and shall be in the said College, a Professor of Divinity of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, for the Instruction of such Youth as may intend to devote themselves to the sacred Ministry in those Churches, in this Our Province of New York, . . . such Professor shall be from Time to Time,

Samuel Johnson, S.T.D., PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE, 1754-1763.

and at all Times hereafter, nominated, chosen and appointed by the Ministers, Elders and Deacons of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, in the City of New York, for the Time being, when they shall see fit to make such Nomination, Choice and Appointment provided always, such professor so to be chosen from Time to Time by them, be a Member of, and in Communion with the said Reformed Protestant Dutch Church."

No advantage of this provision seems ever to have been taken. The fear that the college would be a bulwark of royal prerogative was contrary to the history of educational institutions generally, and, in the crucial period that occurred about twenty years after the establishment of the college, was shown to be groundless as to King's College. The Rev. Myles Cooper,

a Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, who came from England in 1762 to assist Dr. Johnson and succeeded to the presidency in 1763, indeed espoused the royalist side in the fierce controversies that immediately preceded the Revolutionary War; but his course cost him his place, and compelled

him to flee the country. He went to England in the early part of 1775, and did not return. In a sermon preached before the University of Oxford, December 13, 1776, in which he assigned "the Causes of the present Rebellion in America," he feelingly refers to his own efforts in the royal cause and his hasty departure as follows: "The Remonstrances of his Majesty's well-affected and Loyal Subjects could avail but little; the voice of Reason, drowned in the din of licentious Tumult, was not to be heard; and they, whether Speakers, or Writers, or Printers, who endeavored to withstand the Torrent, were treated with the greatest insolence, abuse, and insult, -to which permit ME to add, That Some of them were in the utmost danger of suffering the very last of human evils, by open violence, or more private Assassination."

Notwithstanding the example and the influence of President Cooper, the graduates and the students of the college gave ample evidence of their loyalty to the cause of the people. Alexander Hamilton, a student in one of the younger classes at the time, is said to have entered the lists against the president and to have worsted him in the argument. in the argument. King's College indeed played a conspicuous part in securing and confirming the independence of the United States. The names of Richard Harison, John Jay, Egbert Benson, Robert R. Livingston, Gouverneur Morris, Alexander Hamilton, with those of others who arrived at less distinction but did effective service, as Henry Rutgers, John Doughty, Philip Pell, Edward Dunscomb, Robert Troup, etc., testify to the influence of the college in council and in action. Its influence in the church is attested by the fact that it furnished, in Samuel Provoost and Benjamin Moore, the first and the second bishop, respectively, of the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York.

The educational advantages offered by the college in its first period are set forth in the following extract from a document found among the papers left by President Cooper, and presumed to have been written by him about the year 1773: "The Governors of the College have been enabled to extend their plan of education almost as diffusely as any college in Europe, herein being taught, by proper masters and professors who are chosen by the governors and president, divinity, natural law, physics, logic, ethics, mathematics, metaphysics, natural philosophy, astronomy, geography, history, chronology, rhetoric, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, modern languages, the belle lettres, and whatever else of literature may tend to accomplish the pupils as scholars and gentlemen. To the college is also annexed a grammar school for the due preparation of those who propose to complete their education with the arts and sciences."

The activities of the college were practically suspended during the Revolutionary War, though some instruction appears to have been given. Early in 1776 the college building was converted into a military hospital, and the college remained in abeyance for eight years. It was then revived, May 1, 1784, by act of the legislature, and placed, under the name of Columbia College, in charge of what proved to be a temporary government, viz., the Regents of the University of the State of New York. The first student of the college under its new name was DeWitt Clinton. On the 13th of April, 1787, the legislature of the state of New York passed an act reviving the original charter with amendments, ordaining "That the style of the said Corporation shall be The Trustees of Columbia College in the city of New York," abolishing ex officio membership of its governing body, cancelling the requirements that the president should hold a certain form of religious belief and that a

certain form of prayer should be used in the morning and evening services of the college, and at the same time naming a body of twenty-nine trustees. This body of trustees, after it became reduced by resignation of its members, or otherwise, to twenty-four, was made a self-perpetuating body. Under this government the college has since remained.

The first president of Columbia College was William Samuel Johnson, son of the first president of King's College. When he became president in 1787, he was in the sixtieth year of his age. He was a man of learning and piety, distinguished as a jurist and a statesman. He was the first senator in Congress chosen by the state of Connecticut, and combined the duties of the presidency and the senatorship till the sittings of Congress were removed to

William Samuel Johnson, LL.D.,

PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE, 1787-1800.

Philadelphia, when he resigned the senatorship. He continued president of the college till 1800, and conducted the office with dignity, usefulness, and honor.

Immediately upon the revival and rechristening of the college, its governing body began its rehabilitation. The scheme projected in 1784, involving, as it did, Faculties of Arts, Divinity, Medicine and Law, was too extensive to be practicable with an income from real and personal property that did not exceed twelve hundred pounds. During the control of the Regents, 1784-1787, there appear to have been appointed eight professors in the Faculty of Arts and six professors in the Faculty of Medicine. Their terms were, for the most part, brief, and when the trus

Charles Anthon, LL.D.

tees were placed in charge, and Mr. Johnson became president, there were but three professors in each of the faculties mentioned. There were thirty-nine students in the college at the time, and the annual income was about thirteen hundred and thirty pounds. One of the students in these early years was John Randolph, afterwards celebrated as "of Roanoke," who entered the freshman class in 1788

and proceeded regularly through to his junior year.

The medical faculty was reorganized in 1792, and a professorship of law was established in 1793. For seventy years after the revival of the charter in 1787, it may be said, however, that the income of the institution from its property was too meagre to permit any effective attempt to go beyond "the instruction of youth in the learned languages and liberal arts and sciences" as practised in the subgraduate course of a literary college. That this function was well discharged is fully evidenced by the catalogue of graduates, "rich in noble names." During this period, many of her own alumni, e.g. Nathaniel F. Moore, class of 1802, the

refined scholar and writer; John McVickar, class of 1804, professor of philosophy and political economy; James Renwick, class of 1807, a physicist and writer of wide repute; Charles Anthon, class of 1815, the classical scholar, whose labors in his chosen field "constituted an era in that department of learning"; Henry James Anderson, class of 1818, the accomplished linguist and profound mathematician; Henry Drisler, class of 1839, the distinguished lexicographer, filled chairs of instruction in the college that had trained them. "Her sons have come to honor, and reflected back honor upon her. They have taken high rank, each in his own department of life; they have distinguished themselves at the bar; worn and kept unsoiled the ermine robe; stood prominent in the councils of the nation; maintained its honor abroad; fought gallantly under its banner in the field; have poured the strains of holy eloquence from the sacred desk,

and have had the mitre as a crown of honor on their brow. And even the less distinguished mass of her alumni have carried with them from her halls an enduring fondness for classical studies, and a classic purity of taste, which have borne out that high repute for classical superiority which has been so generally bestowed." (Address before the alumni of Columbia College, October 5, 1842, by Hugh Smith, D.D., Rector of St. Peter's Church, N.Y.)