Notes on a Conversation with Charles Coffin, 13 December 1803
Notes on a Conversation with Charles Coffin
1803. Dec. 13. the revd mr Coffin of New England who is now here solliciting donations for a college in Greene county in Tennissee tells me that when he first determined to engage in this enterprize, he wrote a paper recommendatory of the enterprize, which he meant to get signed by clergymen, and a similar one for persons in a civil character, at the head of which he wished mr Adams to put his name, he being then President, & the application going only for his name & not for a donation. mr Adams after reading the paper & considering, said ‘he saw no possibility of continuing the union of the states, that their dissolution must necessarily take place, that he therefore saw no propriety in recommending to New England men to promote a literary institution in the South, that it was in fact giving strength to those were to be their enemies, & therefore he would have nothing to do with it.’
MS (DLC: TJ Papers, 113:19521); entirely in TJ’s hand; follows, on same sheet, Notes on a Conversation with Andrew Ellicott, 23 June 1801.
A native of Newburyport, Massachusetts, Charles Coffin (1775-1853) graduated from Harvard and became a Presbyterian minister. After visiting eastern Tennessee, he decided to help operate a school there, serving as financial agent of Greenville College until 1810, when he became the school’s president. In 1827, he started a six-year tenure as president of East Tennessee College, forerunner of the University of Tennessee (Christian Observer, new ser., 32 [1853], 109; Leroy P. Graf and Ralph W. Haskins, eds., The Papers of Andrew Johnson, 16 vols. [Knoxville, 1967-2000], 1:147n; Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates of Harvard University, 1636-1910 [Cambridge, Mass., 1910], 164).
On 18 Dec., TJ addressed an order on John Barnes to pay Coffin $100 “for the use of the college of Tennissee for which he acts” (MS in ViU, in TJ’s hand and signed by him, signed by Coffin acknowledging payment, endorsed by Barnes as paid 22 Dec.; , 2:1114).