2014 Meeting Information 
15 
really quite hopeless, but the physical plant remained intact and the 
professors remained at their posts. Given the disarray of education at all 
levels, South Carolina Methodists saw the mission of their colleges as more 
important than ever if a “New South” was to be created. 
Shipp remained at the college through the Reconstruction period, and his 
emancipated slave Tobias Hartwell played a key role in Spartanburg’s 
emerging African-American community. Nevertheless, Wofford’s history from 
the end of the Civil War until 1900 was dominated by one man — James H. 
Carlisle. A member of the original faculty and then president of the college 
from 1875 through 1902, he initially taught mathematics and astronomy, but 
his real strength was his ability to develop alumni of character, one student at 
a time. Three generations of graduates remembered individual visits with 
President Carlisle in his campus home, now occupied by the dean of 
students. To them, he was “The Doctor;” “Wofford’s spiritual endowment; “ 
“the most distinguished South Carolinian of his day.” 
The curriculum gradually evolved during Carlisle’s administration; for 
example, he shocked everyone by delivering his first presidential 
commencement address in English rather than Latin. Nevertheless, many 
lasting traditions of Wofford life date from his administration. Four surviving 
chapters of national social 
fraternities (Kappa Alpha, 1869; 
Sigma Alpha Epsilon, 1885; 
Kappa Sigma, 1891; and Pi Kappa 
Alpha, 1894) were chartered on the 
campus. Such organizations owned 
or rented houses in the village, 
because in those days, professors 
lived in college housing while 
students expected to make their 
own arrangements for room and 
board. To meet some of their 
needs, two students from the North 
Carolina mountains, Zach and Zeb Whiteside, opened and operated 
Wofford’s first dining hall in Main Building. Although music was not part of the 
curriculum, there was an active glee club. Yankee soldiers in Spartanburg 
during Reconstruction apparently introduced college students to baseball, 
and Wofford and Furman University played South Carolina’s first 
intercollegiate football game in 1889. That same year, a group of students 
organized one of the South’s earliest literary magazines, The Journal. At 
commencements throughout the period, graduates sang the hymn, “From All 
That Dwell Below the Skies,” and received a Bible signed by faculty 
members. 
In 1895, delegates from 10 of the leading higher education institutions across 
the Southeast met in Atlanta to form the Southern Association of Colleges 
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