the largest student attendance. Now, after the lapse of more 

 than half a century, its classes are the largest of any school in 

 the Southern Medical College Association. 



"'The attendance for the session now about to close was 308, 

 <>ne of the largest the school has ever known in spite of the fact 

 that a full four year course is given. The number of alumni at 

 the close of the last session was 4,453, this being the largest 

 number of any Southern school. 



"The prestige of the department is an important factor in 

 it- success, but it owes more to the character and ability of its 

 teaching force than to all other agencies. The gentlemen who 

 constituted the faculty in 1849 were the foremost men of the pro- 

 fession. It was my good fortune to know them, to be familiar 

 with their professional attainments, and to know personally their 

 immediate successors. I can therefore say with confidence that 

 the faculty of the Medical Department has always been the 

 strongest; strong in personal character, in professional culture, 

 and in experience, but never abler or stronger in all of these 

 elements than to-day. 



"I congratulate you, young gentlemen, upon your go:»d for- 

 tune in having been under the tuition and direction of men of 

 this type; the opportunity is worth more than money, and I be- 

 lieve that you have not been unmindful of it. I believe that your 

 alma mater will have good reason for pride in your future 

 careers." 



While the University of Nashville, under its various desig- 

 nations was laying the foundations of education broad and deep 

 in .Middle Tennessee, the great institution, now known as the 

 I Diversity of Tennessee, was working out its problem of salva- 

 tion in the Eastern part of the State. The settlers who had re- 

 volted from North Carolina in 1784 and had set up an independ- 

 ent State known as Franklin, had placed in their Constitution a 

 provision for the "encouragement of all kinds of learning," and 

 has provided for a central university and for public grammar 

 schools in each county, to be endowed with public lands and 

 supported by local taxation. In 1790 North Carolina ceded to 

 the United States the territory, which six years later was ad- 

 mitted as the sixteenth State into the Union. Wm. Blount became 

 the Governor of the Territory, one of whose firsts acts was the 

 creation of a school known at the present time as Greenville and 

 Tusculum College. The following day it created Blount College, 

 named in honor of the governor, and located it at Knoxville, the 

 tal of the Territory. 



The board of trustees of the new college was remarkable. It 

 included the governor of the Territory, the first two United States 

 Senators, the first two Judges, John Sevier, the first governor of 



72 



