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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. § 



Chap. 
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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Introductory Remarks of Hon. Robert C. \ymTHROP (a;/ the 
Annual Meeting of the Peabody Trustees, 12 Oct., 1892. 

Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees : 

A quarter of a century was completed on the 7th of 
February last since Mr. Peabody committed to this Board 
the -great Trust which it is our privilege to administer. In 
the providence of God, the individual membership of the 
Board has been almost entirely changed during that period. 
Only three of the original Trustees are to-day on our roll. 
Hamilton Fish, the first Vice-Chairman frorn our organ- 
ization in 1867; William M. Evarts, our second Vice- 
Chairman during the five years which have elapsed since 
the lamented death of Governor Aiken of South Carolina ; 
and myself, to whom Mr. Peabody assigned the permanent 
Chairmanship at the outset, — are the only original mem- 
bers still remaining on the Board. 

Governor Fish addressed to us a formal letter of resig- 
nation last October, which happily did not reach me until' 
after our Annual Meeting was over. It is still in the 
hands of our Secretary, and may be read to you hereafter 
and go upon our records. But as it has not yet been pre- 
sented to the Board, and of course has not been accepted, 
I venture to express the hope that if it be presented, as 
may be due to him, it will be indefinitely postponed. Our 
Board is numerous enough to allow of even more than one 
member emeritus ; and there are certainly some names on 
our roll, placed there by Mr. Peabody himself, which we 
may well shrink from parting with, so long as a good 
Providence shall spare the lives and usefulness of those 
who have rendered them illustrious. Governor Fish, I need 
not say, has been a most valuable and efficient Trustee ; 

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2 MR. WINTHROP'S REMARKS. V <0/V ^ n"!/^ 

and although, like myself, he has not been, and is not now, 
exempt from the infirmitiies and trials of advanced age, his 
advice and counsel would be sought and would be accepted 
as confidently to-day as it has been during the long period 
of his active and faithful service. 

Less than five years remain, gentlemen, before two- 
thirds of our Board, as it shall be constituted on the 7th of 
February, 1897, will be at liberty, agreeably to Mr. Pea- 
body's Letter of Instructions, to close this Trust, and to 
distribute the whole Fund. I have little expectation of 
being present when that decision and distribution shall 
occur, and I would gladly be spared from contemplating so 
protracted a life. But certainly there is no association 
which I shall part from with more regret than this ; nor 
shall I leave any title to remembran^ce more precious, when 
a good Providence shall release me, than the relation I 
have held to the work for which this Board was constituted. 
I look back on the five-and-twenty years during which I 
have presided over this Trust, and given my best thoughts 
and my most careful attention to its administration, as the 
most satisfactory, if not perhaps the most conspicuous, ser- 
vice which I have been permitted to render to my country 
during the more than eighty-three years of my life. I 
say service to my country; for the cause of Education, 
wherever it is prosecuted, and under whatever auspices 
promoted, is nothing less than the cause of the whole 
country. 

It has sometimes been supposed and represented that we 
were engaged in a mere Southern work, and that Mn Pea- 
body's endowment had only a sectional object. In the 
primary, pecuniary aspect of that work and of that endow- 
ment such an impression was indeed not only natural but 
just. Every dollar of the income of the Fund which we 
hold was solemnly consecrated to Southern education, and 
has been exclusively employed for Southern schools and 
colleges, and will continue to be so until the Trust is 



MR. WINTHROP S REMARKS. 3 

closed. But no one with a heart or an eye for the honor 
and welfare of our republic can regard Southern colleges 
or schools as sectional institutions. The influence of 
education, or of the want of education, on the welfare of 
our land can have no territorial limits or boundary lines. 
The schools of the South — not excepting Hampton and 
Tuskegee — are schools of the Union as much as the 
schools of the North and West, and are as essential to 
the stability of our free institutions. Colleges in South 
Carolina or Tennessee or Virginia are United States col- 
leges, and are as important to the welfare of the country 
as Yale or Harvard or Columbia. Illiteracy and ignorance 
are no mere local dangers, whether, among whites or blacks. 
They are dangers to law and order and true liberty every- 
where ; and he that does most to eradicate them anywhere 
may claim no second place on the roll of a comprehensive 
patriotism. 

It was this comprehensive patriotism, this national spirit, 
which animated Mr. Peabody to make this magnificent en- 
dowment and establish this great educational Trust. I had 
it from his own lips when he committed the scheme con- 
fidentially to my consideration four or five months before 
it was promulgated. And in his memorable letter of 
Instructions he says emphatically : " If this endowment 
shall encourage those now anxious for the light of know- 
ledge, and stimulate to new efforts the many good and 
noble men who cherish the high purpose of placing our 
great country foremost, not only in power, but in the intel- 
ligence and virtue of her citizens, it will have accomplished 
all that I can hope." 

The Congress of that day rightly interpreted Mr. Pea- 
body's gift, and presented to him an elaborate and costly 
gold medal in the name of the people of the United States. 
He was thus enrolled at once as a benefactor, not of the 
Southern States only, but of the whole nation. His hope 
has been fulfilled. Through the instrumentality and influ- 



4 MR. WINTHROP S REMARKS. 

ence of this Trust, as administered primarily by the accom- 
plished Dr. Barnas Sears, the first General Agent of our 
Board, school laws and school systems of the most effec- 
tive kind were established wherever they did not pre- 
viously exist; and more recently Normal Schools and 
Colleges and Institutes, under the devoted supervision of 
Dr. Curry, are making provision for that which is in- 
dispensable to the success of any school system, — the 
Education of Teachers, 

Much has, indeed, been done by others, whom we gladly 
recognize as fellow-workers in the cause in which we are 
engaged ; and much remains to be done by us all. 
Illiteracy and ignorance may be imported into all parts of 
our land; we cannot exclude or even quarantine them. 
But there is no excuse for their being indigenous. Let an 
industrial and agricultural element be liberally infused into 
our educational system, as our worthy friend General Arm- 
strong has recently so warmly recommended, and nothing 
more would seem to be wanting to it, except a larger meas- 
ure of that pecuniary aid of which Mr. Peabody gave the 
grandest example. 

By an unforeseen but by no means unwelcome or inappro- 
priate coincidence, we meet here in New York on one of 
the days which has been selected by this great commercial 
metropolis for celebrating the four hundredth anniversary 
of the discovery of America. The grand procession is be- 
ing marshalled beneath these windows while we are enter- 
ing on our deliberations. It commemorates the day, — 
the I2th of October, 1492, — on which Columbus is re- 
corded to have made his discovery of the New World ac- 
cording to the calendar in use at the time. The President 
of the United States, making due allowance of nine days 
for the change of calendar, agreeably to the Resolution of 
Congress, has appointed the 21st of October as a general 
holiday for the American people. In his admirable proc- 



MR. WINTHROP S REMARKS. 5 

lamation for that purpose, after speaking of Columbus as 
the pioneer of progress and enlightenment, he proceeds as 
follows : " The system of universal education is in our age 
the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of 
enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the 
schools be made by the people the centre of the day's 
demonstration." " Let the national flag," he adds, " float 
over every schoolhouse in the country, and the exercises 
be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic 
duties of American citizenship." 

Beyond all question, the discovery of this great country 
and continent, — if I may not say hemisphere, — whether 
according to old style or new style, the Julian or the 
Gregorian calendar, is pre-eminently worthy of commemo- 
ration and celebration by the whole American people ; and 
nothing could be more fit than for the schools to be made 
the centre of the day's demonstration. It will be a signal 
recognition of the great truth that Education is to be 
the main hope of our country in the future, as it has been 
our main support for the past. With the blessing of God, 
and a thorough system of popular education, we may look 
forward safely and confidently to the maintenance of our 
free institutions. The future of the country is in the very 
schools which we are establishing and supporting, and in 
those which others are maintaining, and shall continue to 
maintain, in all quarters of the land. 

Thus far the discovery of America has been an incalcu- 
lable blessing to the world. If it is to be so in all time 
to come. Education, with God's blessing, will decide. We 
may thus pursue our work, gentlemen, with the proud con- 
sciousness that we are doing something for the enduring 
welfare and glory, not of the Southern States of the Union 
only, but of our whole country and of mankind. 







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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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