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THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
N 1869, to my surprise I was invited to visit the University of Michigan and decide whether I would accept the presidency of the institution which Dr. Haven had resigned. My wife accompanied me, and we spent two or three days at Ann Arbor. We were much impressed with the vigour and the promise of the University. But on returning to Burlington, I found that the men who had rallied generously to the support of the college would be sorely disappointed if I left them then. I decided that it was my duty to decline the invitation to Michigan. So I devoted myself with all my energy to the continuance of my work in Vermont. In 1871, the invitation, to Michigan was renewed with much earnestness. I felt that I had discharged my duty to my Vermont friends and that the college could move on fairly without me. I had some hesitation about undertaking so large a responsibility as that at Michigan. One day when I mentioned this to a friend who had very large business interests, he said, "I have found if you have a long lever it is as easy to raise a large load as to lift a small weight with a short lever."
After careful consideration I decided to accept the invitation to Michigan. In compliance with the request of the Regents of the University, I attended the Commencement at Ann Arbor on June 28, 1871, and delivered my Inaugural. I then returned to Burlington and finished the academic year which terminated on August 3. I removed to Ann Arbor with my family early in September.
I found that largely under the influence of John D. Pierce, Superintendent of Public Instruction at the time of its organization, of Isaac E. Crary, and of Henry P. Tappan, its first President, the University had been inspired to a considerable extent by German ideals of education and was shaped under broader and more generous views of university life than most of the eastern colleges. Mr. Pierce, a graduate of Brown University in the class of 1822, was settled as a Presbyterian Home Missionary in Marshall. Mr. Isaac E. Crary, a graduate of Trinity College, Hartford, was a lawyer in the same town. Both were much interested in public education. Mr. Pierce was appointed the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the first officer with that title in the United States. Mr. Crary was a member of the Convention that framed the State Constitution of 1835, and as Chairman of the Committee on Education drafted the Article on Education in the Constitution. Cousin's famous Report on Public Instruction in Prussia had fallen into the hands of Mr. Pierce and formed the subject of much discussion between him and his neighbour, Mr. Crary. Mr. Pierce told me that he could take me in a grove in Marshall to the very log on which they often sat and conferred together on this remarkable book, which gave them the idea of a state system of schools with a university at its head. That idea gave shape to the constitutional Article on Education and to the legislation afterwards enacted in accordance with it. When Dr. Tappan was made President in 1852, he brought from Germany, where he had studied, ideals quite in harmony with those which Pierce and Crary had cherished at the outset, and with his vigorous mind he left a deep impression on the life and spirit of the University. The Institution had in its Faculties at the time of my arrival men of marked ability. I will name some of the more prominent of the professors who are no longer living.
Dr. Henry S. Frieze, Professor of Latin, for the two years prior to my coming Acting President, was a man of rare qualities, a passionate lover of art and of music, a scholar of large and varied attainments and of the finest literary taste, an inspiring teacher and a most winsome spirit. His influence on students and on his colleagues, in fostering the love of classical learning and in the diffusion of high and broad university ideals through all the West, causes his memory to be cherished with peculiar respect and affection.