Vanderbilt University - Commodore Yearbook (Nashville, TN)

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that he endow a university and referred him to the Bishop and the Bishop's well-laid plans. The suggestion caught the Com- modore's fancy, wrote the Bishop's daughter. Dinner over, he repaired to the Bishop's room, and the early hours of the morning found him still seated at his bedside as the plans for the foundation of a great university were unfolded to him. And this was but the first of the talks between the Bishop and the Commodore about this new university for the South. Back in Tennessee, people labelled the Bishop's university-building a quixotic dream. The Commodore, on the other hand, found substance in the Bishop's ambitions, figuring that the field of railroad law lost its greatest potential when McTyeire entered the ministry. And the Commodore paid. The Commodore paid seven percent First Mortgage Bonds of the New York Central and

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control. Meanwhile, the Commodore's young second new wife, the former Miss Frank Craw- ford of Mobile, had her own influence on the magnate. Methodist Bishop Holland McTyeire was a leader of the movement to establish an institution of learning of the highest order -a movement that had already received a Nashville-issued charter for Central Univer- sity. The Bishop was also on his way to New York in 1873 for medical treatment, ultimately to become a guest in the Commodore's home. The Bishop's illness worsened, he lost some ten to fifteen pounds, and he lingered with the Vanderbilts. He did gain, however, the respect of the aging mogul. The two men, leaders in their respective fields at a difficult time, soon felt an empathy that got them down to business. The Bishop had also won the sympathies of the Commodore's wife, who pointed out to her husband the dearth of educational in- stitutions in the South. She recommended

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Hudson River Railroad Company into the Endowment Fund, in addition to providing the Central University with suitable grounds and suitable buildings. Central University became Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt University became the best-endowed university in the South. It would seem that an institution launched with such faith and sponsored by such great leaders might succeed, even in a period of depression and chaos, writes Edwin Mims in his History of Vanderbilt University. But the odds were against it. Cooperation presented a major problem. Southern fear of the intellectual and academic raised its head again at this time: Bishop George Pierce was reluctant to support the new project fwhich would include a theological schoolj since theological education could never make but could only mar a preacher, and, anyway, self-made men were better than educated men. And Pierce was with the majority. Nashville presented another problem. Southern Colleges and universities usually found their way into small towns and country-side at this time, but the Commodore could well have taken down his railroad map to note the strategic location of this city of 40,000. More likely the Bishop reminded Vanderbilt that Nashville was a center for the Methodist Church, that the new university would be near the Methodist Publishing House. And so Nashville it was. Nashville, however, proved slow in contributing to the new university. Mims explained the small support in terms of the inherent individualism which characterized Southern communities-a lack of public spirit and cooperation that has continued into the days of much greater comfort and wealth. Nashville initially provided only 328,000 for the purchase of grounds, and it would be another forty years before a substantial contribution would come from Vanderbilt's home community. 19