UNIVERSITY LIFE IN THE WEST-1857-1864 269 



main purpose of those members of the faculty thus in- 

 vited to lecture was to spread the influence of the univer- 

 sity. But I received from the system more than I gave to 

 it; for it gave me not only many valuable acquaintances 

 throughout the West, but it brought to Ann Arbor the best 

 men then in the field, among them such as Emerson, Cur- 

 tis, Whipple, Wendell Phillips, Carl Schurz, Moncure 

 Conway, Bayard Taylor, and others noted then, but, alas, 

 how few of them remembered now ! To have them by my 

 fireside and at my table was one of the greatest pleasures 

 of a professorial life. It was at the beginning of my 

 housekeeping; and under my roof on the university 

 grounds we felt it a privilege to welcome these wise men 

 from the East, and to bring the faculty and students into 

 closer relations with them. 



As regards the popular-lecture pulpit, my main wish 

 was to set people thinking on various subjects, and espe- 

 cially regarding slavery and "protection." This pres- 

 ently brought a storm upon me. Some years before there 

 had settled in the university town a thin, vociferous law- 

 yer, past his prime, but not without ideas and force. He 

 had for many years been a department subordinate at 

 Washington ; but, having accumulated some money, he had 

 donned what was then known as senatorial costume 

 namely, a blue swallow-tailed coat, and a buff vest, with 

 brass buttons and coming to this little Michigan town, 

 he had established a Whig paper, which afterward became 

 Republican. He was generally credited, no doubt justly, 

 with a determination to push himself into the United 

 States Senate ; but this determination was so obvious that 

 people made light of it, and he never received the honor 

 of a nomination to that or any other position. The main 

 burden of his editorials was the greatness of Henry Clay, 

 and the beauties of a protective tariff, his material being 

 largely drawn from a book he had published some years 

 before; and, on account of the usual form of his argu- 

 ments, he was generally referred to, in the offhand West- 

 ern way, as "Old Statistics." 



