34 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



editor throughout the entire period of the civil war. In this capacity- 

 he had the privilege of personal acquaintance with all our public men, 

 and confidential access to many of them, including Lincoln, Seward, 

 and Stanton. 



In later life his attention was given chiefly to educational work. 

 For a time president of St. John's College, Maryland, and later pro- 

 fessor of belles lettres at Princeton, he was, in 1870, recalled to Wash- 

 ington to become president of the Columbian University, an institution 

 founded fifty years before, in the hope that it might fulfill the desire of 

 Washington, Barlow, and Adams, that a seat of liberal learning should 

 exist at the capital. Dr. Welling was led to accept this position by 

 the urgency of the philanthropist Corcoran and the advice of Henry, 

 both of whom were influenced by the hope of having with them one of 

 the founders of a national university, and who believed that a man 

 of Dr. Welling's character would find in such a position a wide field of 

 influence. 



His aspirations for the university were never fully realized, owing to 

 the impossibility of securing endowments from private sources for a 

 public institution located so near to the seat of Government. He never- 

 theless secured a considerable addition to its endowment, added new 

 professional schools, greatly increased the number of its faculty and 

 students, removed the institution from the suburbs to a new building 

 in the heart of the city, and accomplished many other things which 

 seemed really wonderfnl in view of the smallness of the resources at 

 his command. The dream of his life was to establish a school of com- 

 parative jurisprudence — the only one of its kind in the world — as a 

 branch of the university. In 1892 he visited Europe, secured approval 

 of his plans from Sir Frederick Pollock and other eminent jurists, and 

 their promise to come to America to lecture as members of the faculty. 

 Falling health interfered with the realization of his plan, which, I can 

 but believe, he would have otherwise forced into success. 



After his resignation of the presidency in 1893, he still retained the 

 chair of international law and the position of dean of the university 

 law school, and, full of hopefulness, it was his purpose to labor on for 

 his beloved project. He confidently expected to live to be 80, and to 

 devote the remaining ten years of his life to the compilation of a polit- 

 ical history of the civil war, a work for which no one was so well qual- 

 ified by experience, knowledge, and critical skill as himself. He was a 

 representative man in Washington, identified with all interests which 

 tend toward good citizenship, and held many positions of public trust 

 and honor. He was president of the board of trustees of the Corcoran 

 Art Gallery and of the American Copyright League, and was appointed 

 by President Harrison commissioner to the Columbian Historical Expo- 

 sition at Madrid in 1892. His scholarship was accurate, broad, and 

 genial, as was shown by the critical reviews which he contributed dur- 

 ing his lattr years to some oi the principal American journals. His 



