INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY Volume XLVI DECEMBER,1950 Number 4 Religious Influences in the Development of State Colleges and Universities Earle D. ROSS* The search for origins of American institutions, Euro- pean and colonial, has provided endless, as well as generally inconclusive, historical controversies. The pastime has been especially dear to antiquarian partisans of racial, regional, and sectarian interests. Due to notorious liberties in nomen- clature, educational history has been especially open to such indulgences. Thus, to come to the subject in hand, the ques- tion as to whether our state colleges and universities had their beginnings in colonial colleges presents but another exercise in semantics. Church establishments gave their colleges offi- cial sanction and virtual monopoly of higher education under the standing order. Beyond this grant of powers the govern- ment was not obligated. In no case was there the recognition of a responsibility for support and of a duty to promote gen- eral services as against that of safeguarding the doctrines and prerogatives of the particular sect.l To be sure the period was one of genesis, and it may be said that the colonial colleges were the forerunners of our state universities and land-grant colleges in the sense that the dame schools prepared the way for the kindergarten, the Latin grammar school fathered the * Earle D. Ross is a member of the department of history at Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, Ames, Iowa. This paper was read at the session on “Religion and Education” at the forty-third annual meeting of the Mississippi Valley Historical Associ- ation at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 20, 1950. 1 A concise exposition of church and state relations in the colonial and revolutionary eras is Evarts B. Greene, Religion and the State: The Making and Testing of m American Tradition (New York, 1941). A comprehensive treatment of the whole subject to date is Anson P. Stokes, Church and State in the United States (3 vols., New York, 1950). 344 Indiana Magazine of History all-purpose high school, and the old-field schools pointed the way to county consolidations. Such connections, however, put a hard strain upon the germ theory of history. Realistically the colonial ventures in higher education were modest replicas of the typical English university college with the same narrow content, formal method, and restricted aim and appeal. The main departures were in growing evi- dences of restiveness to sectarian restraints, proposals and small concessions in subject innovations, especially in the College of Philadelphia, and the democratizing influence of the log-colleges and seminaries. Nowhere was the social pur- pose and the expansive and adaptable program of the matured state institution to be glimpsed.2 Consequently without radical alteration in control, cur- riculum, and objectives, these bulwarks of traditional ortho- doxy were entirely inadequate and inappropriate as agencies to propagate and propagandize the democratic transforma- tions of society that the devotees of the Enlightenment were deliberately and sedulously striving for in the era of the Revolution. For in their day these progressive educationists dared openly and confidently to essay the building of a new social order through the public school ~ystem.~ Their planning involved the up-to-date ideas of the French system of unified state control from elementary in- struction to the university. The system was to be wholly secularized with broad curriculum in which modern lan- guages and literatures and the sciences, natural and social, should have co-ordinate emphasis with the classics. The most thorough going reformers, especially those of European back- ground, felt that the nation itself was the only suitable agency 2 For traditional opposing views see, Charles K. Adams, “State Universities,” The North American Review (248 vols., Boston, New York, 1815-1940), CXXI (1875), 365-408; George F. Magoun, “The Source of American Education-Popular and Religious,” New Eng- hnde.r (56 vols., New Haven, Connecticut, 1843-1892), XXXVI (1877), 445-486. A more impartial summary of the evidence is Elmer E. Erown, “The Origin of American State Universities,” University of California Publications in Education (Berkeley, 1893- ), I11 (1903), 1-45. For the College of Philadelphia see, Edward P. Cheyney, Histmy of the Univsrsity of Pennsylvania, 1740-2940 (Philadelphia, 1940) ; Thomas Woody, Educational Views of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1931). 3 A convenient summary and appraisal of the leading educational plans of the period is Allen 0. Hansen, Liberalism and American Ed- ucation in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1926). See also Charles F. Thwing, A History of Higher Education in America (New York, 1906), 193-200; Stokes, Church and State, I, 628-638. Religious Inf1u.ences 345 and jurisdiction for such a regeneration while native leaders like Washington and Benjamin Rush, who appreciated state sensibilities and jealousies, regarded a national university as wholly appropriate. With the initial and persisting state loyalties, there was no possibility of the nationalizing of so intimate a function as the public schools; and the national uni- versity, except for the military division and certain research agencies, has never been realized. As Jefferson, the master mind and the guiding spirit of the educational reformers, realized, the true opportunity was in creating new state systems in accord with regional interests. The first step was to liberalize and modernize the existing colleges by alteration of their charters. Efforts to function- alize and socialize the old centers of sectarian orthodoxy were eagerly undertaken, but academic inertia and natural conser- vatism of much of the constituency delayed and tempered the innovations. As it proved, the defenders of the old ways were given legal relief by the Dartmouth College decision which brought comfort to those who loved the small colleges, not so much for their moral or cultural inspiration as for the defense which they gave to the established order. In newer states or in the cases of colleges too unrespon- sive to the Zeitgeist, new public universities were made to order. Institutions of the approved pattern were launched in the Carolinas and Georgia and in the New England frontier Vermont, while public land grants promoted the initial state universities in the Northwest. Presidents and key faculty members sympathetic to the new program were widely sought at home and abroad. The most complete expression of Jefferson’s design was, of course, his own University of Virginia-the apex of his proposed pyramid of state education. To safeguard the liberal innovations in instruction and administration and to insure the fullest public control, a theological department and cleri- cal professors were excluded. Such a policy by no means re- flected an insensibility to religion as a social determinant or a lack of appreciation of theology, as such, as a field of study and research. On the contrary, Jefferson had a rare under- standing of the religious influence in social progress and, in spite of his unorthodox trinitarian views, a truer and more realistic conception of the Christian ethic than did his intoler- ant assailants. As a student and observer of the European 346 Indiana Magazine of Historg universities he was familiar with the place of the faculty of theology and his original plan included such a chair. Ap- parently he was persuaded by Thomas Cooper of the impossi- bility, in practice, of separating basic religious principles from an intolerant divisive sectarianism. Without risking such a devitalizing influence, he was still confident that es- sential religious values might be taught by the professor of ethics. He did not, however, leave the important matter at that. Characteristically of the philosopher’s realism, he gave recognition to the benefits of church organization and made a concession to the prevalent sectarian loyalties by a provision for affiliated schools of theology for such denominations as cared to provide this special instruction for their student con- stituencies. This invitation extended impartially to all denom- inations, in accord with the spirit of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, had the immediate effect of securing the support for the state institution of the influential dissenting sects who were fearful of the restoration of an establishment or of any favored treatment of a particular group.4 The nearest counterpart of this plan in the West was the University of Michigan which was originally designed by a disciple of Jefferson after the French model. Both univer- sities were subjected to wearisome delays. Virginia’s project did not get under way until 1825 and Michigan’s came a dozen years later. By that time the German system, following the celebrated report of Victor Cousin, had come to supersede the French as the goal of the progressive^.^ In either case the movement was handicapped and prejudiced by foreign origins popularly associated with radicalism in thought and conduct. In popular thinking these extreme and erratic instances tended to discredit all secularizing and rationalizing innova- tions. The cause suffered greatly, too, from intransigent 4 Jefferson’s educational ideas and plans, with extended selections from his writings may be traced conveniently in the following: Her- bert B. Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia (Washington, 1888); John S. Patton, Jefferson, Cabell, and the Uni- versity of Virginia (New York, 1906); Roy J. Honeywell, The Educcc tional Work of Thomas Jefferson (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1931) ; Stokes, Church and State, I, 333-339, 11, 633-634. 5 Willis Dunbar, “Public Versus Private Control of Higher Educa- tion in Michigan, 1817-1855,” Mississippi VaElW Historical Review (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1914- ), XXII (1935-1936), 388-392; Edwin E. Slosson, The American Spirit in Education (New Haven, Connecticut, 1921) , 171-175. Religious Infhence8 347 visionaries, impatient of delay and concession in bringing in the new order. The new social order, it appeared, was slow in emerging.