Southwestern at Memphis .'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' Southwestern at MeIllphis 1848 1948 by WALLER RAYMOND COOPER Professor of History, Southwestern at Memphis John Knox Press RICHMOND· VIRGINIA Copyright 1949 John Knox Press, Richmond, Virginia PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 81-(1)-8156 To President and Mrs. Charles E. Diehl SOUTHWESTERN IS EVER GRATEFUL TO THEM FOR THEIR LOYALTY AND DEVOTION The publication of "Southwestern: 1848-1948" has been unavoidably delayed until 1949. The account of the selection by the Board of Direc­ tors of a successor to President Diehl and of the Centennial Celebration could not be given in the story of the First Hundred Tears. ~ Contents PAGE I. Montgomery Academy and Montgomery Masonic College . II. Stewart College: Before the War Between the States .. 13 III. Stewart College: During War and Reconstruction. .. 27 IV. Stewart College: After the War Between the States 47 v. Southwestern Presbyterian University: 1875-1888 60 VI. Southwestern Presbyterian University: 1889-1917 . 83 VII. Southwestern Presbyterian University: 1917-1925 . 102 VIII. Southwestern at Memphis: The First Decade, 1925-1935 114 IX. Southwestern at Memphis: 1936-1948 . 141 Appendix ~ Foreword As SOUTHWESTERN at Memphis completes its first century, it is appropriate that this history should be published and that its author should be precisely the person who was chosen to write it. Professor Cooper is not only the Chairman of the Department of History at Southwestern and a lifelong student of Southern history; he is also that member of the faculty who, with the exception of President Diehl, has been most closely connected with the development of the college during the last twenty-five years. Hundreds of alumni, of whom I am one, cannot recall their student days without remem­ bering with gratitude and pleasure the studies and the personal asso­ ciations they enjoyed with Professor Cooper: studies and assOcia­ tions that have enriched the lives of all of us. The story that Professor Cooper has to tell is important, for it is a segment of the story of the South and of Southern education since the tragic days of the War Between the States. Before hos­ tilities began in 1861, the Masonic College from which Southwestern takes its origin had become an instrument in the educational pro­ gram of a Presbyterian Church that knew no sectional division and that, since before the Revolution, had established schools and col­ leges in the Middle Colonies, in Virginia, and along the expanding western frontier. When the war ended, what remained of the college, both in physical equipment and in educational ideals, was the pos­ session of a sectional Church, hampered by poverty and by the in­ tellectual isolationism that characterized Southern life in the decades that immediately followed Reconstruction. The plans of the founders of Southwestern Presbyterian University had been bold, vigorous, and enlightened. That they could not be carried out fully at Clarksville was due to the very conditions of Southern life that war and defeat created. The history of the college until its removal to Memphis in 1925 is, at first glance, the depress- ing chronicle of failure: failure due to economic distress, to recur­ ring panics, and to a tendency toward obscurantism in the Church itself. But it would be an error to read the history of those decades merely as a record of failure. The handicaps under which the col­ lege operated can be explained by "natural" causes: natural both in the theological and in the human meaning of that word. What cannot be so explained is its success in surviving at all. This was attributable to the remarkable vitality of the institution, a vitality that bespoke the faith and confidence of its faculty and Board of Directors. Those men possessed courage and vision that were more than natural and that heartened them to carryon as best they could the work to which they were committed, even when common sense must have insisted that the cause was hopeless. It is to those men, devout Christians and devoted teachers, that Southwestern is indebted for its survival during a period in which a shade less of conviction and self-sacrifice might have proved fatal. It was they who kept alive the dream of a great college of liberal arts which would serve not only the Church but the South. They did their work so faithfully that in 1917 there was in existence a Southwestern Presbyterian University for President Diehl to take over. It is difficult to think of anything more typically Southern than this achievement by a small group, not known outside their own community, unaided by funds from Northern foundations, but determined to work as individuals in the rebuilding of the cultural life of their area. It is easy to fasten one's attention on the short­ comings of the Clarksville period, but it is more invigorating and certainly more just to remember gratefully those quiet men who saw to it that the light that Dr. Palmer and others had lighted did not go out. It is right that President Diehl should be the protagonist of the latter part of Professor Cooper's story. He inherited the college when it had reached its nadir and when the first World War seemed to threaten its very existence. But he inherited also the fine ideals: of the founders, and to these he has remained faithful. His achieve- ments illustrate finely and poignantly the old "romantic" concep­ tion of history, which is unhappily alien to contemporary thought: the idea that history is the lengthened shadow of great men. Carlyle and Emerson, one feels certain, would know how to evaluate him. Southwestern as we know it today with its fine buildings, its broad curriculum, its liberal tone, its excellent library, its distinguished faculty, is primarily his achievement. He would be the first to admit that he has not brought all this about single-handed, but those of us who have known the college intimately during the last quarter of a century are aware of the degree to which Southwestern in 1947 is the creation of its president. A careful reading of this history will make plain how splendidly he has worked to realize the hopes and plans of the men who took over the college from the Masons in a time when external forces were hostile or indifferent to much which they hoped to accomplish. On his retirement President Diehl will tum over to his successor a college that is stable financially, superbly equipped physically, vig­ orous intellectually, and respected nationally-a college that has every right to claim the support of the Southern Presbyterian Church, the community in which it exists, and its alumni. What President Diehl has done is great, and like all greatness it is the result of cour­ age, devotion, and self-sacrifice. I am sure that he would ask no better reward for his more than thirty years of tireless effort than that we, the Alumni of Southwestern, should understand aright not only his own accomplishments but also those of his predecessors; and that we should guarantee, through our loyalty and generosity, that his long labors on our behalf should bear their finest fruit in the century that lies ahead. SAMUEL HOLT MONK, '22 Minneapolis, Minnesota November 30,1947 I~ Montgomery Academy and Montgomery Masonic College FOR THE very beginning of Southwestern we must go back to that most interesting period in Tennessee history, the age of "King An­ drew"; and to Clarksville, on the Cumberland, where in the turbu­ lent eighteen-thirties a male academy or "log college" was estab­ lished, which in the following decade developed into the Mont­ gomery Masonic College, the predecessor of Stewart College and the Southwestern Presbyterian University. It was in 1829 that the rough and ready Andrew Jackson, that idol of the western pioneers, overrode all opposition and became the President of the United States. His own Nashville at this time was little more than a typical frontier village, while Clarksville, the second town in age and importance on the Cumberland, was still very much the whiskey-drinking, gun-toting, pioneer community it had been at the very beginning of the century. The white population in Clarksville in 1829 amounted altogether to two hundred and fifty souls. This number included sixty-five un­ married men and eight unmarried women. These men and women had little time to think of schools, even if they had been greatly interested in formal education. There were but fifty-six buildings of any description in the town. There was not a resident minister of the Gospel in the place, no church building, and only nine pro­ fessing Christians of different creeds. "John Barleycorn ruled the hour. He was in every home; in the pockets of the multitude; and all business houses kept whiskey in a conspicuous place for the free use of their respective customers." Since there was no town hall, the office of the mayor was in the street, and the official papers were carried around "in the crown of his Honor's hat." 2 SOUTHWESTERN AT MEMPHIS: 1848-1948 There was, however, a Masonic Hall, and the members of the Masonic Order seem to have accepted the responsibility of keeping alive whatever interest in education and religion the pioneer Scotch­ Irish settlers brought with them from their Carolina and Virginia homes. It was in the Masonic Hall that the few Presbyterians met for occasional services long before they had a church, a pastor, or even a stated supply. It was the Masonic Order which was chiefly interested in estab­ lishing Clarksville Academy, better known as Montgomery Academy, on what was then the outskirts of town, and on the spot which later became the site of the Southwestern Presbyterian University.