Report of the Regents to the New York State Legislature, 20 March 1800
Report of the Regents to the New York State Legislature
Albany, 20th March, 1800
To the Honorable the Legislature of the state of New York.
The REGENTS of the University respectfully report—
THAT during the last Year the annual Provision ceased, which had subsisted by law since the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two, for the support of additional professorships in Columbia College, and in consequence thereof three of the Professorships have, for the present, ceased, and several others are diminishing in activity, from the want of more adequate support.1 The faculty of medicine, which is deemed a very useful department of learning in that institution, is also languishing, and stands in need of aid and encouragement. In other respects the College continues to prosper. The number of students under the faculty of arts is seventy five and under the faculty of medicine nineteen, and the various branches of classical knowledge are taught by professors eminently respectable for their diligence and learning.
The state of this college calls for the attention of the Legislature. Its prosperity is closely connected with the honor and interest of the state. Its situation is very favorable for teaching successfully the higher or more advanced branches of academical education, it might be made a medical school of the first character in the United States. The Regents would beg leave to suggest that this college ought to receive some renewed and strong mark of public Munificence.
A number of circumstances indicate that Union College will soon become a very useful and distinguished seat of learning; and with great pleasure the Regents have witnessed the liberal assistance it has recently received, and by which it will be enabled to complete the requisite buildings and make provision for its professors.2
The returns which the Regents have received from several of the Academies instituted in various parts of the State, are in general very favorable, and afford well grounded expectations that those Academies will become extensively influential in the diffusion of learning and the promotion of virtue. The academies of Erasmus Hall, Montgomery, Dutchess, Clinton, Columbia, Johnstown, Hamilton, Oneida and Union Hall carry with them very honorable marks of prosperity. The building belonging to the Oxford Academy was recently destroyed by fire, and they have applied to the legislature for some pecuniary assistance to enable them to repair their misfortune.3 That application has been referred to the Regents, by the Assembly, and they thereupon respectfully report and recommend that assistance be afforded to that Academy, in such mode, and to such extent as to the Legislature shall seem meet
By order of the Regents,
JOHN JAY, Chancellor.
By Command of the Chancellor,
FR. BLOODGOOD, Sec’ry.
PtD, Commercial Advertiser (New York), 3 Apr. 1800. Reprinted, Albany Gazette, 10 Apr.; Mercantile Advertiser (New York), 18 Apr. 1800; DS, NNC (EJ: 13186); N.Y. Assembly Journal, 23rd sess. (1800), 199–200.
1. For seven years (1792–99), Columbia College received a 750 pound annuity from the State legislature. See Report of the Regents to the New York State Legislature, [6 Mar. 1797], note 2, , 6: 535.
The financial difficulties of Columbia College coupled with the continuing downsizing of the faculty led William Samuel Johnson, the college president since 1787, to resign his post in 1800. Robert A. McCaughey, Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University in the City of New York, 1754–2004 (New York, 2003), 58.
2. The state legislature had recently granted a sum of ten thousand dollars to Union College to assist with the building costs and the establishment of professorships. “An Act to augment the Funds of the Trustees of Union College in the town of Schenectady”, 7 Mar. 1800, N.Y. State Laws, 23rd sess. (1800), 21–22.
3. For subsequent legislative assistance to Oxford Academy, see “An Act relative to Oxford Academy”, 7 Apr. 1800, N.Y. State Laws, 23rd sess. (1800), 237–38. For the fire that devastated Oxford Academy in January 1800, see Otsego Herald (Cooperstown), 16 Jan. 1800.