Dissension and Dissolution

Smith and other Anglican leaders were regularly suspected of disloyalty to the revolutionary cause. Although Smith was largely sequestered at his estate near the Falls of Schuylkill, he had offered tours of the school to Hessian officers^[1] and may even have warned the Hessians of an impending attack by Washington’s forces at Germantown.^[2] Late in 1777, after the end of the occupation, the Pennsylvania Assembly attempted to suspend the powers of the Trustees, claiming that some “are now with the British army . . . and in open hostility against the United States,” while others who had remained in the city under occupation were “enemies of the said states.”^[3]

The true crisis for the school came in 1779, a year of deep social conflict in the city. As inflation spiked, artisans, mechanics, and others protested against merchants and in favor of price regulations. When a militia demonstrated at the College in June in support of price controls^[4], wealthy flour merchant and school Trustee Robert Morris defended his “liberty” to set prices as he wished. On October 4, militia members held four merchants and marched them to the home of wealthy lawyer James Wilson, previously a tutor in the College, signer of the Declaration, and protegé of John Dickinson. Wilson, an ally of Morris, was thought to oppose price controls and also the new Pennsylvania Constitution. Five people were killed during this “Fort Wilson” conflict.^[5]

Shortly afterward, the College became a direct target of the “Constitutionalist” or radical state leaders, led by Presbyterians Joseph Reed and George Bryan. In early 1779, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives formed a committee to investigate the school^[6], and in November the Assembly passed an act of dissolution. Their legislative language was harsh. The 1779 Act voided the charters, declaring that the institution had been “in the hands of dangerous and disaffected men” who have provoked “tumult, sedition, and bloodshed.” The Act also cited the 1764 Trustees vote to favor Anglican dominance of the board as a major reason for its departure from its original religious balance.^[7] Despite Smith’s vociferous protests, the school was no longer in his hands, and a new school was mandated into existence.^[8]

Reformation

The new school was to be governed directly by the state of Pennsylvania and renamed the “University of the State of Pennsylvania.” The new Board of Trustees President was school graduate Joseph Reed, also the President of the Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council. With him were constitutionalist leaders David Rittenhouse, George Bryan, and Timothy Matlack, and moderate John Dickinson. Two Anglicans who favored the Revolution, Francis Hopkinson and William White, remained on the Board.

The Act also mandated a remarkable degree of religious diversity. The Board would include the “senior ministers” of the Episcopal (Anglican), Presbyterian, Baptist, Lutheran, German Calvinist (Reformed), and Catholic churches of the city. One area, however, in which no diversity of opinion was to be tolerated was political allegiance: an oath of loyalty to the new Pennsylvania constitution was required of all Trustees and faculty.

The state confiscated estates belonging to the College, and William Smith, the long-serving Provost, was compelled to give up his position and his house on the College grounds. Smith soon moved to Maryland, while continuing to protest the legislature’s actions.

The new University’s academic leaders were John Ewing and David Rittenhouse, two men of science strongly committed to the new revolutionary order. Their new curriculum was quite different from that of the old College. A group of seven professors equal in rank would be appointed, including Ewing and Rittenhouse, covering natural and moral philosophy, geography, astronomy, history, mathematics, Latin and Greek, and English and oratory. The medical school faculty structure remained the same though personal and political differences created problems filling the posts until the mid-1780s.

Reflecting the state’s population, the German language also took on a new centrality in the curriculum. German Lutheran Rev. Henry Helmuth was appointed Professor of German Philology in 1784, and he attempted (unsuccessfully) to create a full German-language academy or college within the University, while advocating publicly for parents to send their children to Philadelphia for advanced education in German.^[9]

The University, it seems, became a vibrant intellectual space in the revolutionary city. Enrollment numbers in the upper levels of the school increased during the 1780s, suggesting the school’s appeal. Commencements, held on July 4, were well attended, and honorary degrees were given to Thomas Paine and George Washington, among others. The Marquis de Chastellux, who received a degree, wrote of the impressive speeches given by a “rising generation.” The building was also used actively by community organizations, including night schools. Noah Webster gave a series of lectures in 1786 and 1787, supporting the new federal Constitution, even though Provost Ewing was active against it.^[10]

At the same time, financial problems were significant, even dire, and new Provost John Ewing was constantly appealing to state leaders for increased funds. And political freedom of speech may have been limited: when one student, Francis Murray, spoke with sympathy of Major John André at the 1781 Commencement, his diploma was withheld.

1. Baer, Hessians, 242: showing off the Orrery, other scientific equipment, and the library to Hessian officers. ↑

2. Baer, Hessians, 245; Sullivan, The Disaffected, 83–85. ↑

3. “An Act for suspending the powers of the Trustees of the College and Academy of Philadelphia,” PA Statutes at Large, presented December 29, 1777, passed 2 January 1779. ↑

4. Nash, Unknown American Revolution, 314 (Militia at the College, June 27), 315–6 (Morris). ↑

5. On “Fort Wilson”: Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, 174–178; https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/fort-wilson/ ↑

6. Trustees Minutes 2:122: House committee inquiry into the school, March 16, 1779. upa11volii_wk1_body0124-House committee to enquire into College. ↑

7. its “free and unlimited catholicism.” ↑

8. Brunhouse, Counter-Revolution, 78–79; Pencak, “Pennsylvania’s Anglican Loyalist Clergy,” 102–103; Foster, In Pursuit of Equal Liberty, 105–106; Sack, History of Higher Education in Pennsylvania, 280–282. ↑

9. UPA pre1820, no. 1190. UPA Archives, John Christopher Kunze: “While teaching German at Penn, John Christopher Kunze worked unsuccessfully with fellow German Lutheran pastor, Justus Henry Christian Helmuth, to establish a German College within the University.” Roeber, “J.C.H. Helmuth,” 80–84. Roeber, “German & Dutch Books,” in The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, 309:

   Initially, once the Treaty of Paris reopened the possibility of importing German-language books, the future looked exceedingly promising. In no small part this initial possibility stemmed from the talented efforts of two Philadelphia Lutheran clerics who aggressively promoted the study of German language and literature in the context of American colleges. Johann Friedrich Kunze and Justus Christian Heinrich Helmuth would later occupy professorships in German philology at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively. Both helped to edit the Neue Philadelphische Korrespondenz; Helmuth founded the von Mosheim Society in 1789 to promote the reading and discussion of German books. The pastors succeeded in sending some promising youngsters to the University of Pennsylvania, where courses in philology were taught in the German language.

   Roeber, “German & Dutch Books,” 312:

   But Helmuth himself recognized by the 1780s and 1790s the need for a more extensive literary effort to preserve German-language readership among the young. By 1786 he had produced in unpublished pamphlet form a dialogue conversation between youths that encouraged parents to send their children to Philadelphia to take advantage of German-language schools, and, for the more advanced, German-language classical learning and the classics department at the University of Pennsylvania. Moreover, he himself composed various odes and songs to be sung by children's choirs at his parish in Philadelphia.↑

10. Trustees Minutes vol. 3, 215–216, February 4, 1786: approval for 1786 Webster lectures. ↑