To mark the reopening, the College bell tolled on October 1, 1869, for the first time in several years.^[1] But relatively few responded to its summons. Both the Grammar School and the collegiate classes attracted a disappointingly small number of students, and many of those arrived well after the beginning of the session.^[2] On November 5, J. Wilmer Turner told his father he had only twenty-five scholars, though he expected more in the next week.^[3] (The year before, the Grammar School had enrolled forty boys.) In the collegiate courses Ewell reported thirty students, a figure he described as “small, but not discouraging.”^[4] Ewell believed that word of the College’s reorganization had reached many people too late to allow them to enroll for the 1869–70 session. The matriculation book recorded a total of sixty-five students for the year, thirty collegiate and thirty-five preparatory; Ewell’s annual report counted thirty-two collegians and thirty-one Grammar School boys.^[5] Whichever figures are correct, they represent a slight increase in the collegiate enrollment but an almost identical total to that of the first postwar session. Not a disaster, to be sure, but not the dawn of a new era for the College, either.

A New Beginning

If the smaller-than-expected enrollment dismayed the faculty, Ewell would not admit it. Instead, he reported that the professors were “in good spirits[,] especially the new ones.” Wilmer, Wise, and, of course, Preston he described as “full of earnestness, zeal, & energy.” They were “of weight and character enough to build up a College themselves,” he told Tazewell Taylor. Wilmer, who was fifty-one years old, provided seniority; Dr. Wise, who was elected secretary of the faculty and librarian at the beginning of the session, seemed to be following Ewell’s advice to help out wherever he was needed; and Preston, for whom Ewell had such high hopes, was “first among equals.”^[6] These men, along with Snead and McCandlish, offered the serious student a good education, Ewell believed, whatever the inadequacies of the physical plant.

Fortune soon mocked Ewell’s optimism. The promising young Frank Preston died of “pulmonary consumption” a little more than a month into the session. Although he had been sick before he came to William and Mary, Preston’s friends and supporters in Williamsburg obviously underestimated the severity his illness, for they viewed his death as a sudden catastrophe.^[7] “The College has met a severe blow in Capt. Preston’s death,” Ewell told Tazewell Taylor. “In all respects he promised to be a man of mark & a most able Professor.”^[8] J. Wilmer Turner agreed that William and Mary had “sustained a grievous loss.”^[9] The faculty, mourning the demise of this scion of a distinguished Virginia family and exemplar of “manly virtues,” resolved that both they and the students would accompany his body to the wharf; a smaller group would escort it to Lexington and attend the funeral.^[10] Replacing Preston would be difficult, Ewell confided to Grigsby, but added that the attempt should be made at once.^[11]

In January the faculty did find a temporary replacement in the person of the Reverend Lyman B. Wharton.^[12] A native of Bedford County who had been ordained by Bishop Johns, the thirty-nine-year-old Wharton had studied ancient and modern languages at the University of Virginia, attended Virginia Theological Seminary, served as chaplain of the Fifty-ninth Virginia Regiment during the war, and taught school in Abingdon before coming to William and Mary.^[13] Although he sparked none of the excitement of his predecessor, Wharton did well enough with the Greek and German classes that Ewell, Snead, Wise, and Wilmer petitioned the Board at the end of the session to make his appointment permanent. The students liked him, and he was a good colleague, they reported. “We believe it as safe an appointment as can be made.” Only McCandlish dissented. While he agreed with his colleagues’ assessment of Wharton, he warned the Visitors that it would be a mistake to add another Episcopalian minister to the faculty.^[14]

Evidently the Board did not share his concern, for they named Wharton to the vacant chair at their July meeting. In fact, at that same meeting, Hugh Grigsby raised the question of cultivating closer ties with Virginia Episcopalians, though he did not pursue the matter just then.^[15] Ironically, Wharton long outlasted McCandlish at the College. He remained at his post under President Ewell until the summer of 1881, when he “resigned with almost heart-breaking feelings” as the College prepared to close its classrooms in order to preserve what was left of its endowment.^[16] However, Wharton did return as one of the Seven Wise Men when the College reopened.

The prospects for the College that Ewell described as “misty” in August had begun to look decidedly darker by the late fall of 1869. The relatively low enrollment meant that student fees would add little to College coffers or faculty pockets, especially since fifteen of the Grammar School boys were nonpaying Mattey Scholars. Moreover, even while he struggled to correct the problems with the recent repairs, Ewell faced demands for repayment of the $9,000 construction debt. Thus, he continued a steady stream of appeals to Tazewell Taylor for any funds the bursar could manage to squeeze from the College’s remaining assets or borrow at a reasonable rate. Ewell’s letters were a litany of needs punctuated by flattery and calculation. “If you cannot get it [a loan] it is very certain there is no man in Norfolk who can,” he told Taylor on October 21.^[17] In mid-December he wrote that if the bursar could find $3,000 in January, the rest of the building debt could probably be put off for another six months. However, faculty salaries had to be paid, “for we are as poor as the same number of church rats.”^[18] Taylor responded to Ewell’s pleas, but the checks he sent were never enough. Ewell had no choice but to resume his quest for outside money.

During the fall of 1869, Ewell continued to collect letters from prominent figures such as General George B. McClellan, President Frederick A. P. Barnard of Columbia College, and Virginia’s new governor, Gilbert C. Walker.^[19] Some of these he would use in New York, others in Washington and Richmond, as he retraced the routes he had already taken several times since the war. With a partially refurbished campus and these additional endorsements, Ewell set out once again to make the College’s case to wealthy Northerners, the United States Congress, and the Virginia legislature. Once again the results were disappointing. Several weeks in New York in December did not even bring in enough to pay Ewell’s expenses, and uncertainty about Virginia’s readmission to the Union persuaded him to postpone a trip to Washington until the spring.^[20] The president also delayed lobbying for the College’s renewed request for a portion of the state’s Morrill money until he had some reassurance that receipt of such funds would not weaken William and Mary’s case for federal indemnification.^[21]

When Ewell finally traveled to the two capitals in early March 1870, the faculty had to borrow $500 from Mr. Vest to pay his expenses. Ewell and his colleagues believed the financial stakes were high enough—and the College’s needs urgent enough—to justify this additional indebtedness.^[22] Unfortunately, few lawmakers in Washington or Richmond shared that sense of urgency, and Ewell accomplished little in either place.^[23] Clearly, he had overestimated the impact of a rebuilt campus on potential donors or legislative supporters. Yet he could not afford to be discouraged; he would simply have to refine his arguments, recruit additional allies, and press his suit at every opportunity.

Although Visitors Hugh Grigsby and William Lamb suggested alternative strategies for revitalizing the College, Ewell found strong backing for his emphasis on the federal indemnity in Board member Henry A Wise. Neither Grigsby’s proposal of a closer link with Virginia’s Episcopalians nor Lamb’s notion of turning the College over to the state (provided the legislature would “give it an equal endowment with the University of Virginia”) aroused much enthusiasm, but Wise’s offer to approach Representative Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts on behalf of William and Mary’s wartime damage claim helped shape College policy for the next decade.^[24]

It may have seemed a startling proposition to approach this Radical Republican and former Union general, who had gained notoriety early in the war for welcoming runaway slaves into his camp at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, and who later earned the sobriquet “Beast” for insulting Southern white womanhood during his occupation of New Orleans.^[25] But Wise had known Butler as a fellow Democrat before the war, and he calculated that he could pique the congressman’s interest in the College’s reimbursement campaign, especially since Butler had supported educational aid bills in the House. Wise first raised the possibility of enlisting Butler’s aid at a meeting of alumni in the College chapel on July 6, 1870.^[26] With the endorsement of that group, he sent Butler a detailed account of the destruction of the College and challenged the congressman to show that he was a better man than his detractors allowed by advising Wise how best to prepare a relief bill for submission to Congress and by agreeing to be the bill’s patron.^[27] Wise’s gambit paid off. Butler immediately replied in the affirmative, and he offered sound political advice as to what arguments the College might most effectively employ.

In Butler’s view William and Mary had neither a legal case nor a legitimate financial claim against the federal government “So far as justice and claim go, the tree must lie where it fell,” he stated bluntly. But he did believe the College could arouse the sympathy of the Congress and appeal to the federal government’s tradition of aiding educational institutions that had suffered disasters by emphasizing its historic service to the nation, the many patriots whom it had educated, and its potential for future usefulness. College officials should prepare a statement of property damage that stressed the accidental or unauthorized nature of the destruction while “carefully not raising the issues of the war which might tend to invoke political considerations.” Butler would energetically support such a memorial at the next session, he assured Wise.^[28]

When Wise relayed Butler’s response to his fellow Board members, they swiftly authorized Rector Macfarland to prepare an appeal along the lines the congressman had suggested. But though this document garnered significant support in the next several Congresses, the victory Butler predicted was long in coming. Despite his prescient warning that “political considerations” could hamper William and Mary’s campaign and despite Ewell’s constant efforts to avoid any hint of recrimination, strong sectional and partisan feelings proved more difficult to overcome than either man had anticipated.^[29]

Acceptance of Butler’s strategy was but one of several important Board of Visitors decisions in the summer of 1870. The physical plant required continued attention, and the Building Committee agreed that both the enclosures of the College grounds and the refurbishing of the Brafferton should be completed. The committee also accepted Ewell’s recommendation that the Grammar School be moved off campus—the president thought it a mistake to mix the younger boys with the older—and approved plans for a one-story, brick schoolhouse measuring sixty-two by forty-three feet on a College-owned lot on the Palace Green.^[30]

In addition, the Board elected three new members to fill the vacancies in its ranks , the most important of whom was General William B. Taliaferro of Gloucester.^[31] An 1841 graduate of the College, brother of the late Edwin Taliaferro, son-in-law of Visitor James Lyons, and father of several future William and Mary students, Taliaferro was an influential lawyer and politician with a strong interest in higher education. (At various times he sat on the governing boards of Virginia Military Institute, Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, and the State Normal School for Women at Farmville, in addition to William and Mary.) Although Taliaferro never achieved the statewide political offices he sought, he was an invaluable legislative ally for the College, especially in 1888. And during his many years on the Board—the last seven as president—he was a staunch friend and frequent confidant of both Benjamin Ewell and Lyon Tyler.^[32]

The Search for Students

Whatever the disappointments of the 1869–70 session, Ewell moved into the new decade with his characteristic perseverance and optimism. Now that Virginia was back in the Union and the College had friends in both Washington and Richmond, prospects for financial aid seemed brighter. Ewell knew much work lay ahead, but he could legitimately hope for tangible gains. He also believed that with proper advertising and incentives, the College could substantially increase its enrollment. He reported to the Visitors in July 1870 that he had already distributed twelve hundred copies of the 1870 general catalog. “There is every reason for expecting a fair increase of students next session,” he added.^[33] The College continued to advertise in newspapers throughout the state and as far away as Memphis, Tennessee, and Hartford, Connecticut.^[34] In addition, Ewell stressed the low cost of a William and Mary education at every opportunity. Thus, for example, he assured General Taliaferro in October 1870 that he was “not underestimating” when he said that the general could educate his oldest son “at an expense of not over 50 Dolls. the session, by letting him mess & sending over provisions and room furniture.”^[35]

In all this, there was nothing new. Ewell had been making the same arguments since 1865. In the fall of 1872, however, the faculty did create an additional incentive by offering one tuition scholarship to each county in the State. Recipients, chosen by their county superintendents of schools, would have to pay only their expenses, estimated at less than $180 per session.^[36] The College also had several endowed scholarships.^[37] In addition, each professor could confer scholarships on two students selected from his classes each year on the basis of merit.^[38] Moreover, by the 3 mid-1870s tuition and fees were lower than they had been immediately after the war.^[39]

Despite the best efforts of Ewell, the faculty, and friends of the College, enrollment remained disappointingly low.^[40] The numbers rose only slightly to 74 (41 collegiate) students for the 1870–71 session and 76 (49 collegiate) the next year and then declined to 66 (38 collegiate) in 1872–73, despite a new program designed to prepare candidates for West Point and Annapolis.^[41] The decline continued in 1873–74, with only 50 (35 collegiate) students in attendance. Even Ewell found these figures discouraging.^[42]

The situation did improve dramatically during the next two sessions, thanks in large part to a new charitable organization, the Southern Orphans’ Educational Association, established by Richard and Henry Wise, Ewell, and others, for the purpose of offering free tuition and board at the College to sons of the Confederate war dead. By August 1874 Henry Wise had raised enough money to support 5 students, and he later gained state support for a lottery that funded several more.^[43] In addition, Ewell took advantage of the approaching celebration of the nation’s centennial to advertise the College’s historic connections and contributions to a broader audience. The temporary nature of this boom became devastatingly obvious in 1876–77, however, when the total enrollment sank to 38. Even worse, the decline occurred entirely within the collegiate ranks, which fell to 23 students. Ewell blamed much of the decrease on the legislature’s repeal of the law authorizing aid to the Confederate orphans and widows; he estimated that the College lost about 30 students with the demise of the Orphans’ Association.^[44] Moreover, the centennial celebration generated more publicity than students.

After 1876–77 the enrollment dropped steadily until the College suspended operations at the end of the 1880–81 session. There were only 27 students on campus that year, and 15 of those were in the preparatory department. Even the 12 students in the collegiate course were very young, ranging in age from fifteen to eighteen. In reality, by 1881 there was little left of the College to suspend.

Several factors accounted for the College’s continuing difficulties. In the first place, neither the economic nor the political climate of the state and nation in the 1870s proved as propitious as Ewell had hoped. Hard times and bitter partisanship hindered many of his efforts. The unrelieved poverty of Tidewater Virginia, the area from which William and Mary continued to draw most of its students, remained a severe handicap. Even the College’s well-advertised “cheap” rates were too high for many.

Second, the absence of either denominational or state support meant that the College could not subsidize students to the extent that some of its competitors could. Even during the economic depression of the mid-1870s, enrollments at the University of Virginia, Virginia Military Institute, and the just-established Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College far outstripped that at William and Mary. Denominational schools such as Emory and Henry, Hampden-Sydney, Roanoke, Richmond, and Randolph-Macon attracted significantly more students as well. Moreover, all of these schools, except the new Agricultural and Mechanical College, had substantial numbers of out-of-state students, whereas William and Mary relied almost entirely on Virginians. Washington and Lee University, the one other Virginia school that had neither state nor denominational ties, also attracted many non-Virginians, even after the death of Robert E. Lee in October 1870.^[45]

A third factor, the remoteness of the College from the more densely populated areas of the state, continued to hinder recruitment. Williamsburg was still at least four hours by boat from Norfolk and eight from Richmond—and that on vessels that were neither frequent nor entirely reliable.^[46] Even the carriage rides from the wharves on the James and York rivers into town were long and tedious. Ewell spoke often of the planned rail line between Richmond and Norfolk that would pass through Williamsburg, but progress on that road was glacially slow.^[47]

Another perennial hindrance to attracting more students was the widespread impression that Williamsburg was an unhealthy place. Ewell worked valiantly to counter this belief; he quoted experts and cited low death rates at the College and at the Eastern Lunatic Asylum; he spoke of the area’s salubrious climate from October to July in almost every appeal he made for the College. Yet he obviously left many Virginians unconvinced.^[48]

Any one of these problems would have been difficult enough; in tandem they proved lethal. As enrollment declined after 1875–76, rumors circulated each year that the College might close. Although the faculty and the Board of Visitors hung on for another five years, the rumors quite naturally discouraged prospective students, and the College found itself caught in a near-fatal downward spiral.^[49]

The Campaign for a Federal Indemnity, 1871–73

Ewell, of course, refused to believe that the College was beyond salvation. Throughout the 1870s he pursued the federal indemnity at every opportunity while looking to other sources of support as well. Inevitably, there were many disappointments, but he always found enough good omens and positive developments to keep hope alive. And, indeed, he did spark a great deal of interest in the College. Translating that interest into cash was the rub.

The initial, though limited, successes of William and Mary’s appeal in 1871 and 1872 encouraged both Ewell and the Visitors. True to his word, Benjamin Butler introduced the College’s memorial and had it referred to the Committee on Education and Labor in December 1870.^[50] At his urging, Ewell traveled to Washington to testify before the committee in early 1871. Ewell’s remarks, which he repeated with only minor variations in three subsequent appearances on Capitol Hill, summarized the historical, utilitarian, and emotional arguments he had been making since the end of the war. After carefully noting that William and Mary advanced no legal claim against the government, he argued that the $69,000 (reduced from an initial estimate of $80,000) the College was requesting was little enough to ask for the reconstruction of the alma mater of Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, John Randolph, and James Monroe.^[51] Ewell stressed the importance of William and Mary to the people of Virginia, but he also emphasized the intersectional and bipartisan support for the appeal. He cited the letters he had collected from various Union generals and quoted extensively from one written by Robert W. Hughes, a prominent Virginia Republican, whose son attended William and Mary.^[52] Finally, he denied that this bill would open the floodgates for thousands of unwarranted war claims. The College was unique both in the extent of its injurie s and in its historical significance; no other Southern institution could make such an appeal to the Congress and the nation.^[53]

After his testimony Ewell stayed on in Washington for several weeks to lobby on behalf of the College. He won over the committee. On March 3, 1871, chairman Samuel Amell, a Radical Republican from Tennessee, presented a favorable report, but the session ended before the House could act.^[54] Butler expressed regret at this outcome but assured Henry Wise that the bill would be successful in the coming session. Wise passed this encouraging message along to his fellow Visitors, and they resolved in the summer of 1871 to continue to press the College’s case.^[55] To strengthen the effort, they appointed five of their number to confer with Virginia’s United States representatives and senators.^[56] Primary responsibility for the campaign, however, remained Ewell’s.

In January 1872, with “strong hopes,” Ewell returned to Washington to repeat his testimony.^[57] Initially, those hopes seemed well founded. The Committee on Education and Labor was, if anything, more receptive than in 1871. Its new chairman, Legrand W. Perce, a carpet bagger from Mississippi, strongly supported the bill, as did member George F. Hoar of Massachusetts. Although both men were Radical Republicans, they shared a deep interest in federal aid to education, especially in the war-torn South. Indeed, Hoar proved to be one of the key backers of the indemnity and other aid for the College for the next twenty years.^[58] Under Perce’s leadership, the committee reported favorably and unanimously on the William and Mary bill at the end of January. Although they reduced Ewell’s estimate by $4,000 (for damage to enclosures and grounds), committee members agreed that the destruction of the College ”was entirely without authority, and utterly useless for any purpose of legitimate warfare.”^[59] The New York Times lent editorial support “because the claim is just, and because it is made for the interest of education in a Southern state where education has been sadly interfered with.”^[60] Debate began in the House in early February. In addition to Perce and Hoar, several Northern Democrats spoke in favor of the bill.^[61] But many Republican congressmen opposed the measure; they could see no reason why federal funds should go to a school whose students and faculty had supported the Confederacy. They considered that the destruction of the College was simply part of the price the South had to pay for its failed rebellion.^[62] Despite Ewell’s claim of uniqueness, they worried that the bill might set a precedent and “burden the Treasury with the cost of rebuilding every school or church or institution of charity destroyed during the war.”^[63]

Opposition arose outside of Congress, too. A former officer of the Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry, offended by the House committee’s strictures against “drunken, disorderly and insubordinate U.S. soldiers,” claimed to have evidence that the Confederates had actually fired the Main Building. He urged Representative Perce to postpone action for two weeks to allow him time to gather affidavits.^[64] Nothing seems to have come of this particular challenge, but another Union veteran later told Republican representative John Hawley of Illinois that he was certain the rebels were responsible for the conflagration.^[65]

More serious were the charges that began to circulate in Washington of current disloyalty at the College. Reports that a volunteer militia company commanded by Professor Richard Wise had disrupted a Republican political meeting in Williamsburg and shown contempt for the federal government at the state fair in Richmond sent Ewell scrambling to investigate and explain. Having been assured by Wise that the interruption of the Republican gathering was entirely inadvertent and that nothing untoward had occurred at the fair, Ewell quickly rebutted the allegations. And, for good measure, he noted that very few students belonged to the militia, which had no official connection with the College.^[66]

Faced with these mounting obstacles, but still hopeful of success, Ewell prepared for a long fight.^[67] In late February the faculty endorsed his efforts and authorized him to borrow enough money to meet his expenses while he lobbied for the College’s claim. As it turned out, he stayed in Washington “with little interruption” until mid-May 1872.^[68]

Drawing heavily on his own record of unionism and moderation, President Ewell worked feverishly to counter the bloody shirt arguments. He wrote to Representative Perce in late February that the secession flag had never been raised on the College buildings, and since the war the College had educated all who had applied, regardless of political preference or regional background. “One of the most prominent Republicans in Virginia declares that he sends his son [here] in the confident belief that he will not be insulted on account of his politics,” Ewell reported. He went on to point out that since 1865 the school had awarded honorary degrees to distinguished Northerners, and he reminded Perce that for two years after the war the faculty “gave preaching accommodations in the college premises to the northern Methodists who could not get them elsewhere in Williamsburg.”^[69]

To strengthen the bipartisan appeal of the measure, Ewell rallied alumni and friends. William Reynolds of Baltimore, who had been a law student at the College in the spring of 1861, filed a deposition attesting to Ewell’s hostility to secession.^[70] Samuel Chapman Armstrong, principal of Hampton Institute, furnished a letter of introduction to Representative Henry L. Dawes, a Massachusetts Republican, in which he praised Ewell’s kindness and liberality toward Northerners who had settled in Virginia. He also urged passage of the bill. “This grant will do more to bring about good feeling than any measure of the govt. since the war,” he argued.^[71] Dr. D. R Brower, a Union veteran from Pennsylvania and current superintendent of the Eastern Lunatic Asylum, wrote to Pennsylvania Representative William D. (“Pig Iron”) Kelley, another Republican, on behalf of the College and assured him of the loyalty of the faculty.^[72] Robert W. Hughes took up his pen again. In an open letter to George Hoar, published in the Washington Chronicle, he made an explicitly Republican case for the indemnity. Arguing that latent Republican sentiment in Virginia could be aroused if the national government offered aid to repair war damage, he suggested that passage of the William and Mary bill might help President Grant carry the state in the forthcoming election.^[73]

Finally, in May 1872 Ewell took the dramatic step of publicly endorsing Grant for a second term and admitting that he had also favored the general in 1868. His letter, praising Grant’s commitment to peace and reconciliation and noting that the president had allowed Virginia to reenter the Union on very favorable terms, appeared in the Washington Chronicle, the New York Times, and several other papers around the country.^[74] It was also reproduced as a broadside entitled “The South and Grant,” presumably for use in the 1872 campaign.^[75]

All these efforts were not enough to prevent the bill’s opponents from blocking its passage by what Ewell called “parliamentary stratagems” in the spring of 1872. Disappointed, he nevertheless took comfort in the unanimous support of the committee and the optimistic assessments of friendly representatives who told him that the bill might fare better in the next session.^[76]

In light of the College’s sorry financial condition and diminishing opportunities for fund-raising elsewhere, Ewell had every reason to cling to whatever hope Washington offered. In 1871 and 1872, George Hoar had led a subscription drive for William and Mary among residents of Massachusetts, but a disastrous fire in Boston in late 1872, combined with an economic downturn, meant the pledges—totaling perhaps as much as $100,000—went unfilled.^[77] In March 1872 the General Assembly had finally disposed of the state’s Morrill money; two-thirds of it went to establish a new institution, Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College at Blacksburg, and one-third went to Hampton Institute.^[78] Despite their extensive lobbying campaigns, none of Virginia’s established white schools received a penny. In June the Board of Visitors reduced the College faculty to four professors, including Ewell. Although they hoped to attract additional students in the coming year with the special preparatory program for service academy candidates, Visitors and professors alike knew that increasing the enrollment was a difficult task.^[79]

If the College’s situation seemed unpromising, political developments in the state offered some encouragement. During the summer of 1872, Ewell discovered that he was not alone in his endorsement of President Grant. Many prominent Virginia Conservatives and Democrats who could not abide Horace Greeley, the Liberal Republican challenger, threw their support to the incumbent. Among those who offered to canvass for Grant was James Lyons, rector of the Board of Visitors since July 1871. (His predecessor, William Macfarland, had gone insane in February of that year.)^[80] Henry Wise also denounced the Liberal Republicans, although he could not bring himself to campaign for the president.^[81] When Grant carried Virginia by a small margin in November, Ewell may well have hoped that the Republican victory would redound to the benefit of the indemnity campaign. Otherwise, as he had admitted to Hugh Grigsby in early October, “the prospects [were] not very encouraging for the College.”^[82]

In anticipation of the reintroduction of the William and Mary bill in the third session of the Forty-second Congress in December 1872, the faculty—consisting of Professors Wilmer, Wharton, and Wise—resolved that Ewell must go again to Washington and renewed his plenary authority to represent the College.^[83] But Rector Lyons opposed this trip, probably for financial reasons. Meeting with Lyons and other Visitors in Richmond in early December, Ewell managed to persuade a majority to overrule the rector by arguing that his presence on Capitol Hill was essential. “Unless someone is there all the time there will be no chance for it the College Bill [sic].”^[84] Ewell returned to the capital in time to see Representative Perce present H.R 1338 on December 13.

Opponents of the bill immediately demanded additional debate. Some of the arguments echoed those of the previous session, but Indiana Republican John Shanks proposed an amendment skillfully designed to discomfit the College’s Radical Republican supporters. He moved that none of the $65,000 indemnity should be paid until the Board of Visitors had adopted a resolution declaring William and Mary now and forever open for admission on equal terms and with equal privileges to “all persons irrespective of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”^[85] Perce angrily charged that Shanks was simply trying to defeat the measure. While he and other backers of the bill favored equal rights, Perce said, it was unfair to single out one college in the entire country for integration. The practical effect of the amendment would be to make William and Mary an all-black school. Moreover, he added, sounding more desperate and hypocritical by the minute, his black constituents did not want this kind of amendment. Shanks replied that since the money in question was from the public treasury, it should be used in a nondiscriminatory fashion. Another supporter of the bill, Virginia Democrat John Critcher, argued that since there was a flourishing black college (Hampton Institute) just a few miles from Williamsburg, there was no need to integrate William and Mary. Shanks asked whether Hampton barred whites. Critcher professed not to know but claimed that no whites currently attended.^[86]

Shanks had clearly placed many Republicans in an awkward position. But when George Hoar got up to speak, he agreed to the amendment, admitting that his commitment to equal rights required as much. More surprising was his announcement that he understood College authorities were willing to open the school’s doors to all. Hoar then went on to argue for the appropriation as a gesture of reconciliation.^[87]

Ewell must have authorized Hoar to accept Shanks’s amendment, but whether either of them really expected it to become law is not clear. Just a few weeks earlier, Ewell had assured Rector Lyons that a report that Ewell favored admitting blacks to William and Mary was “a malicious falsehood.”^[88]

In any event, although the House endorsed the Shanks amendment, it then defeated the amended bill, 36 to 127, with 78 not voting. Perce, Hoar, and Kelley all voted yea, as did three Virginia congressmen, but Benjamin Butler abstained.^[89] A month later the House reversed itself and passed Perce’s original bill, without the amendment, 111 to 75, with 54 not voting. The bill contained no appropriation, however, and the Senate adjourned without ever considering it.^[90] Another Congress expired without any relief for William and Mary.

As usual, there were optimists who assured Ewell that the bill would surely pass during the next session. In the meantime, the College faculty rewarded Legrand Perc and Georg Hoar; each received an honorary doctor of laws degree on February 22, 1873.^[91] Despite the frustrations of congressional politics, Ewell took heart from such allies. They confirmed the cogency of his historical arguments for William and Mary. He remained committed to pursuing the federal indemnity, he told the Board of Visitors in his report for 1873.^[92]

Consideration of Closer Ties with the Episcopal Church

Not all of the Visitors shared Ewell’s faith in the eventual success of his Washington lobbying. The immediate needs of the College—thousands of dollars for repairs to the eternally leaking roof of the Main Building and  to the increasingly dilapidated College Hotel and Brafferton, as well as for faculty salaries—seemed to demand a swifter and more certain solution. Hugh Grigsby, who since July 1871 had been chancellor of the College as well as a Visitor, revived his idea of pursuing closer ties with the Episcopal church. At the July 4, 1873, Board meeting he moved to appoint a committee of three to investigate the possibility of “a more intimate connexion [sic]” between William and Mary and the Diocese of Virginia and to report back at the next annual meeting.^[93] Grigsby’s resolution aroused the spirited and long-winded opposition of Henry Wise who kept the Board in session until almost two in the morning with his objections. As Grigsby later described the scene:

Gov. Wise … spoke for two mortal hours in opposing my resolution. While he was speaking, every member of the Board, excepting the Rector, Gen. Taliaferro, and myself, went soundly to sleep. Some were strewed on the platform, others nodded in their chairs; but Wise went on and, according to the papers, consumed two hours and a half after ten at night.^[94]

When the vote was taken, only Taliaferro and William Crump joined Wise on the negative side. Not yet ready to concede defeat, Wise then offered an alternative resolution that would have impossibly broadened the charge to the committee. Again he spoke at length, and again he could muster only two votes besides his own, this time from William Peachy and Crump. The committee as finally appointed consisted of three ministers, Woodbridge, Minnegerode, and J. H. D. Wingfield. They were given the added charge of devising a feasible plan for raising $100,000 in permanent funds for the College.^[95] (Ironically, the two men quietly added to the Board at this contentious meeting, John Goode and Warner T. Jones, would play important, and in Jones’s case, successful roles in raising money for William and Mary from secular sources.)^[96]

The lopsided vote in favor of Grigsby’ s resolution and the ministerial composition of the committee overstated the enthusiasm of the Board for a formal link with the church. Although most of the Visitors were Episcopalians, they were less concerned with theological questions than with money. In attempting to capitalize on William and Mary’s historic ties with the large and influential denomination, they sought financial rather than spiritual support.

Even as the committee began its work, other friends of the College tried to interest the Episcopalians of the state in the school’s welfare. A stranger from Nelson County bombarded both Professor Wilmer and President Ewell with elaborate plans for circularizing the communicants of the diocese and pleading the College’s case in the Southern Churchman.^[97] The Churchman itself weighed in with the perennial, and perennially unwelcome, suggestion that the College consider moving to a new location. To counter this “mad scheme of removing Wm & Mary,” Ewell’s old friend, Superintendent Francis Smith of the Virginia Military Institute, submitted an article to the journal which stressed yet again the College’s historic roots in Tidewater and complained of the church’s neglect of an institution that “had been the nursery of its ministry, & the chief instrument in maintaining an educated class of gentlemen & scholars in our State.”^[98] Grigsby remained convinced that if the College’s “clerical friends” would embrace his scheme, William and Mary would prosper.^[99] But the only visible support came from New York churchmen when the trustees of Episcopalian Hobart College in Geneva conferred an honorary doctor of laws degree on President Ewell in 1874.^[100]

Although Ewell, who was a Presbyterian by birth, told one correspondent that all the professors at the College were Episcopalians “in feeling, if not in fact,” the faculty opposed any attempt to transform William and Mary into a church school.^[101] On the eve of the July 1874 Board meeting, they drafted a resolution urging the Visitors to make no overtures toward the church. “In our opinion,” they wrote, “the adoption of any resolution on the subject might stir sectarian odium—but could not create any church patronage.”^[102]

The faculty need not have worried. The Board’s committee discovered that the Episcopal church in Virginia had no interest in linking itself with a liberal arts college under independent trustees. Any formal relationship would necessarily entail complete ecclesiastical control. And that was not at all what the Visitors had in mind. Minnegerode thought the positions of the two parties were “probably irreconcilable,” and Woodbridge reported that there was no hope for any connection beyond goodwill and “friendly interest.”^[103] Hugh Grigsby was unable to reach Williamsburg in time for this Board meeting, so there is no record of his reaction to the report, but Henry Wise felt vindicated.^[104] He promptly moved that the College should remain free of any religious connection whatever. Wary of offending potential supporters, other Visitors favored a substitute motion declaring that while it was “inexpedient, injudicious and unwise” to give any one denomination control of William and Mary, “we cordially invite the co-operation of all denominations of Christians in our effort to promote the usefulness and prosperity of the College.”^[105] If there was no hope of any money from the Episcopalians, let alone the $100,000 the committee had been directed to find, the College needed to cast its net as widely as possible.

Although there would be one more serious attempt to join the College and the Episcopal church near the end of the decade, the Visitors’ 1874 resolution freed Ewell to focus most of his energies once again on the federal government. Minnegerode, for one, urged that strategy. “It seems to me very important, to press our claims upon Congress at the earliest possible day,” he wrote. “The longer it is put off, the less hope do I have of success.”^[106] The faculty also remained firm in its support of Ewell’s efforts to extract money from the national treasury.^[107]

Campaign for the Indemnity and Other Fund-Raising Efforts, 1873–76

Despite the distraction of the other issues, Ewell had kept a close watch on the situation in Washington. On the advice of the state’s Democratic senator, John W. Johnston, Ewell resubmitted the College bill in 1873, and on April 1, 1874, he again testified before the House Committee on Education and Labor.^[108] This time, thanks to the exertions of General Taliaferro, he had the added support of a joint resolution from the General Assembly urging Virginia’ s senators and representatives to back the indemnity.^[109] He had been careful, too, in Williamsburg to see that no embarrassing hint of sectional rancor emanated from the College. When the Phoenix Literary Society invited General Taliaferro to speak at its final celebration in July 1873, Ewell followed up by asking the general, as diplomatically as possible, “not to be too hard on the political powers that be” in his talk. As he explained to Taliaferro, he knew from his previous trips to Washington “how the opponents of the College Bill exaggerate every point of which they deem capital can be made.” Taliaferro professed not to be offended by Ewell’s request, but he did decline the invitation and thus avoided the possibility of an indiscrete remark.^[110]

Although Legrand Perce had lost his House seat, George Hoar remained a staunch advocate, and the committee once more recommended passage of the College’s bill. But, as Ewell reported to the Board of Visitors, despite a significant amount of support for the measure, the timing was unpropitious, and opponents of the bill blocked consideration. This time Ewell found his silver lining in the fact that Hoar told him that Haivard (Hoar’s alma mater) and one or two other leading colleges would help William and Mary with its campaign.^[111]

That the campaign must continue was clear to Ewell. In fact, the approaching national centennial seemed to open new opportunities for the College to assert and publicize its historical importance. Not only would the American people be looking back to the days of the Founders, but the celebration would also present innumerable occasions to promote sectional reconciliation. Before Ewell approached Congress again in 1876, he spent almost two years trying to win support around the country.

He began in the summer of 1874 by circulating as widely as possible a new catalog and history, published by Randolph and English of Richmond. The History of the College of William and Mary from its Foundation, 1660, to 1874, adjudged by the New York Times “an interesting account,” emphasized the number of great men who had studied at the school during the eighteenth century.^[112] In 1875 the Virginia novelist and biographer John Esten Cooke contributed a laudatory short history of the College to Scribner’s Monthly, a magazine known for its espousal of reconciliation between North and South.^[113] George Hoar had also emphasized the theme of reconciliation in a letter to the Boston Advertiser in March of that year. Urging the people of Massachusetts and especially the sons of Harvard to contribute to the rebuilding of William and Mary, Hoar argued that such aid would be a fitting gesture for the centennial year. The New York Times gave Hoar’s appeal a handsome notice and ventured the thought that “New-York would not be found unwilling to do her part” in a private subscription campaign for the College.^[114] United States Commissioner of Education John Eaton, a strong advocate of federal aid to education, was so impressed with Hoar’s suggestion that he reprinted the letter in his annual report.^[115] Eaton believed that the movement to aid William and Mary would promote both learning and goodwill; he also hoped it would interest the South in the centennial celebration.

The favorable response to Hoar’s letter encouraged both Ewell and Hoar to think about a major fund-raising effort for the College in New England. While attending the centennial celebration of the battle of Lexington in April, Ewell met with Hoar to plan an elaborate appeal to graduates of colleges in the North that would carry the endorsement of a number of distinguished Harvard men.^[116] Hoar then enlisted the aid of Edward Hale, “a power in all good works in Boston,” and by June the three had agreed on the text of the appeal and the accompanying signatures, including George and E. R. Hoar, Hale, Charles W. Eliot, James Russell Lowell, Richard H. Dana, and several other prominent residents of the Boston area.^[117] Addressed “to the liberal friends of education in the Northern States,” the appeal emphasized the ” truly national character” of the College in its early days, calculated its losses in both property and money in 1776, 1859, and 1862 at $150,000, and suggested that donors endow professorships and scholarships to that amount.^[118]

In mid-July Hoar arranged for the printing of six hundred copies and publicized the appeal anew in the Boston Advertiser.^[119] He planned that he and Hale would distribute it to likely donors over the summer. Then, he suggested, Ewell should come north early in the fall to follow up in person.^[120] Once again the New York Times extended the reach of the campaign by reprinting Hoar’s letter to the Advertiser. On the same day, the paper also reported that Ewell had spoken at the recent commencement exercises at Hampton Institute. It hailed Ewell’s presence as evidence of “the reasonable spirit with which intelligent Virginians have overcome the traditional prejudices of their section.”^[121] Such a comment could only help Ewell’s efforts in the North.

Unfortunately, the campaign came to naught. After months of optimistic pronouncements, Hoar suddenly admitted in September 1875 that economic conditions in Boston were so grim that the appeal had no chance of success. He told Ewell there was little point in his coming to the city after all.^[122] Ewell’s disappointment can only be imagined. Even a small amount of money would have been a godsend to William and Mary in 1875. Talk about closing the College was apparently so widespread that Rector Lyons, whose rheumatism prevented him from attending the Board meeting in July, sent a letter emphasizing his opposition to such a step.

Lyons favored spending part of the endowment, if it came to that, rather than shutting the College’s doors. What he suggested instead was “to enforce rigidly the collection of all outstanding interest and to sell so much of the stock or other property of the College as will pay off all the debt” that carried more than 6 percent interest.^[123] Getting a decent price for any of the property the College wanted to sell was nearly impossible, but the Board adopted a variation of Lyons’s proposal. They authorized the bursar to borrow enough money to pay off the portion of the College debt bearing 10 percent interest.^[124] In that way they managed to buy a little more time.

Lyons had earlier demonstrated his commitment to saving the school by working with General Taliaferro to encourage the formation of an alumni association. Under their sponsorship and the leadership of Richard Wise and other faculty members, a number of William and Mary graduates met in Richmond in May 1875 to organize the “Society of Alumni and Students of the College of William and Mary.” They planned and publicized a grand reunion for the July commencement.^[125] The response was heartening. The meeting and dinner drew an impressive crowd, but the alumni group never became the financial supporter of the College its organizers had hoped.^[126]

The College’s already dismal economic situation was complicated further in the fall of 1875 by the death of longtime bursar Tazewell Taylor.^[127] Although he and Ewell had often been at odds, his cautious, conservative approach to financial matters had helped balance the president’s more expansive attitude. Ewell could be remarkably imprecise about both the College’s finances and his own. Even his good friend Hugh Grigsby described Ewell as “the poorest manager of money that I have ever known.”^[128] Whether because he enjoyed being free of the oversight of a financial officer or because he had other things on his mind, Ewell delayed the nomination of a new bursar for several months. Visitor Montagu Thompson was both irritated and alarmed at the delay. A fiscal conservative with a reputation for parsimony, Thompson feared for the institution. “I am certain that the financial affairs of the College are daily getting worse,” he wrote, “and that it is only a question of a few years when the College must be closed, unless something be speedily done for its relief.”^[129]

When Ewell finally selected John S. Wise of Richmond as Taylor’s replacement in March 1876, not everyone was happy to see a third member of that family assume an important role at the College.^[130] Henry Wise’s political eccentricities were well known, and both John and Richard seemed to be following in his steps. Their move toward the Republican party in the 1870s displeased some of the staunch Democrats on the Board who worried that the College might be tainted by their unpopular stance. In the end , however, John Wise’s politics mattered little in dealing with William and Mary’s problems. They proved intractable to Democrats and Republicans alike.

As of late 1875, none of the positive publicity or organized effort on behalf of William and Mary had in any way eased the school’s financial plight. But Ewell was determined not to let all that activity go to waste; he still had hopes that the nation’s centennial mood would somehow benefit William and Mary. He turned once more to Congress. Although George Hoar remained supportive, he reminded Ewell that the College must this time depend on the Democrats, who by now controlled the House of Representatives.^[131] It made no difference. Although the House passed the measure on April 7, 1876, the centennial spirit did not extend to the upper chamber. Many senators still believed that the College had done as much to destroy the nation as to found it.^[132]

The Final Push for an Indemnity and an Appeal to the State, 1877–79

The repeated failures in Washington, like those in Richmond and in the North, were deeply discouraging, yet the men who hoped to keep the College alive had little choice but to renew their pleas year after year. Changes in the membership and shifting political tides held out the possibility, however slim, of favorable action in the next Congress or General Assembly. Moreover, the presence in each legislative session of at least some representatives who shared Ewell’s deep reverence for the country’s past and William and Mary’s part in it ensured that the College’s appeal would not be completely overlooked.

In the late 1870s, John Goode was the congressional optimist who encouraged his fellow Visitors to renew the appeal to the federal government. The Board agreed at their July 1877 meeting and promptly appointed a committee of three (Goode, Lamb, and Crump) to ask Congress for an appropriation of $70,000. At the same time, the Board designated a second group to approach the state legislature for aid.^[133] As the College teetered on the brink of closure, every avenue had to be tried—and tried. In fact, new legislative campaigns looked practical next to the other proposals of some of the school’s supporters. For example, Richard Wise suggested converting the College into a normal and agricultural school, while Rector James Lyons wanted to investigate the possibility of establishing a military institute at William and Mary.^[134] Such plans were indicative of the growing sense of desperation in Williamsburg. As Bursar John Wise had told the Visitors in his May 1877 report, “Gentlemen, this is a gloomy outlook.”^[135] His words were prophetic, for in early December 1877, a single congressman was able to force postponement of consideration of the College bill until late January.^[136]

Meanwhile, the committee appointed to petition the state prepared a thirteen page printed appeal to the General Assembly. Most of the arguments about William and Mary’s historic status and contributions were familiar, but there were some novel elements. For example, borrowing from both Richard Wise and James Lyons, the document offered the Grammar and Mattey School as the basis for a normal program and also asked the state to establish a chair for military studies at the College. Also, the appeal introduced a racial element by inquiring rhetorically and self pityingly whether “every other college, and even the negro schools” were to be ”bountifully supplied” while William and Mary was “treated worse than a prodigal son.” Surely the General Assembly would never be so “unjust or ungenerous.”^[137] Unfortunately for the College, the legislators reserved their justice and generosity for other causes in 1877.

When Congress reassembled in January 1878, Representative Goode renewed his efforts for the College’s bill. But this time President Ewell did not go to Washington to testify. The case for William and Mary had been made so many times that both sides knew the arguments by heart. Success or failure depended less on persuasion than on legislative skill and political power. Moreover, Goode had articulate allies. Massachusetts Republican George B. Loring, who had taken Butler’s old seat, was another Harvard graduate who appreciated William and Mary’s contributions to the early republic; he repeated all the historical arguments so dear to Ewell’s heart.^[138] John Tyler’s widow, Julia Gardiner Tyler, also did some lobbying when she was in Washington in March.^[139] Goode was convinced that a substantial majority favored the measure. But because it was a private bill, five hostile votes were enough to force another postponement.^[140]

Representative Loring rose to make the case for William and Mary on April 12. “It is not for the property of Virginia but for a national monument that I speak,” he declared.^[141] The opponents refused to see the College in that light. Republican Martin Townsend of New York ridiculed the constant references to William and Mary’s distinguished graduates.

It is because this College forgot her great men that she comes here today suppliant, cringing, begging for money at the hands of those whose sons she has caused to lie down in bloody graves by the side of her own sons that she hounded on to death and destruction.

William and Mary “sought rebellion,” he charged; “she went into the rebellion; she sent her sons into rebellion; why shall she not take the consequences?”^[142]  Such vigorous waving of the bloody shirt had enough public appeal to frighten the Northern Democrats; they did not dare vote for the bill in an election year. They counseled another postponement until the short session in December 1878, after the November elections. They promised to aid William and Mary then, but Lyon Tyler, following these maneuvers from Williamsburg, told his mother, “In my opinion and most people agree with me the Bill is dead.”^[143] Tyler permitted himself a brief resurgence of optimism in the summer of 1878, but by the time Goode and his allies began their final push, he had left William and Mary.^[144]

When Goode demanded consideration of the College measure in the third session of the Forty-fifth Congress, opponents were amazed at such dogged persistence. Republican Joseph W. Keifer of Ohio observed that “the friends of this bill press it from one Congress to another with a pertinacity that challenges admiration. The many speeches made in this and former Congresses in favor of the payment of the claim of William and Mary College would make a large volume.”^[145] In January 1879 Representatives Goode, Loring, and Randolph Tucker, Democrat of Virginia, J. brought to be all the eloquence, rhetoric, and lofty appeals at their command one last time.^[146] But they did not have the votes. The bill was defeated 87 to 127, with 75 not voting.^[147]

Writing from Williamsburg, Ewell claimed not to be too disappointed at the outcome of Goode’ s efforts because he had never thought there was much chance for success this time around. Goode had made a fatal error, in Ewell’s view, when he allowed the bill to become a partisan issue. “At the time I was entrusted with it,” the president reminded General Taliaferro, “the House of Reps. voted for & passed it by a majority of 40, & upwards, and about 45 Republicans voted for it. This time 5 or 6 only.” Ewell had scrupulously followed Butler’s original advice “not to let either party as such take it up.”^[148] But, of course, Ewell’s successes in the House, gratifying though they may have been, had no greater practical impact on the College than Goode’s failures. Ewell was undoubtedly unhappy that he had not been dispatched to Washington to direct the indemnity campaign in 1878 and 1879, but he could hardly blame Goode’s strategy, however flawed, for the defeat of the College’s hopes for federal aid in the 1870s.

The Rejection of a Merger

By the spring of 1879, the outlook for the College was bleak indeed. Rebuffed repeatedly by both the Congress and the General Assembly, unsuccessful in its appeals to private donors, the school had few remaining options. A growing number of Visitors, unhappy at having to borrow money to meet current expenses, favored closure in order to preserve what remained of William and Mary’s resources. Even Ewell admitted that “times [were] hard & threatening,” though, characteristically, he added that he felt certain better times were coming.^[149]

The well-publicized difficulties of the College encouraged those who still favored a formal link with the Episcopal church to make one last effort to convert William and Mary into a sectarian institution. This time the initiative came from the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. Three Sewanee faculty members, including the Reverend George T. Wilmer, formerly of William and Mary, met with several of the Visitors in Richmond in March 1879 to urge a merger of the two schools. They proposed that the College move to Tennessee, where it would be known as the College of William and Mary of Virginia at the University of the South.^[150] Rector Lyons seems to have been intrigued by this idea, though other Visitors, such as Colonel Lamb, were opposed.^[151] Lacking a quorum, they took no action. Lyons called a second meeting in April for further discussion with a Sewanee representative, but again there was no quorum. Not until the July meeting in Williamsburg did the Board offer an official response.

Meanwhile, word of the proposal sparked a flurry of activity. If the College were to be moved, localities within the state wanted to assert their claims. One suggestion that aroused some interest was to incorporate William and Mary into the University of Virginia.^[152] People in Norfolk again offered their city as a site.^[153] Ewell also prepared a report for the Board outlining his opposition to the merger. Although he admitted that the College was in dreadful shape, he marshaled all his usual arguments against either removal or closure. The Peninsula was growing in wealth and population, albeit more slowly than he had anticipated. Within five years there would be a railroad through Williamsburg. Moreover, closer ties with the Episcopalians did not necessitate a move to Sewanee; William and Mary could be a church school in Williamsburg, if necessary.^[154]

Proponents of the merger were not idle. On the eve of the Board meeting, they had printed in Richmond a fourteen-page pamphlet that presented their case. Carrying the endorsement of some forty prominent Southern Episcopalians, including the bishops of Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, and Arkansas, the pamphlet argued that the merger of the two schools would create a true university at Sewanee, with freedom for research within an “atmosphere of historical Christianity.” Such an institution would benefit the region by keeping a distinctive Southern culture alive. This positive vision was only part of the argument, however. Many pages called attention to the current sorry state of the College. Pointing out that both the state of Virginia and the federal government had ignored William and Mary ‘s plight, the pamphlet contended, “William and Mary College is virtually defunct” “It is a college in name only, and has no standard.” Union with the University of Virginia or reendowing the College in Williamsburg, the pamphlet judged chimerical. Individuals in the North had offered verbal support, but only the University of the South had real sympathy for William and Mary.^[155]

Despite the accuracy of the pamphlet’s grim picture of the College, the Board of Visitors declined Sewanee’s offer at their July 1 meeting.^[156] Neither Hugh Grigsby nor James Lyons voted, but Grigsby noted in his commonplace book, “The removal is opposed by Faculty & every member of the Board of Visitors so far as I have heard.”^[157] In order to soften the rejection, the Visitors stressed the legal barriers to such a move and expressed doubt that the merger would really be advantageous to either institution. They also appointed a committee of three to conference more with the Episcopal bishop and council of Virginia on the possibility of a closer connection between the diocese and the College.^[158]

Having reaffirmed their loyalty to Williamsburg, the Visitors were left with the task of finding enough money to allow the College to continue to eke out an existence there. They appointed a committee to look for ways to raise $20,000 to liquidate the College’s debt and another to memorialize the legislature to continue to pay the full interest on the College’s state stock. They also reduced faculty pay and resolved that they would not take any compensation or reimbursement for Board meetings.^[159] If all these resolutions had an air about them of trying to squeeze blood from a stone, the Board had little choice once it accepted Ewell’s recommendation to keep the College open for another year.