Nothing is more apparent in all this legislation than the breadth and comprehensiveness of the plan. Some changes in detail have been made as developments made them necessary, but the university is still going forward and upward, under the guidance of this noble ordinance which has continually served to guide and direct rather than to limit or prescribe.

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To suppose [said Mr. Pierce] that the wants of the State will not soon require a superstructure of fair proportions, on a foundation thus broad, would be a severe reflection on the foresight and patriotism of the age. Let the State move forward as prosperously for a few years to come as it has for a few years past, and one-half of the revenue arising from the university fund will sustain an institution on a scale more magnificent than the one proposed, and sustain it too with only a merely nominal admittance fee. The institution then would present an anomaly in the history of learning-a university of the first order, open to all, tuition free.1

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In regard to the advisability of establishing a State university he thus speaks:

In respect to the assertions that State institutions do not and can not flourish, it may safely be affirmed that the history of the past proves directly the reverse. The oldest and most venerable institutions in our land are emphatically State institutions; they were planted, came up, increased in stature, and attained to the maturity and vigor of manhood under the guidance and patronage of the State. The same is true of nearly all European universities; they are State institutions, founded, sustained, and directed by the State.

It would be interesting and instructive to give all the statements and arguments of this wise educator, but that can not be done here. His efforts are clearly enough seen in the university as it now stands, its breadth and capabilities largely due to his generous comprehension.

It will be noticed that the plan of the statute above mentioned included the founding of various branches throughout the State. Such schools were to serve as preparatory schools and as normal schools for the training and education of teachers. The superintendent, with his optimistic view of the university fund, recommended that a branch be established in every county, each branch to have means for giving an education of some thoroughness in literature and science, besides having a department of agriculture and a female seminary as soon as practicable. It is apparent that had it been possible to carry out this scheme there would have been a college in each county in the State, its affairs presided over by a central university, and all this maintained on the interest of a fund of $1,000,000, which Mr. Pierce still fully believed would be realized from the sale of lands. Steps were taken June 21, 1837, to start eight of these branches, and nine seem to have been established in all, before the board decided on their discontinuance entirely. It was seen that the university would be hampered in its development by attempts to support subordinate schools in various parts of the State, and after 1849 they disappeared from the

Senate documents, 1837, p. 61.

arena of university interests. The regents asserted, and the reasoning seems good, that it was beyond even the power of the legislature to authorize the use for intermediate schools of funds granted by Congress for the support of a seminary of learning. Not only were they a burden on the university because of the expense in providing for them, but there was danger at one time that the branches would absorb the interest of the people and be considered the end rather than the approaches to a college education. Many gravely asserted that they did more good than the university itself, and that every reasonable effort should be made to extend them and to increase their means of usefulness. It is with the feeling that a great danger has been escaped that we read of the action of the regents between 1846 and 1849, and we feel relieved when we hear no more of these branches, which threatened to sap the very life-blood of the university, and to give Michigan a host of rival acephalous colleges rather than one large and comprehensive university. And yet these branches did a good work of preparation, and the towns and cities where they had not been established hastened, when there was no hope of such aid, to establish high schools, which have now become the great feeders of the university. They are intimately connected with that institution; not so closely that all local pride and generous emulations are unknown stimulants; not so closely that local peculiarities and desirable individualities are unknown, and yet so closely that there is an evident connection between them, and a division of labor for the best interests of both.

A peril akin to the one arising from the establishment of branches was involved in a plan for the distribution of the income of the funds among various colleges, which were to be planted in different parts of the State. Such a bill at one time actually passed the senate and was defeated in the house by only one vote. The efforts of Mr. Pierce may be credited with averting destruction from the university, for he had obtained from leading educators of the country statements strongly in favor of concentration as opposed to distribution and consequent dissipation.

CHAPTER V.

THE UNIVERSITY FROM 1837 TO 1852.

March 18, 1837, the act establishing the university was approved. On the 20th of that month an act locating the university at Ann Arbor was approved. The Ann Arbor Land Company had granted gratuitously 40 acres of land as an inducement for settlement there. On the 5th of June the first meeting of the board of regents was held in Ann Arbor.1 A great deal of discussion and planning and devising seems to have occupied the attention of the board at this meeting. Schemes were spoken of which could not be put into being for many years to come, and various were the devices for the future. The regents began their duties with commendable zeal, their enthusiasm indeed carrying them to the very verge of destructive legislation. The board was composed of men who had little or no experience in educational matters. Mr. Crary was perhaps the only one who had ever studied the subject of education. Mr. Schoolcraft was a man of literary and scientific training.

The influence of Mr. Pierce is again discernible in tempering with wisdom the hasty and overambitious designs of the board. This first board determined upon the erection of a building, which was, as Mr. Pierce tells us, of a "truly magnificent design, and would in that day have involved an expenditure of half a million dollars." Had it not been for the refusal of the superintendent to agree to these plans the board would have committed itself to the expenditure of one-half the sum hoped for and of the whole sum actually realized from the sale of the university lands. Great excitement and even anger were the results of Mr. Pierce's refusal, but he remained steadfast in his opposition, and new plans were agreed upon. He insisted that able teachers, scientific collections, museums, and libraries were the essentials of a great university, not monstrous buildings of bricks and mortar. With the $100,000 loaned to the board by the State, four professors' houses were built on the campus, which are now used for various purposes, one

That day may, perhaps with as much propriety as any, be considered the natal day of the present organization of the university. (University of Michigan, Semicentennial, p. 164.)

of them only being used as a dwelling. About the same time the building now known as the north wing was completed. There is no need of suggesting that these buildings were not of a "truly magnificent design," yet thus with the expenditure of a reasonable amount of money suitable buildings were finished and the doors of the university were opened for students in September, 1841.

One of the very first acts of the board was to secure a collection of minerals offered for sale by Baron Lederer and now known as the Lederer Collection. For this collection was paid the sum of $4,000; and this expenditure, the first of the university, was soon followed by the purchase for $970 of four folio volumes and four octavo volumes com. posing Audubon's Ornithology. These purchases were made before a building was ready to receive the collection, before, in fact, a building committee was so much as appointed. Dr. Houghton, the State geol· ogist, sent specimens secured by him in his researches, as did Dr. Sager and Dr. Wright, who represented the botanical and zoological departments of the State survey; and so, before there were students, the university had in its possession a number of valuable collections, which formed the basis of the present museum of so much importance in later collegiate work. The books which the university should have inherited from its former self at Detroit were not transferred until 1869, but in 1840 some 3,700 volumes arrived in Ann Arbor and formed the nucleus of the present library. This was undoubtedly a valuable collection, selected with rare discrimination and judgment. July 17, 1838, the board of regents bestowed the first professorship on Dr. Asa Gray, who afterwards, in Harvard University, added so much to scientific knowledge. He was at that date made professor of botany and zoology, and a little later he was given by the board the sum of $6,500, of which he was to spend $5,000 in books for the university while absent in Europe on a contemplated visit. The 3,700 volumes were the fruits of his purchase. In April of 1842 the board, by a committee, inquired of Dr. Gray if he would consent to a suspension of his salary for a year. He agreed to the request and his connection with the University of Michigan was ended. To him may justly be given the credit of beginning the library of the university.

Because of many interruptions and financial difficulties the board was unable to open the university for students before the autumn of 1841. There were various complaints and reproaches because of this delay. Students who had been prepared in the branches and other schools of the State went elsewhere for their college course and there was a popu· lar demand for the opening at Ann Arbor. July 22, 1841, the following resolution was passed:

Resolved, That the resolution adopted on the 8th instant, in reference to the organization of a branch at Ann Arbor be so far modified as to authorize the organization of the university at Ann Arbor by the appointment of a professor of languages, who shall perform the additional duties prescribed in the resolution hereby modified.

George P. Williams was given the professorship here mentioned, but he was soon removed to the chair of mathematics and Rev. Joseph Whiting was made professor of languages. The former of these men was at that time principal of the Pontiac branch and the latter principal of the Niles branch. Mr. Colclazer, who had been appointed librarian by the board at its first meeting, was also now on hand, ready for the performance of his duties.

In August of this year the requirements for admission were published, as follows:

Applicants for admission must adduce satisfactory evidence of good moral character and sustain an examination in geography, arithmetic, the elements of algebra, the grammar of the English, Latin, and Greek languages, the exercise and reader of Andrews, Cornelius Nepos, Vita Washingtonii, Sallust, Cicero's Orations, Jacob's Greek Reader, and the evangelists.

The faculty of two received in September six students, and the University of Michigan began its actual work.

It is perfectly evident from the requirements for admission that the "department of literature and science and the arts" began as a college, and did not, as many others, struggle upward to collegiate standing. Greek and Latin, mathematics, astronomy, physics, and metaphysics constituted, with little besides, the typical course of the typical Eastern college. Almost immediately a broader course was offered in the new university. The faculty announced that they could see no reason in confining all students to precisely the same authors. A course of study was prepared which certainly had the attribute "disciplinary."