the Rev. Dr.
Thomas Church Brownell, who had been for ten years tutor and professor
in Union College, a man of learning, profoundly interested in education,
and qualified for the varied duties which lay upon him as Bishop of
Connecticut. He soon availed himself of this favorable opportunity for
renewing the plans for the establishment of a college. There was much
strong opposition to be encountered, and the student of the pamphlet
literature of the day finds much to excite his interest and his wonder
in the attacks upon the proposed "Second College in Connecticut"--"Seabury
College," as it was sometimes called. The whole matter was curiously
complicated with discussions as to political and financial matters, the
many questions between the recently disestablished order and its opponents
not having been fully settled as yet. At last, on the 13th day of May,
1823, a petition for a college charter was presented to the General
Assembly, and the act of incorporation of Washington College passed the
lower house three days later, and soon received the assent of the senate
and the approval of the governor. The name selected for the institution was
not that which its friends would have preferred; but the honored name of
Washington was adopted partly, as it would appear, because others than
Episcopalians united in the establishment of the college, and partly that
there could be no ground of opposition to it on account of its name. Among
the corporators associated with Bishop Brownell were some of the prominent
clergy and laity of the diocese, such as the Rev. Drs. Harry Croswell
and N. S. Wheaton, Gov. John S. Peters, the Hon. Nathan Smith, the Hon.
Elijah Boardman, the Hon. Asa Chapman, Com. McDonough, and Mr. Charles
Sigourney; and there were added to them representatives of the other
opponents of the old establishment, among them the Rev. Samuel Merwin
and the Rev. Elisha Cushman. It was expressly provided in the charter
that no religious test whatever should be required of any president,
professor, or other officer, and that the religious tenets of no person
should be made a condition of admission to any privilege in the college.
Even before the charter containing this clause was granted, it produced
a most important effect; for, on the 12th day of May, 1823,--it was
believed, as a last effort of opposition,--the corporation of Yale
College met in Hartford, and repealed the test act which required of all
its officers, even of p