CHAPTER XIX 



ORGANIZATION OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY 1865-1868 



A LTHOUGH my formal election to the university presi- 

 JLJL dency did not take place until 1867, the duties im 

 plied by that office had already been discharged by me 

 during two years. 



While Mr. Cornell devoted himself to the financial ques 

 tions arising from the new foundation, he intrusted all 

 other questions to me. Indeed, my duties may be said to 

 have begun when, as chairman of the Committee on Edu 

 cation in the State Senate, I resisted all efforts to divide 

 the land-grant fund between the People s College and 

 the State Agricultural College; to have been continued 

 when I opposed the frittering away of the entire grant 

 among more than twenty small sectarian colleges; and 

 to have taken a more direct form when I drafted the 

 educational clauses of the university charter and advo 

 cated it before the legislature and in the press. This 

 advocacy was by no means a light task. The influential 

 men who flocked to Albany, seeking to divide the fund 

 among various sects and localities, used arguments often 

 plausible and sometimes forcible. These I dealt with 

 on various occasions, but especially in a speech before the 

 State Senate in 1865, in which was shown the character 

 of the interested opposition, the farcical equipment of 

 the People s College, the failure of the State Agricul 

 tural College, the inadequacy of the sectarian colleges, 

 even though they called themselves universities; and I 

 did all in my power to communicate to my colleagues 



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