Ohio History Journal

ROBERT HAMILTON BISHOP,1

ROBERT HAMILTON BISHOP,¹

PIONEER EDUCATOR

By JAMES H. RODABAUGH

One hundred and twenty-five years ago, in 1809, the Legis-

lature of the State of Ohio granted the charter which led to the

organization of Miami University at Oxford, Ohio. This institu-

tion was built on lands granted in trust by the Federal Govern-

ment to the State of Ohio for use primarily by the inhabitants

of the John Cleves Symmes' Purchase.

For fifteen years after its founding Miami University re-

mained insignificant, harboring nothing more than a local grammar

school. By 1824, it was decided that the rents from the college

lands had reached an amount sufficient to open the university. A

committee of the Board of Trustees was appointed to seek a

president. It so happened that a number of the members of the

Board and of the committee were Presbyterians and either former

residents of Kentucky or former students at Transylvania Uni-

versity at Lexington. Because of these connections they had be-

come acquainted with a man who had served as acting president

of Transylvania for several years, who had been a professor there

since 1804, and who had been very popular and influential among

the students.

Just at the time Professor Robert Hamilton Bishop was in-

volved in difficulties at Transylvania which were so unsettling as

to force him to welcome an opportunity to leave the institution.

A Unitarian minister from Boston, Horace Holley by name, had

become president of the school in 1818, and since that time Bishop

had been busy fighting what he claimed were the evil influences

of the "Socinians" (Unitarians) and trying to keep Transylvania

1 Volume IV. of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society Collections,

now being written by Mr. James H. Rodabaugh, will present the life of Dr. Robert

Hamilton Bishop in greater detail. All quotations made in the present article are fully

documented in the forthcoming volume.--Editor's note.

(92)

DR. ROBERT HAMILTON BISHOP 93

safely in the fold of the Presbyterian God. The Board and the

faculty of Transylvania thus stood opposed to Bishop and made

his position not one to be particularly desired.

It is not surprising therefore, when friends at Miami Uni-

versity offered Bishop the presidency of that institution, that his

acceptance was soon announced. In the fall of 1824, the new

school in the wilderness, its campus a former Indian haunt, opened

with about twenty students, though the number continued to in-

crease during the session. The reputation of Miami University,

the history of the school, its traditions, its very foundations, come

from the sixteen-year administration of its first president, Bishop,

the longest administration of any president. His influence lingers

to this day, not only in the university, but over the whole country.

Bishop was born in Scotland in 1777. In 1802, at the invi-

tation of the Associate Reformed Church of North America, he

came to the United States, and was immediately assigned to the

Presbytery of Kentucky. In the fall of 1804, he became professor

of moral philosophy, logic, criticism, and belles-lettres at Tran-

sylvania. Among his colleagues at that university were Henry

Clay, professor of law, Doctors Daniel Drake, Benjamin Dudley,

and William H. Richardson of the Medical School, Joseph Cabell

Breckinridge and Jesse Bledsoe.

After Bishop went to Miami, he soon surrounded himself

with able professors, among them William H. McGuffey, compiler

of the famous readers, and John W. Scott, one of the early agita-

tors for female education and founder of the Oxford College for

Women. The university prospered under what its faculty termed

the "Yale plan," for they followed the example, as much as pos-

sible, of that great institution of the East. By 1839, the "Yale

of the West," boasted 250 students in attendance, and the school

ranked in numbers among the greatest and oldest in the country.

It was at this time the second largest college west of the Alle-

ghenies and the largest west of Pennsylvania.

Several students followed Bishop from the South to form

the nucleus of the first student body of Miami University. How-

ever, the great number of students came to Miami because it was,

94 OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

although nominally a state institution, a Presbyterian school.

Throughout most of its existence it has been controlled by Pres-

byterians. In the early years the Associate Reformed Church of

the South recognized Miami University as the training school for

its candidates for the ministry. Shortly after Lane Seminary, a

New School Presbyterian institution in Cincinnati, was founded

about 1830, the literary department of that school was transferred

to Miami. In addition to such aid as this in building up the

student body, funds were furnished by the education societies

of the Presbyterian Church to send students through the uni-

versity at Oxford. In 1837, for example, the Presbyterian Edu-

cation Society gave aid to six Miami students, granting them a

total of 354 dollars. Between 1828 and 1833, this society granted

to Miami beneficiaries a total of 1,527 dollars. The aided students,

it was assumed, were preparing for the ministry.

The early West, being composed as it was of a conglomerate

of nationalities and religions, was a veritable melting-pot in which

were always brewing conflicts of a serious nature. Bishop had

left Transylvania in the midst of a struggle about to defeat him.

Not long after the opening of Miami, he was again enveloped in

serious contentions which continued throughout his long and use-

ful life. The split in the Presbyterian Church in the United States

in 1837, threw this region of the West into turmoil. Bishop was a

liberal theologian in his time. From the Scottish liberals of the

late eighteenth century, especially from his teacher, Dugald Stew-

art, Bishop had inherited the spirit of liberalism and progressiv-

ism. While in Scotland he came near to splitting with his church,

when he began to see the evils of dogmatic denominationalism.

However, with a group of other reformers he determined to

cleanse the church from within. When the split came in the

Presbyterian Church in 1837, he opposed it with all his energy.

With his colleagues, among whom were Scott, Thomas E. Thomas,

Calvin E. Stowe, and Samuel Crother, he organized a group known

as the Conservative Presbyterians which actively strove to main-

tain the unity of the church. They denied the fact of the split,

and issued defiant declarations against the leaders of the two

major factions. They produced a publication known as the

DR. ROBERT HAMILTON BISHOP 95

Peacemaker, in an attempt to maintain "United Christian Action"

among Presbyterians. For their essentially liberal policies Bishop

and Scott and their followers barely escaped trial before the higher

tribunals of the church.

At the same time there was another struggle of perhaps

greater ferocity because it included so many more people. This

was the anti-slavery movement. When in Kentucky, Bishop had

begun his attack on slavery. In and about Lexington he opened

a number of Sabbath schools for the negro, and for this was "more

than once returned to the Grand Jury." When the Ohio State

Colonization Society was organized in 1827, Bishop became a

vice-president of the organization.

But Bishop's activities against negro slavery progressed

beyond the calm of the Colonizationist, and although he never be-

came a Garrisonian, he spiritually, though never formally, joined

the ranks of such anti-slavery men as James G. Birney. Two of

Birney's sons were sent to Miami, and one graduated and taught

there. In 1834, an anti-slavery society was formed at Miami Uni-

versity. No professor was listed among its members, but students

who afterwards expressed great reverence for Bishop and Scott

were among them. There we find such men as Thomas, Freeman

G. and Samuel F. Cary of Cincinnati, Jared Stone, William M.,

James, and John S. Thomson, Robert Schenck, and David Bruen.

The religious and slavery conflicts flared side by side, and

opposition to Bishop grew to greater proportions. Southwestern

Ohio was one of the last portions of the North to join the cause

of the Union. Many of the people of this region held slaves or

were connected with families in the South which still upheld

slavery. Especially on the Board of Trustees of Miami Univer-

sity did the opposition to Bishop grow, for a majority of its mem-

bers differed from him on the questions of religion and slavery.

The enemies of Bishop attacked him on any and all grounds of

which they could conceive. The Colonizationist and pro-slavery

groups condemned him because he was too radically opposed to

slavery, and the New and Old School Presbyterians declaimed

Vol. XLIV--7

96 OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

against him because he dared to defy both factions and stick to

the principle of union.

The opponents of Bishop, however, could find no good legit-

imate reason, acceptable to all sides, for ousting him from the

presidency of Miami University. From 1831 to the end of his

administration, therefore, his liberal policies of discipline were put

on trial with the hope of finding an excuse for his dismissal. In

that day college boys over the whole country were easily provoked

to roughness and riot. Riots were many during these years, but

Miami University never experienced one during the Bishop era.

Still, the boys did break windows and cause much damage to the

buildings, they often had fights, caused disturbances in the town,

got drunk, and caused much unrest. This fact is quite easily

understood when it is remembered that there was nothing else

upon which they could give vent to their energies in the isolated

and lonely village of Oxford. Bishop, being a good student of

human nature, knew that harsh and strict disciplinary measures

would not remedy the situation.

The good old doctor encouraged the students to be individual-

istic and think for themselves. He refused to bind them with

arbitrary rules and regulations which would, by their very nature,

stunt the growth of the student. He encouraged the literary

societies and even the fraternities on the campus, and gave them

as much of a part in the government of the university as the

faculty would allow. All this he did because he believed that

placing responsibilities upon the student was of far more value

in developing the individual than placing him under the arbitrary

rules of discipline laid down by the faculty or the Board of

Trustees. Thus he declared at the time of his resignation:

I for one, at least freely declare--that I on many occasions am pleased

with the opinions of young men freely and honestly expressed, though they

should contradict some of my settled and favorite opinions. And I am

more pleased when the matter with respect to myself is still a matter of

doubt. I love to see in young men a disposition to think and to act in all

things for themselves and on their own responsibility, and to require a sat-

isfactory reason for every thing which they are required to do. Nor have

I yet had any occasion to repent of throwing myself upon the understand-

ings and the hearts of any number of young men.

DR. ROBERT HAMILTON BISHOP 97

However, Bishop's enemies used this as the tool with which

to oust him as president. Even McGuffey fought Bishop on this

point, although it is very probable that part of McGuffey's oppo-

sition was also based upon the slavery question, for McGuffey

remained pro-southern all his life. When Bishop lost the presi-

dency, it is of importance that, although his successor, George

Junkin, was a strict disciplinarian, he was also a leader in the Old

School of the Presbyterian Church, in the service of which he

was known as the "Heresy Hunter," and a strong pro-slavery

advocate.

In 1841, Junkin succeeded Bishop as president of Miami

University. The next four years were crowded with serious

troubles and conflicts over church differences and the matter of

slavery. In 1843, Junkin delivered in Hamilton, Ohio, an eight-

hour address on the Biblical justification of slavery. In this

he declared that one of the reasons why he had been called to

Miami was to put an end to the anti-slavery activities ruining

that institution.

However, Bishop's friends continued to agitate in his behalf.

The enrollment of the school fell far below the usual number.

Open attacks in newspapers and pamphlets were made upon

Junkin. Finally the situation became so uncomfortable for him

that he resigned in 1845, to return to the East.

The Board of Trustees, at this juncture, refused to accede

to the demands to return Bishop to the presidency. They further-

more exercised their power by ousting him from the chair in

which he had been serving, that of history and political science.

They also removed Scott from his position. Immediately the loyal

students of these men, and especially of Bishop (and such loyalty

is rarely seen then or now), rallied to their support. The two

men were given positions in Farmers' College at Pleasant Hill,

near Cincinnati.

From this time Bishop lived in comparative calm and peace-

fulness, in an atmosphere in which he was loved and revered by

all those about him, who considered him, as did Freeman Cary, as

"our beloved father." The alumni, led by the Carys and Thomas,

98 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

built a home for Bishop at Pleasant Hill. Finally Bishop allied

himself with the New School, wishing to go "into the General As-

sembly and Church of the First Born, hand-in-hand with brother

[Lyman] Beecher," although he still condemned the division of

the church. In this restful environment at Pleasant Hill, where he

taught to the very end of his life, Bishop remained for ten years,

dying in 1855. He was buried where he had died, his body, at

his direction "put in a plain coffin, and then enclosed in a strong

square box and deposited in an artificial mound in a designated

spot in the College yard."

Today this grave may be found on the campus of the former

Farmers' College, now the Ohio Military Institute. Bishop's life

had been full of struggles and conflicts. Yet it must be admitted

that he accomplished much. From the old country he had come,

a pioneer, to play one of the most important roles in the field of

higher education in the early West. His success reached its climax

when he raised Miami University from nonentity to the leading

position among the colleges of the West. Probably no other presi-

dent of Miami has been such an influential character, relatively

speaking.

To his credit is the training of many of the great men of the

country, among them, educators, ministers, missionaries, writers,

lawyers, soldiers, men who held public positions as high as presi-

dent of the Confederate States of America and president of the

United States, and noted men of other walks of life. Only a few

of the students who became famous are here named: Jefferson

Davis and Francis Preston Blair among those at Transylvania;

Benjamin Harrison at Farmers' College. While at Miami he had

under his care Schenck, Duncan F. Kenner, Birney, Charles

Anderson, Oliver P. Morton, Charles H. Hardin, William S.

Groesbeck, Theophilus L. Dickey, John C. Thompson, William

M. Thomson, Thomas, Benjamin W. Chidlaw, and Joseph G.

Monfort.

But the fact that he had taught these men would mean little

were it not for the influence of his teaching. Bishop was a man

DR. ROBERT HAMILTON BISHOP 99

of liberal and progressive tendencies. As early as 1803, when

he had arrived in Kentucky, Bishop declared:

Kentucky and the Miami valley appeared to me to be not only the

garden of America, but the garden of the world, and were fixed upon my

mind not only to be filled with a dense population, but to be the centre of

influence to the future States and future nations of the Mississippi valley.

In 1825, he was predicting, "Other sixty years hence and the

population and improvements will, in all probability, be extended

to the Pacific ocean." This was at a time when expansion beyond

the Mississippi looked to most Americans as a very remote dream.

When Bishop became president of the University he imme-

diately began to promote education for the masses. He was truly

democratic by nature, for his own early life and training had so

directed him. Always he felt the need of the poor student so

greatly that each year he gave a large portion of his salary to aid

these boys, with the result that he was usually in bad circum-

stances financially. This was his principle: "Literary and Scien-

tific knowledge is no longer to be the exclusive property of a few

professional men. It is to become the common property of the

mass of the human family."

With this in mind, he established, besides the college proper,

various departments within the university to meet the various

desires of the youth of the early West. The "Farmers' College"

was for the education of students who were to become farmers

and was a three-year course. A three-year course was to be had

in the Theological Department. An English Scientific Depart-

ment furnished a two-year course in fundamental subjects for

those who could not go the full four years. A Department of

Modern Languages was begun, although frowned upon by many

as an interference with the traditional Classical Course. A pre-

paratory school was established to prepare the western youths for

college work. Bishop attempted to establish law and medical

schools, but circumstances prevented.

Perhaps Bishop's greatest change from the traditional Amer-

ican university courses was in those which he himself taught.

While in Transylvania he began his teaching of the social sciences,

a study in which he had become intensely interested under the

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100 OHIO ARCH AEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

guidance of Stewart. As early as 1833, he began teaching a course

which he called the "Philosophy of Social Relations," certainly

one of the earliest fore-runners of the modern sociology courses

of this country. There are some who hail Adam Ferguson, a

famous Scotch philosopher of the eighteenth century, as the

founder of modern sociology, preceding the work of Auguste

Comte by nearly three-quarters of a century. Bishop brought to

America the social philosophy of Ferguson, tempered and ex-

panded by the revolutionary theories of Stewart. Stewart was

Ferguson's successor at the University of Edinburgh. Bishop

was therefore teaching a methodological and technical science of

society at the very time Comte was beginning to expound his

philosophy of social physics. While in Kentucky, at the time

Charles Darwin was still a boy, Bishop and his young colleagues

of the ministry had begun to preach a theory of evolution. Of

societal evolution, Bishop wrote:

Human society is never stationary with respect to improvement. It is

either advancing or retrograding. All connected with society is in con-

stant state of change. The most prominent individuals, for good or for ill,

have only a short course of action. They soon disappear, and their places

are immediately filled.

In the teaching of another modern science Bishop was among

the American pioneers. This was the field of political science.

While at Transylvania and during most of his time at Miami, he

taught the subject of government and politics in his history and

social science courses. In 1841, however, he was given as an

experiment, the professorship of history and political science. He

attacked the study of government from an objective point of

view. He was of a democratic nature, and believed that the

English and American systems of government came the closest to

providing the social and political freedom which the individual

should have. He was no chauvinist, however, and without hesita-

tion pointed out the evils of the government of the United States.

He opposed the sort of democracy which permitted the privileged

to over-ride the common man. His intense interest in government

he passed on to his students, many of whom followed political

careers.

DR. ROBERT HAMILTON BISHOP 101

As an educator Bishop ranked among the greatest and most

esteemed of the West, having charge of the most renowned in-

stitution west of Pennsylvania. He aided in the organization of

the Western Literary Institute and College of Teachers. He was

an officer of the Board of Education of the General Assembly

of the Presbyterian Church, of the Presbyterian Education So-

ciety coordinate with the American Education Society, and was

vice-president of the Western Agency of the Presbyterian Edu-

cation Society. Throughout his life he worked for and urged the

establishment of primary schools throughout the West. With

Scott he aided in promoting facilities for the education of women.

As a writer and speaker Bishop exerted great influence in this

region of the country. His sermons were printed and sent

throughout the West. His text-books on logic, history, govern-

ment, and philosophy are yet quite numerous. He was a promi-

nent contributor to western magazines and newspapers, especially

to the Cincinnati Journal. His volume of Sermons on Plain and

Practical Subjects, printed in 1809, is a good example of one of

the earliest books published in the West. His Outline of the

Church in the State of Kentucky, published in 1824, is still of

historical value for its material and is now of considerable finan-

cial value on the market. He aided the students at Miami to

establish the first college paper west of the Alleghenies, called

the Literary Focus, in 1827. When the students failed to con-

tinue their publication because of financial difficulties, Bishop and

other members of the faculty produced a paper for the edification

of the student body and the community.

Thus we see Bishop, builder of a great university, writer and

speaker of note, a pioneer, perhaps a founder of the modern sci-

ences of sociology and government, the stimulator, during his

half-century of university teaching, of innumerable famous men

in all walks of life. He deserves, as does no other, the credit for

the high reputation gained by Miami University in its early years,

a reputation which still clings.

Though he would rank if he were living today among the

most conservative in religious beliefs, in his day he was liberal.

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102 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Even to the people of today his treatment of young men seems

most advanced, when, in his democratic spirit, he recognized them

as his political and social equals, encouraged their individual per-

sonalities, and entrusted them with the responsibility for their own

conduct.