CHAPTER 



ORGANIZATION OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY- 1865-1868 



A LTHOUGH my formal election to the university presi- 

 J\ 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 



330 



