In this summary I have hardly touched upon the most important part of my duty,--namely, the purpose of my lecture-courses, with their relations to that period in the history of our country, and to the questions which thinking men, and especially thinking young men, were then endeavoring to solve,--since all this has been given in my political reminiscences.
So much for my main work at the University of Michigan.
But I had one recreation which was not without its uses. The little city of Ann Arbor is a beautiful place on the Huron River, and from the outset interested me.
Even its origin had a peculiar charm. About a quarter of a century before my arrival, three families came from the East to take up the land which they had bought of the United States; and, as their three holdings touched each other at one corner, they brought boughs of trees to that spot and erected a sort of hut, or arbor, in which to live until their log houses were finished. On coming together in this arbor they discovered that the Christian name of each of the three wives was Ann:
hence the name of the place; and this fact gave a poetic coloring to it which was a permanent pleasure to me. It was an unending satisfaction to reflect that no misguided patriot had been allowed to inflict upon that charming university town the name of ``Athens,'' or ``Oxford,'' or ``Socratopolis,'' or ``Anacreonsburg,'' or ``Platoville,'' or ``Emporium,'' or ``Eudaimonia.'' What, but for those three good women, the name might have been, may be judged from the fact that one of the founders of the university did his best to have it called a ``Katholopistemiad''!
But there was one drawback. The ``campus,'' on which stood the four buildings then devoted to instruction, greatly disappointed me. It was a flat, square inclosure of forty acres, unkempt and wretched. Throughout its whole space there were not more than a score of trees outside the building sites allotted to professors;unsightly plank walks connected the buildings, and in every direction were meandering paths, which in dry weather were dusty and in wet weather muddy. Coming, as I did, from the glorious elms of Yale, all this distressed me, and one of my first questions was why no trees had been planted. The answer was that the soil was so hard and dry that none would grow. But on examining the territory in the neighborhood, especially the little inclosures about the pretty cottages of the town, I found fine large trees, and among them elms. At this, without permission from any one, I began planting trees within the university inclosure; established, on my own account, several avenues; and set out elms to overshadow them.
Choosing my trees with care, carefully protecting and watering them during the first two years, and gradually adding to them a considerable number of evergreens, Ipreached practically the doctrine of adorning the campus.
Gradually some of my students joined me; one class after another aided in securing trees and in planting them, others became interested, until, finally, the university authorities made me ``superintendent of the grounds,''
and appropriated to my work the munificent sum of seventy-five dollars a year. So began the splendid growth which now surrounds those buildings. These trees became to me as my own children. Whenever I revisit Ann Arbor my first care is to go among them, to see how they prosper, and especially how certain peculiar examples are flourishing;and at my recent visit, forty-six years after their planting, I found one of the most beautiful academic groves to be seen in any part of the world.
The most saddening thing during my connection with the university I have touched upon in my political reminiscences. Three years after my arrival the Civil War broke out, and there came a great exodus of students into the armies, the vast majority taking up arms for the Union, and a few for the Confederate States. The very noblest of them thus went forth--many of them, alas!
never to return, and among them not a few whom I loved as brothers and even as my own children. Of all the experiences of my life, this was among the most saddening.
My immediate connection with the University of Michigan as resident professor of history lasted about six years;and then, on account partly of business interests which resulted from the death of my father, partly of my election to the New York State Senate, and partly of my election to the presidency of Cornell University, I resided in central New York, but retained a lectureship at the Western institution. I left the work and the friends who had become so dear to me with the greatest reluctance, and as long as possible I continued to revisit the old scenes, and to give courses of lectures. But at last my duties at Cornell absolutely forbade this, and so ended a connection which was to me one of the most fruitful in useful experiences and pregnant thoughts that I have ever known.
