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INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY Volume LIV DECEMBER 1968 NUMBER4 Minutes of the Board of Trustees for Vincennes University Edited by Robert Constantine* During the fall of 1956 Vincennes University, now oper- ated as a junior college, observed the one hundred fiftieth an- niversary of the first meeting of its Board of Trustees. The school’s Act of Incorporation represented one of the first realizations in the Old Northwest of the ideal expressed in that part of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 which had promised that “schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” An organized attempt to secure “the means of education” for Indiana Territory was made as early as December, 1801, when a group of men at the territorial capital forwarded to Congress the following plea for “federal aid” :I The Petition of the Undersigned, Trustees chosen by the Subscribers for establishing and founding an Academy or Semin- ary of learning at Vincennes in the Indiana Territory, called The Jefferson Academy Humbly sheweth That the Inhabitants of the Country and more especially those descended from French Parents, have long experienced the Inconveniences aris- ing from the total want of an Institution for the Education of Youth; The Consequence has been, that almost the whole of the Inhabitants distinguished by the name of French, are entirely illiterate, and the rising Generation as well American as French, will in all probability, without the Establishment of the intended Institution, be brought up in a similar State of Ignorance. The Subscribers to the Institution have exerted their private funds for its Erection and Support, and have already at Robert Constantine is Instructor of History at Indiana University, South Bend Center. He formerly served on the faculty at Vincennes University. 1 Clarence Edwin Carter (ed.), The Territorial Papers of the United States, Vol. VII, The T6dtOry of Indiana, 1800-1810 (Washington, 1939), 43-44. 314 Indiana Magazine of History a considerable Expense engaged Masters in the Classics, Belles Lettres, Mathematics and the English and French languages- They are nevertheless convinced, that however strenuous their Endeavors, a sufficient fund cannot be raised for a permanent Establishment, without the benevolent Aid of the United States-This Aid from the bountiful provisions heretofore made for similar Institutions2 in the North Western Territory your Petitioners have every Reason to hope, will be extended to them. They therefore humbly pray that a Donation of land, equal in Quantity to that made for a similar Institution in the Ohio purchase on the Muskingum, or such other Quantity as you think proper, may be granted to the Trustees for the Benefit of said Institution, to be located and laid out, under the Direc- tions of the Governor of the Territory, in the neighbourhood of this place, on lands to which the Indian Title has been or may be extinguished. VINCENNES31st December 1801. WI~.HENRY HA~~ISON JNOGIBSON Wm CURKE ii HENRYVAN DER BURGH $1 F: VIGO s: 8 JNORICE JONES sg+3 2.3 2 a* Bh (d The failure of this petition to produce Congressional action (of record, at least) in no way diminished the desire for federal assistance for education in the territory. In December, 1802, a “general convention of the Territory” held in Vincennes included in its list of “representations to the Congress of the United States” a request that a law may be passed making a grant of lands for the sup- port of the Schools and Seminaries of learning to the several Settlements in the Illinois, the Settlement of Vincennes, and that of Clark’s Grant, near the Rapids of the 0hio.s * In its agreement with the Ohio Com any of Associates (1787) Congress reserved one section of land in ea& township for schools and two whole townships for a university. Similarly, the patent granted to John Cleves Symmes in 1794 reserved “one compleat Township or tract of Land of six miles square . for the sole and exclusive intent and purpose of erecting . an Academy & other public schools and seminaries of learning. .” Carter, Territorial Papers, Vol. 11, The Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, 1787-1809 (Washington, 1934), 496-498. 3Logan Esarey (ed.), Governors Messages and Letters (3 vols., Indiana Historical Collections, Vols. VII, IX, XII; Indianapolis, 1922- 1924), I, 64. Vincennes University 316 Congressional response to this petition was embodied in an act of March 26, 1804, setting aside a Congressional town- ship of land in the Vincennes land district “for the use of a seminary of learning” and directing the Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, to “locate” the specific township.‘ In October of 1806 Gallatin wrote to his friend, John Badollet, register at the Vincennes Land Office, and instructed him to enter “township No 2, South of the base line in the eleventh range, West of the Vincennes Distri~t”~as the seminary lands.e Thus provided with about 23,000 acres of land as the “means of education” the advocates of a “seminary of learn- ing” now turned to the territorial legislature for incorpora- tion and recognition as legal custodians of the land grant. Both objectives were achieved in “AN ACT to Incorporate an University in the Indiana Territory”? which was approved by Governor Harrison on November 29, 1806. The law specified that the school “be called and known by the name, or style of the Vincennes University” and named twenty-three of the most prominent men of the territory as its Board of Trustees. The body of the law invests the Board of Trustees with the powers of suing and being sued, selling and leasing the “seminary lands,” filling vacancies, making bylaws, and drawing up “ordinances for the government and discipline” of the school. The act also comprises a summary of early nineteenth century educational philosophy, curriculum plan- ning, and administrative procedure for higher education. The educational philosophy embodied in this act of 1806 is couched in Jeffersonian terms ; the preamble states simply and clearly the case for a liberal education : WHEREASthe independence, happiness and energy of every republic depends (under the influence of the destinies of Heaven) upon the wisdom, virtue, talents and energy, of its citizens and rulers. And whereas, science, literature, and the liberal arts, con- tribute in an eminent degree, to improve those qualities and acquirements. 4 Carter, Territorial Papers, VII, 178. 5 An area west of present-day Princeton in Gibson County. 6 Gallatin to Badollet, October 10, 1806, in Carter, Territorial Papers, VII, 394-396. 7 Francis S. Philbrick (ed.), The Laws of Indiana Territory 1801- 1809 (Indiana Historical Collections, reprint; Indianapolis, 1931), 178- 184. The act is also copied at the beginning of the original Board of Trusteea Minutes Book, 316 Indian& Magazine of History And whereas, learning hath ever been found the ablest advocate of genuine liberty, the best supporter of rational religion, and the source of the only solid and imperishable glory, which nations can acquire. And forasmuch, as literature, and philosophy, furnish the most useful and pleasing occupations, improveing [sic] and varying the enjoyments of prosperity, affording relief under the pressure of misfortune, and hope and consolation in the hour of death, And considering that in a commonwealth, where the humblest citizen may be elected to the highest public office, and where the Heaven born prerogative of the right to elect, and to reject, is retained, and secured to the citizens, the knowledge which is requisite for a magistrate and elector, should be widely diffused. Taken altogether the fifteen articles of the act reveal several details of frontier social and intellectual history. The university was to “provide for the instruction of youth in the Latin, Greek, French and English languages, Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Antient [sic] and Modern History, Moral Philosophy, Logic, Rhetoric and the Law of Nature and Nations. .” No “particular tenets of religion shall be taught. by the president and professors. .” It was hoped that “the establishment of an institution of this kind in the neighborhood of the aborigines of the country, may tend to the gradual civilization of the rising generation, and if pyoperly conducted be of essential service to themselves, and contribute greatly to the cause of humanity and brotherly love which all men ought to bear to each other of whatever colour. .” Moreover, the Indian children who were “sent to the said university for education” were to be “maintained, clothed, and educated at the expense of the said institu- tion. .” Students and professors were to be “exempt from militia duty,” the trustees were to “establish an institution for the education of females” when funds were available, and a “Grammar school . for the purpose of teaching the rudi- ments of the languages” was to supplement the university offerings. A final article empowered the Board of Trustees to con- duct a lottery “to raise a sum not exceeding twenty thousand dollars,” a project which was quickly undertaken but which soon proved unsuccessful. Less than two weeks after the passage of this Act of Incorporation, seventeen of the twenty-three men named by Vincennes University 317 it as trustees met in the territorial secretary’s office on December 6, 1806. These men, as the footnote sketches of them which follow suggest, were the political and social leaders of the area, and in their roles as political leaders they were not infrequently bitter, implacable adversaries. Within the group were Harrison men and anti-Harrison men, pro- slavery and anti-slavery men, alleged Federalists and Re- publicans, territorial divisionists and those who supported territorial unity. It was not to be expected, perhaps, that the effect of such rivalries and animosities would be entirely absent in the proceedings of the Board.