mmediately. It was some time, however, before they found
the right man, Henry Philip Tappan, LL.D., who was inaugurated as the
first President of the University of Michigan on December 22, 1852. Dr.
Tappan's name was first suggested by George Bancroft, the historian, who
was also considered for the position, but there was some opposition,
which seems to have centered about the fact that Dr. Tappan had once
consulted a homeopathic physician, and he was not elected until August
12.

President, or as he was often called, Chancellor Tappan was a man of
wide culture, of established reputation as a scholar, and an author on
philosophical and educational subjects. His personality was magnetic and
commanding, but it was combined with a frank and fatherly attitude
toward his students which won their immediate and life-long friendship.
Born at Rhinebeck on the Hudson, of mixed Dutch and Huguenot ancestry,
on April 18, 1805, he came to Michigan in time to give his best years to
his new work. Many of his friends may well have been astonished at his
acceptance of a post in a tiny college far on the outskirts of a village
in the Western wilderness, which carried with it the munificent salary
of $1,500, together with a house and an additional $500 for traveling
expenses. Yet he came. The principles of the University agreed with the
ideals he had received in his long study of European methods and his
personal experiences in German schools. He determined to make a real
university in the West; he fixed his glance upon the opportunities for
future development rather than the bareness and inevitable crudity of
pioneer life. For the first time he found his cherished ideas embodied
in the provision for a state university; and though he realized they had
not been made effective, he believed that in the West, if anywhere, was
his opportunity to put them into actual practice, unhampered by the
traditions which had grown up everywhere in the East.

The new President, in the first catalogue issued under his
administration, let the world know in no uncertain terms what the
University was to become as long as his was the guiding hand. He traced
the succession of state schools up to and through the University, where,
he declared, it was his purpose "to make it possible for every student
to study what he pleases, and to any extent he pleases."

Some of his proposed measures must be regarded as prophecies for the
future; they could hardly have been