economic development closely followed shifts in the very notion of economic development. It has meant different things to different people at different times. In 2000, Zell Miller referred to preparing Georgia’s youths for the so-called New Economy that puts a premium on computer skills and literacy and the nimble-mindedness required of a constantly educating and re-educating population. Clyde Barrow referred to economic development in terms of the industrial/capitalist society that put a premium on order and a populace able to make itself one more part of the production machine. In the late nineteenth century South, it meant improving agriculture by diversifying and intensifying 1 Clyde W. Barrow, Universities and the Capitalist State: Corporate Liberalism and the Reconstruction of American Higher Education (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990). See also Edward C. Kirkland, Dreams and Thoughts in the Business Community, 1860-1900 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1956), 83-114. vi it, laying more and better railroads, developing chemical and extractive industries, and jump-starting a manufacturing sector that had languished (despite potential) under slavery. “Commerce and College” will trace the origins and development of this third notion of economic development through the educational policies it inspired at the Universities of Georgia and North Carolina from 1850 to 1890. In the process, it will explore several themes. It will demonstrate the early nature and character of university reforms at these two schools and in the South; the continuity of those reforms through the Civil War, Reconstruction and beyond; and how those reforms were just as comprehensive (though woefully underfunded and underpatronized) as those elsewhere in the nation. Furthermore, it will demonstrate that these reforms in Southern higher education policy were one aspect of the economic boosterism of the era, stretching back into the 1850s and that the universities and their reformers interacted with other state institutions to serve what they hoped would be the region’s developing economy. “Commerce and College” is a policy study, concerned primarily with the men, ideas, and experiences that shaped the changing educational policies at these two schools, but it addresses these within their economic, social, and political contexts, pointing out where those contexts shaped the nature and success of the policy implementation. The Introduction, “Higher Education in the Nineteenth Century South,” explores the important historical and historiographical issues of nineteenth century higher education in the United States and the South and how “Commerce and College” will contribute to them. Chapters one through six tell the story of curriculum reforms in some detail, focusing on the individuals behind them, their motivations, and their state-level vii political and economic contexts. By going into such detail with only two schools, these chapters can better explore internal nuances and external relationships with other institutions than by fleetingly addressing numerous schools through speeches and rhetoric. Chapter one looks at the reforms designed by William L. Mitchell at the University of Georgia in the 1850s. It traces how they stemmed from a growing movement for agricultural education, culminating in an endowment for the university in 1854, and from Mitchell’s own business experiences, particularly as chief engineer of the state’s railroad. The separation of the freshman and sophomore classes from the university into a preparatory Collegiate Institute and the creation of a series of professional schools around what remained of the liberal arts college did not survive the Civil War, but they did provide blueprints for future reforms. Chapter two explores the creation of the School for the

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