xt7sxk84nj8k_95 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7sxk84nj8k/data/mets.xml https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7sxk84nj8k/data/L2021ua019.dao.xml Kentucky University 18.26 Cubic Feet 32 document boxes, 5 flat boxes, 21 bound volumes archival material L2021ua019 English University of Kentucky Property rights reside with Transylvania University.  The University of Kentucky holds the copyright for materials created in the course of business by University of Kentucky employees. Copyright for all other materials has not been assigned to the University of Kentucky.  For information about permission to reproduce or publish, please contact the Special Collections Research Center.  Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Transylvania University Library. Record Group 5:  Collection on Kentucky University Address before the alumni of Kentucky University text Address before the alumni of Kentucky University 2024 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7sxk84nj8k/data/L2021ua019/Box_5_18/Folder_13/Multipage4550.pdf 1868 June 25 1868 1868 June 25 section false xt7sxk84nj8k_95 xt7sxk84nj8k ADDRESS

BEFORE THE

ALUMNI OF KENTUCKY uni/nan,

June 25, 1868..-

 

0ne common call brings us here ,to-nigt, from various
avocations and widely divergent places of abode. The re-
turn of the student’s Geminencement; the heightening fame
that attaches to Kentucky UniVersity; and the geiierbUs
grasp of the Warm palmof a comrade Alumnus are the m0-
ving causes that prevail upon our hearts in assembling at
this re-union of the graduates of three different colleges,
now claiming a common mother of us all. To us, Whether
wehail from the tomb of Transylvania, or have our creden-
tials covered with dust from the ashes of Bacon College, or
acknowledge a more recent birth at the creative will of
Kentucky University, the interests, the motives, the am-
bitions, the sympathies are the same. Gathered for apur-
pose having its origin in close intimacy with the ceremo-
nies that will croWn to-morrow’s exercises and the protract-
ed labors of a fruitful session, we no less commemorate the
recollections of the past than honor the auspices of the fu-
ture! Hours like this, indeed, assign to memory one of its
sv’veegt offices. If the sight of his green isle is a thrill-
ing vision to the returning emigrant; if the, neat and come-
ly cottage, “half-concealed, half-revealed” under the thick-

 

  

2 ADDRESS.

clustering woodbine is a memory shrine to the affections
of the sailor; if the farmer home Where the yule log burns
brightly, or the “old oaken bucket hangs in the well” is dear
to the bronzed veteran from the wars, may not the Alum-
nus claim the privilege, the honor, the authorized right of
leaving for a time the multiplied pursuits of the busy age
and paying just tribute to class. and social memories.—
While the graduate of Transylvania muses upon the long
hours when he pored over the consolidated hieroglyphics of
Thucydides, the heaven-reaching tangents and shadowy in-
finitudes of Calculus, or steered tremblingly in constant
fear of ship-wreck between the rocky promontories of log-
ical syllogisms; while the representatives of Bacon College
repeat to such of their comrades as are here met the un-
forgotten story of their trepidous matriculation, the sinking,
fainting sensation that clung to their first entrance into the
class-room, 0r saunter away in an easy walk among the mar-
riage statistics of the belles of the village who ruthlessly
cut in twain their delicate heart-strings; we, their succes-
sors, have also somewhat to recall. How shall we forget
the rigidly faithful mathematical faculties of a White, who
could calculate to a hair’s breadth or the hundredth part of
a unit the merits of a student’s recitation; or over his
spectacles command the trembling disciple of Newton to
draw an air line from the 'apeX of the university steeple to
the moon, and festoon it with ellipses and parabolas, sweep-
ing the confines of the planetary world. It were sinful to
omit, too, the acutely jocular smile that made sunset on
the features of a Richardson, as he bade his class of wild
blades observe closely an invisible gas that they might rec-
ognize it on a second inspection, or complacently turned on
to their quivering joints adouble shock of electricity. Need
we go by the polished and erudite Graham, or the ‘gical
and gifted Pinkerton, dealing in the savage incantations of
“Barbara,” or delighting to bid us solve the dialectics of Plato

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

ADDRESS. '3

or to distribute an undist‘ributed middle. If the benevo-
lent philanthropy of a Robert Milligan gave us stilts to walk
over the nine year’s labor of Butler, who dug a deep grave
for the student’s pride; or if the finished and Scholarly
Neville distributed classical scalpels amongst us that we
might make anatomical demonstrations on the dry bones of
generations long since evaporated into thin air, is it to be
supposed that a dutiful obedience to university discipline
or a reverential regard for the authority of the fathers will
permit us to forget these salient points in our college histo-
ry. By no means. They are as closely linked with the
more labored and serious features of the academic course
as the grade book of a dull scholar is linked with his per-
sonal reputation. Whether we recall the argument of our
humanitarian professors thundering the canons of moral and
positive, divine and human, law against the profligate stu—
dent who repeated the muscular feat of Sampson against
the city of Gaza, or drew caricatures of his beloved profes-
sors on the smooth surface of a bench; or whether we re-
member the rich, ripe fruits they plucked from the tree of
knowledge and presented to his taste, the reminiscence en~
ters into the general Thesaura of the graduate, lettered,
numbered and shelved.

The Alumnus loves no less than the old soldier to tell
his battles o’er again. They belong to his life campaign,
and when he buries them for a time in the bustle of other
things, it is done with all the honors of war. “They do not
sleep. The rolling of a year turns them to sight when the
bugle sounds the revez'lle. And thus they live on from cycle
to cycle, never fading till the bubble of life bursts and the
spirit is enfranchised for its final flight. They are the ev-
ergreens that hang along the gnarled and knotted forest
trunk, giving a semblance of renewing youth to its wasting
form—over which the tempests of years successively beat.

 

 

  

 

4 ADDRESS.

If we add that this hour brings back, with its tripping
dactylic remembrances, somewhat of shadow, of cloud, of

dark-visaged, sombre-clad melancholy,

“That from her wild, sequestered seat,
In notes by distance made more sweet
POurs through the mellow horn her pensive soul,”

We do but draw photographs of forms and features this
day absent, but resting on our hearts. Unheeding the full-
toned call of his Alma Mater or‘ the festival pleasures of
this hour, sleeps in the valley of the Tennessee, and beside
its placid waters, a gallant youth who seven years ago
started with us the life campaign, The hot breath of fever
touched his slender frame and did the work that singing
bullet, and screaming shell, and glistening blade and bayo-
net had failed to do, and Charles Harrison died, filling a
soldier’s grave, We recall his heart beaming with generous
impulses, his spirit communing only with the honorable and
the manly, quick at the touch of wrong and prompt at the
call of duty, his eye flashing the fires of a vaulting genius,
his step elastic and his soul as the soul of the hart—loving
to breathe the free atmosphere of unbounded space. His
premature fate teaches the “rustic moralist” a lesson and
pages of truth reflect themselves from the lowly mound
covering his dust and from the white marble tablets that
stand, pale monitors, at his head and at his feet. Gifted,
hopeful, sanguine, reaching towards the laurels that sur-
mount the pillars of State, a few short, sharp hours broke
the proud Qirit and the gates of life closed upon him.
Need we pass by, in these tributes to the absent, the un-

selfish heroism that fired the missionary spirits of a Gore

and a Surber as they assay to plant the banners of truth
and Christianity on the ocean-bound shores of Australia,
and there in measureless power, teach the value‘of faith,
the lesson of charity and demonstrate the sublime truth
that there is a life beyond the present. All honor to them

 

 {I

 

ADDRESS. 5

in their noble work! They build a monument that caps
the mausoleum of the Ptolemies or the costly, sculptured
triumphal column of the French fatalist. In the silent
watches of this night we send across the great waters the
sweet evangel of our recollection, and the mute prayer
that Heaven may grant a successful finality to their labors
and restore them in undiminished health to the bosom of
their friends. I 1

Turning from this branch of natural responses suggest-

ed by the spirit of the occasion, shall we hesitate to man-

ifest that strong degree of pride that moves us as we con-
template Kentucky University. But a few years in the
past and its foundation stones were scarcely laid. Its
present greatness and completeness was but a dream, a
purpose in the mind of one* who deserves and will receive
the title of the poor man’s friend and Kentucky’s benefac-
tor. Like the pledge written on the cloud, Kentucky
University suddenly erects its bow of promise over the
State whose pioneer history is marked with the fiercest
conflicts and whose every valley has flowed with blood.
Rich in endowment, strong in talent, popular with the
masses, growing, developing, aggregating—it unwraps each
year the mystic roll of its fortune and its fame. It makes
an era in the history of the Commonwealth. The era of
the savage who besieged Bryant’s Station, almost in hear-
ing of this spot, making the deep woods to ring with his
fierce war-whoOp, has yielded to the era of the white hun-
ter and the school-master, and this in turn is now merged
in the era of the professor, the scholar, the man of science.
Refinement tracks the retiring foot-steps of ruffianism;
classical knowledge displaces the rugged family genealo-
gies; and‘reason, under the tutelage of revelation, sur-

 

*John B. Bowman.

 

  

 

(3 ADDRESS.

mounts the instincts and passions peculiar to uneducated
minds. The infidelity that lurks in the primitive views of
the back-woodsman, under the lens of revealed triith, pass-
es into a reverential regard for deity. With knowledge
comes protection and personal security with safety to
property—the three great natural rights of man that are
above law and on which government is built. The hunter
need no longer take his gun to church, nor the matron bar
her doors against the painted savage, nor the child fear
capture and the cruel tomahawk. These are passed away.
They adorn only the pages of remance or weave a strange
thread in history. There is light breaking, and rays are
streaming abroad. That light is penetrating the moun-
tains that line our southern border and is glancing as a sil-
ver sheen across the bosom of the State. Shall we be
startled if, erelong, the Valley of the Mississippi is illumi-
nated with its beams. Shall we be startled again if, ere-
long, a continent feels its smile. With light there will be
truth—moral truth, intellectual truth, physical truth.—
Whether the infallibility of a divine canon of inspiration is
established, or the accuracy of a law of solar influence, or
the proportion of elements that enter into the composition
of a stone, the result is the same—it is a truth. Whether
one truth be greater than another is measured by its influ-
ence on human destiny. And we are not far from support-
ing authority when we affirm that the duty and the end of
man combine in the discovery and the possession of light
and truth. To attain both, Kentucky University rears its
young but massive frame, and on these builds its reputa—
tion. If here on this spot, where a McKinley, in his nar.
row log school-room, in no poetic imagery but in actual
struggle, taught the way to truth despite the sharp claws
and envenomed lacerations of the wild beast, an institution
of learning that pledges to equal a Yale or a Harvard, nor

 

  

ADDRESS. 7

blushes at the mention of ivy-clad Edinburgh. or classic
Berlin, lifts its commanding form, need we wonder at the
change. Greater changes are before us. Kentucky is just
feeling the strong pulse and vigorous heart—beat that to-
kens the coming giant. Asleep for a quarter of a century,
she is ready to dash the dews from her eye-lids and lether-
gy from her lusty limbs. Her fertile valleys waving with
rich grain harvests; her limestone hills perforated with
ribs of iron, or concealing beds of coal; her muscular frame
marked with blue veins of lead; her deposits of salt, of
gypsum, of lime, of salt—petre; her shadowy forests mak-
ing twilight under the eye of noon are elements fast insti-
tuting a marked influence in the marts and emporiums of
trade. Within a twelve-month the railroad system of the
State will have increased its proportion by a half, and the
parallel bars will shortly after stretch eastward from your
city to the cities and ports of the Atlantic sea-board.
Manufacturing enterprise is gaining activity; capital is
pouring in; labor systematizing itself; sober emigration

turning its tide hitherward; and the vitalizing force of pro- I
gressive civilization exerting its salutary influences. The
farmer is gradually ceasing to rely on the supernatural
agencies of the moon and the physical phenomena of the
goose-bone, and to trust more to the fertilizing uses of gu-
ano, and the proper development of the chemical properties
of the soil. The prophetic warning of the Commissioner
of Agriculture at Washington that there is a retrogression
imminent in American agriculture, that improvidence and
reckless waste are stripping the fairest fields of their
wealth of fertility, we are assured does not embrace Ken-
tucky. There is improvement and progression here. The
formation of agricultural clubs and societies are potent
means of eliciting valuable information, and their numberis
rapidly increasing. The farmer more attentively husbands

 

  

 

8 ADtREss.

his means and is careful to save that which months ago he
suffered to waste. Skilled and professional labor com-
mands a better price than before, and begin to assume that
position and rank to which they are justly entitled. Some
stumbling blocks yet lie in the way, but economy, indus-
try, morality, the observance of good faith, and the distri-
bution of equal justice in legislation will remove these and
put us in the road to full-orbed success.

These are but the phases of material prosperity. There
is work yet for the student, for the public educator. Sud
perficial education has flourished long in Kentucky. Its
chain has been difficult to break. That pastoral simplicity
that peers forth from the printed rules of one of our acad-
emies of science that yearly issues a diploma to its gradu-
ates, prescribing as a line of duty to its pupils that “they
shall retire at night and arise in the morning” is a strong
picture to adorn the point of a correspondent’s wit or serve
as a shining example. The unsubstantial fabric of the hu-
man mind needs to strengthen its powers with the muscu-
lar food of experience, of judgment, of active, philosophic
research, of practical operations, of right reason, of close
analysis, and vigorous, determined thought. Moving on
from crown point to crown point; staying its march only
to master and man the works captured; bearing its tri-
umphal banners, tattered and torn with a thousand close-
contested conflicts; springing its mines under the feet of
the enemy and leveling its cogent shafts in their very
faces; driven back only to take fresh foothold; brighter
and brighter gathering the glories of its achievements; on
and on, still high advancing, it should stay not till the

limit of the invisible is reached, and reason disappears in ,

faith. Fashionable etiquette and Chesterfield accomplish-
ments are lost in these pure battle-fields of thought. They

 

-awoumayhakwv-M ‘ .,.. -

 

a]
tl
a]

 go he
com-

that
Some
1dus-
istri-
a and

'here
811-:
Its
icit37
Load-
adu-
they
rong
erve
: hu-
sou-
phic
lose
_on
inly
tri-
ose—
t of
eny
Iter
on
the

1111'

sh-
iey

.3...§..1r-_~.-..~;..~.-—.::-: .,,— - ‘

ADDRESS. ' 9

are out of place. Fill the mind and the mind will guide
the graces of person and supply those social attractions
and individual charms that are the light and admiration of
the polished circle, the promiscuous audience and the Sen~
ate chamber. But there is a specific work cut out for the
educator within our near proximity. Nearly forty thous-
and human beingsof adult age claim a birthright in our Com-
monwealth who cannot sign their names to a legal document
nor read the signpost that stands by the highway. Startling as
this fact sounds to the ear of the educated Kentuckian,
the records of the State departments demonstrate its truth.

It is a fixed basis from which we must necessarily start in

order to attain the desired conclusion. It is not an uncon-
querable barrier to science. Forwhile thunders mutter and
threatenings flash from its dark cloud in the face of the ad‘
Yancing army of professional educators, time, labor, direct-
ness of means and united effort will contribute to dissipate
its terrors. There need be no exaggerated hope as to the
result. Swedenborg has long since died and his rapturous
visions perish with him. The transceiulentalism of Kane
fails to make a power in the earth—his philosophy is dull
and cold. We prophecy no millenium. But the lifting of
the veil of ignorance that o’erhangs forty thousand chil-
dren of the “dark and bloody ground ;” the destruction of
error with its hydra head and forked tongue; the ushering
in of the dominion of reason in stead of the dominion of
force; the arguing b y rules of logic, and figures of rhetoric
and axioms of revelation in stead of steel and lead and
gunpowder; these—«these are the attainments to be con~
trived.

If England convinces her Abyssinian opponent by razing
his stronghold, taking his life, and subjugating his provin-
ces, it is an example not reconcilable with Christian civili-

 

 10 ADDRESS.

zation, if nevertheless authorized by the code of interna-
tional law. We discern a more royal road to human devel—
opment. A road that leads through a perfected common
and grade sch001 system; through a higher academic course;
and through a more complete and enlarged university eurrlc—
ulum to those broad and boundless fields where rule the sol--
emnly impressive principles of duty, right, justice, truth-—
Where love spreads its silken Wings and charity covers a
multitude of faults. Here is a mission opened and a des-
tiny to fill. If Kentucky University, in the hands of Prov—
idence, is the great agent to perfect that mission and meas-
ure herself equal to that destiny, reigning a queen of the in-
tellectual Antilles, then, indeed, can we say that she has
fought her fight, has run her race, has closed her triumphs,
and is ready to be offered up.