An Historic Sketch of the
SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
of
Charleston, S.C.
1898
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A HISTORIC SKETCH
,' OF THE-
SECCm-nl. .
OF CHARLESTON,
» . T^
Presbyterian
Church,
of Charleston, S. C.
■> *
FROM ITS BEGINNING
TO THE PRESENT TIME.
BY
Rev. Gilbert R. Brackett, D. D..
PASTOR.
in Year Book, 1898.
UCA8 <4 RICHARDSON CO. PRINT
CHARLESTON, 8. C.
AN HISTORIC SKETCH
OF THE
SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH,
of charleston, s. c.
'rom its Beginning to the Present Time,
BY
REV. GILBERT R. BRACKETT, D. D.,
PASTOR.
esbyterians were among the first settlers in South Caro-
They have been proportionably numerous in all
ods of its history, and during the latter part of the i8th
:ury, the great majority of emigrants were Presbyte-
s. In the year* 1704, when there was but one Episcopal
gregation in the whole province, then numbering towards
thousand white inhabitants, the dissenters had three
;hes in Charleston. As early, however, as the year
, the Presbyterians in conjunction with the Indepen-
3, formed a church in Charleston, which continued in
nited form for forty years. During this period, two
ir ministers, the Rev. Messrs. Stobo and Livingston,
Presbyterians, and connected with Charleston Presby-
After the death of the latter, twelve families seceded.
formed a Presbyterian Church, on the model of the
ch of Scotland. Previous to 1790 the Presbytery was
^corporate, from reasons to be presently mentioned.
t belonged the churches of Wiltown, Pon-Pon, St.
mas', Stoney Creek, Salt Catchers, Black Mingo, the
nal and first incorporated church of Williamsburg,
rleston, Edisto, and the church of John and Wadmalaw
.ids. In 1790, four of these, by a petition to the Legis-
lature, were constituted a body corporate, principally in
view of raising a fund for the relief of widows and orphans
of deceased ministers. In I 790, the Presbytery of Charles-
ton made application to be received as a constituent part
of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in
the United States of America, but this union was never
formed. The ministry constituting this Presbytery were
mostly from Scotland and Ireland ; " men," says Ramsay,
"of good education, orderly in their conduct, and devoted
to the systems of doctrine and government established in
Scotland."
It may well be inquired, why, with such an early and
continued prominence in the colony, Presbyterians did not
multiply to a corresponding extent; recommended as they
ever have been by an enlightened, educated and laborious
ministry? To this, plain answer can be given by the state-
ment of a few facts. In the year 1698, an Act was passed
by the Government "to settle a maintenance on a minister
of the Church of England in Charleston." The precedent,
thus set by the Legislature, and without any suspicion ac-
quiesced in by the people, was the germ of a future eccle-
siastical establishment. Most of the proprietors and public
officers of the province being attached to the Church of
England, determined if possible to secure for it legal pre-
eminence and connection with the State. The election of
members of this church to the Legislature was covertly
promoted, and a majority obtained. " The recently elected
members," says Dr. Ramsay, "soon after they entered upon
their legislative functions, took measures for perpetuating
a power they had thus obtained, for they enacted a law
'which made it necessary for all persons thereafter chosen
members of the Commons House of Assembly to conform
to the religious worship of the Church of England, and
receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to
the rites and usages of the Church.' ' This Act passed the
lower House by a majority of one vote. It virtually ex-
cluded from a seat in the Legislature all who were dissenters,
erected an aristocracy, and gave a monopoly of power to
one sect, though far from being a majority of the inhabi-
tants. Though the infant establishment of the Church of
England, thus instituted, was frowned upon by the ruling
powers in England, and was disagreeable to a majority of
the inhabitants of Carolina, yet no further steps were then
taken for restoring to dissenters their equal rights. The
Episcopal party continued to maintain their ascendency in
the Assembly, and made legislative provision for extending
and maintaining their mode of worship. In two years, the
colony was divided into ten parishes, and each parish was
made a corporation. Some of these were afterwards sub-
divided, and others occasionally formed as the population
extended.
Money was provided by law for building and repairing
churches; lands were secured by donation, purchase or
grants from proprietors, at the public expense, for glebes
and church yards; and salaries for the different rectors,
clerks, and sextons of the established parishes were fixed
and made payable out of the provincial treasury. Legisla-
tive acts were passed for the encouragement of Episcopal
clergymen to settle in the province, and exercise their
clerical functions, in the several parishes designated by law.
This state of things, with but little variation, continued
for seventy years, and as long as the province remained
subject to Great Britain. In the course of that period
twenty-four parishes were laid off, most of which were in
maratime districts, and none more than ninety miles from
the seacoast.
It was not until the period of the Revolution, that this
monopoly of religious privilege was broken up, and Presby-
terians and other denominations of Christians, were re-
stored to equality of rights, and freed from a taxation
which required them to support an established faith, with
which in many things they could not agree. Nor was this
deliverance even then granted them but from necessity.
For they had now an unquestionable majority in the colony,
and the physical force necessary for war and defence was
theirs. W lthuut union among all parties, there was no pros-
pect of success, and therefore, after seventy years of exclu-
sive authority, the Established Church was under the neces-
sity of yielding to a constitution which gave equal laws,
equal rights, and full and free toleration to all sects and
parties. The unfettered progress of Presbyterians must be
dated, therefore, from the period of repose after the storm
of the Revolution, when they found their funds unguarded
by every previous security, almost entirely gone, and their
prospects dark and foreboding. Thus freed from constraint,
the number of Presbyterians multiplied in the city, and
throughout the State. The church in Charleston was
found insufficient to accommodate those who wished to
worship with Presbyterians. The house was always
crowded, seats could not be procured, except by long delay,
and the necessity of another Presbyterian Church became
apparent. Previous to i8u,the First Presbyterian Church
was the only accommodation for Presbyterians in Charles-
ton. It had been for many years, however, found alto-
gether insufficient for this purpose. As early as the year
1804, the necessity of a new erection was felt, and the
design encouraged by Dr. Buist, then pastor of the
church. The Rev. James Malcomson who arrived from
Ireland, in 1794, and had been settled as pastor for many
years in Williamsburg, of this State, was engaged to preach
for those who wished to form another congregation, and
the temporary use of the French Church was procured.
His death, which occurred in September of the same year,
blighted the sanguine hopes which were entertained, that
ere long another Presbyterian Church and congregation
would be formed in Charleston.
Mr. Malcomson was born in the Parish of Castlereagh, in
the County of Down, but received the chief part of his
education at the University of Glasgow. With his minis-
terial functions he combined the profession of medicine,
which he practiced with no small degree of skill, and it is
this profession that gave him the title of Doctor. He had
attended medical lectures at Edinburgh, and was a licensed
physician. In addition to his pastoral charge, he taught a
5
large grammar school, at which many received their early
education. He was a man of talent, of thorough scholar-
ship, and of pleasing address, and prepossessing person.
He wrote his sermons, but was interesting and often elo-
quent in their delivery. Facetious and genial, he had many
and warm friends, and was not without his enemies. In
the divisions which rent the church asunder, it was difficult
to avoid all obloquy and prejudice, even for those who
were the most perfect. He continued to minister to this
church till 1804, when he removed to Charleston, where he
taught a classical school and preached to a new congrega-
tion, increasing in numbers when he was called away, and
which was the germ of the Second Presbyterian Church.
He died of yellow fever during the summer of 1804, m the
thirty-sixth year of his age.
It was not until the year 1809, when the inability to find
accommodation in the existing church made the matter ur-
gent, the determination was finally and effectually made
to enter upon the formation of the Second Presbyterian
Church.
It was on Wednesday evening, February 8th, 1809, that the
following gentlemen being assembled at the house of Mr.
Fleming, entered into an agreement to unite their efforts
to secure a suitable building for a Presbyterian Church, viz. :
Benjamin Boyd, William Pressly, John Ellison, Archibald
Pagan, George Robertson, Samuel Robertson, William
Walton, James Adger, Caleb Gray, John Robinson, Alex-
ander Henry, Samuel Pressly, William Aiken, John Porter.
At a subsequent meeting, on March 6th, a subscription
paper for the support of a minister was presented, when, by
a subscription of a number present of one hundred dollars
each for two years, more than a sufficient salary being sub-
scribed, a committee was appointed to request the Rev.
Andrew Flinn, then connected with the united congregation
of Williamsburg and Indiantown, to organize and take
charge of the congregation, with a salary of two thousand
dollars. That committee consisted of Benjamin Boyd, John
Cunningham, Joseph Milligan, Samuel Robertson and John
Robinson. The invitation, the claims of his charge having
been voluntarily surrendered, Mr. Flinn accepted, when a
meeting for the formation of a Second Presbyterian Church
was held at Trinity Church on Monday evening, April 24th,
1809. Committees were appointed to attend to the secular
business, to purchase a site for the erection of a church
and to obtain subscriptions. The first standing committee
to attend to all the secular affairs of the church, to purchase
a site for the church, were Benjamin Boyd, John Cunning-
ham, Joseph Milligan, John Robinson and Samuel Robert-
son.
The committee to procure subscriptions, consisted of
Benjamin Boyd, John Cunningham, Joseph Milligan, Alex-
ander Henry. John Stoney, John Ellison, William Porter,
George Robertson, James Gordon, William Aiken, William
Walton, William Pressly, John Robinson.
As a record of the munificence of the donors, who were
not confined to Presbyterians, it was resolved that the
names of the subscribers should be preserved in parchment
and deposited in the archives of the church.
By May 16th, the plan of the church was presented by
William Gordon, who was appointed to build it, and who
immediately entered upon the work. In 1809, an Act of
Incorporation was obtained, At a meeting in January 25th,
1810, a subscription paper was presented for the signatures
of those who wished to become members of the Second
Presbyterian Church, to be governed by prescribed rules
and by-laws, when the following persons signed their names,
viz: Benjamin Boyd, Stephen Thomas, Robert Fleming,
Richard McMillan, Caleb Gray, Richard Cunningham, James
Adger, John Porter, William H. Gilliland, Alexander Gray,
John Blackwood, John Cunningham, Alexander Henry,
John McDowell, William Walton, Samuel Robertson, John
Walton, Thomas Fleming, John Robinson, James Begg,
George Robertson, J. C. Martindale, John Brownlee, Wil-
liam Scott, John Johnson, Charles Robiou, William Aiken
George Keenan, Archibald Grahame, James Carr, Lewis A.
Pitray, James Leman, John Noble, David Bell, James
Evans, John Ellison, B. Casey, William McElmoyle, John
Davis, William Pressly, Thomas Johnson, George Miller,
James Blocker, Robert Belshaw, Samuel Corrie, Samuel H.
Pratt. James Pennal, Thomas A Vardell, John Steele, Na-
thaniel Slavvson, John C. Beile, William Porter, Samuel
Patterson, Samuel Browne. John M. Fraser, Thomas Milli-
ken, John Smyth, John Mushet, John Crow, John Geddes,
Peter Kennedy, James Wall, Charles Martin, Alexander
Howard, William Thompson, John Dunn, William Smith,
Sr., William L. Shaw, Edward Carew, C. B. Duhadvvay,
Samuel Pilsbury, William Scott, R. Galbraith, Richard
Fair, Edward McGrath, James Cooper, William Simms.
In order that the church might be opened for the recep-
tion of Harmony Presbytery, at its first session, it was
dedicated to the worship of Almighty God, by a sermon
from the Rev. Dr. Flinn, on Wednesday, April 3d, 181 1;
and connected with the ecclesiastical judicatories of the
Presbyterian Church. This was the first session ever held
in Charleston by a Presbytery connected with the General
Assembly of the " Presbyterian Church in the United
States of America."
The Charleston Union Presbytery also held its first ses-
sion in this church, April 10th, 1823.
Although great munificence was exercised by the found-
ers of this church, its cost far exceeded both their expecta-
tions and their means. By the account of the Treasurer
presented up to April, 1812, it appears that the sum of
fifty-five thousand, five hundred and forty-eight dollars had
been expended, and that a large amount would be still
necessary to carry out the plans and pa)' the incurred debt.
To meet this, a heavy assessment was laid upon the pews
of the church in March, 181 1 ; and another, to three times
the amount, in December, 1815. Notwithstanding these
efforts, in June, 1816. it appeared that the sum of thirty-one
thousand, one hundred and fifty-six dollars, twenty-five
cents, was still due, when it was resolved to sell all the pews
on which the assessment had not been paid. There still,
however, remained in May, 1822, a debt of twenty-two
8
thousand dollars hanging upon the church, and which, in
April, 1823, had increased to twenty-three thousand four
hundred and eighty-five dollars. The standing committee
feeling the great importance of removing in some way this
oppressive burden, reported in 1823 a plan of relieving the
church of this debt, by transferring the whole property and
temporal jurisdiction of the church to an association, who
should assume the debt as their own, engaging however,
that the Confession of Faith as moulded by the General
Assembly, should ever be the rule of government to the
church, as well as in doctrine as in discipline. The report
was adopted at a meeting in August, 1823, and in the same
month the committee reported that they had obtained
subscriptions for the extinction of the debt, amounting to
sixteen thousand and twenty-five dollars, and in April,
1824, the same committee stated that all the debts of the
church had been settled.
Thus was this beautiful temple, at a cost of more than
one hundred thousand dollars, finally erected and delivered
from all incumbrances, by the energy, union, and concerted
liberality of its founders.
The burden of its debt having been removed from the con-
gregation, it was now prepared to take into consideration the
possibility of lessening the evils suggested by Dr. Smyth,
occasioned by the immensity of the auditorium. And it
was with much pleasure and gratification that he testified
to the readiness and liberality with which in 1833, it entered
upon that series of alterations, which terminated so bene-
ficial in the present greatly improved condition and aspect
of the church. By these alterations, while no injury was
done to the appearance of the church, the capacity of
the audience room was diminished by lowering the ceiling,
raising the floor, and taking sufficient space from the front
to make a convenient vestibule, and a commodious room
above, which could be used for a Sunday School, or lecture
room, and a library.
It was found in 1874, that a new roof was needed for the
safety and preservation of the building, and the sum of six
thousand was raised in a time of great financial strin-
gency. In his handsome tribute to the " noble ladies,"
President C. H. Simonton said : '" The work could not have
been finished without their generous co-operation." The
amount raised by them was eighteen hundred dollars. In
the great cyclone of August 27th, 1813, this church sus-
tained considerable injury ; the lead that covered the top
of the roof, with a large portion of the slate, were raised
and carried away, and some of the sashes of the windows
were blown away.
In 1855, when other churches were seriously damaged by
the cyclone, this received a comparatively slight injury.
In the memorable earthquake of 1886, which threatened
the city with destruction, this church was damaged to the
amount of six thousand dollars, but through the kind and
generous benefaction of friends abroad, from both South
and North, chiefly from the latter, the congregation were
enabled, speedily, to restore their shattered walls.
In August 27th, 1893, this church again suffered severely
from the most destructive cyclone «that has ever visited our
city. The building was completely unroofed on the north
side, the pews and organ deluged with water, and the whole
ceiling so damaged as to necessitate its removal. The sum
required to restore the building was three thousand three
hundred dollars, which was partially covered by an insur-
ance of thiiteen hundred.
Only such repairs were made immediately after the earth-
quake as were deemed necessary for safety. The work of
complete restoration and improvement was deferred until
the pastor's summer vacation. The actual damages by the
quake were not visible to the ordinary observer, who saw
only the shattered walls and broken ceiling.
Beginning with the tower, it was found necessary to make
such changes in the contiguous walls and galleries as would
remedy the settling of the foundations nearly six inches.
The unsightly block on the summit of the tower was re-
placed by an elegant gilded vane, and the old lightning rod
removed. In the south vestibule, a convenient room was
10
added for the pastor. The organ was retired twelve feet
into the old lecture room, which is no longer used for relig-
iovs services, thus enlarging the orchestra and giving ample
room for the choir. The whole building received a new
coat of paint, both on the inside and outside. No change
was made in the interior walls. The venerable pulpit, of
rich Spanish mahogany, and of richer hallowed associations
was retained as far as possible, and at the same time to
accomodate it to a low platform. The pews were recush-
ioned by the congregation. The new and beautiful carpet
is the generous gift of one of the members. The group of
windows back of the pulpit was improved by the substitu-
tion of stained glass.
Previous to the time of Dr. Henry, the weekly lectures
were delivered, and the prayer meeting held at private resi
dences ; but in January, 1824, at the urgency of Dr. Henry^
the corporation procured a temporary building in St.
Philip Street. A lot of land was, however, soon leased in
Black Bird's Alley, now Burns' Lane, at fifty dollars per
annum, and a lecture room erected through the efforts of
the ladies of the congregation, at a cost of about seven hun-
dred dollars. But this building being too small and the
location unfavorable, it was resolved in 1835, to procure a
more suitable building in a more eligible situation.
A beautiful, and more creditable edifice was erected in
Society Street, and dedicated in March, 1837. This lecture
room was destroyed in the great fire of 1838. It was after-
wards rebuilt, and subsequently sold. It was in these lec-
ture rooms that Dr. Smyth delivered to crowded audiences,
of every class his masterly discourses on " Apostolical Si4c-
c ess ton," and " Presbytery and Prelacy" which were after-
wards published and used as text books in several theo-
logical seminaries.
In 188 1 , the need of a new and more convenient Sunday
School building was beginning to be deeply felt, and steps
were taken to procure funds for its erection, resulting in
the organization of a society called the " Sunday School
Workers," which in the course of nine years raised three
11
thousand dollars. In November, i88i,alot was purchased,
at a cost of twelve hundred and seven dollars. The elegant
building was completed at a cost of ten thousand four
hundred and fifty-six dollars, and dedicated May, 1887.
The Sunday School of the Second Presbyterian Church,
was organized in the year 18 18 by Mr. and Mrs. George E.
Hahnbaum. It was the second Sunday School organized
in this city. Mr. and Mrs. Hahnbaum were both members
of the Congregational (or Circular) Church, of Charleston,
and they had, about two years previous started in connec-
tion with that church, the first Sunday School in the city.
This attracted the attention of some of the members of
the Second Presbyterian Church, and in 1818 an invitation
was extended to Mr. and Mrs. Hahnbaum to organize a
school there.
The first superintendent of the school, was Mr. Geo. E.
Hahnbaum himself, assisted by Mrs. Hahnbaum. It was
organized as distinct from the church, and was not, at that
time, under the direction of the session. For this, and other
reasons, the Rev. Dr. Flinn, the pastor of the church opposed
it, regarding the work as too secular in its nature. But he
was soon convinced of its usefulness, and was ever after its
zealous supporter.
In 1822, when the school was firmly established, Mr. and
Mrs. Hahnbaum returned to the Circular Church, and the
Rev. Basil Gildersleeve was elected superintendent of the
school, which office he held until 1839. During a part of
his administration he was assisted by Mr. Charles S.
Simonton.
This church always manifested a deep and affectionate
interest in the colored people, who filled the galleries of the
church and largely composed its membership, at one time
numbering two hundred. During the forty years of Dr.
Smyth's ministry, he was accustomed to prepare sermons
with special reference to their instruction, and held a special
service for them during the week. He was a warm sup-
porter of the Zion Colored Church, in Anson Street, and of
the Rev. J. L. Girardeau. D. D., in his ministry to thepeo-
12
pie. At the time we now refer to, this church furnished a
dozen teachers for the colored Sunday-school in Anson
Street. "The erection of a beautiful and commodious edi-
fice for the special accommodation of the colored people,
the employment of an able minister to labor among them,
and the self-denial with which some have persevered in im-
parting to their cathechitical instruction," said Dr. Smyth,
"will ever be to your praise."
Reference is here made to the church in Calhoun Street,
to which the growing congregation in Anson Street re
moved, and where multitudes of colored people were gath-
ered into the Presbyterian Church. The first pastor of this
"Zion Church," as it was called, was the Rev. John B.
Adger, D. D., for twelve years a zealous missionary in
Smyrna, and who labored among this people with equal
devotion. For several months after the resignation of Dr.
Adger, the church was supplied by the Rev. Ferdinand
Jacobs, D. D,, when the Rev. John L. Girardeau, D. D.,
entered upon his long and useful ministry among this peo-
ple. This valuable building on Calhoun Street, is gratui-
tously furnished to the colored people as a place of wor-
ship.
The first pastor of this church was the Rev. Andrew
Flinn, D. D. He was called in February, 1809; installed
April 4th, 1811, and died February 24th, 1820, having been
eleven years connected with the church. Mr. Flinn was
born in the State of Maryland, in the year 1773, of honest
and pious, but humble parentage. When he was about a
year old the family emigrated to Mecklenburg County, N.
C, where his father died in 1875. Thus he was left to the
care of a widowed mother, with six small children, and with
stinted means for their support. Some of his friends, how-
ever, observing that he was a youth of extraordinary promise,
encouraged him to commence a course of study and vol-
unteered their aid to enable him to prosecute it. He en-
tered the University of North Carolina, where he graduated
with considerable distinction in 1799. He engaged in the
study of theology, under the care of the Presbytery of
13
Orange, and was licensed to preach the Gospel in 1800.
His first efforts in the pulpit excited great attention, and
marked him as one of the most popular candidates of the
day. Having preached for some time in Hillsboro and in
some other places, he accepted, in January, 1803, an invita-
tion to supply the pulpit in Fayetteville, where he was or-
dained to the work of the ministry, and installed pastor.
Mr. Flinn was indefatigable as a pastor, and was obliged,
besides, to teach school in order to make out a competent
support. But these united labors became so oppressive,
that in 1805 he was compelled to resign his charge. He
now removed to Camden, S. C, where he was instrumental
in organizing and building up a very respectable Presbyte-
rian congregation. After laboring there for a short time,
he went to Williamsburg County and preached for a while
to the churches of Bethel and Indiantovvn. But it was not
long before he visited Charleston and preached several
times in the Scotch Presbyterian Church. So great was
the sensation produced by his fervid eloquence, that he was
immediately invited to take charge of the Second Presby-
terian Church. When this new church was in process of
erection, the congregation obtained the use of a vacant
Methodist place of worship, in which Mr. Flinn commenced
his ministry.
In November, of this year, he was honored with the de-
gree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of North
Carolina. In 1812 he was Moderator of the General Assem-
bly of the Presbyterian Church.
On February 24th, 1820, in the forty-eighth year of his
age, after a long and painful illness, Dr. Flinn was removed
from the scene of his earthly labors. In his last moments,
he, with an affectionate farewell of his mourning family and
friends, and this with perfect composure, raised his hands
and eyes to heaven and said, "Jesus, into thy hands I com-
mend my spirit." Mr. Flinn was twice married. His first
wife was Martha H. Walker, who died in 1808, the mother
of one daughter, who was married to the Rev. John Dick-
14
son. His second wife was Mrs. Eliza Grimball, widow of
John Grimball, by whom he had no issue.
After the death of Dr. Flinn, the church was supplied by
such transient ministers as could be obtained, until April,
1820, when the Rev. Artemus Boies, pastor of the Church
of Wilmington, N. C, who had been recommended by Dr.
Flinn, was called to supply the church for one year, during
the rebuilding of the church at Wilmington, which had been
burnt. He was elected pastor in April, 1821, and continued
to labor until May, 1823, when he tendered his resig
nation.
In November, 1823, it was unanimously resolved to call
the Rev. Thomas Charlton Henry to the pastoral charge for
one year. This call was very soon made permanent and
accepted, and Mr. Henry was installed by the Charleston
Union Presbytery January, 1824. He died October 5th,
1827, having been connected with the church only four
years. The Rev. T. C. Henry was the son of Alexander
Henry, of Philadelphia, the venerable and devoted President
of the American Sunday School Union, and an Elder in the
Central Presbyterian Church. He was born September 22d,
1790. At his birth, and during his childhood, his father
repeatedly devoted him to the ministry; but his early years
were passed with great buoyancy of spirit, and love of
pleasure, though he had withal a considerable fondness for
books. His father was disposed to indulge his literary tastes
by giving him the best advantages for improvement. At
the age of eighteen he was placed at mercantile business.
This, however, proved distasteful to him, and he returned
to literary pursuits, and was graduated from Middleburg
College, Vermont, in August, 1814, with distinction. Hav
ing meantime experienced the saving power of divine grace,
he devoted himself to the sacred ministry. To fit himself
for this work, he took a course of theological study at
Princeton Seminary, N. J., where he was a diligent student
for two years. He was licensed to preach by the Philadel
phia Presbytery April 17, 1816, but in October following
was dismissed to Newcastle Presbytery, by which he was
15
subsequently ordained. For two successive years he per-
formed gratuitously the work of a missionary. Several
months of this period were passed at Lexington, Ky., where
he had great popularity as a preacher. From Lexington
he was called to the First Presbyterian Church in Columbia,
S. C, of which he was installed pastor in 1818, by the Pres-
bytery of Harmony. After a prosperous ministry of five
years, he received a unanimous call to this church to be-
come their pastor. In the first and second years of his
ministry considerable additions were made to the church,
but in the third, a blessed effusion of the Spirit was enjoyed.
His indefatigable labors during this season rendered a period
of relaxation indispensible, and he therefore embarked for
Liverpool in April. 1826. During the four or five months
of his stay in Europe, he travelled through the principal
parts of Great Britain and France, He returned early in
December, and with redoubled vigor entered upon his
labors. On the first of October, 1827, when in the enjoy-
ment of perfect health, he was suddenly seized with the
yellow fever, then prevalent in this city, and of a malig-
nant type, which in four days terminated his valuable life,
at the early age of thirty-seven. From the beginning he
manifested unqualified submission to the Divine will, and
he conversed with his friends in the most comforting and
rapturous manner, testifying to the power of his Redeem-
er's love and grace. The following is a list of Dr. Henry's
publications: A Plea for the West; A Sermon before the
Missionary Society of the Synod of South Carolina and
Georgia, 1824; The Song of Ascent ; A Sermon preached
on the fourteenth anniversary of the Dedication of the
Second Presbyterian Church, 1825 ; Popular Amusements,
12 mo., 1825 ; Letters to an Anxious Enquirer, 12 mo.. 1827;
Etchings from the Religious World, 12 mo. His "Letters
to an Anxious Enquirer" have been twice published in
America, the second edition under the auspices, and with a
recommendatory preface, of the Rev. Dr. Bedell, and also
in London, with an introduction by Dr. Pye Smith. .The
account of his death is also published in a volume of the
16
London Tract Society, as an eminent exhibition of the
triumph of divine grace.
After the melancholy death of Dr. Henry, the church
remained two years without a pastor, though faithfully sup-
plied by the Rev. Benjamin Gildersleeye. and the Rev. A.
Leland, D. D. Various and unsuccessful efforts were made
to obtain the services of a suitable minister.
In June, 1828, the Rev. Alonzo Church, of Georgia, re-
ceived a call which he declined. In September, the Rev.
E. N. Kirk, was elected pastor, but he also refused to come.
In February, 1829, the Rev. William Ashmead, being in
Charleston, on account of his health, received a call. In
March he accepted of his appointment, and was in May,
installed pastor. On June 7th, he obtained leave of ab-
sence for the summer, with the intention of bringing his
family, but he died on his return in Philadelphia, December
2d, 1829, having been connected with this church but little
more than six months, of which he was absent more than
four. Mr. Ashmead was born in Philadelphia, in 1797. From
his earliest youth he was devoted to books and retirement,
and was remarked by Dr. Rush as a youth of fine promise.
He studied in the University of Pennsylvania, and was
graduated in 1848. Having chosen as his future profession
the Gospel Ministry, he studied under the Rev. James P.
Wilson, of Philadelphia. Mr. Ashmead was compelled to
teach by day and study by night, and thus laid the founda-
tion for his future infirmities. In 1820, he was licensed to
preach by the Presbytery of Philadelphia. He received a
call from the Presbyterian Church in Lancaster, Pa., where
he labored more than eight years previous to his call to
this church. Mr. Ashmead, considering his age, was an
accomplished and thorough scholar. He read with ease the
French, Spanish and Italian languages, and had made some
proficiency in German also, when his declining health
obliged him to relinquish it. In the winter of 1825, he
commenced a translation of Saurin's Historical, Critical
and Theological Discourses, but in this labor also, after he
had made considerable progress, he was arrested by ill
17
health. In 1826, he published an essay on pauperism, ad-
dressed to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, in which was
displayed great ingenuity, and power of argument. Since
his death, a volume of sermons has been issued from the
press, to which is prefixed an interesting memoir by the
lamented Grimk£, who was his warm friend, and held him
in high estimation.
After the death of Mr. Ashmead, the church sat in her
widowhood for several years, receiving her food from occa-
sional supplies, especially from her tried friend, the Rev.
Benj. Gildersleeve.
In August, 1830, the Rev. Alexander Aikman received
an unsuccessful call. In April, 1831, a similar call was pre-
sented to the Rev. J. B. Waterbury.
In April, 1832, the Rev. Thomas Smyth was called to
this church. He was born in Belfast, Ireland, on the 14th
of June, 1808, of English and Scotch parentage. He-was
of so frail a constitution that no one expected him to live
beyond the period of childhood. He entered the Institute
at Belfast, which was then connected with what is now the
Queen's College, as a preparatory or high school. His
academical career was bright with glowing prophecies of
his future eminence. In 1827, at the age of nineteen, he
became a student at Belfast College, where he won prizes
in every branch of study. It was within these classic walls
that, under the private instructions of the famous tragedian,
Sheridan Knowles, he began to develop those powers of
elocution, which afterwards gave him a place among the
princes of pulpit oratory.
He was twenty-one years of age when he made a public
profession of his faith in Christ. His father was an elder
for many years in the Presbyterian Church, of which Dr.
Samuel Hanna (father of Dr. Wm. Hanna) was pastor.
"The Presbyterian Church, at this time," he writes, "was
sadly degenerated, both in doctrine and discipline, and the
erection of an Independent Church on principles of evan-
gelical purity, was received with favor. In this church I
was brought up." He prosecuted his theological studies at
18
Highbury College, in London. In addition to his theologi-
cal studies he attended a course of scientific lectures in
London. But his feeble constitution began to relax under
the constant and unremitting strain of exhausting study.
He believed he was sinking into rapid decline, and all his
bright hopes of entering the ministry began to wither. At
this painful crisis his parents were preparing to remove to
America, where the most of their children were already
settled. He embarked with his parents for New York in
August, 1830. He connected himself with the Presbyterian
Church of which Dr. Fisher was pastor, and by whom he
was introduced to Newark Presbytery. He entered the
senior class of Princeton Seminary, but before graduating
received a call to this church November. 1831, and was in-
stalled by Charleston Union Presbytery December 29th,
1834.
In 1832 he married the eldest daughter of Mr. James
Adger, of Charleston, S. C. His long and useful ministry
began and ended with this favored people, extending over
a period of forty years. " For her," he said, " I have given
myself, and all that I have — my time, talents, acquisitions,
substance, and strength." He declined complimentary and
enticing calls in every direction, from the college, the sem-
inary, and the editorial chair, saying: " I am determined
to live and die with my people." He was an indefatigable
student and a voluminous author, and published in all about
thirty volumes, embracing almost every subject of public
interest. Dr. Smyth collected probably the largest private
library which has ever been gathered in this country, num-
bering at one time nearly twenty thousand volumes. For
general improvement, and to gratify a long cherished taste
for the sciences, he attended the medical lectures in the
College of Charleston for two seasons and pursued the
study privately. He also read Blackstone and other treatises
on law, together with a course of classical literature and
general science. He was an enthusiastic member of the
Gentlemen's Literary Club, and also of the Charleston
Bible Society.
19
In the prime of his manhood, Dr. Smyth was stricken
with paralysis, and in 1853, when he was on his return from
the General Assembly, he was again stricken so severely
that, for a time, all hopes of his life were given up. His
indomitable energy of will, with the divine blessing, how-
ever, sustained him, and though ever after a cripple, he
persevered to the end in the work to which he had devoted
his life, and on the 20th of August, 1873, he quietly entered
into his rest. His last thoughts were for the people of his
love, for whom he was struggling to deliver his dying mes-
sage.
It deserves to be mentioned here that Dr. Smyth was
assisted at different periods of his ministry, when disquali-
fied by infirmity for discharging its functions, by the follow,
ing ministers, whose faithful labors are held in grateful re-
membrance: Rev. Henry M. Smith, D. D., Rev. D. L. But-
tolph, D. D., Rev. Ferdinand Jacobs, D. D., Rev. James
McDowell, and Rev. Hampden C. DuBose. D. D.
In May, 1871, the Rev. Gilbert R. Brackett was invited
to supply the vacant pulpit for a year, Dr. Smyth being
pastor emeritus, and on the 16th of June, 1872, was in-
stalled pastor, which office he still holds.
LIST OF OFFICERS OF THIS CHURCH FROM ITS ORGANIZA-
TION IN 1809 :
Pastors.
Rev. Andrew Flinn, D. D., i8oq; Rev. Artemas Boies,
1820; Rev. Thomas Charlton Henry, D. D., 1823; Rev. Wil-
liam Ashmead, 1829; Rev. Thomas Smyth, D. D., 1832; Rev.
Gilbert R. Brackett, D. D., June, 1872.
Elders.
Benj. Boyd, 1810 ; Stephen Thomas, 1810; John Cunning-
ham, 1810; Wm. Pressly, 1812 ; David Bell, 1812 ; Henry
Bennett, 1812 ; John Todd, 1821 ; Thomas Fleming, 1821 ;
James Black, 182 1 ; Israel C. Anthony; Charles O'Neal,
1825; Robert Wright, 1825; Charles S. Simonton, 1837;
Thomas R. Vardell, 1837; John DeWees, 1837; George
20
Moffett, 1840; William Dearing, 1845; William Yeadon,
1845 ; William C. Dukes, 1845 ; William Harrall, 1845 ; Wil-
liam Adger, 1845 ; D. W. Harrison, 1845 ! James M. Cald-
well, 1846; John Caldwell, 1846; Robert S. Wright, 1852;
Hugh Wilson, 1852; Hugh R.Banks, 1852; S. S.Clark,
1852 ; James Dillingham, 1853 I Archibald Campbell, 1853 ;
Robert Adger, 1855 ; F. D. Fanning, 1855; A. F. Brown-
ing, 1855: James S. Chambers, 1855; Robert C. Gilchrist,
1867 ; Wm. J. Smith, 1867 ; Dr. D. J. Cain, 1867 ; George S.
Cook, 1867; Alfred R. Stillman, 1869; J. Adger Smyth,
1869; John S. Bird, 1876; John S. Roberts, 1 88 1 ; James
Allan, 1881 ; C. N. Averill, 1888 ; James E. Edgerton, 1888 ;
William B. Hills, 1888; Augustine T. Smythe, 1893; James
N. Robson, 1893; John B. Adger, Jr., 1893 ; Frank F. Whil-
den, 1893 ; James Allan, Jr., 1899.
Deacons.
JohnS. Bird, 185 1 ; James S. Chambers, 185 1 ; Dr. John
Anderson, 185 1; A. F. Browning, 185 1 ; Robert C. Gilchrist,
1853 ; John V. Lyon, 1853 > George S. Cook, 1853 5 Wm. J.
Smith, 1855; James S. Roberts, 1855; George H. Moffett,
1855; Thomas S. Jones, 1855; Edward Fogartie, 1856;
Wm. John Johnson, 1856; William DeWees, 1856; John
Knox, 1856; F. D. Whitney, 1867; J. N. RqJdsoii, 1867 ; J.
Adger Smyth, 1867 ; James Allan, 1867 ; C. N. Averill, 1867 ;
Augustine T. Smythe, 1869; Edwin F. Miscally, 1876;
George L. G. Cook, 1876 ; Oscar E. Johnson, 1881 ; Robert
E. Seabrook, 1888; John B. Adger, Jr., 1888; Frank F.
Whilden, 1888; W. W. Houston, 1888; Hall T. McGee,
1893 ; Geo. H. Moffett, 1893 ; William S. Allan, 1893 ; John
W. Robson, 1893; James Robinson Williams, 1893; Robert
C. Lebby, 1893; R. M. Masters, 1899; Robert A. Smyth,
1899.
Presidents of the Corporation.
Benj. Boyd, 1809; Samuel Robertson, 18 10; Stephen
Thomas, 1 8 1 3 ; Wm. Smith, 1 8 1 5 ; Samuel Patterson, 1818;
Thomas Fleming, 1819; John Robinson, 1821 ; James Black,
1823; James Adger, 1823; Wm. Smith, 1825; Alexander
21
Black, 1827; John Robinson, 1828; Win. Smith, Sen., 1834;
Alexander Black, 1838; Alexander Brown, 1840; John
Robinson, 1841 ; William C. Dukes, 1845 > Alexander Black,
1847; H- R- Banks, 1849; Robert Adger, 1850; N. F.
Browning, 1854; Fleetwood Lanneau, 1856; William C.
Dukes, 1858; Wm. J. Smith, 1859; George S Cook, 1866;
Charles H. Simonton, 1867; A. McD. Brown, 1876; Ellison
A. Smyth, 1878, Hall T. McGee, 1881 ; J. Adger Smyth,
1887.
The following members of this church have entered the
Gospel Ministry: Rev. John B. Adger, D. D. ; Rev. D.
McNeill Turner, D. D. ; Rev. George C. Logan ; Rev. Wil-
liam S. Hughes; Rev. Donald J. Auld ; Rev. Charles A.
Stillman, D. D. ; Rev. Arnold W. Miller, D. D. ; Rev. Robert
Small; Rev. Thos. J. Girardeau; Rev. James E. White;
Rev. Arthur Small; Rev. E. H. Bolles ; Rev. Wm. J.
McCormick, D. D. ; Rev. Wm. B. Corbett, D. D. ; Rev. D.
L. Buttolph, D. D. ; Rev. E. G. Walker ; Rev. James T.
Waite ; Rev. Matthew Green ; Rev. R. M. McCormick, D. D. ;
Rev. E. O. Frierson, D. D. ; Rev. James J. Chisolm, D. D. ;
Rev. C. E. Chichester; Rev. Wm. G. Vardell ; Rev. E. B.
Hort.
Inscriptions from Mural Tablets.
Rev. Andrew Flinn, D. D. Sacred to the memory of the
Rev. Andrew Flinn, D. D., who departed this life on the
24th of February Anno Domini 1820, in the XLVII year of
his age. He was the first Pastor of this Church. Under
his ministry the congregation was formed, and this Temple
dedicated to the service of Almighty God. He was an
accomplished Scholar, an able Theologian, an eloquent, and
impressive Preacher of the Gospel, a faithful and affection-
ate Pastor. In his private life, he was distinguished for his
affability, condescension, and benevoience, and for his ex-
emplary conduct in the endearing relations of Husband,
Parent, Friend and Master. To the Stranger he was hospi-
table, to his country an ardent friend. To Public Institu-
22
tions, he was uniformly generous. As a Citizen he was
independent and of unsullied integrity. Through life he
devoted himself to his Redeemer, to whom he committed
his soul, triumphing in death, leaving an example worthy
of the imitation of every worthy Christian. As a testimony
of their affection, and veneration for his virtues, his be-
reaved congregation have erected this monument. Dens
nobis Refugtum.
Reverend Thomas Charlton Henry, D. D. This Tablet is
erected to the Memory of their late faithful Pastor, the
Reverend Thomas Charlton Henry, D. D., who finished his
course Oct. 5, 1827, aged 37 years and 13 days. Actuated by
the noblest motives, wealth, talents, and every other distinc-
tion he counted but loss, that he might bear the exalted char-
acter of a Minister of the Gospel of Christ. To this adorable
Name, his theme, his hope and his joy, which gave energy
to his principles, and success to his labors, he consecrated
a superior mind, extensive acquirements, and eminent en-
dowments; having been the instrument of gathering many
souls into the fold of his Redeemer. In his last moments,
when every earthly consolation vanished, his soul sweetly
reposed upon the grace which bore him through triumphant.
Reverend William Ashmead. To this marble tablet is
entrusted the pious office of recording the Life, the Virtues,
the Talents, and the Death of the Reverend William Ash-
mead. He was a native of Philadelphia ; graduated there
in 1 8 1 8 ; was ordained in 1820; and on the 17th of May,
1829, was installed as pastor of this church. He died at
Philadelphia, 2d December, 1829, aged 32, leaving behind
him a widow and six children. Talents, erudition and
scholarship, won for him admiration. His Christian graces,
whilst they endeared him to such as worshipped God, like
himself, in spirit and in truth, commanded the respect and
esteem of all who valued, promoted and honored religion,
as a living fountain of public felicity and duty, usefulness
and glory ; and in all the relations of private character, of
23
purity, harmony and peace, of order, beauty and love.
His widow and children, his relatives and friends attest, in
tears of earthly grief, yet of heavenly faith and hope, the
loveliness and worth of his social and domestic life. As a
man, sensible and discreet, amiable, benevolent and
polished. As a Husband, a Father, and a Friend, considerate
and judicious, faithful and affectionate, cordial, respectful,
and constant. As a scholar, enthusiastic in study, and various
in knowledge, accomplished in taste, and disciplined in mind.
As a pastor and a preacher, he was apostolic ; in life,
doctrine, discipline, worship, faithful and courteous, kind,
candid and thoughtful, eloquent and fearless, zealous, yet
liberal. As a Christian, in purity of heart, in singleness of
purpose, in humanity of spirit, in the depth and breadth,
and height of faith, hope and charity. He was indeed, an
Israelite without guile. In life, the servant of God and
man ; in death, the purified, happy spirit of a just man
made perfect. Here in the sanctuary that he loved,
honored and adorned, the corporation of the Second Pres-
byterian Church have dedicated this silent, yet faithful
marble, as an enduring witness of their love, and an affec-
tionate memorial of his merits.
Reverend Thomas Smyth, D. D. This tablet is erected by
his bereaved and loving people to the memory of the
Reverend Thomas Smyth, D. D., who died August 20th,
1 873. aged 65. Called to be pastor of this church in April,
1832, he here labored for more than forty years, devoting
to this his first and only charge, the whole of his min-
isterial life, his eminent talents, his boundless stores of
learning, and the undivided affections of a warm and gene-
rous heart. A preacher of thrilling and fervid eloquence,
a devoted and sympathizing pastor, a learned and volumi-
nous author, an influential leader in the church, a master
spirit of the age, he faithfully labored with an unabated
energy, and an indomitable will, through years of protracted
sufferings, cheerfully borne, until the Christian warrior was
called to receive his crown.
24
Tablets in the Vestibule.
Original Founders of this Church, February 8, 1809:
Benj. Boyd, Alexander Henry, Wm. Walton, James Adger,
Wm. Aiken, John Parker, Caleb Gray, Samuel Robertson,
Wm. Pressly, Samuel Pressly, John Ellison, Archibald
Pagan, George Robertson, John Robertson.
Pastor, Rev. Andrew Flinn, D. D.
President, Benj. Boyd.
Building Committee, John Cunningham, chairman; Alex-
ander Henry, John McDowell, Wm. Aiken, Samuel Robert,
son, Stephen Thomas, Wm. Parker, John Brownlee, John
Geddes.
Architects, James and John Gordon.
Two new tablets were inserted in the walls of the vesti-
bule, after the earthquake, bearing the following inscrip-
tions:
This church was seriously injured by the earthquake,
August3i, 1886; was partly repaired and occupied October
31,1886. By the liberal assistance of Presbyterians from
all parts of our country, the repairs were completed October
9, 1887.
Pastor, Rev. G. R. Brackett, D. D.
President, J. Adger Smyth.
Building Committee, Hall T. McGee, chairman ; S. R.
Marshall, James Allan, J. Adger Smyth, H. C. Robertson.
On the wall of the vestibule of the Sunday-School build-
ing is the following tablet :
This building was dedicated May 226, 1887. Pastor, Rev.
G. R. Brackett, D. D.; superintendent. A. T. Smythe ; vice
superintendent, Frank F. Whilden ; president, Hall T. Mc-
Gee; building committee, J. Adger Smyth, chairman; S.
R. Marshall, James Allan, H C. Robertson, H. T. McGee;
Gus E. Leo, architect; C. McK. Grant, builder.
Dr. J. H. THOMWELL'S LETTER
TO
GOVERNOR MANNING
ON
PUBLIC INSTRUCTION
IN
SOUTH CAROLINA,
Originally Published in November, 1853,
Republished in the editions of The News and Courier
July, 1885,
BY
THE CITY COUNCIL OF CHARLESTON
FOR THE INFORMATION OF THE PEOPLE.
"
Dr. J. H. THORNWELL'S LETTER
TO
GOVERNOR MANNING
i >N
PUBLIC INSTRUCTION
IN
SOUTH CAROLINA,
Originally Published in November, 1853,
Republished in the editions of The News and Courier.
July, 1885,
BY
THE CITY COUNCIL OF CHARLESTON
FOR THE INFORMATION OF THE PEOPLE.
This Edition in Pamphlet Form is Issued by a Committee of Citizens for
Free Circulation Throughout the State.
t
CHARLESTON, S. C
INK NEWS AND COURIER BOOK PRESSES
1885.
Dr. J. II. THORNWELL'S LETTER
TO
GOVERNOR MANNING
ON
PUBLIC INSTRUCTION IN SOUTH CAROLINA.
South Carolina College,
November, 1853.
To His Excellency Governor Manning :
I ask the favor of presenting to your Excellency a few re-
flections upon the subject of public instruction in South
Carolina. As I feel that I am addressing one whose in-
terest and zeal in the prosperity of letters will induce him to
weigh with candor, to estimate with charity, and even to
invest with disproportionate value, the crudest hints which
spring from the desire to increase the educational facilities
of the State, I shall dismiss all apprehensions of being sus-
pected of an officious obtrusion upon your notice. You are
the man, above all others, to whom the head of this institu-
tion should look with confidence to give fresh impulse to
the general cause of education, and you will excuse me for
saying that if the suggestions which shall fall from me, or
the maturer recommendations which shall come from your-
self, shall terminate auspiciously to the wishes of us both,
there will be furnished a beautiful instance of providential
retribution, in connecting the name of the first conspicuous
benefactor of the South Carolina College with the establish-
ment of an adequate system of common schools. A proud
distinction in itself to be the friend and patron of learning,
the honor is increased in your case in that it has been pre-
eminently your care, in its higher and lower culture, to dis-
pense its blessings to the poor. Apart from fellowship with
God, there cannot be a sweeter satisfaction than that which
arises from the consciousness of being a father to the father-
less; and if the ends which I know are dear to your heart
can only be achieved, every indigent child in the State,
looking upon you as its real father, may address you in the
modest and glowing terms which the genius of Milton has
canonized as fit expressions of gratitude for the noblest of
all eifts :
*->
At tibi, chare pater, postquam non aequa merenti
Posse referre datur, nee dona rependere factis,
Sit memorasse satis, repetitaque munera grato
Percensere animo, fideique reponere menti.
DIFFICULTIES OF THE SUBJECT.
I am not insensible to the dangers and difficulties which
attend the discussion of this subject. It is so seductive to
the fancy that the temptation is almost irresistible to indulge
in schemes and visionary projects. In the effort to realize
the conception of a perfect education we are apt to forget
that there is no such thing as absolute perfection in the
matter, that all excellence is relative, and that the highest
recommendation of any plan is, that it is at once practicable
and adjusted to the wants and condition of those for whom
it is provided. A system of public instruction, like the
form of government, must spring from the manners, maxims,
habits and associations of the people. It must penetrate
their character, constitute an element of their national ex-
istence, be a portion of themselves, if it would not be sus-
pected as an alien, or distrusted as a spy. The success of
the Prussian scheme is ascribed by Cousin to the circum-
stance that it existed in the manners and customs of the
country before it was enacted into law. It was not a
foreign graft, but the natural offshoot of popular opinion
and practice. It is an easy thing to construct a theory,
when nothing is to be done but to trace the coherencies and
dependencies of thought ; but it is not so easy to make
thought correspond to reality, or to devise a plan which
;>
shall overlook none of the difficulties and obstructions in
the way of successful application. In the suggestions which
I have to offer, I shall endeavor to keep steadily in view the
real wants of the citizens of this Commonwealth, and avoid-
ing all crotchets and metaphysical abstractions, shall aim
exclusively at what experience or the nature of the case
demonstrates to be practicable. I have no new principle to
ventilate, but I shall think myself happy if I can succeed in
setting in a clearer light, or vindicating from prejudice and
misconstruction, the principles which have already been
embodied in our laws. It is, perhaps, not generally known
that the Legislature of South Carolina contemplates a
scheme of public instruction as perfect in its conception of
the end as it is defective in its provision of the means. The
order, too, in which the attention of the Legislature has
been turned to the various branches of the subject, though
not the most popular or the most obvious, is precisely the
order of their relative importance. It began where it ought
to have begun, but, unfortunately, stopped where it ought
not to have stopped. To defend what it has already done,
and stimulate it to repentance for what it has not done, is
the principal motive of this communication.
OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.
Permit me, in pursuance of this design, to direct the at-
tention of your Excellency to the nature, operation and
defect of the system among us. This system consists of the
South Carolina College, established in 1801 ; of the free
schools, established in 181 1, and of the Arsenal and Citadel
Academies. This series of institutions is evidently ad-
justed without, perhaps, any conscious purpose of doing so,
to a threefold division of education, in so far as it depends
upon instruction, into liberal, elementary and professional.
The College is to furnish the means of liberal, the free
schools of elementary, and the Arsenal and Citadel Acade-
mies of that department and professional education which
looks to the arts of practical life, especially those of the
6
soldier. For the liberal or learned professions, those of law,
physic and divinity, no provision has been made. The
College undertakes to give the same kind of instruction
which is given by the faculty of arts and philosophy in the
Universities of Europe. Our military academies, with a
slight change in their organization, might be converted into
scientific schools, and free schools are, or were, designed to
be substantially the same as the elementary and grammar
schools of England. The scheme as here developed, though
far from fulfilling the logical requirements of a complete
system of public instruction, is amply sufficient, if ade-
quately carried out, to meet the real wants of our people.
The kind and degree of education for which there is any
serious or extensive demand, is what is provided for. To
make the system logically complete there would have to be
a succession of institutions individually perfect and yet
harmoniously co-operating to a general result, which, taking
the man at the very dawn of his powers, shall be able to
carry him up to the highest point of their expansion, and
fit him for any employment in which intelligence and
thought are the conditions of success. It should supply the
means to every individual in the community of becoming
trained and prepared for his own peculiar destiny — it should
overlook no class, it should neglect no pursuit. It may be
doubted whether a scheme so comprehensive in its plan is
desirable — it is quite certain that it is not practicable. The
Legislature has done wisely in confining its arrangements
to liberal and elementary education. It has aimed, by a
preliminary discipline, to put the individual in a condition
to educate himself for the business of his life, except where
his calling involves an application of scientific knowledge
which does not enter into the curriculum of general instruc-
tion. In that case it has made a special provision. I see,
then, no improvement that can be made in the general
features of our scheme ; it is as perfect in its conception as
the wants and condition of our people will justify. All that
the Legislature should aim at is the adjustment of the de-
tails, and the better adaptation of them to the end in viewr
THE SOUTH CAROLINA COLLEGE.
The first in the order of establishment, as well as the first
in the order of importance, is the College. Devoted to the
interests of general, in contradistinction from professional
education, its design is to cultivate the mind without refer-
ence to any ulterior pursuits. " The student is considered
as an end to himself; his perfection, as a man simply, being
the aim of his education." The culture of the mind, how-
ever, for itself, contributes to its perfection as an instrument,
so that general education, while it directly prepares and
qualifies for no special destination, indirectly trains for every
vocation in which success is dependent upon intellectual
exertion. It has taught the mind the use of its powers,
and imparted those habits without which its powers would
be useless; it makes men, and consequently promotes every
enterprise in which men are to act. General education
being the design of the College, the fundamental principles
of its organization are easily deduced. The selection of
studies must be made, not with reference to the compara-
tive importance of their matter, or the practical value of the
knowledge, but with reference to their influence in unfold-
ing and strengthening the powers of the mind ; as the end
is to improve mind, the fitness for the end is the prime con-
sideration. " As knowledge," says Sir William Hamilton
(man being now considered as an end to himself), " is only
valuable as it exercises, and by this exercise develops and
invigorates the mind, so a University, in its liberal faculty,
should especially prefer these objects of study which call
forth the strongest and most unexclusive energy of thought,
and so teach them too that this energy shall be most fully
elicited in the student." For speculative knowledge, of
whatever kind, is only profitable to the student in his liberal
cultivation, inasmuch as it supplies him with the object and
occasion of exerting his faculties ; since powers are only
developed in proportion as they are exercised, that is, put
forth into energy. The mere possession of scientific truths
is, for its own sake, valueless; and education is only educa-
8
tion, inasmuch as it at once determines and enables the
student to educate himself. Hence, the introduction of
studies upon the ground of their practical utility is, pro
tanto, subversive of the College. It is not its office to make
planters, mechanics, lawyers, physicians or divines. It has
nothing directly to do with the uses of knowledge. Its
business is with minds, and it employs science only as an
instrument for the improvement and perfection of mind.
With it the habit of sound thinking is more than a thousand
thoughts. When, therefore, the question is asked, as it often
is aked by ignorance and empiricism, what is the use of cer-
tain departments of the College curriculm, the answer should
turn, not upon the benefits which in after life may be
reaped from these pursuits, but upon their immediate sub-
jective influence upon the cultivation of the human facul-
ties. They are selected in preference to others, because
they better train the mind.
THE END OF COLLEGE INSTRUCTION.
It cannot be too earnestly inculcated that knowledge is
not the principal end of College instruction, but habits.
The acquisition of knowledge is the necessary result of those
exercises which terminate in habits, and the maturity of the
habit is n\easured by the degree and accuracy of the knowl-
edge, but still the habits are the main thing. In the next
place, it is equally important that the whole course of
studies be rigidly exacted of every student. Their value as
a discipline depends altogether upon their being studied,
and every College is defective in its arrangements which
fails to secure, as far as legislation can secure it, this indis-
pensable condition of success. Whatever may be the case
in Europe, it is found from experience in this country that
nothing will avail without the authority of law. The curric-
ulum must be compulsory, or the majority of the students
will neglect it. All must be subjected to catechetical ex-
amination in the lecture room, and all must undergo the
regular examinations of their class as the condition of their
't>
9
residence in College. The moment they are exempted from
the stringency of this rule all other means lose their power
upon the mass of pupils. Much may be accomplished by
rewards, and by stimulating the spirit of competition, and
great reliance should be placed upon them to secure a high
standard of attainment; but in most men the love of ease
is stronger than ambition, and indolence a greater luxury
than thought. For, whilst mental effort is the one condi-
tion of all mental improvement, yet this effort is at first and
for a time painful — positively painful in proportion as it is
intense, and comparatively painful as it abstracts from other
and positively pleasurable activities. It is painful, because
its energy is imperfect, difficult, forced. But as the effort
is gradually perfected, gradually facilitated, it becomes
gradually pleasing ; and when finally perfected, that is,
when the power is fully developed and the effort changed
into a spontaneity, becomes an exertion absolutely easy.
It remains, purely, intensely and alone insatiably pleasur-
able. For pleasure is nothing but the concomitant or reflex
of the unforced and unimpeded energy of a natural faculty
or acquired habit, the degree or permanence of pleasure
being also in proportion to the intensity and purity of the
mental energy. The great postulate in education is, there-
fore, to induce the pupil to enter and persevere in such a
course of effort, good in its result and delectable, but primarily
and, in itself, irksome. The argument of necessity helps to
reconcile him to the weariness of study ; what he feels that he
must do he will endeavor to do with grace, and as there is
no alternative he will be more open to the generous and
manly influence which the rewards and distinctions of the
College are suited to exert. There are always causes at
work apart from the repulsiveness of intellectual labor to
seduce the student from his books; and, before his habits
are yet formed and the love of study grounded into his
nature, it is of the utmost consequence to keep these
causes in check. No other motives will be sufficient without
compulsion of law co-operating with this. There are many
others which, if they do not positively sweeten his toil, may
10
help to mitigate the agony of thought. I have insisted
upon this point because it is the point in regard to which
the most dangerous innovations are to be apprehended.
THE ELECTIVE PLAN.
Two changes have at different times been proposed, one
of which would be absolutely fatal and the other seriously
detrimental to the interest of the College as a place of lib-
eral education. The first is to convert it into a collection
of independent schools, each of which shall be complete in
itself, it being left to the choice of the student what schools
he shall enter. The other is to remit the obligation of the
whole course in reference to a certain class of students, and
allow them to pursue such parts of it as they may choose.
In relation to the first, young men are incompetent to pro-
nounce beforehand what studies are subjectively the most
beneficial. It requires those who have experienced the dis-
ciplinary power of different studies to determine their rela-
tive value. Only a scholar can say what will make a
scholar. The experience of the world has settled down
upon a certain class and order of studies, and the verdict of
ages and generations is not to be set aside by the caprices,
whims or prejudices of those who are not even able to com-
prehend the main end of education. In the next place, if
our undergraduates were competent to form a judgment,
their natural love of indolence and ease would, in the
majority of cases, lead them to exclude those very studies
which are the most improving, precisely because they are
so; that is, because, in themselves and in the method of
teaching them, they involve a degree and intensity of
mental exercise which is positively painful. Self-denial is
not natural to man, and he manifests but little acquaintance
with human nature who presumes, as a matter of course,
that the will will choose what the judgment commends.
Video mcliora proboqiie deteriora sequor is more pre-eminently
true of the young than the old. They are the creatures of
impulse. Permit them to select their own studies and the
11
majority will select those that are thought to be the easiest.
The principle of choice will be the very opposite of that
upon which the efficiency of a study depends. Experience
is decisive on this point. What creates more trouble in the
interior management of our Colleges than the constant de-
sire of pupils to evade recitations? And is it not univer-
sally found that the departments which are the most popu-
lar are those which least task the energies of the student?
I do not say that the Professors who fill these departments
are themselves most respected. That will depend upon
their merits; and in matters of this sort the judgments of
the young are generally right. But easy exercises are pre-
ferred, simply because they do not tax the mind. The
practical problem with the mass of students is the least
work and easiest done. Is it easy? is it short? These are
the questions which are first asked about a lesson. I must,
therefore, consider any attempt to relax the compulsory
feature of the College course as an infallible expedient for
degrading education. The College will cease to train. It
may be a place for literary triflers, but a place for students
it cannot be.
COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY.
There is much in a name, and the change here condemned
is delusively sought to be insinuated under the pretext of
converting the College into a University. This latter title
sounds more imposingly, and carries the appearance of
greater dignity. But the truth is, there is hardly a more
equivocal word in the language. " In its proper and
original meaning," as Sir Wm. Hamilton has satisfactorily
shown, " it denotes simply the whole members of a body
(generally incorporated body) of persons teaching and learn-
ing one or more departments of knowledge." In its ordi-
nary acceptation in this country it is either synonymous
with College as an institution of higher education, and in
this sense we are already a University ; or it denotes a Col-
lege with professional schools attached. It is clear, how-
12
ever, that the introduction of the faculties of law, medicine
and theology necessitates no change in the faculty of
philosophy and arts. It is not necessary to make general
education voluntary in order to provide for professional in-
struction. There is, consequently, nothing in the name or
in the nature of the case which demands a fundamental
change in the system in order that the South Carolina Col-
lege may become the South Carolina University. For my-
self, I am content with our present title, and if it promises
less I am sure it will accomplish more than the new title
with the corresponding change. As to the expediency of
adding the faculties of law and medicine — theology is out
of the question to the present organization— I have only to
say that it will multiply and complicate the difficulties of
the internal management of the institution without securing
any increased proficiency m these departments of knowledge ;
that is, if there is to be any real connection between the
faculty of arts and those of law and medicine. I dread the
experiment. I think it better that the professions should
be left to provide for themselves than that a multitude of
inexperienced young men should be brought together,
many of whom are comparatively free from the restraints
of discipline, and yet have an easy and ready access to those
who are more under law. The very liberty of the resident
would be a temptation to undergraduates. I have no ob-
jection, however, to the founding of professional schools by
the State. All that I am anxious for is that they should not
be so connected with the College as that the members of all
the schools should reside together. To be under a common
government is impossible ; to be under a different govern-
ment would breed interminable confusion and disorder.
That sort of nominal connection which requires that all
medical and law degrees should be conferred by the authori-
ties of the College, and which is perfectly consistent with
the law and medical schools, being established in a different
place, would, of course, be harmless. But this difficulty
might arise: the College would be unwilling to confer any
degree without a liberal education — it could not, without
13
abjuring the very principles of its existence, grant its honors
upon mere professional attainment. With respect to the
other change, that of allowing students, under certain cir-
cumstances, to pursue a partial course, it is evidently con-
tradictory to the fundamental end of the College. These
students are not seeking knowledge for the sake of disci-
pline, but with reference to ulterior uses. They come not
to be trained to think, but to learn to act in definite depart-
ments of exertion. It is professional, not liberal, education
which they want. The want, I acknowledge, ought to be
gratified — it is a demand which should be supplied — but
the College is not the place to do it. That was founded
for other purposes, and it is simply preposterous to abrogate
its constitution out of concessions to a necessity, because
the necessity happens to be real. What, therefore, ought
to be done is not to change the nature of the College, but,
leaving that untouched to do its own work, to organize
schools with special reference to this class of wants. We
have the elements of such an organization in the Arsenal
and Citadel Academies.
THE INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLS.
Let these be converted into Seminaries of special educa-
tion, which will only be an extension of their present plan,
and they will form that intermediate class of schools be-
tween the elementary and the College, which the circum-
stances of every civilized community, in proportion to the
complication of its interests, demand. These changes in
the College have been favored on the ground that they will
increase its numbers. But the success of the College is not
to be estimated by the numbers in attendance, but by the
numbers educated. It should never include more than those
who are seeking a liberal education, and if it includes all
these, whether they be fifty or two hundred, it is doing the
whole of its appropriate work. No doubt, by the changes in
question, our catalogue might be increased two or threefold,
but we should not educate a single individual more than
14
we educate now. Numbers in themselves are nothing, unless
they represent those who are really devoted to the business
of the place. What real advantage would it be to have four
or five hundred pupils matriculated here, if some remained
only a few months, others remained longer in idleness, and
out of the whole number only four or five applied for a de-
gree. That four or five would be the true criterion of sue-
cess. The real question, I insist, is how many graduate?
This is the decisive point. As long as we receive the whole
number of young men in the State who are to be liberally
educated, whether that number be greater or smaller, we
are doing all that we were appointed to do, or that we can
be legitimately expected to do; and a decline in numbers
is not a necessary proof of the declension of the College ; it
may be only a proof that the demand is ceasing for higher
instruction. The work, however, to be done loses none of
its importance in consequence of the failure to appreciate
its value; and the remedy is not to give it up and yield to
empirical innovations, but to persevere in faith and patience,
relying upon time as the great teacher of wisdom.
INDEPENDENCE OF TEACHERS.
Another cardinal principle in the organization of the Col-
lege is the independence of its teachers. They should be
raised above all temptation of catering for popularity, of
degrading the standard of education for the sake of the
loaves and fishes. They should be prepared to officiate as
priests in the temple of learning, in pure vestments, and
with hands unstained with a bribe. It has been suggested
that if the stipends of the Professors were made dependent
upon the number of pupils, the strong motive of personal
interest, added to the higher incentives which they are ex-
pected to feel, would increase their efficiency by stimulating
their zeal and activity. They would be anxious to achieve
a reputation for the College which would enable it to com-
mand students. This argument proceeds upon a hypothesis
which, I am ashamed to say, my own experience pronounces
15
to be false. In the state of things in this country there is
a constant conflict between the government of the College
and the candidates for its privileges, the one attempting to
raise and the other to lower the standard of admission, and
every effort of the faculty in the right direction is met with
a determined resistance. It is not to be presumed that
young men, at the age of our undergraduates generally,
should have any steady and precise notions of the nature of
education. A College is a College, and when they are de-
bating the question, whither shall they go, the most impor-
tant items in the calculation are, not the efficiency, but the
cheapness of the place, and the shortness of the time within
which a degree may be obtained. The consequence is that
no College can resist the current, unless its teachers are in-
dependent. In that case they may stand their ground, and,
though they can never hope to equal feebler institutions in
numbers, they will still accomplish a great work and confer
a lasting benefit on society. The South Carolina College
has raised her standard. She has proclaimed her purpose
to be to educate well, and I should deplore any measure
that might remotely tend to drive her from this position.
The true security for the ability of the professional corps is
not to be sought in starving them, or in making them scram-
ble for a livelihood, but in the competency, zeal and in-
tegrity of the body that appoints them, and in the strict
responsibility to which they are held. An impartial board
of overseers to elect faithful and turn out incompetent men,
a board that has the nerve to do its duty, will be a stronger
check upon indolence and inefficiency than an empty larder.
The motive of necessity may lead them to degrade instruc-
tion to increase their fees ; the motive of responsibility to a
body that can appreciate their labors will always operate in
the right direction. " Let this ground, therefore," says
Bacon, "be laid, that all works are overcome by amplitude
of reward, by soundness of direction, and by the conjunction
of labors. The first multiplieth endeavor, the second pre-
venteth error, and the third supplieth the frailty of man.
But the principal of these is direction." So far as the un-
16
dergraduates are concerned, I think that all these condi-
tions of success are measurably fulfilled in the present
arrangements of the College, as much so as the general state
of education will allow. No changes in this respect are de-
sirable. But the interests of higher education demands
something more than that culture " in passage," as Bacon
expresses it, which is all that is contemplated in provisions
for undergraduates.
WHERE THE WORK STOPS.
Our work stops with the degree. We have no founda-
tions upon which scholars may be placed, " tending to quiet-
ness and privateness of life and discharge of cares and
troubles." We are wanting in facilities for "conjunctions"
of learned men, and, consequently, the only persons whose
business it is to keep pace with the higher intelligence of
the age are the few Professors who are employed in the
work of instruction. With only such means we must fall
behind in the march of improvement. There must be more
competition, more leisure, more freedom from distracting
cares. " This I take to be," says the great writer from whom
1 love to quote, "a great cause that hath hindered the pro-
fession of learning, because these fundamental knowledges
have been studied but in passage ; for if you will have a
tree bear more fruit than it hath used to do, it is not any-
thing you can do to the boughs, but it is the stirring of the
earth and putting new mould about the roots that must
work it." I do not look to the Legislature to supply this
deficiency. Other demands, more immediate and urgent,
must be met, and to meet them adequately will make a
heavy draft upon its resources. But I do look to private
liberality. Many of the foundations in Oxford and Cam-
bridge have arisen from this source. The Northern Col-
leges are indebted for the largest part of their funds to the
same cause. Why should not some portion of the Southern
wealth take the same direction? Are we wanting in the
love of knowledge, in the spirit of charity, and in zeal for
17
the honor and prosperity of the State? I cannot account
for the remissness and apathy of our rich planters and mer-
chants and professional men in other way than that this
form of generosity has not been the habit of the country.
I had hoped that your example and the example of Col.
Hampton would have given an impetus to this matter, and
I shall not despair until I see the result of the festival
which is proposed to be celebrated in honor of the fiftieth
anniversary of the College. A body of learned men devoted
to the pursuit of fundamental knowledge is what, more
than everything else, is now needed to complete our system.
There is wealth enough in private coffers and liberality
enough in the hearts of our citizens to supply the want, if
public interest could only be elicited in the subject. There
prevails an impression that the annual appropriations of the
Legislature are amply sufficient for all the ends of a Col-
lege. It is forgotten that these appropriations contemplate
it entirely as a place of teaching, and not the residence of
scholars. In this latter aspect we are wholly dependent
upon private generosity. The advantages to the College,
and to the State, and to the whole country, of such a body
of resident scholars cannot be estimated. They might in
various ways assist in the business of discipline and instruc-
tion ; they would furnish a constant supply of materials for
new Professors ; they would give tone and impulse to the as-
pirations and efforts of the young men gathered around
them, and diffuse an influence which, silently and imper-
ceptibly concurring in the formation of that powerful and
mysterious combination of separate elements called public
opinion, would tell upon every hamlet in the land. " For
if men judge that learning should be referred to action,
they judge well ; but in this they fall into the error described
in the ancient fable, in which the other parts of the body
did suppose the stomach had been idle, because it neither
performed the office of motion, as the limbs do, nor of sense,
as the head doth ; but yet, notwithstanding it is the stomach
that digesteth and distributeth to all the rest ; so if any man
think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he doth
3
18
not consider that all professions are from thence served and
supplied." This homely illustration sets the question of
utility in its true light ; and if I could impress upon the com-
munity, as it exists in my own mind, the deep and earnest
sense of the importance of this feature in the organization
of the College, the lack of means would soon cease to be an
impediment in keeping pace with the highest culture of the
ace. It would soon be found that wealth has no more ten-
dency to contract the mind in South Carolina than in Mas-
sachusetts and New York, and that there are merchant
princes in Charleston as well as in Boston. Who will begin
the work? Who shall set the first example of a founda-
tion of ten or twenty thousand dollars, devoted to the sup-
port of genius in reflecting light and glory upon the State?
It is devoutly to be hoped that something more substantial
than echo will answer who.
«
OBJECTIONS TO THE COLLEGE.
But as there are those who admit, in general, the advan-
tages of a high standard of liberal education, and the con-
sequent importance of such institutions as the College, and
yet doubt the wisdom of the policy which directly connects
them with the State, a more distinct consideration of this
question will not be out of place here. The grounds of
doubt are twofold :
First. The College, it is said, is for the benefit of the
few, and, therefore, should not be supported by the taxes of
the many. What comes from all should be for all ; what is
for a class should be by a class.
This is the substance of the clamor by which ignorance
and vulgar ambition, and, above all, a pretended regard for
the rights and interests of the masses, are constantly en-
deavoring to steal away the hearts of the people from what,
justly considered, is the bulwark of their liberties and the
strongest safeguard of their honor and respectability.
Hence the cry that the College is an aristocratic institution,
a resort for the rich, exclusive of the poor.
19
The other ground is that education, in its very nature,
belongs to the church or to private enterprise; that it in-
cludes elements which lie beyond the jurisdiction of the
State, and that, therefore, the State has no right to inter-
fere with it. These objections, I think, embody the
strength of whatever opposition is expressed or felt to the
College as a public foundation. In reference to the first, let
it be admitted that the number of those who participate in
the privileges of the College is, and must necessarily be,
limited. It is, of course, impracticable, even if it were de-
sirable, that every young man. in the State should receive a
liberal education. Some must be excluded. The very no-
tion of their being excluded implies that they do not share
in the immediate advantages of the College. But then the
question arises, what is the principle of exclusion, so far as
the College is concerned ? If that principle is directly based
upon difference in fortune, then there is ground of com-
plaint ; otherwise, none. Does the College reject any be-
cause they are poor? Does it admit any because they are
rich ? Does it recognize any distinction between rich and
poor? Who will venture upon such an allegation? And
yet it is only by making wealth the ground of admission,
and poverty the ground of exclusion, that the College can
be justly charged with aristocratic tendencies. It is no-
torious that the only question which the College asks as to
the qualification for admission to its immunities is in rela-
tion to the fitness of the candidates to enter upon its pur-
suits. All who are prepared to comply with its requisitions
are welcomed to its halls, whether rich or poor. Poverty
may, indeed, be a remote and accidental cause of exclusion,
as it incapacitates for acquiring the fitness which the Col-
lege exacts, and which is absolutely indispensable to the
ends it has in view. But in these cases it is not the poverty
which the College considers, but the ignorance and want of
preparatory training. There are also expenses incident to
a College course which put it out of the power of those who
arc absolutely without funds to pursue it. A man must be
fed and clothed and warmed, and the comforts of life do not
20
usually come without money; and if he cannot afford the
necessary expenses himself, and his friends will not afford
them for him, all that can be said is, that Providence has
cut him off from a liberal education. He is not in a condi-
tion to reap the advantages of personal residence within the
College walls.
THE POOR MAN'S COLLEGE.
But the principle of exclusion, so far as the College is
concerned, is not a class principle, but one which necessarily
results from the nature and end of its institution. It is
founded exclusively for a certain kind and degree of educa-
tion, and it opens its doors to all, without exception, who
are prepared for its instructions, and can sustain the ex-
penses necessarily incident to a residence from home. It
shuts its doors upon none but upon those who shut them
upon themselves, or against whom Providence has closed
them. A free College means a College absolutely without
expense. We must wait for the realization of such a dream
until the manifestation of that state in which our bodies
shall cease to be flesh and blood, and such homely articles
as food, raiment and fuel be no longer needed. But if an
institution is not ipso facto aristocratic, because the mem-
bers of it have to pay for their victuals and clothes, then
the South Carolina College is not an aristocratic or class in-
stitution. It might not be improper to inquire whether, in
those institutions whose glory it is to be, par eminence, in-
stitutions for the vulgar, it is pretented that the pupils
have absolutely nothing to pay. Can a stark beggar get
through them without help? If not, poverty and wealth
have the same remote and direct influence in determining
who shall participate in their privileges as they have in the
South Carolina College. From a somewhat careful inquiry,
too, I am inclined to the opinion that none, however poor,
ever fail to get through College who have been enabled,
either by their own exertions or the assistance of others, to
prepare for College. I am sure the number is very small.
21
Hence, of all charges that the imagination can conceive, that
of educating only the rich is the most idle and ridiculous.
Most of our students, as a matter of fact, are from families
in moderate circumstances, many are absolutely poor, either
expending their whole living upon their minds, or toiling in
vacations to acquire the means of defraying their expenses,
or sustained by the eleemosynary foundations of the Col-
lege, or by the assistance of the College societies, or by pri-
vate liberality. The public sentiment of the students
speaks volumes upon this point. If there were anything in
the genius or organization of the institution which distin-
guished it as the College of the rich, there would be a cor-
responding pride of aristocracy among the young men, and
the poor would be avoided, insulted or shunned, as a pro-
fanum vulgns. They would be branded by public opinion
as men who were out of their place, as upstarts who were
aspiring to the privileges of their betters. This would be
necessitated as the common feeling by the organic principle
of the body. But what is the truth ? I have no hesitation
in affirming that if there be a place more than any other
where the poor are honored and respected, where indigence,
if coupled with any degree of merit, is an infallible passport
to favor, that place is the South Carolina College. It may
be pre-eminently called the poor man's College in the sense
that poverty is no reproach within its walls, no bar to its
highest honors and most tempting rewards, either among
Professors or students. On the contrary, if there is a pre-
judice at all it is against the rich ; and from long observation
and experience I am prepared to affirm that no spirit re-
ceives a sterner, stronger, more indignant rebuke within
these walls than the pride and vanity of wealth. Let any
young man presume upon his fortune and undertake to put
on airs, and the whole College pounces down upon him with
as little mercy and as much avidity as the jackdaws in the
fable upon their aspiring fellow, who was decked in the
peacock's feathers. No doubt there are many whose cir-
cumstances preclude them from the first steps of a liberal
education, and who yet have the capacity to receive it, and
22
who, if educated, might reflect lasting honor upon the
State, but, unfortunately, from the imperfect and inefficient
condition of the free schools, these poor children can never
be distinguished. One advantage of a more adequate
scheme of public instruction will be that of bringing in-
digent merit to the light. For such cases there ought to be
the most ample provision. "This," in the words of Cousin,
" is a sacred duty we owe to talent, a duty which must be
fulfilled, even at the risk of being sometimes mistaken."
The State should either endow scholarships, or extemporize
appropriations to meet the cases of those who, when public
schools shall have been established, shall be reported as
worthy of a liberal education by their earlier teachers.
And beyond this, as the same writer observes, it is not de-
sirable that it should provide for the higher instruction of
the poor. So much for the limitation of the immediate
benefits of the College. They are confined to comparatively
a few, simply because it is comparatively a few that are in
a condition to receive them.
*
THE GOOD OF THE STATE AT LARGE.
But then the important point is, and it is a point which
ought never to be forgotten, though it is systematically
overlooked by those who are accustomed to decry the Col-
lege, that these benefits are imparted, not for the sake of
the few, but for the interest of the many — the good of the
State at large. Those who are educated are educated not
for themselves, but for the advantage of the Commonwealth
as a whole. Every scholar is regarded as a blessing — a great
public benefit — and for the sake of the general influence that
he is qualified to exert, the State makes provision for his
training. It is because the " proper education of youth con-
tributes greatly to the prosperity of society," that it "ought
to be an object of legislative attention." The many, there-
fore, are not taxed for the few, but the few are trained for
exalted usefulness and extensive good to the many. If the
23
Legislature had in view only the interest of those who are
educated, and expended its funds in reference to their good,
considered simply as individuals, there would be just ground
of complaint ; but when it is really aiming at the prosperity
of the whole community, and uses these individuals as
means to that end, there is nothing limited or partial in its
measures.
It is great weakness to suppose that nothing can contri-
bute to the general good, the immediate ends of which are
not realized in the case of every individual. Are lighthouses
constructed only for the safety of the benighted mariner
who may be actually guided by their lamps, or are they
raised for the security of navigation, the interest of com-
merce, and, through these, the interest of society at large?
There is no way of evading the force of this argument but
by flatly denying that an educated class is a public good.
If there are any among us who are prepared to take this
ground, and to become open advocates of barbarism, I have
nothing to say to them ; but for the sake of those who may
be seduced by sophistry which they cannot disentangle, I
offer a few reflections.
THE REAL ELEMENTS OF PROGRESS.
In the first place the educated men in every community
are the real elements of steady and consistent progress.
They arc generally in advance of their generation ; light
descends from them to their inferiors, and by a gradual and
imperceptible influence emanating from the solitary specu-
lations, it may be of their secret hours, the whole texture
of society is modified, a wider scope is given to its views
and a loftier end to its measures. They are the men who
sustain and carry forward the complicated movements of a
refined civilization — the real authors of changes which con-
stitute epochs in the social elevation of the race. Pitt
could not understand, and Fox refused to read, the masterly
speculations of Adam Smith upon the " Wealth of Nations."
24
He was ahead of his age% The truth gradually worked its
way, however, into the minds of statesmen and legislators,
and now no one is held to be fit for any public employment
who is not imbued with the principles of political economy.
The thoughts of a retired thinker once set in motion, if
they have truth in them, have a principle of life which can
never be extinguished. They may for a season be re-
pressed and confined, but they finally, like disengaged
gases, acquire an intensity and power which defy all opposi-
tion. They spread through society, leavening first its lead-
ing members, and extending in the shape of results, or
maxims, or practical conclusions, to every fireside in the
land. The solitary scholar wields a lever which raises the
whole mass of society. It is a high, general education which
shapes the minds and controls the opinions of the guiding
spirits of the age ; it is this which keeps up the general tone
of society ; it is at once conservative and progressive. The
conservative tendency requires to be a little more distinctly
pointed out.
The case is this: the universal activity which general in-
telligence imparts to mind must be prolific in schemes and
theories, and these are likely to be sound or hurtful, accord-
ing to the completeness of the instruction or the narrowness
of the views on which they are founded. A half truth, or a
truth partially apprehended, always has the effect of a lie.
A higher order of culture, with occasional exceptions (for
profound thinkers are sometimes eccentric), is a security
against the ill-digested plans and visionary projects which
they are peculiarly tempted to originate, whose vision is
confined to a contracted horizon, and who are deceived,
simply because they do not perceive the bearing of a prin-
ciple in all its applications. An educated class expands the
field of vision, and serves as a check to the regular impulses
and the impetuous innovations of minds equally active but
less enlarged. It protects from rashness, from false maxims,
from partial knowledge. It is a security for public order
which can hardly be over-estimated — it is the regulator of
the great clock of society. General intelligence, without
high culture to keep it in check, will exemplify the maxim
of Pope —
"A little learning is a dangerous thing" —
and will prove a greater curse to the State than absolute igno-
rance. It is not ignorance, but half knowledge, that is full
of whims and crotchets ; they prey on impulse and fanat-
icism, and are the parent of restless agitation and ceaseless
change. It is in the constant play of antagnonistic forces,
the action and reaction of the higher and lower culture, that
the life, health and vigor of society consists. General intel-
ligence cheeks the stagnation of ignorance, and a thorough
education checks the rashness of empiricism. Where this
prevails there is all the inspiration without the contortions
of the Sibyl.
ELEVATION OF THE MASSES.
In the next place, it should not be omitted that general
education is the true source of the elevation of the masses,
and of the demand for popular instruction. Every educated
man is a centre of light, and his example and influence
create the consciousness of ignorance and the sense of need,
from which elementary schools have sprung. Defective cul-
ture is never conscious of itself until it is brought into contact
with superior power. There may be a conviction of igno-
rance in reference to special things, and a desire of knowl-
edge as the means of accomplishing particular ends ; but
the need of intellectual improvement on its own account
never is awakened spontaneously. We never lament our
inferiority to angels. The reason is, we are not brought
into contact with them, and are consequently not sensible
of the disparity that exists. If we had examples before us
of angelic amplitude of mind, the contrast would force upon
us a lively impression of the lowness of our intellectual
level. If we had never been accustomed to any other light
but that of the stars, we should never have dreamed of the
sun, nor felt the absence of his rays as any real evil. The
4
26
positive in the order of thought is before the privative. We
must know the good in order to understand the evil ; we
must be familiar with the day to comprehend night and
darkness. Hence it is that civilization never has been, and
never can be, of spontaneous growth among a people. It
has always been an inheritance or an importation. If men
had been originally created savages they would all have
been savages to-day.
Those ingenious theories which undertake, from principles
of human nature, to explain the history of man's progress
from barbarism to refinement are nothing better than
speculative romances. They are contradicted by experience
as well as by the laws of the human mind. Philosophy
coincides with the Bible — man was created in the image of
God, and the rudeness and coarseness of uncivilized com-
munities are states of degradation into which he has apos-
tatized and sunk, and not his primitive and original condi-
tion. Civilization has migrated from one centre to another,
has found its waj- among barbarians and savages, and re-
stored them to something of their forfeited inheritance, but
in every such instance it has been introduced from without,
it has never developed itself from within. Where all is
darkness whence is the light to spring? What planet is the
source of the rays that shine on it? Hence it is knowledge
which creates the demand for knowledge, which causes
ignorance to be felt as an evil, and hence it is the education
in the first instance of the few which has awakened the
strong desire for the illumination of the many. Let knowl-
edge, however, become stagnant, let no provision be made
for the constant activity of the highest order of minds in
the highest sphere of speculation, and the torpor would be
communicated downwards until the whole community was
benumbed.
THE PROGRESS OP SOCIETY.
The thinkers in the most abstract departments of specula-
tion keep the whole of society in motion, and upon its mo-
tion depends its progress. Scholars, therefore, are the real
m
benefactors of the people, and he does more for popular
education who founds a University than he who institutes a
complete and adecpaate machinery of common schools.
The reason is obvious — the most potent element of public
opinion is#wanting where only alow form of culture obtains.
The common schools, having no example of anything higher
before them, would soon degenerate and impart only a
mechanical culture, if they did not — which I am inclined to
think would be the case, from their want of life — permit the
people to relapse into barbarism. Colleges, on the other
hand, will create the demand for lower culture, and private
enterprise under the stimulus imparted would not be back-
ward in providing for it. The College will diffuse the educa-
tion of principles, of maxims, a tone of thinking and feeling
which are of the last importance, without the schools. The
schools could never do it without the College. If we must
dispense with one or the other, I have no hesitation in say-
ing that on the score of public good alone it were wiser to
dispense with the schools. One sun is better than a thou-
sand stars.
There never was, therefore, a more grievous error than
that the College is in antagonism to the interests of the
people. Precisely the opposite is the truth ; and because
it is pre-eminently a public good, operating directly or in-
directly to the benefit of every citizen in the State, the
Legislature was originally justified in founding, and in still
sustaining, this noble institution. It has made South
Carolina what she is ; it has made her people what they
are; and from her mountains to her seaboard there is not a
nook or corner of the State that has not shared in its health-
ful influence. The very cries which are coming up from all
quarters for the direct instruction of the people, cries which
none should think of resisting, are only echoes from the
College walls. We should never have heard of them if the
state of things had continued among us which existed when
the College was founded. The low-country would still have
sent its sons to Europe or the North, and the up-country
would have been content with its fertile lands and in-
vigorating hills.
28
EDUCATION LIVES ON CHARITY.
The second ground of objection does not deny or diminish
the importance of the College or the general advantages of
higher education. It only affirms that the State is not the
proper body for dispensing them. The advocates of this
negative opinion divide themselves into two classes, one
maintaining that Colleges should support themselves, the
other that they should be supported by endowments under
the control of private or ecclesiastical corporations. The
first was the doctrine of Adam Smith, who may be reckoned
among the ablest opponents of the policy of public educa-
tion in the higher branches of learning. He lays down the
thesis that the demand will infallibly create the supply, that
in science, literature and the arts, as in the commodities
which minister to the physical comfort and conveniences of
man, what is wanted will be procured. The double opera-
tion of private interest, on the one hand to obtain, on the
other to furnish, will present inducements enough to
originate all the schools that may be needed to teach all
the arts that may be desired. This ingenious reasoner for-
got that in the matter of education, as Sir Wm. Hamilton
justly remarks : "Demand and supply are necessarily co-
existent and co-extensive; that it is education which creates
the want which education only can satisfy." " Those
again," says the same writer, " who, conceding all this, con-
tent that the creation and supply of this demand should be
abandoned by the State to private intelligence and philan-
thropy, are contradicted both by reasoning and fact."
The expensiveness of the machinery which is necessary to
put in motion a higher Seminary of learning renders it
hopelessly impossible to make such institutions self-support-
ing bodies, and the attempt to do so would have no other
effect than to degrade them into professional or scientific
schools, in which knowledge is the end and not the instru-
ment. Hence there is not a College University worthy the
name, either in Europe or America, that is capable of sus-
taining, much less of having founded, its various depart-
29
merits of instruction by the patronage it receives. Educa-
tion has always lived on charity. Foundations and endow-
ments, partly from individuals, partly from the State, have
always been its reliance to supply the apparatus with which
the machinery is kept in motion. As to private corpora-
tions, it is certain that the degree of interest which is taken
in learning for itself will never be adequate to meet the
exigencies of higher education. There must be some
stronger principle at work, and impulse more general and
pervading, in order to touch the chords of private liberality
and awaken a responsive thrill. There may be extraordinary
efforts of single men, but these spasmodic contributions will
be too rare, besides that they may be hampered by unwise
restrictions and limitations to answer the ends of a College.
DOES EDUCATION BELONG TO CHURCH OR STATE ?
The only principle which has vitality and power enough
to keep the stream of private charity steadily turned in the
direction of education is the principle of religion. And
hence the true and only question is, does education belong
to the Church or State ? Into the hands of one or the other
it must fall, or perish. This, too, is the great practical
question among us. To meet formidable war against the
College will be that waged on the principle of its existence.
I respect the feeling out of which jealously of State institu-
tions has grown. A godless education is worse than none;
and I rejoice that the sentiment is well-nigh universal in
this country that a system which excludes the highest and
most commanding, the eternal interests of man, must be
radically defective, whether reference be had to the culture
of the individual or to his prosperity and influence in life.
Man is essentially a religious being, and to make no provis-
ion for this noblest element of his nature, to ignore and
preclude it from any distinct consideration, is to leave him
but half educated. The Ancients were accustomed to re-
gard theology as the first philosophy, and there is not a
people under the sun whose religion has not been the chief
30
inspiration of their literature. Take away the influence
which this subject has exerted upon the human mind, de-
stroy its contributions to the cause of letters, the impulse
it has given to the speculation of philosophy, and what will
be left after these subtractions will be comparatively small
in quantity and feeble in life and spirit. We must have re-
ligion if we would reach the highest forms of education.
This is the atmosphere which must surround the mind and
permeate all its activities, in order that its development
may be free, healthful and vigorous. Science languishes,
letters pine, refinement is lost, wherever and whenever the
genius of religion is excluded. Experience has demon-
strated that, in some form or other, it must enter into every
College and pervade every department of instruction. No
institution has been able to live without it.
But what right, it is asked, has the State to introduce it?
What right, we might ask in return, has the State to ex-
clude it? The difficulty lies in confounding the dogmatic
peculiarities of sects with the spirit of religion. The State,
as such, knows nothing of sects but to protect them, but
it does not follow that the State must be necessarily godless ;
and so a College knows nothing of denominations, except
as a feature in the history of the human race, but it does
not follow that a College must be necessarily atheistic or
unchristian. What is wanted is the pervading influence of
religion as a life, the habitual sense of responsibility to God
and of the true worth and destiny of the soul, which shall
give tone to the character and regulate all the pursuits of
the place. The example, temper and habitual deportment
of the teachers, co-operating with the dogmatic instructions
which have been received at the fireside and in the church,
and coupled with the obligatory observance (except in cases
of conscientious scruple) of the peculiar duties of the Lord's
day, will be found to do more in maintaining the power of
religion than the constant recitation of the catechism or the
ceaseless inculcation of sectarian peculiarities. The difficul-
ty of introducing religion is, indeed, rather speculative than
practical. When we propose to teach religion as a science
31
and undertake, by precise boundaries and exact statutory
provisions, to define what shall and what shall not be taught,
when by written schemes we endeavor to avoid all the
peculiarities of sect and opinion without sacrificing the essen-
tial interests of religion, the task is impossible. The resi-
duum, after our nice distinctions, is zero.
RELIGIOUS, BUT NOT SECTARIAN.
But why introduce religion as a science? Let it come in
the character of the Professors, let it come in the stated
worship of the sanctuary, and let it come in the vindication
of those immortal records which constitute the basis of our
faith. Leave creeds and confessions to the fireside and
church, the home and the pulpit. Have Godly teachers and
you will have comparatively a Godly College. But what
security have we that a State College will pay any attention
to the religious character of its teachers'1 The security of
public opinion, which, in proportion as the various religious
denominations do their duty in their own spheres, will be-
come absolutely irresistible. Let all the sects combine to
support the State College, and they can soon create a senti-
ment which, with the terrible certainty of fate, shall tolerate
nothing unholy or unclean in its walls. They can make it
religious without being sectarian. The true power of the
church over these institutions is not that of direct control,
but of moral influence, arising from her direct work upon
the hearts and consciences of all the members of the com-
munity.
It is alleged that experience presents us with mournful
examples of State institutions degenerating into hotbeds of
atheism and impiety. It may be promptly replied that the
same experience presents us with equally mournful exam-
ples of church institutions degenerating into hotbeds of the
vilest heresy and infidelity. And what is more to the
point, a sound public opinion has never failed to bring these
State institutions back to their proper moorings, while the
church institutions have not unfrequently carried their
32
sects with them and rendered reform impossible. In the
case of State institutions, the security for religion lies in
the public opinion of the whole community; in the case of
church institutions, in the public opinion of a single de-
nomination ; and as the smaller body can more easily be-
come corrupt than a larger, as there is a constant play of
antagonisms which preserves the health in the one case,
while they are wanting in the other, it seems clear that a
State College, upon the whole and in the long run, must be
safer than any sectarian institution. As long as the people
preserve their respect for religion the College can be kept
free from danger.
The principle, too, on which the argument for church
supervision is founded proves too much. It is assumed that
wherever a religious influence becomes a matter of primary
importance, there the church has legitimate jurisdiction.
" This," it has been well said, " puts an end to society itself,
and makes the church the only power that can exist, since
all that is necessary is for any officer or any power to be
capable of moral effects or influences in order to put it under
the dominion of the church. The moral influences of
governors, judges, presidents, nay, even sheriffs, coroners or
constables, is as real and may be far more extensive than
that of school-masters. The moral influence of wealth,
manners, taste, is immense ; that of domestic habits, nay,
even personal habits, often decisive." The truth is, this
species of argument would reduce every interest under the
sun to the control of the church. It is just the principle on
which the authority of the Pope over Kings and States has
been assumed and defended. The argument, moreover, is
one which can be very easily refuted. If, because education
has a religious element it must fall within the jurisdiction
of the church, a fortiori, because it has multiplied secular
elements it must fall within the jurisdiction of the State.
The church is a distinct corporation, with distinct rights
and authority. She has direct control over nothing that is
not spiritual in its matter and connected with our relations
to Jesus Christ. She is His kingdom, and her functions are
33
limited to His work as the Mediator of the covenant and
the Saviour of the lost; and if education, in its secular
aspects, is not a function of grace, but of nature, if it
belongs to man, not as a Christian, but simply as a man,
then it no more falls within the jurisdiction of the church
than any other secular work. The duties of the State are
civil, not sacred; the duties of the church are sacred, not
civil. To exclude the church from the control of general
education, and to exempt it from the duty of providing the
means thereof, it must be shown that education is of the
nature of religious things, and that the duty of superintend-
ing it is, in its nature, spiritual. Is not a man bound to
educate himself as an individual person? Is not every
family bound to educate each other, and the head of the
family peculiarly bound to educate the members? If so,
are these obligations, which arise out of our individual per-
sonality and out of our family relations, in any degree at all,
or do they spring solely and chiefly out of our obligations
as members of Christ? Is a Christian more bound, or is he
chiefly bound, or is he exclusively bound — they are three
degrees of the same proposition — to acquire and to impart
knowledge which has nothing to do with religion, but much
to do with temporal success and temporal usefulness, all
the positive sciences for example, simply or mainly as a
Christian, or because he is a Christian? Or is he bound
chiefly, or at all, to do so from any consideration drawn
from his individual position, or his relations to his family or
his country? These are considerations, and there are many
more like them, that require to be deeply pondered before
we arrive at the sweeping generalities which assume and
assert that denominational education is only the safe and
true conclusion of this "high argument."
SECTARIAN COLLEGES.
Apart from the principle involved, I have other objections
to sectarian education. I say sectarian education, for the
Church Catholic is one, in the present condition of things
u
not visible and corporate. What she does can only be done
through the agency of one or more of the various fragments
into which she has been suffered to split. In the first place,
it is evident, from the feebleness of the sects, that these
Colleges cannot be very largely endowed. In the next
place, they are likely to be numerous. From these causes
will result a strenuous competition for patronage ; and from
this two effects may be expected to follow : first, the depres-
sion of the standard of general education, so as to allure
students to their halls ; and next, the preference of what is
ostentatious and attractive in education to what is solid and
substantial. It is true that there can be no lofty flight, as
Bacon has suggested, " without some feathers of ostenta-
tion ; " but it is equally true there can be no flight at all
where there are not bone, muscle and sinew to sustain the
feathers. It is also a serious evil that the State should be
habitually denounced as profane and infidel. To think and
speak of it in that light is the sure way to make it so ; and
yet this is the uniform representation of the advocates of
church education. They will not permit the State to touch
the subject, because its fingers are unclean. Can there be a
more certain method to uproot the sentiment of patriotism,
and to make us feel that the Government of the country is
an enormous evil, to which we are to submit, not out of
love, but for conscience sake? Will not something like this
be the inevitable effect of the declamation and invective
which bigots and zealots feel authorized to vent against the
Commonwealth that protects them, in order that they may
succeed in their narrow schemes? Instead of clinging
around the State as they would cling to the bosom of a be-
loved parent, and concentrating upon her the highest and
holiest influences which they are capable of exerting; in-
stead of teaching their children to love her as the ordinance
of God for good, to bless her for her manifold benefits, and
to obey her with even a religious veneration, they repel her
to a cold and cheerless distance, and brand her with the
stigma of Divine reprobation. The result must be bad.
The fanaticism which despises the State, and the infidelity
35
which contemns the church, arc both alike the product of
ignorance and folly. God has established both the church
and the State. It is as clearly our duty to be loyal and en-
lightened citizens as to be faithful and earnest Christians.
A BOND OF UNION.
I think, too, that the tendency of sectarian Colleges to
perpetuate the strife of sects, to fix whatever is heterogene-
ous in the elements of national character, and to alienate
the citizens from each other, is a consideration not to be
overlooked. There ought surely to be some common
ground on which the members of the same State may meet
together and feel that they are brothers— some common
ground on which their children may mingle without con-
fusion or discord, and bury every narrow and selfish inter-
est in the sublime sentiment that they belong to the same
family. Nothing is so powerful as a common education,
and the thousand sweet associations, which spring from if
and cluster around it, to cherish the holy brotherhood of
men. Those who have walk'ed together in the same paths
of science, and taken sweet counsel in the same halls of
learning; who went arm in arm in that hallowed season of
life when the foundations of all excellence are laid ; who have
wept with the same sorrows or laughed at the same joys;
who have been fired with the same ambition ; lured with the
same hopes, and grieved at the same disappointments— these
arc not the men, in after years, to stir up animosities or
foment intestine feuds. Their college life is a bond of
union which nothing can break— a divine poetry of existence
which nothing is allowed to profane. Who can forget his
college days and his college companions, and even his
college dreams? Would you make any Commonwealth a
unit, educate its sons together? This is the secret of the
harmony which has so remarkably characterized our State.
It was not the influence of a single mind, great as that mind
was it was no tame submission to authoritative dictation.
It was the community of thought, feeling and character.
36
achieved by a common education within these walls.
Here it was that heart was knit to heart, mind to mind, and
that a common character was formed. All these advantages
must be lost if the sectarian scheme prevails. South Caro-
lina will no longer be a unit, nor her citizens brothers. We
shall have sect against sect, school against school, and Col-
lege against College ; and he knows- but little of the past
who has not observed that the most formidable dangers to
any State are those which spring from divisions in its own
bosom, and that these divisions are terrible in proportion to
the degree in which the religious element enters into them.
I shall say no more upon the College. I have spoken of
its end, its organization and its defects, and have vindicated
the policy upon which it was founded. What I have said
I believe to be true, and I am sure that it is seasonable ; and
nothing would delight me more, as a man, a Christian and a
patriot, than to see all jealousies laid aside, all sectarian
schemes abandoned, and the whole State, as one man, rally
to its support. It would find ample employment for all the
funds which private liberality is pouring into the coffers of
other institutions ; and when charity had done its utmost,
and the Government still more freely unlocked its treasury,
we should have a splendid institution beyond doubt, but
one which was still not perfect. Education is a vast and
complicated interest, and it requires the legacies of ages
and generations past, as well as the steady contributions of
the living, to keep the stream from subsiding. Let it roll
among us like a mighty river, whose ceaseless flow is main-
tained by the springs of charity and the great fountain of
public munificence. Let us have a College which is worthy
of the name — to which we can invite the scholars of Europe
with an honest pride, and to which our children may repair
from all our borders, as the States of Greece to their
Olympia, or the chosen tribes to Mount Zion. How beauti-
ful it is for brethren to dwell together in unity !
THE FREE SCHOOLS.
II. The next part of our system, in the order of legisla-
tion, is the free schools. And here I am sorry to say that
37
the law is not only inadequate, but there is a very extraor-
dinary discrepancy between the law and the practice, which
increases the difficulty and has added to the inefficiency of
the standing appropriation. It is clear from the face of it
that the Act of 1811 was designed as the first step towards
the establishment of a system of common schools that
should bring the means of elementary education within the
reach of every child in the State. It was not intended to be
a provision for paupers. Throughout our statutes free
schools mean public schools, or schools which are open to
every citizen. The first Act in which I find the expression
is that of the 8th of April, 1710, entitled "An Act for the
founding and erecting of a free school for the use of the in-
habitants of South Carolina." This Act created and incor-
porated a Board of Trustees for the purpose of taking
charge of such funds as had already been contributed, or
might afterwards be contributed, for public instruction in
the Province. In it the epithet free is synonymous, not with
pauper, but public, or common. The same is the case in the
Act of the 7th of June, 1712, entitled "An Act for the en-
couragement of learning." Although the school was a free
school, every pupil was required to pay for his tuition. But
the meaning of the phrase is made still clearer by the ex-
tended Act of the 1 2th December of the same year. There
the school was manifestly open to all. Special inducements
were held out to patronize and encourage it, and provisions
made for educating a certain number free of expense. The
Act of 181 1, which is the basis of our present system, is so
clear and explicit as to the kind of schools to be founded,
that I am utterly unable to account for the partial and ex-
clusive interpretation which has been put upon its words.
The Third Section provided "that every citizen of this
State shall be entitled to send his or her child or children,
ward or wards, to any free school in the district where he
or she may reside, free from any expense whatever on ac-
count of tuition ; and where more children shall apply for
admission at any one school than can be conveniently edu-
cated therein, a preference shall always be given to poor
orphans and children of indigent and necessitous parents."
38
I have no doubt that, if this Act had been executed ac-
cording to its true intent and meaning, and public schools
had been established in every district of the State corres-
ponding to the number of members in the House of Repre-
sentatives, the advantages would have been so conspicuous
that the Legislature could not have stopped until the means
of instruction had been afforded to every neighborhood, to
every family, and to every child. The law was wise ; it was
strictly tentative and provisional, but its benevolent inten-
tion has been defeated by a singular misconception of its
meaning. As a provisional law, it was defective in unity of
plan. The Commissioners in each district were absolutely
independent and irresponsible. There was no central power
which could correct mistakes, and which could infuse a com-
mon spirit and a common life into the whole scheme. The
consequence is that, after all our legislation and all our ex-
penditures, we have not even the elements in practical
operation of a system of public schools. We have the
whole work to begin anew.
You will permit me to suggest a few reasons why we
should begin it heartily and at once, and then to imitate
the nature and extent of our incipient efforts :
In the first place, it is the duty of the State to provide
for the education of its citizens. Even Adam Smith, who,
we have seen, was opposed to the direct interference of the
Government in higher, or liberal education, is constrained
to admit that the education of the common people forms
an exception to his principle. He makes it the care of the
Government, upon the same general ground with the culti-
vation of a martial spirit. We should be as solicitous that
our citizens should not be ignorant as that they should not
be cowards. The whole passage is so striking that you will
excuse me for quoting it in full :
THE DUTY OF THE STATE.
" But a coward, or a man incapable either of defending
or revenging himself, evidently wants one of the most essen-
tial parts of the character of a man. He is as much muti.
39
lated and deformed in his mind as another is in his body,
who is either deprived of some of his most essential mem-
bers, or has lost the use of them. He is evidently the more
wretched and miserable of the two, because happiness and
misery, which reside altogether in the mind, must necessa-
rily depend more upon the healthful or unhealthful, the
mutilated or entire state of the mind, than upon that of
the body. Even though the martial spirit of the people
were of no use towards the defence of the society, yet to
prevent that sort of mental mutilation, deformity and
wretchedness, which cowardice necessarily involves in it,
from spreading themselves through the great body of the
people, would still deserve the most serious attention of
Government — in the same manner as it would deserve its
most serious attention to prevent a leprosy, or any other
loathsome and offensive disease, from spreading itself among
them ; though, perhaps, no other public good might result
from such attention besides the prevention of so great a
public evil.
"The same thing may be said of the gross ignorance and
stupidity which, in a civilized society, seems so frequently
to benumb the understanding of all the inferior ranks of
people. A man without the proper use of the intellectual
faculties of a man is, if possible, more contemptible than
even a coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed in
a still more essential part of the character of human nature.
Though the State was to derive no advantage from the in-
struction of the inferior ranks of the people, it would still
deserve its attention that they should not be altogether un-
instructed. The State, however, derives no considerable
advantages from their instruction. The more they are in-
structed the less liable they are to the delusions of enthusi-
asm and superstition, which, among ignorant nations,
frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders. An in-
structed and intelligent people, besides, are always more
decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one. They
feel themselves, each individually, more respectable, and
more likely to obtain the respect of their lawful superiors
40
and they are, therefore, more disposed to respect those
superiors. They are more disposed to examine, and more
capable of seeing through, the interested complaints of fac-
tion and sedition ; and they are, upon that account, less apt
to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary opposition to
the measures of Government. In free countries, where the
safety of Government depends very much upon the favor-
able judgment which the people may form of its conduct, it
must surely be of the highest importance that they should
not be disposed to judge rashly or capriciously concerning
it."
" If the community wish to have the benefit of more
knowledge and intelligence in the laboring classes," says
Say, "it must dispense it at the public charge. This object
may be obtained by the establishment of primary schools,
of reading, writing and arithmetic. These are the ground-
work of all knowledge, and are quite sufficient for the civil-
ization of the lower classes. In fact, one cannot call a native
civilized, nor consequently possessed of the benefits of civil-
ization, until the people at large be instructed in these three
particulars; till then it will be but partially reclaimed from
barbarism."
I might multiply authorities to an indefinite extent, show-
ing that it is the general opinion of political philosophers
that popular instruction is one of the most sacred duties of
the Commonwealth. The opinion obviously rests upon two
"rounds — the importance of education in itself and in its
relation to the State, and the impossibility of adequately
providing for it without the assistance of the Legislature.
The alternative is either that the education of the people
must be abandoned as hopeless, or the Government must
embark in the work. Surely, if this be really the state of
the case, South Carolina cannot hesitate a moment as to
which branch of the proposition she will choose.
THE FOLLY OP INDIVIDUAL EFFORT.
When it is remembered that education makes the citizen
as well as the man — that it is precisely what fits a human
41
being to be a living member of a Commonwealth — we can-
not hesitate as to whether our people shall be ciphers or
men. And that this is the alternative is clear, both from
the nature of the case and from fact. Whoever considers
what it is to provide an adequate system of instruction for
all the children of a country, the amount of funds necessary
to erect school-houses, to found libraries, to procure the
needful apparatus, to pay teachers, and to keep the ma-
chinery, once set in motion, in steady and successful opera-
tion, will perceive the folly of entrusting such a task to the
disjointed efforts of individuals, or the conflicting efforts of
religious denominations. In either case there will be no
unity of plan, no competency of means ; what is d*ne must
be done partially, and, because partially, must be done
amiss.
" All experience," says Sir Wm. Hamilton, " demonstrates
the necessity of State interference. No countries present a
more remarkable contrast in this respect (in regard to
popular education) than England and Germany. In the
former the State has done nothing for the education of the
people, and private benevolence more than has been at-
tempted elsewhere ; in the latter, the Government has done
everything, and left to private benevolence almost nothing
to effect. The English people are, however, the lowest, the
German people the highest, in the scale of knowledge. All
that Scotland enjoys of popular education above the other
kingdoms of the British Empire she owes to the State, and
among the principalities of Germany, from Russia down to
Hesse Cassel, education is uniformly found to prosper ex-
actly in proportion to the extent of interference and to the
unremitting watchfulness of the Government. The ex-
perience of the last half century in Germany has, indeed,
completely set at rest the question. For thirty years no
German has been found to maintain the doctrine of Smith.
In their generous rivalry the Governments of that country
have practically shown what a benevolent and prudent
policy could effect for the University as well as for the
school, and, knowing what they have done, who is there now
6
42
to maintain that for education, as for trade, the State can
prevent evil, but cannot originate good?"
There are those among us who admit that no complete
system of popular education can be instituted without the
intervention of the State, and yet maintain that the true
method of intervention is simply to supplement individual
exertions ; that is, they would have those who are able to
do so educate their children in schools sustained by them-
selves, and solicit the aid of the Legislature only for pau-
pers. It is obvious, in the first place, that in this there is
no system at all ; the schools are detached and independent,
they have no common life, and the State knows nothing of
the influences which may be exerted within them. Educa-
tion is too complicated an interest, and touches the pros-
perity of the Commonwealth in too many points, to be left,
in reference to the most important class of its subjects, ab-
solutely without responsibility to the Government. The
homogeneousness of the population can only be sustained
by a general system of public schools.
In the next place, the scheme is invidious — it makes a re-
proachful distinction betwixt the children of the Common-
wealth, and in the last place it must, from this very circum-
stance, be inefficient. Parents will scorn a favor rather than
permit their children to be stigmatized as the condition of
receiving it. The true policy of the State is to recognize
no distinction betwixt the rich and the poor; to put them
all upon the same footing; to treat them all upon the same
footing; to treat them simply as so many minds whose
capacities are to be unfolded and whose energies are to be
directed. The rich and the poor in the school-house, as in
the house of God, should meet together upon the ground of
their common relations, and the consequences of this
promiscuous elementary training would soon be felt in har-
monizing and smoothing all the unevenness, harshness and
inequalities of social life.
In the second place, the State should make some speedy
provision for popular education in consequence of the un-
usual demand which, in some form or other, is indicated as
existing in every section of the country.
4:;
THE DEMAND FOR SCHOOLS.
There never was a greater cry for schools ; the people are
beginning to appreciate their importance, and at no period
within my recollection have such strenuous efforts been
made to establish and support them. The extraordinary
exertions of the various sects — exertions, too, which deserve
all praise when considered as attempts to satisfy an acknowl-
edged public want, and the success which has attended
them — are proofs that public opinion is ripe in South Caro-
lina for the interference of the Legislature ; and if it should
not speedily interfere this great and mighty interest will
pass completely out of its hands and be beyond its regula-
tion or control. It is a critical period with us in the history
of education. The people are calling for schools and teachers,
and if the State will not listen to their cries they will be
justified in adopting the best expedients they can, and in
acceding to the provisions which religious zeal proposes to
their acceptance. Our people are not, as a body, in favor
of sectarian education. They prefer a general and inex-
clusive system, and if they adopt the narrower one it will
be because their own Government has been inattentive to
their interests. I sincerely hope that the Legislature may
be duly sensible of the delicate posture of this subject. To
my mind it is clear as the noonday sun that, if anything is
to be done, it must be done at once. Now or never is the
real state of the problem.
In the third place, the State should take the subject in
hand, because this is the only way by which consistency and
coherence can be secured in the different departments of in-
struction. Education is a connected work, and its various
subdivisions should be so arranged that, while each is a
whole in itself, it should be at the same time a part of a
still greater whole. The lower elementary education should,
for example, be complete for those who aspire to nothing
more ; it should likewise be naturally introductory to a
higher culture. It should be a perfect whole for the one
class, and a properly adjusted part for the other. So, also,
44
the higher elementary education, that of the grammar
school, should be complete for those who are not looking to
liberal education, and yet, in relation to others, subsidiary
to the College or the scientific schools. This unity in the
midst of variety cannot be secured without a common cen-
tre of impulse and of action. There must be one presiding
spirit, one head, one heart. Education will become a dis-
jointed and fragmentary process if it is left to individuals,
to private corporations and religious sects. Each will have
his tongue and his psalm, and we shall have as many
crotchets and experiments as there are controlling bodies.
The competition excited will be a competition not for
efficiency in instruction, but for numbers ; each will estimate
success by the hosts that can be paraded at its annual fes-
tivals, or the pomp and pretension of a theatrical pageant,
played off under the name of an examination. This is not
the language of reproach ; it is a result which, from the
principles of human nature, will be inevitably necessitated
by the condition in which they shall find themselves placed.
Let me add, in this place, that public education is recom-
mended by considerations of economy. Absolutely it is
the cheapest of all systems. It saves the enormous expense
of boarding schools, or the still heavier expense of domestic
tutors, one of which must be encountered when it is left to
private enterprise to supply the means of education. If
the amount which is annually expended in South Carolina
upon the instruction of that portion of her children who are
looking to a liberal education could be collected into one
sum, we would be amazed at the prodigality of means in
comparison with the poverty of the result. The same sum
judiciously distributed would go very far towards supplying
every neighborhood with a competent teacher. From the
want of system there is no security that, with all this lavish
expenditure, efficient instructors shall be procured. Those
who employ the teachers are not always competent to judge
of their qualifications, and the consequence is that time and
money are both not infrequently squandered in learning
what has afterwards to be unlearned. The danger, too, of
45
sending children from home at an early age, the evil of ex-
emption from parental influence and dicipline, arc not to be
lightly hazarded. The State should see to it that the family
is preserved in its integrity, and enabled to exert all its
mighty power in shaping the character of the future citizens
of the Commonwealth. Comparatively, public education is
cheap, as general intelligence contributes to general virtue,
and general virtue diminishes expenditures for crimes; it is
cheap, as it develops the resources of the country and in-
creases the mass of its wealth. It is not labor, but intelli-
gence that creates new values; and public education is an
outlay of capital that returns to the coffers of the State with
an enormous interest. Not a dollar, therefore, that is judi-
ciously appropriated to the instruction of the people will
ever be lost. The five talents will gain other five, and the
two talents other two ; while to neglect this great depart-
ment of duty is to wrap the talent in a napkin and bury it
in the bowels of the earth.
THE REAL DIFFICULTY.
But, after all, the practical question is one of real dif-
ficulty. What shall the State do ? This is a point of great
delicacy, and demands consummate wisdom. Nothing
should be done abruptly and violently, no measures should
be adopted that are not likely to recommend themselves,
no attempt made to force an acquiescence into any provis-
ions, however salutary they may have proved elsewhere,
which are not founded in the habits and predilections of
the people, or obviously indispensable to elevate and im-
prove them. The public mind should be prepared for
every great movement before it is begun. Popular en-
thusiasm should, if possible, be awakened by addresses and
disputations, which, like pioneers, prepare the way for the
law by making rough places plain and the crooked straight.
Above all, we should guard against attempting to make our
system too perfect at the outset. The words of Cousin are
as applicable to us now as they were to France at the time
46
he wrote them : " God grant that we may be wise enough
to see that any law on primary instruction passed now must
be a provisional and not a definite law; that it must of
necessity be reconstructed at the end of ten years, and that
the only thing now is to supply the most urgent wants, and
to give legal sanction to some incontestable points."
Festina lente contains a caution which it becomes States as
well as individuals to respect.
What we first need is a collection of the facts from which
the data of a proper system may be drawn. We must
know the number of children in the State of the ages at
which children are usually sent to school, the kind and
decree of education demanded, the relative distances of the
residence of parents, the points at which school-houses may
be most conveniently erected, the number of buildings re-
quired, the number of teachers, and the salaries which dif-
ferent localities make necessary to a competent support.
Facts of this sort must constitute the ground-work. In
possession of these we may then proceed to compare dif-
ferent systems, adopting from among them that which seems
to be best adapted to our own circumstances, or originate a
new one if all should prove unsatisfactory.
All, therefore, that in my judgment the Legislature
should undertake at present is to acquire this preliminary
information, including the accumulation of facts, the com-
parison of different common school systems, and the digest
of a plan suited to the wants of our own people. This can
be done by the appointment of a minister of public instruc-
tion, who shall be regarded as an officer of the Government,
compensated by a large salary, and who shall give himself
unreservedly to this greafinterest. Let him be required to
traverse the State, to inspect the condition of every neigh-
borhood, and from personal observation and authentic testi-
mony let him become acquainted with the number, the ex-
tent and the circumstances of the children. Let him be
prepared to say where school-houses can be most conven-
iently erected, the distance at which they should be re-
moved from each other, the kind of teacher needed in each
47
neighborhood, and let him indicate what sections of the
State are unprepared for schools in consequence of the dis-
persion of their inhabitants. Let him be able to give some
probable estimate of the expenses incident to the success-
ful operation of an adequate scheme. In the next place, it
should be his duty to master the existing systems, whether
in this country or Europe, and to lay before the Legislature
a succinct account of their fundamental provisions. Let
him propose the scheme which he thinks ought to be
adopted here, and let his report be referred to an able and
learned commissioner, charged with the final preparation of
such a scheme as we may be ready to enact into law.
I shall not disguise from your Excellency that upon many
points connected with details of any and every scheme my
own opinion has long ago been definitely settled. The
extent or degree of elementary education, the best mode of
securing competent teachers, the principle which should
regulate their salaries, the introduction of religion into the
schools — these and many other similar topics I have inves-
tigated to my own satisfaction. But, in the present condi-
tion of the whole subject, it would be obviously premature
to express the opinions of any individual. The minister of
public instruction should have the whole subject before him,
and whatever discussions may take place upon details
should be consequent upon and not prior to this report.
All, therefore, that I would now press upon your Excellency
is to have public instruction erected into a department of
the Government. That is the first and indispensable step,
and until that is done there never can be a plan adequate,
consistent, successful. I have only to add here that this is
substantially the recommendation which I had the honor
to make in concert with the Bishop of Georgia some four-
teen or fifteen years ago, and time and observation have
only strengthened my convictions of the wisdom and neces-
sity of the measure.
MILITARY SCHOOLS.
III. The third and last part of our system is the military
schools. What I have to suggest in regard to them is that
48
they be made to supply a want which is constantly increas-
ing, as the country advances in trade and the arts. It is a
great evil that there should be nothing intermediate be-
tween the grammar school and the College, and that all who
wish to acquire nothing more than the principles of physical
science, on account of their application to various branches
of industry, should be compelled to purchase this privilege
by bearing, what to them is, the heavy burden of liberal
education. They do not want Latin, Greek and philosophy,
and it is hard that they cannot be permitted to get a little
chemistry, a little engineering, or a little natural philosophy,
without going through Homer and Virgil, Aristotle and
Locke. " Two great evils " (I use the words of Cousin, who
is deploring a similar state of things in France), "two great
evils are the consequence. In general, these boys, who
know that they are not destined to any very distinguished
career, go through their studies in a negligent manner; they
never get beyond mediocrity, when, at about eighteen, they
go back to the habits and the business of their fathers. As
there is nothing in their ordinary life to recall or to keep up
their studies, a few years obliterate every trace of the little
classical learning they acquired. On the other hand, these
young men often contract tastes and acquaintances at Col-
lege which render it difficult, nay almost impossible, for
them to return to the humble way of life to which they are
born ; hence a race of men restless, discontented with their
position, with others and with themselves ; enemies of a
state of society in which they feel themselves out of place,
and with some acquirements, some real or imagined talent,
and unbridled ambition, are ready to rush into any career
of servility or revolt. Our Colleges ought, without doubt,
to remain open to all who can pay the expenses of them,
but we ought by no means to force the lower classes into
them ; yet this is the inevitable effect of having no inter-
mediate establishment between the primary schools and
Colleges."
The remedy, as I have already shown, is not to change
the construction of the College, but to employ the elements
49
which we confessedly have, and which are essentially suited
to the purpose.
I shall trespass upon the patience of your Excellency no
longer. In all that I have said I have had an eye to the
prosperity and glory of my native State. Small in territory
and feeble in numbers, the only means by which she can
maintain her dignity and importance is by the patronage of
letters. A mere speck compared with several other States in
the Union, her reliance for the protection of her rights and her
full and equal influence in Federal legislation must be upon
the genius of her statesmen and the character of her people.
Let her give herself to the rearing of a noble race of men,
and she will make up in moral power what she wants in
votes. Public education is the cheap expedient for uniting
us among ourselves, and rendering us terrible abroad. Mind
after all must be felt, and I am anxious to see my beloved
Carolina p.ie-eminently distinguished for the learning, elo-
quence and patriotism of her sons. Let us endeavor to
make her in general intelligence what she is in dignity and
independence of character— the brightest star in the Ameri-
can constellation. God grant that the time may soon come
when not an individual born within our borders shall be
permitted to reach maturity without having mastered the
elements of knowledge.
I am, with considerations of the highest respect,
J. H. THORNVVELL.
PRESBYTERIAN COLLEGE LIBRARY
3 5197 00140945 0
r.
f/Tp.HIS edition in pamphlet form has been published by
%p> some friends of education for free circulation. T£o j
promote which end copies have been furnished to the
gentlemen named below for distribution and delivery within
their several Counties:
WM. HENRY PARKER Abbeville.
JAMES ALDRICH Aiken.
B. F. WHITNER Anderson.
ISAAC M. HUT80N Barnwell.
WM. ELLIOTT Beaufort.
CHARLES BOYLE Berkeley.
WM. A. COURTEN AY Charleston.
J. J. McLTTRE Chester.
JAS. C. COIT Chesterfield.
J. F. RHAME Clarendon.
J. D. EDWARDS Colleton.
E.KEITH DARGAN Darlington.
D. A. G. OUZTS Edgefield.
J. H. RION Fairfield.
WALTER HAZARD. Georgetown.
ISAAC M. BRYAN Greenville.
C. J. C. HUTSON Hampton.
T. M. GILLESPIE Horry.
W. L. LEITNER] Kershaw.
J. D. WYLIE Lancaster.
H. Y. SIMPSON _. Laurens.
H. A. MEETZE Lexington.
JOSEPH T. WALSH Marion.
KNOX LIVINGSTONE Marlboro'.
GEORGE JOHNSTONE Newberry.
JOHN S. VERNER.... Oconee.
JAS. F. IZLAR Orangeburg.
J. E. BOGGS Pickens.
J. M. McBRIDE Richland.
THOS. J. MOORE Spartanburg.
J. D. BLANDING Sumter.
J. G. McKISSICK Union. (
T. M. GILLAND V" >J
W. B. AYILSON
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