Editor Atlantic Monthly._]
At the annual meeting in June, 1876, the Building Committee reported the
Pace Lecture Hall as being about half completed, with funds on hand to
meet expenses of completion. This was the second brick building erected
on the campus.
The following received the degree of A. M.: John M. Burton, of Virginia;
Howard Edwards, of Virginia; Robert Sharp, of Virginia; R. Bascom
Smithey, of Virginia.
The President, in his annual report, does not give the statistics as to
the number of students in attendance, but the catalogue for the year
gives it as 167. He, evidently regarding this as the last he would make,
takes the occasion to speak in the kindest and most commendatory terms
of his associates of the Faculty. He was on the most cordial terms with
them, and his kindly regard was fully reciprocated. Referring to his
resignation, which he was about to tender, he said:
"And now I approach a matter which it gives me very great pain to
announce. Many reasons combine to make it best, however, that I take the
step now; but these reasons I do not propose to open for discussion,
because I have become satisfied and decided in my convictions.
"I have worked earnestly, in all good conscience, before God for eight
years to promote the cause of Christian education in connection with
Randolph-Macon College; nor have I spared myself till my health demanded
it. I have done what I could. Eight years ago, in a critical moment in
the history of the College, your flattering representations of the
service you believed I might render to Christian education induced me to
sacrifice my own inclinations and to accept the presidency of
Randolph-Macon.
"What has been done is too well known to you to make it necessary for me
to recount the familiar facts. My rejoicing in it all is the blessing
the College has been to our young men, and the fact that, by abundant
labors, I have also had a personal share in the rebuilding and
re-establishing an institution whose work is its best witness. In God's
providence these labors have, I trust, been blessed unto permanent good.
"But in the meanwhile I have found that to repeat or continue them would
be a tax on my health and strength too great for me to bear. I am fully
satisfied that the confining duties of College life are entirely
incompatible with my future health and consequent usefulness; but I
cannot consent to be a nominal president of an institution whose funds
are not sufficient for the support of all the active officers she needs.
When invitations to more lucrative positions were extended to me I have
not entertained them for a moment, simply because I could not allow my
duty, as a minister of Christ, in relation to this work to be governed
by monetary considerations. But now, when unembarrassed by any
invitations whatever, after calm reflection on all the reasons which
favor or oppose it, after careful and prayerful meditation upon it as a
question of duty as under God's guidance, I am fully persuaded that the
moment has come when I may and ought dutifully to return to the position
I formerly occupied as a preacher in the church of God. This conviction
is too firmly and clearly fixed for me to alter it at present.
"I hardly need to say that my devotion to the College is unchanged. My
readiness to do whatever I can to advance its welfare, I know you will
believe and appreciate. Therefore, most respectfully, with the warmest
wishes for your success personally and officially, I feel it my duty to
tender my resignation as President of Randolph-Macon College. This I
propose shall take effect at the beginning of the next session, or at
the meeting of the Virginia Conference.
"With many prayers for the prosperity of the great cause, which I must
now serve less efficiently, but not less earnestly, and with immutable
love for Randolph-Macon, I am, most respectfully and sincerely yours,
"JAMES A. DUNCAN."
[Illustration: REV. JOHN D. BLACKWELL, D. D., _Vice-President Board of
Trustees, and President Elect, 1877._]
The resignation of President Duncan was most reluctantly accepted, with
resolutions of highest regard for him personally and commendation of his
great services to the College. It may be stated here that he continued
to act as president in the interval between the annual meeting and the
adjourned meeting, held in Richmond, July, 1876. At this meeting Rev.
John D. Blackwell, D. D., was elected President. He declined to accept
the office. At the adjourned meeting, in November, Dr. Duncan was
re-elected, and he consented to serve again, under the most pressing
solicitation of the Board and the evident urgency of the case.
It has been said that "coming events cast their shadows before." So this
resignation of Dr. Duncan, on account of the consciousness of failing
health, was a shadow, and a very dark one it was, of the event of the
coming year, which was to cause mourning in all Southern Methodism and
in regions beyond.
The annual meeting adjourned, in sadness and gloom, to meet again in
Richmond, July 25th.
The financial condition was not satisfactory, and the old embarrassment
of former years was again felt.
At the adjourned meeting, held in Richmond, Va., July 25, 1876, the
resignations of Professors Thomas R. Price and James A. Harrison were
tendered. Professor Price had been elected to the chair of Greek at the
University of Virginia, and Prof. Harrison to the chair of Latin at
Washington and Lee University.
[Illustration: PROF. R. E. BLACKWELL, A. M.]
Changes were made in the chairs to be filled, viz., one to be that of
English and Modern Languages, and the other that of Latin and Greek. To
fill the first Robert Emory Blackwell, A. M., was elected, and to the
other Prof. Charles Morris, M. A., of the University of Georgia. Prof.
Blackwell was in Europe at the time, taking a course at Leipzig. He took
his degree of Master of Arts in 1874. He had served as assistant in the
School of English under Prof. Price, and was recommended by him in the
highest terms. He was the first of Prof. Price's graduates, of a long
list, to be elected to a chair of English.
Prof. Morris was, when elected, Professor of Latin and Greek at the
University of Georgia. He, also, was highly commended to the Board by
Prof. Price, who was a fellow-student with him at the University of
Virginia. A more whole-souled, ingenuous man never lived than he, and
his character was beaming from his face. Though a member of the
Episcopal church, he threw his whole soul into the religious work of the
College, and no one would have known that he was not a member of the
Methodist church.
[Illustration: CHARLES MORRIS, M. A., _Professor of Greek and Latin,
1876-1882._]
The scale of salaries was changed. The salary of the President was fixed
at $2,000: of professors, $1,600. Dr. T. H. Bagwell was elected College
physician, in place of Dr. H. M. Houston, resigned.
In parting with Prof. Price, the Board expressed for him the kindest and
highest appreciation of his long and distinguished services.
Complimentary resolutions were also adopted in regard to Prof. Harrison.
As a part of a great educational advance, the following extract is given
from Professor Price's letter of resignation:
"You have used me to do one piece of work that was so bold, and timely,
and wise as to draw the attention of educated men throughout America to
our College, and to win for your system of education the hearty applause
of all that love the culture of our young men.
"In establishing the chair of English you have taken a bold step and
wise innovation. You have pushed the whole system of Virginia education
distinctly forward, and you have given to your system of collegiate
education a firm basis in the needs of our people. I have felt the
sweetest joy of my life to have been permitted to help in this great
work. I have seen the School of English, from session to session, bear
richer fruits in the development of our whole student class and in the
growing power of the College over the educated opinion of the State. I
beseech you now, in parting from you, to take the chair of English under
your fostering care, not only to uphold it, but to develop and expand it
as the characteristic and special glory of the College, and to bring it
to pass that every alumnus of Randolph-Macon College shall be, to his
own benefit and to your honor, as soundly and correctly educated as man
ought to be in the knowledge and use of his mother tongue."
At this meeting Dr. W. W. Bennett, chairman of the Building Committee,
announced to the Board the completion of the Pace Lecture building, at a
cost of about $11,000.
At the annual meeting of the Board of Trustees, held June, 1877, the
reports made by the President and Treasurer showed great embarrassment
in financial matters, which, as a matter of course, affected the prompt
payment of salaries to the members of the Faculty.
The patronage for the year was reported to be 132.
[Illustration: PROF. W. A. FRANTZ, A. M., _Prof. English, Central
College, Missouri._]
The degree of A. M. was conferred on William Abner Frantz, of Virginia.
At the June meeting, 1877, Thomas Branch, Esq., resigned the office of
president of the Board. Resolutions of regret at his action, and
expressive of the kind regard of the Trustees towards him, were adopted.
Dr. J. A. Duncan was elected to fill the vacancy.
William Willis, Jr., resigned the oflice of Treasurer of the Board on
account of ill-health and defective eyesight. This was accepted with
great reluctance by the Board, and resolutions of sympathy for him in
his afflictions and thanks for his faithful service were adopted.
Prof. W. A. Shepard was elected Treasurer _pro tempore_.
When the Board adjourned, it closed its last meeting in connection with
the president who had inaugurated the College at Ashland, and had
presided over it for nine years.
A few days after the opening of the session of 1877-1878 he passed away,
after a brief illness. The record of the journal made by the Secretary,
and enclosed in black lines, is as follows:
[Transcribers' note: In the original book, the following paragraph is
also enclosed in black lines.]
On Monday, September 24, 1877, at 4 o'clock A. M., Rev. JAMES A. DUNCAN,
D. D., President of Randolph-Macon College, died at the President's
house, Ashland, Va., after a brief illness. On Tuesday, the 25th, a
brief funeral service was conducted in the College chapel by Rev. Leroy
M. Lee, D. D.; after which the corpse was conveyed by a special train to
Richmond. Funeral service conducted at Broad-Street Church by Bishop D.
S. Doggett, D. D.; a procession formed to Hollywood, and the body of
this faithful and illustrious servant of God buried there, in the hope
of a glorious resurrection.
"This writer was a student at Randolph-Macon when Dr. Duncan was a
little boy, not yet in his _teens_. He was then as full of fun and
mischief as a boy could be, which, with his sprightliness, made him an
uncommonly interesting boy. He was a scholar in the first Sunday-school
class he ever taught, and along with him were Dick and Gib Leigh and
Dick Manson. He was intimately associated with him in re-establishing
the College at Ashland, he beginning his presidency, with this writer as
treasurer and chairman of the Executive Committee. Then, from 1870 to
his last illness, he sat under his ministry in the old ball-room chapel,
whose walls echoed to the tones of his wondrous voice, such as
cathedrals rarely, if ever, have heard. This ought to render him
competent, in part, to write of this most gifted man.
[Illustration: WILBUR F. TILLETT, A. B., D. D., _Sutherlin Medalist,
1877; Dean Theological Faculty, Vanderbilt University._]
But others have written tributes so much better and worthier of the
subject that he will let them speak. The first tribute to him was given
by Prof. Thos. R. Price, LL. D., who has more than once expressed to
this writer the great remissness of the Methodist Church in not having
had prepared a memoir of one of its greatest preachers and wisest men.
The following is Prof. Price's sketch of Dr. James A. Duncan:
"THE GREAT PREACHER."
"The bitterest hour for them that mourn their dead is not when the
breath rattles in the throat nor when the clod rattles on the coffin. It
comes when, after all the stir and turmoil of death and funeral are
over, the family go back to the ravaged home, and grope their ways,
blinded with tears, through the rooms that the dead man has left forever
empty. Not even the sudden jar of the final separation strikes so deep a
wound as the growing sense of loss, as the accumulating despair of
unsatisfied longing. So, in all the many regions where Dr. Duncan, the
great apostle of Virginia, was known and loved, the deepest grief was
not felt when all those thousands followed the hearse and sobbed around
the open grave under the stars at Hollywood. A deeper sorrow comes to us
now, after taking up again the task of life, when we feel, amid our
pleasures and our business, that the great advocate of God, who lived
Christ among us as sublimely as he preached him, has been withdrawn
forever from among the potencies of our time; when we remember that, in
evil days, when many bad men are seeking to break down the honesty and
to dull the moral sense of the Virginia people, we are left without the
mighty aid of that one man who knew best of all how to stir the hearts
and to guide the acts of our people to good. Yet with the calmness of
the deeper sorrow comes, too, the calmness to think out the secret of
the dead man's power over the great masses of the Southern people, for
that power was one that reached far outside of his church and of all
churches deep down into the moral life of Virginia. Thus even for us
laymen, for us that have no right to preach and no theology to teach,
the character of this wonderful man has an abiding interest. It is worth
while for us all to know what were the means by which he worked. As his
life did such immense good to so many thousands of our people, the
contemplation, and, if possible, the understanding, of that life, can
hardly fail to do good to the great communities that are now mourning
for him.
"On the first meeting with Dr. Duncan, were it only a hurried talk at a
street-corner or a few minutes' conversation on a railway train, the
first impression that came to the stranger from his sweet eyes and
tender lips was the sense of a strange and overpowering love and
loveableness in the man. The face and voice stole their way to the heart
and mastered the affections. All the children were drawn to his
caressing hands by a charm that their little hearts could not withstand.
The negro servants in the houses that he visited could be seen to hang
upon his words and to strive to catch his smile. The belle of the
springs, on her way to the ball-room; the roughest mountaineer loafing
on the skirts of a camp-meeting; boys and old men, the ignorant and the
educated, had to yield themselves to the fascination of the fresh and
guileless love that emanated from his beaming eyes and tender,
penetrating voice. Whether he was moving with his exquisite grace,
smiling and talking, through a parlor, or standing all aglow in his
passionate eloquence beside his pulpit; whether he spoke to one man,
soul to soul, in the quiet of his study, or faced the thousands of eyes
that looked up to him from a great city church, or from the green
hillsides of a rustic amphitheatre, the power that went forth from him,
winning all hearts and softening all hardness, was the power of an
exquisitely loveable nature, giving love richly and pleading for love in
return. But as you listened to him, as you watched the play of his
mobile features, and took in the rich, sweet tones of his voice, this
first impression of the man's intense loveableness was deepened by the
impression of his marvellous intellectual power. The shrewdness of his
observation, the penetrating keenness of his intelligence, the splendid
precision of his thought and of his utterance, took instantaneous
possession of the hearer's mind. His knowledge of human character as men
moved before him, his ready insight into the tangled web of human
motives, was almost infallible. In spite of his boundless charity and
graciousness, he was a man that could not be deceived or cheated. He
took men in at a glance. The smile that curled around his lips, the
light that sparkled in his eyes, showed to the dullest, as to the
wiliest, that the secrets of their character were seen, that the very
depths of their soul lay unveiled before him. Thus, when you talked with
him, you were sure to feel that, while his love opened his heart to you,
his intellect opened yours to him. In managing men, above all, in
wielding the discipline of a college, the amazing quickness and
penetration of his intellect made him the fittest of all men to control
both character and conduct. The offender who came to hide his sin
beneath a lie, found the lie impossible, and flung himself with
passionate tears upon the love of the man that both understood and
pitied his weakness. Even in great audiences, when he spoke to thousands
of God and goodness, the veils of self-deception fell away before the
glances that he shot into the souls of men. In all the history of
Christianity no man ever pleaded for Christ before men with a mightier
control over the secrets of human hearts, with a sharper penetration
into the weakness and badness of each human soul. It was this union of
moral with intellectual force, this union of the attractive power of
love with the penetrative power of understanding, that gave to Dr.
Duncan his unrivalled and irresistible control over the heart and
intellect of the Virginia people. The world is so bad that we are apt to
confuse amiability with silliness, and to see a sign of intellectual
weakness in a good man's love and care for his fellow-men. But here, at
least, it was one man as strong as he was good, a man that joined to the
charm of a tenderly loving heart the power of a splendid genius and of
an incisive intelligence. Thus he rose on the hearts of men to be a
living power in our State and time. Thus to each man that saw much of
him, to every human being that was exposed for long to the influence of
his words and actions, the man, simple and kindly, and great in all his
deeds, shone forth as the revelation of a higher life, as the proof and
example of what Christ's teaching meant.
"The mystery both of the moral power and of the intellectual power of
this great man lay in his astounding unselfishness; for the egoistic
habit of mind is a hindrance not only to the moral but also to the
intellectual progress of the man. A selfish regard for one's own
interests, the bad trait of regarding all things and all men as
subordinate to one's own designs, not only deadens the moral
sensibility, but it even distorts and discolors all intellectual insight
into the world. If we fail to care for other men's good by being so busy
about our own, we fail equally to penetrate into their characters and to
see the good and evil that is in them by being unable to remove from our
intellectual vision the beam of our own desires and designs. From all
these obstacles, to noble acting and to accurate thinking, Dr. Duncan
was sublimely free. He had resigned himself so fully into the hands of
God that he had ceased absolutely to care for his own advantage or to be
perplexed by the contemplation of his own aims. Thus he moved through
the annual courses of his serene and glorious activity, preaching and
teaching and helping all good causes, with a mind unperverted from great
things by any care for little ones, with a soul ready for any sacrifice,
and, what is harder still, ready to throw itself into full and
instantaneous sympathy with any soul that opened to his approach. In all
his dealings with men, as friend with his friends, as preacher with his
congregations, as teacher with his pupils, the loveliness and warmth of
his affections were equalled only by the pliability and penetration of
his intellect, by his wisdom in advising, by his discretion in helping.
"All the ordinary temptations to self-seeking fell off powerless from
the supreme unselfishness of his nature. When the fame of his eloquence
spread over many States; when he was acknowledged as the greatest orator
of his church, and, perhaps, of his country; when the richest churches
of the greatest cities offered him vast salaries to leave the struggling
people and the impoverished college that he loved, he clung fast to
poverty, and put aside, without a struggle, the temptations of ease and
wealth. Even when temptation assailed him in craftier forms; when men
told him of the mighty congregations that New York or St. Louis or San
Francisco would pour forth to catch from him the words of life, he said
that 'he loved his own people best, and must stay to help Virginia
along.' Like his Master, he chose poverty rather than riches; like his
Master, he chose to work in a little village, among a small band of
disciples, rather than among the splendors and plaudits of cities; like
his Master, he made of life one long series of sweetly-borne
self-sacrifices. Before the spectacle of such sublime self-depression
all words of common praise are unseemly. But to them that lived with
him, who saw the great soul take up so bravely and bear so lovingly the
burthen of poverty, trouble, and suffering, the life he led was a
miracle of beauty and holiness, making the world brighter and nobler by
even the remembrance of him.
"In his preaching, as in his life, the same blending of love with
wisdom, of childlike simplicity with manly power, was revealed. There
was no fierceness, no affectation, no struggling after oratorical
effects; but, as the powers of his mind got into motion, as the thoughts
rolled on, clear and massive, the words and sentences grew rich and
lofty, the sweet voice swelled out into organ tones, the small and
graceful figure swayed to the pulsations of his thought, and the
beautiful face glowed with all the illumination of love. There was no
theology in his sermons, no polemical divinity in his conception of
divine truth. To love God, and to love men was for him, as Christ taught
him, the sum of all righteousness. This power of love was the agency
through which he did his work in the world. As the warmth of the sun
controls all the processes of nature and commands all the movements of
the universe, so warmth of love, as the central fact of God's moral
government, was for him the source of all power, the means of subduing
all wrong, and of bringing the world back into harmony with God's laws.
"No human life ever lived in this world of ours was attuned more fully
to a loftier harmony. As we think of all the good deeds he did, of all
the wise words he spoke, of his solemn yet tender warnings against evil,
of the love that charmed so many souls to do right, of the sublime
unselfishness that made his life a sacrifice to other men's good, we can
feel that to us, in our own State, born of our own stock, in full sight
of us all, a man has been given to live for our good, as nearly as man
may, up to the life-story of the Christ himself.
"_University of Virginia._ T. R. PRICE."
The following is taken from the Minutes of the Virginia Conference, and
was written by an old college mate, Dr. J. C. Granbery, now bishop: