Winter Convocation
From GWUEncyc
Article
In 1905 George Washington University began to have Winter Convocations in February to correspond with George Washington’s birthday, where degrees were conferred in addition to the Spring (there were also Fall Convocations until 1961). The last Winter Convocation took place in 1993. The following is a letter from GW President Charles Needham, addressed to Justice David Brewer, who was also a faculty member in the Law School, along with Justice John Marshall Harlan.
January 19, 1905
Dear Mr. Justice Brewer:
Permit me to put in writing the invitation which I extended to you verbally on Tuesday afternoon, to deliver the address before the mid-winter Convocation of the University at ten o’clock in the morning at the Lafayette Theater on the twenty-second day of February next. This invitation is extended on behalf of the Council representing the University, and I personally urge strongly your acceptance of this invitation. The audience will be made up of our student body and faculty, and quite a large number of invited guests from men in public life. You will have a fine audience and an appreciative one.
This is our first mid-winter Convocation and the first gathering under the new name. We desire to have you speak of Washington and his views upon public questions, adjusting them, if possible, to modern conditions. This is not intended to limit you in any way, but to suggest that we desire to have the theme appropriate to the day.
Awaiting your favorable reply, and with great esteem, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Charles Needham
Hon. David J. Brewer Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Justice Brewer accepted President Needham’s invitation, and the following is the address he delivered February 22, 1905 at the first Winter Convocation:
“Shall George Washington's Will be Executed?”
Theologians and scientists alike change their phraseology, if not their ideas, from generation to generation. One theologian recently spoke of the Almighty as not the great first cause, but only "intelligent energy," and more than one scientist has affirmed that there is no such thing as a material atom, the only existence being that of electricity. Using for the moment this phraseology, it may be affirmed that education has attracted the attention and enlisted the sympathy of every one of our Presidents from that "intelligent energy" named George Washington to that concrete electricity we call Theodore Roosevelt. They have believed in it as something to wisely direct intelligent energy and to usefully restrain dynamic electricity. I invoke their faith as an excuse for what I have to say.
Education moves horizontally and perpendicularly. Horizontally it means the common school; perpendicularly, the university. Horizontally it uplifts the many; perpendicularly, the few. The horizontal uplift dwarfs the apparent height of the nation's leaders. From the base of Pike's Peak we look up only 9,000 feet to the summit; yet that peak, like Mt. St. Elias, towers 14,000 feet above the ocean's level. The difference comes from the elevation of the surrounding base. So as all rise through the horizontal uplift of the common school, the intellectual peaks seem nearer and lower; yet still, as of old, they rise to the same height above the ocean level of universal ignorance. There are Websters and Clays today towering in lofty grandeur, but by the horizontal uplift of universal education the masses are nearer their summits. This uplift means much for the Republic, for it gives to all a clearer vision of the peaks. All see more clearly the barren rocks as well as the snowy summits of glory. All more accurately determine the elements and the worth of the summits.
The perpendicular uplift means now, as ever, the mountain heights. They tower into the eternal blue and catch the early glimpses of celestial glory. The sunlight' of the morning first radiates upon their summits, and God's mightiest manifestations of Himself come first to them. The university may mean the perpendicular uplift of only the few, but even the single mountain glorifies the surrounding valleys. Every dweller in the lowlands shines in the reflected sunlight. He longs to climb to the summit that he may share in the early glow. So it is that the university is a blessing and benefit not merely to the few who dwell on its heights, but to the many who bathe in its reflecting glory.
The Father of His Country, in his last will and testament written by his own hand and acknowledged less than six months before his death, recognized both the horizontal and the perpendicular movement of education. One item provides:
"To the trustees * * * of the academy in the town of Alexandria, I give and bequeath, in trust, $4,000, or in other words 20 of the shares which I hold in the Bank of Alexandria towards the support of a free school, established at, and annexed to the said academy for the purpose of educating such orphan children, or the children of such other poor and indigent persons as are unable to accomplish it with their own means, and who in the judgment of the trustees of the said seminary are best entitled to the benefit of this donation."
In another is this declaration:
"It has been my ardent wish to see a plan devised, on a liberal scale, which would have a tendency to spread systematic ideas through all parts of this rising empire, thereby to do away (with) local attachments and state prejudices, as far as the nature of things would, or indeed ought to admit, from our national councils. Looking anxiously forward to the accomplishment of so desirable an object as this is (in my estimation), my mind has not been able to contemplate any plan more likely to effect the measure than the establishment of a university in a central part of the United States, to which the youths of fortune and talents from all parts thereof might be sent, for the completion of their education in all the branches of polite literature, in the arts and sciences, in acquiring knowledge in the principles of politics and good government; and, as a matter of infinite importance, in my judgment, by associating with each other, and forming friendships in juvenile years, be enabled to free themselves in a proper degree from those local prejudices and habitual jealousies, which have just been mentioned, and which, when carried to excess, are never-failing sources of disquietude to the public mind, and pregnant with mischievous consequences to this country."
Following these words is this bequest:
"I give and bequeath in perpetuity the fifty shares which I hold in the Potomac Company (under the aforesaid acts of the Legislature of Virginia) towards the endowment of a university to be established within the limits of the District of Columbia, under the auspices of the General Government, if that Government should incline to extend a fostering hand towards it-and until such seminary is established, and the funds arising on these shares shall be required for its support, my further will and desire is that the profit accruing therefrom shall whenever the dividends are made be laid out in purchasing stock in the Bank of Columbia or some other bank at the discretion of my executors, or by the Treasurer of the United States for the time being under the direction of Congress, provided that honorable body should patronize the measure. And the dividends proceeding from the purchase of such stock is to be vested in more stock and so on until a sum adequate to the accomplishment of the object is obtained, of which I have not the smallest doubt before many years pass away, even if no aid or encourage (ment) is given by legislative authority or from any other source."
The value of these bequests is not to be measured by the money they bestow, but by the influence which will be exerted when the thought they express is fully carried into the life of the nation. The American people have recognized the first and are putting it into effect wherever between the oceans Old Glory waves supreme. By the census of 1890 (the last statistics I have been able to obtain) there were in the United States in round numbers 220,000 school houses, 423,000 teachers, and 14,374,000 students. Thus in one respect they have magnificently executed the will of George Washington.
There is as yet no national university, and that thought of the Father of His Country has not been carried into effect. Will the American people execute this provision also of Washington's will? We have in the land many colleges and universities. Shall we have a national university?
Is a national university constitutional and possible? Some would answer the constitutional objection in the words attributed to a well-known Congressman, "What's the Constitution among friends?" Others contend that it has been buried by judicial hands in Puerto Rico and the Philippines. I do not admit this contention, but I do say that if there has been any burial; on the tombstone above the grave will be found the prophetic word "Resurgam," and the Constitution will yet arise, the bright and shining angel with no spot of death on her face and no smell of the grave in her garments, leading the Republic to heights of national usefulness and glory. Under this Government of express delegations and limitations of power a constitutional objection may never be put one side. The objection is that Congress may legislate only to carry into execution some one of the powers granted by the Constitution; that education is not entrusted to the General Government, and therefore by the tenth amendment full control of it is reserved to the States and the people.
I concede that this constitutional objection is to a certain extent valid; that Congress may not create an institution for educational purposes and endow it with the operative force of national law throughout the land; but at the same time a university which is in fact national may be established in this Capital City. Over this District Congress has full legislative power. It may incorporate, as it has done, the George Washington University, and that university may, by the combined efforts of the American people acting as individuals, be so built up in endowment, in equipment, in instructors, scientific investigators, and students as to make it the acknowledged representative of American education. Legally, constitutionally, it may dwell and have operative force only in this District, and yet it may stand as the educational leader of the nation. Place may bound jurisdiction, but greatness knows no limits of influence.
Many dread the centralizing tendencies manifested to-day within the Republic. To them the increasing power of Congress and the Executive and the widening of the jurisdiction exercised by the nation is freighted with peril. They see in it the gradual undermining of democratic institutions, the formation of a strong central authority, ending in personal despotism. The power of the States is to them their refuge, and their glory is in the town meeting. I confess to something of sympathy with this belief. The perpetuity of the Republic depends largely upon the preservation to the locality of its control of local matters, and the fact that any may be more efficiently attended to by the nation is no reason for taking away from the locality its control. I was brought up on the town meeting and nurtured in the spirit of independence born of local control. At the same time, some centralizations have no terrors. They mean, not increased power in the central government, but added glory to the Republic. What earthly danger can there be to the liberties of the nation if here in Washington is built the finest temple of art and in it gathered the richest treasures of painting and sculpture?
Place of birth may be within narrow boundaries, while the life touches the confines of earth and time. The waters of the Mediterranean bound the little island where Napolean was born, but the grown Napolean shook Europe from center to circumference. The baby Abraham Lincoln was shut in by the four walls of a cabin in Kentucky, but the man Abraham Lincoln filled this Republic from ocean to ocean, and wrote his name in letters of glory on the firmament of time from horizon to horizon. So, with a university. Its birth and legal residence may be confined by constitutional limitation to the narrow territory of this District, but its power and influence may reach wherever the mind of man aspires to higher knowledge. Congress may perhaps not endow it with national authority to occupy as its field of action the entire national domain, but no constitutional restrictions stand in the way of its rise to the height of an educational Himalaya. Congress may perhaps not give its degrees legal force within the States, but if it rises to the possible heights of university development its degrees will have a status in the realms of knowledge above that of any university in the world.
If the American people will this, there is no power which can prevent. It will require large sums of money to endow and equip such an institution. The people have abundance. Even the trusts, popularly denounced as so wicked, may contribute. The Steel Trust might furnish the frames for its buildings, the Standard Oil might lubricate its machinery, the Beef Trust might feed its faculty and students, and the Sugar Trust might sweeten all its efforts to advance and distribute knowledge. If they should do this, I fancy the Government might not improperly say to this university, paraphrasing the words of Scripture, "The wrath of man shall praise thee, and the remainder of wrath I will restrain."
It will require the devoted services of the most accomplished investigators in the broad domain of science, the most profound students and thinkers in all the other realms of knowledge, and surely, if the conditions of successful university development are furnished, the location in the Capital of the Nation will attract such men to its service.
It must inculcate the spirit of-patriotism, for no institution which is to be national in its character can hope to be permanent or make the most profound impress unless it holds up before all the citizens their first great duty of citizenship, devotion to the highest welfare of the Republic. It should teach religion, not creed nor denomination, but that truest science which looks through nature and history to the heights where dwells the unseen and infinite One.
As Tennyson sings:
Let knowledge grow from more to more.
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music, as before,
But vaster.
Other nations, attracted by the greatness of its achievements, may come to its assistance. No as yet known extension of the Monroe Doctrine will stand in the way. It may be done by agreement; it may require a treaty. All this may come not as the direct result of congressional legislation, not in defiance of constitutional limitations, not as a centralization freighted with possible danger to free institutions, but from the purpose of the people of the United States to execute the will of George Washington, and because they in their supreme majesty and in the exercise of their reserved power as individuals determine that it shall be done for the glory of the Republic and the better day of humanity.
Is there not something in this possible development appealing strongly to every citizen's love of country? Who will not rejoice to see the Capital City of the Nation richly endowed with everything which can give it preeminence in the best things? With prophetic eye Washington and L'Enfant saw what it might be, and laid out its streets and avenues with a view to that possible future.
It has many advantages for highest university development. It is the center of political life. The archives of the Republic are here. The scientific activities of the nation will be carried on in this city, and all that the chemist, the mineralogist, the geologist, discover in the soils, minerals and rock formations, will be open to the students' examination. Governmental administration, daily becoming more and more complex, is calling for legislators of largest experience and greatest wisdom. You cannot run the government of a great nation on the haphazard plan. The ship of state is something more than a plank on the waters driven hither and thither by wind and tide. Legislation must be other than a mere pooling of local interests. The best engineering skill will be summoned to direct the great work which the Government must carry on in the highways and harbors, in forestry and irrigation, in fleets and fortifications. Indeed, the highest thought and wisdom of the nation will more and more be centered here-centered because of the increasingly intimate relations between the Government and the life of the people.
All this will change the character of our society, attract men and women of intelligence and culture, and make it one in which the first place will be accorded not to him who holds the temporary office of Ambassador, Justice of the Supreme Court, or Speaker of the House of Representatives, but to him who has done the most and the best for the Republic and humanity.
This will not be the manufacturing, mercantile, or moneyed center. The time will not come, we trust, when it shall be necessary for some divine hand to drive out the money-changers and them that sell doves. This Capital City will more and more speak for the higher things of the national life. We rejoice in the Congressional Library, and hope that it will steadily grow until it becomes not merely the great library of the nation, but of the world. We look for temples of music, galleries of art, the finest displays of architecture, parks which in part are rich only in nature's wealth and in part adorned with works of art, memorials of the Republic, the incarnation in marble and bronze of the faces and forms of our heroes, and the great events of our history. We mean to have a common-school system to challenge the admiration of the world, and shall we not supplement all with a university which knows no equal and in whose service are the great thinkers and investigators of the world, a university national in fact, if not in law? In short, the will of George Washington must be fully executed by the American people.
He said so on this birthday of the Father of His Country I leave with you this thought: George Washington the testator, the people of the United States the executor, the bequest a university, its domicile this District, its field of toil the Republic, the reach of its ever-increasing influence and glory the boundaries of space and time.
Document Information
Images: 0
Photographic Credit: n/a
Author or Source: President’s Papers; 1905 yearbook The Mall
Document Location: University Archives
Date Added to Encyclopedia: December 21, 2006
Prepared by: Lyle Slovick, Assistant University Archivist
For more information about GW history
Contact:
Special Collections Research Center [1]
The Melvin Gelman Library [2]
The George Washington University [3]
2130 H Street, NW Suite 704
Washington, DC 20052
202-994-7549
mailto:archives@gwu.edu
Please send us your questions and comments about the encyclopedia.
This site is maintained by the Special Collections Research Center and the Web Development Group.
