SKETCH OF PRESIDENT BARNARD 



101 



nor could this be justly expected of a man whose life has been so 

 absorbed in the work of educational reform, the progress of scientific 

 culture, the organization and administration of collegiate institutions 

 and the furtherance of those higher measures and agencies of intel- 

 lectual improvement which are never carried out except throuo-h the 

 executive force and indomitable perseverance of a few men who are 

 specially constituted for such tasks. Dr. Barnard has been untirino-jy 

 busy in these important spheres of activity for nearly half a century, 

 and seems still in the prime and vigor of his powers, and the meridian 

 of his public influence. 



Feedeeick Augustus Poetee Baenaed was born in Sheffield, 

 Massachusetts, in the year 1809. He was educated at Yale Col- 

 lege, where he graduated in 1828. He began his career as teacher 

 by taking the position of tutor in that institution in 1829. In 

 1831 he went to Hartford, and engaged as instructor in the Asy- 

 lum for the Deaf and Dumb ; and, becoming interested in this branch 

 of teaching, he subsequently pursued it in the Deaf and Dumb Asy- 

 lum of New York. He afterward published an "Analytic Grammar, 

 with Symbolic Illustrations," based upon a system he had origi- 

 nated for teaching the deaf and dumb, and which is still used in 

 institutions devoted to their education. Dr. Barnard early chose the 

 South as his field of labor, and in 1837 became Professor of Mathe- 

 matics and Natural Philosophy in the University of Alabama, at Tus- 

 caloosa, and subsequently took the chair of Chemistry in the same insti- 

 tution, which he lield until 1854. The same year he took orders in 

 the Protestant Episcopal Church. In 1854 he became Professor of 

 Mathematics, Astronomy, and Civil Engineering, in the University of 

 Mississippi, at Oxford, was elected its president in 1856, and promoted 

 to its chancellorship in 1858. During his long residence at the South, 

 Dr. Barnard devoted himself with great energy to the subject of edu- 

 cation, both primary and academic, and advocated liberal and ad- 

 vanced views regarding college polity in several able reports. Never 

 an opponent of classical culture, he freely criticised it, and strongly 

 urged the claims of science to a larger and higher place in modern 

 study than had been hitherto allowed. At the approach and out- 

 break of the civil war, President Barnard, remaining loyal to the 

 Union, found himself embarrassed in his Southern position, and in 

 1861 he resigned his chancellorship and his chair in the university, 

 and returned to his native North. In 1862 he was engaged in continu- 

 ing the reduction of Gilliss's observations of the stars in the south- 

 ern hemisphere. In 1863 he was connected with the United States 

 Coast Survey, and had charge of chart-printing and lithograpliy. Prof. 

 McCulloch, who occupied the chair of Physics in Columbia College, 

 New York, having left the institution and gone South to take his 

 chances with the Confederate cause. Dr. Barnard became an applicant 

 for the vacant position ; but, instead of accepting him for this place, 



