ears; still
less to realize all the problems it involves. But it requires no great
vision to see the University of the future occupying at last the heights
overlooking the Huron valley which that unfortunate decision at the
first meeting of the Regents denied to her in 1837.

CHAPTER XIII

THE UNIVERSITY IN WAR TIMES

Michigan has had a most honorable record in the three wars in which the
country has been engaged since the first class was graduated. Though two
of her early graduates were veterans of the Mexican War, it was not
until the Civil War that the opportunity came to show what kind of
citizens of the Republic were in the making in this pioneer State
University. The catalogue of 1864 lists only 999 graduates. Yet the
number of Michigan men who served in the Civil War was within a few of
2,000. This number of course includes many students who left never to
return and many who entered the University, particularly the
professional schools, in the years immediately after the war.
Practically half of the members of the classes of '59, '60, '61, and '62
served in the war, and '62 alone lost seven members out of twenty-two in
service. The college men of the sixties were no less ready than their
grandsons in 1917.

Feeling ran high in the University during the period just before the
Civil War. The students were nearly all strong and vigorous products of
pioneer life, good hunters and rifle shots, with a love of individual
liberty and free speech. Many were studying for the ministry.
Anti-slavery sentiment was all but unanimous, except for the one or two
students from the South, but few could be called out and out
abolitionists. It is difficult nowadays to understand the sentiment
which led to the mobbing of an abolitionist speaker, Parker Pillsbury,
some months before war was declared. He knew from personal experience
that the South was arming and came to urge the citizens of the North to
prepare for the struggle. Yet when he attempted to speak in Ann Arbor a
mob collected and would have none of his advice; they stormed the little
Free Church on North State Street, driving audience and speaker out of
the rear windows and gutting the building. Similar troubles were
threatened when Wendell Phillips was advertised to speak on abolition a
month or so later. In view of the first experience, there was great
difficulty in finding a hall, but finally the trustees of the old
Congregational Church decided that if the