Part 8 (1/2)
These institutions for higher education have trained overnth to the nation Their extensive knowledge and thoroughly disciplined and co our syste the nation to the rank of one of the greatest political powers
The colleges have trained the intellect and conscience of the one forth as leaders, and have exerted a prodigious influence a They have not only disciplined the powers of thethe our civil destinies The students that have been gathered into the colleges from the different portions of the nation have become imbued with one sentiether by the bonds of a co friendshi+ps, which have resulted favorably for the republic
Soes have richly repaid the nation for all the effort and sacrifice it cost to found thee has sent out twenty or ress, fifteen United States Senators, seventeen Governors, thirty-seven Judges, a Lieutenant General and other high officers of the Army, two Commodores to the Navy, twelve professors, seven Cabinet officers; the chief draughtsman and author of the Constitution, Edmund Randolph; the most eminent of the Chief Justices, John Marshall, and three Presidents of the United States
Harvard has furnished two Presidents, one Vice President, fifteen Cabinet officers, twenty Foreign Ministers, twenty-nine United States Senators, one hundred and four Congressmen, and nineteen Governors
Princeton has beaten the Harvard record in everything except the first and fourth iteiven to the country one President, two Vice Presidents, nineteen Cabinet officers, nineteen Foreign Ministers, fifty-five United States Senators, one hundred and forty-two Congressians have ranked a the principal leaders in the political life of the nation Fifty-eight per cent of the chief national offices have been filled by them Thomas Jefferson, author of the ”Declaration of Independence,” was a college man Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, who took such a pro of the Constitution of the United States, were college-trained ners of the Declaration of Independence were college graduates These and other superior men in public life, at this period, were educated and possessed a scholarshi+p that was in co of the titon was a self-reatest statese, in preparing his state papers
The counsellors of Abraha the stormy days of the Rebellion, were men of trained minds ”All the leaders,” says Professor S N Fellow, ”in that Cabinet were college-trained men
William H Seward, the shrewdest diplomatist, who held other nations at bay until the Rebellion was throttled; Salmon P Chase, whose fertile brain developed a financial system by which our nation was saved froood as the gold in foreign anized a million of raw recruits into an army equal to any in the world; Gideon Welles, who, al, created a navy sufficient for our needs,--each of these, and every other raduate So, also, in the arhly trained and disciplined men filled the chief places in command that the Federal forces overwhelmed and destroyed the Rebellion We repeat, the law is, and it is believed to be universal, that the higher the rank or position, the larger per cent of college graduates are found in it”
Education was an i the issues of our Civil War Thoroughly trained and disciplined men filled the chief places in command in the Federal Army The Northern soldiers were better educated than those of the South It has been said that ”in the Gerht the battles of the Franco-Prussian war, those who could neither read nor write amounted to only 38 per cent, while in the French Ar to the admission of the defeated, the universities conquered at Sedan
Perhaps it is not too es in the Northern States conquered at Appoe per cent of the leaders in the A period of our country's history froraduates or had taken a partial course in college and gained its inspiration
The college graduates have furnished 33 per cent of the Congressmen, 46 per cent of the Senators, 50 per cent of the Vice Presidents, 65 per cent of the Presidents, 73 per cent of the associate Judges, and 83 per cent of the Chief Justices of the Supreain, we are especially indebted to the colleges for encouraging private and public schools, through which we have becohtened people It is iiate education There is an intie and the public schools, which differ not in kind, but only in the degree of instruction ”The success and usefulness of common schools,” says Professor W S Tyler, ”is exactly proportioned to the popularity and prosperity of the colleges, and whatever is done for or against the one is sure to react, with equal force and sies have been fore that the education of the youth should not be left to those of er attainments and narrow sympathies They have es of our public schools, it is iive instruction, as well as to prepare text-books, and to increase the appliances e
It has been a difficult task to bring our public school systeress The work has proceeded slowly and steadily under the exareat educational centers The excellence and usefulness of our school system has advanced just in proportion to the culture and ability of the teachers A collegiate education has always tended to foster and encourage higher standards of scholarshi+p a teachers, and this influence has been diffused into the public school system President Charles W Super truthfully says: ”That which leads up to the highest must always be supervised and directed by that which is at the top A system of elementary and secondary education which does not culoal towards which its efforts are directed, is an absurdity There ood teachers can only be fore at first hand
This has been a recognized principle in Gerer; is now aloal tohich the whole civilized world is rapidly ”
The efficiency of our public schools has been felt in every depart bulwark against the influences of a raw and uninstructed foreign population, who, like a tidal wave, have flooded our shores Sonorant and infidel, but filled with monarchical ideas and un-Aht their children into accord with our Aent patriotises, and helped to generate a union of sympathy and sentiment which leads to the consolidation of our society into a hoh the public school teachers, have likewise helped to educate the millions of the manumitted and enfranchised colored people, and to break up sectionalism, allay party strife, and make for the peace, prosperity, and unity of the nation
Our political safety has called for a wise and vigorous effort to educate the eneous elees, with their interdependence, have in a great acy of peace, prosperity, and intelligence enjoyed by all the people
Likewise, the colleges have contributed largely to the general prosperity and ress of society They are the real centers of power of this enterprising and progressive age ”The revival of learning and the epoch of discovery ushered in the epoch of natural science, which has e-trained men are the most practical and useful of men They have been the creators of material wealth and prosperity Their discoveries and inventions have revolutionized business and social life Every depart with the fruits of science and philosophy, which have been largely built up by colleges and college-trained lish universities Watt and Fulton associated with college men, and ”derived from them the principles of science which they applied in the developation Professor Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph, was not only a college graduate and professor, but reat experiments within the walls of a university” Likewise, many other scientists, who have demonstrated the limitless possibilities of steam and electricity, and other valuable discoveries and inventions, were either trained in the colleges or received fro principles which were essential to their success These human inventions are of priceless value to the people The steareatly to human welfare It represents, in the United States alone, 20,000,000 horse power in the form of locomotives, or the steam power of 300 horses for each thousand inhabitants Besides all this, 6,000,000 horse power in stationary steaive the vast force which toils for us, and the laborer furnishes only the guiding power These inventions have enabled us to increase our wealth at the rate of 2,000,000,000 a year during the last decade, and helped to make our people sharers in the products of the world, and in all the blessings of civilization
Professor Huxley was right when he said: ”If the nation could purchase a potential Watt, or Davy, or Faraday, at a cost of a hundred thousand pounds down, he would be dirt cheap at that money” Fifty-two of the inventions now prized by the civilized world were made in Germany, and within the influence of her universities All these discoveries are opening the doors for reat industries of the country require anize and control theencies to help produce thee labor and tastes
The colleges, as centers of intellectual life, have fostered literary tastes in those who have built up and enriched literature Their libraries and lectures have gathered together men of literary aie has becoe literature and science This congenial intellectual at person to project noble literary plans
The reat writers have spent years at the university Lord Bacon outlined his gigantic plan for ”the Instauration of the Sciences” during the four years spent in the University of Cae
Milton laid the foundations of his classical scholarshi+p in the university ”Neas e, Cae, and a professor of mathematics He passed fifteen years of his life in the cloisters of a college, and solved the probleateway”
The literary influences of our colleges were early manifest in our nation The scholarshi+p, classical taste, and fine literary style of the superior men in public life led the Earl of Chatham, in the House of Lords, in 1775, to pay ”a tribute of eloquent hoe to the intellectual force, the symmetry, and the decorum of the state papers recently transmitted from America, which was virtually an announceral part of the civilized world, and a es have nourished the conditions out of which a pure, classical literature , of Harvard, and Webster, Worcester and Goodrich, of Yale, have perfor the way for our ue to be spoken in its purity
In the line of history, the Aiven the nation such men as Bancroft, Parkman, Palfrey, Prescott, Motley, Winthrop and Adams In the sciences, there are Dana, Gray, Cooke, Walker, Porter, Woolsey and Agassiz In law and political science, we have Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Evarts, Webster, Chase, Choate, Everett and Sumner