LETTER.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,

BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C., January 20, 1887.

The Honorable the SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR,

Washington, D. C.:

SIR: The history of the higher education in the United States deserves organized inquiry and national attention. The origin, development, academic status, and practical usefulness of many of our older and better institutions of learning are scarcely known beyond their own scholastic environment. Documentary and manuscript material for such educational history and statistics is abundant, although often widely scattered, as will be seen by an examination of the bibliography appended to the present sketch.

The College of William and Mary, founded in 1693 by royal grant, and long supported by popular legislation in Virginia, has been suffered to decline almost to ruin since the civil war, which destroyed the greater part of its property. The oldest college in the South, in fact the oldest in the country with the exception of Harvard University, has been left to decay, while the latter institution, with which William and Mary College used to share the annual income of the bequest by Robert Boyle, the English philosopher, has lately celebrated its 250th anniversary amid general rejoicing, with the President of the United States and representatives of American and European universities to do honor to the occasion. The old college at Williamsburg, which gave Washington his first degree as civil engineer and to which he gave his last public service as chancellor, the college which trained in law and politics Thomas Jefferson, Governor Randolph, Chief Justice Marshall, and nearly all of the Virginia statesmen of the revolutionary and formative periods in our Federal history, has not now a single student. Its classic halls are closed and deserted. From a once flourishing faculty, which early and ably represented both history and political science with other liberal arts, only the president, who is also professor of mathematics and physics, now remains. At the opening of every academic year, in October,

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Doctor Ewell causes the chapel bell to be rung, reminding Williamsburg that the ancient college still lives. To friends of the higher education in all of our States this fact will echo as a note of warning against public neglect and legislative indifference toward higher institutions of learning. The present monograph has been prepared by Dr. Herbert B. Adams, the head of the Department of History and Political Science at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in connection with his more extended inquiry for the Bureau of Education respecting the study of history in American colleges and universities.

This special inquiry is, however, not designed to be a special plea for the College of William and Mary, whose claim for reimbursement for damages suffered at the hands of undisciplined and straggling soldiers has more than once been presented to Congress, and more than once favorably reported by the Committee on Education and Labor, sustained by the opinions of lawyers and Federal officers. The primary objects of the present investigation have been to discover the historical beginnings of the higher education at the South; to trace the causes of the early prosperity of William and Mary College; to show its influence upon Virginia statesmen and the Southern States, its relation to the university ideas of Jefferson and Washington, and its significance to the whole country; to point out the causes of the decline of William and Mary College; to explain the rise of the University of Virginia, and the necessity of popular support for the higher education.

The most practical of all results from this historical study of William and Mary College is the suggestion of a possible revival in the city of Washington and throughout the country of the original Virginia idea of political education, which made Williamsburg a school of statesmen who were fitted in the college-capital to prepare the so-called "Virginia plan," from which our present Constitution grew. It is the idea of intimate organic connection between Education and Government in a municipal environment.

The promotion of political education by connection on the one hand with the people, and on the other with the administration of State and Nation, is an idea worthy of consideration in this centennial year of our Constitution, which was founded upon political wisdom and Federal democracy. In December, 1886, it was proposed, at a meeting in Philadelphia of delegates from the various States and Territories in the Union, to create a suitable memorial commemorative of the Constitution. Doctor Adams suggests a civil academy in the City of Washington for the practical training of representative college graduates appointed to government fellowships for two years from Congressional districts. He would combine, at the national capital, the West Point idea and the Williamsburg idea for the highest political education, and apply the results to the general improvement of civic life throughout the country. This eminent scholar writes with the freedom of one

who understands as well as loves his subject, and his article will commend itself to the hearty approval of all interested in American learning, in the history of our country, and in the faithful record of the first steps in American education.

In view of these facts I recommend the publication of the paper as a Circular of Information. I have the honor to be, Very respectfully, your obedient servant, N. H. R. DAWSON,

Approved.

Commissioner.

L. Q. C. LAMAR,

Secretary.

THE COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY.

FIRST ENDOWMENT OF AN AMERICAN COLLEGE.

In 1619-one year before the Pilgrim Fathers came to the land named New England by Captain John Smith-Sir Edwin Sandys, president of the Virginia Company in old England, moved the grant of ten thousand acres of land for the establishment of a university at Henrico. The proposed grant, which was duly made, included one thousand acres for an Indian college; the remainder was to be "the foundation of a seminary of learning for the English." The very same year the bishops of Eng. land, at the suggestion of the King, raised the sum of fifteen hundred pounds for the encouragement of Indian education. Thus, by the combined authority of church and state, was anticipated by more than two centuries the endowment of such institutions as are now represented by the Hampton School and by the University of Virginia.

It was not from lack of generosity or good-will toward the cause of higher education and the improvement of the Indians, that these, the earliest of all American endowments, bore no immediate fruit beyond the subscription of one hundred and fifty pounds in 1621, for a preparatory or collegiate school at Charles City, and the appropriation of one thousand acres of land, with five servants and an overseer to improve the same. The Virginia Company was thoroughly in earnest with regard to its educational project. Tenants were sent over to occupy the university lands, and Mr. George Thorpe, a gentleman of His Majesty's Privy Chamber, came over to be the superintendent of the university itself. This first beginning of philanthropy toward the Indians and of educational foundations for the English in America was suspended by reason of the Indian massacre, in the spring of 1622, when Mr. Thorpe and three hundred and forty settlers, including tenants of the university, were cut off by an insurrection of savages.

ACADEMIA VIRGINIENSIS ET OXONIENSIS.

It was only two years after this terrible catastrophe that the idea of a university in Virginia was revived. Experience with treacherous Indians suggested that the institution should be erected upon a secluded, sheltered site-an island in the Susquehanna River. The curious trav

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