Valley Spirit

Proceedings of a Meeting of the Electors and Trustees of the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, Located in Centre County, held Wednesday, September 6th, 1865.

Judge Watt, of Carlisle, President of the Board of Trustees, called the meeting to order when the following persons presented credentials as electors:

From the Pennsylvania State Agricultural Society.

A. Boyd Hamilton. President, Harrisburg; Frederick Watts, Ex-President, Carlisle; B. Morris Ellis, Vice President, Hughesville, Lycoming county; Joshua Wright, Vice President, Washington.

From Philadelphia Agricultural Society.

George Plight, Germantown; Craig Biddle, Philadelphia; James A. McCrea, Philadelphia.

From Huntingdon Co. Agricultural Society.

S. Miles Green, Barree; J. Sewall Stewart, Hutingdon; Joshua Greenland, Cassville.

From the Erie Co. Agricultural Society.

Nathan Blickensdafer, Conneaut, Ohio; James Miles, Girard.

From Montgomery Co. Agricultural Society.

William H. Holstien, Bridgeport.

From Lycoming Co. Agricultural Society.

John V. Woodward, Williamsport.

From Columbia Co. Agricultural Society.

Sylvester Purcell, Bloomsburg; Mathias Hartman, Cattawissa; Joseph P. Conner, Fowlersville.

From Berks Co. Agricultural Society.

Thomas Penrose, Reading; Jeremiah Mengle, Leesburg.

From Clinton Co. Agricultural Society.

Samuel H. Brown, Cedar Spring; Alexander Reed, Thomas S. Lingle, Lock Haven.

From Centre Co. Agricultural Society.

Samuel T. Shugert, Bellefonte; J.M. McCoy, Milesburg; Samuel Van Tries, Potter's Mlls.

When an election took place for three trustees, Messrs. Watts and Miles acting as tellers. After consultation, Messrs. Augustus O. Heister, of Dauphin; Samuel Chadwick, of Allegheny; and B. Morris Ellis, of Lycoming, were nominated and elected to serve for three years, when an adjournment was had until 1 o'clock.

Same Day--Afternoon

The electors met in annual meeting when on motion of Judge Watts, A. Boyd Hamilton was called to the chair, and on motion of W. Woodward, Wm. H. Holstien, of Montgomery, and S. Miles Green, of Huntingdon, were chosen Secretaries.

Dr. McCoy, of Centre submitted the following, which was adopted:

Resloved, That a committee be appointed to report a preamble and resolutions expressive of the sense of this meeting in relation to the origin, present condition and future prospects of the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, and to submit an address to the Industrial classes here represented, upon the exceeding importance of sustaining the institution.

Whereupon the chair appointed the following committee: Messrs. J.M. McCoy of Centre; James A. McRea, of Philadelphia; J.S. Stewart, of Huntingdon; N. Bliedensdefer, of Erie; John V. Woodward, of Lycoming; Sylvester Purcell, of Columbia; Alexander Reed, of Clinton; William H. Holstien, of Montgomery; Frederick Watts, of Carlisle; Joshua Wright, of Washington; and A.O. Helster, of Dauphin.

During the absence of the committee, the meeting was addressed in explanation of the objects and management of the College, by Dr. Allen, President of it. Before the speaker had concluded the committee returned and reported the following;

Preamble and Resolutions

Whereas, The Agricultural College of Pennsylvania was originated, and has been organized by the industrious classes, to remedy evils arising out of the distaste for manual labor, imbibed at our literary institutions of learning, as well as our Agricultural Societies, have wholly failed to supply. And

Whereas, The industrial classes have regained the control and government of the institution which they have thus originated and organized by reserving to themselves the election annually of three trustees, in the exercise of which right we are now here assembled as electors; therefore

Resolved, That whatever, in the management of the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, has been wrongly done, whatever has been omitted, that should have been done, may, in part, at least be justly attributable to our negligence, and that a sure remedy against the recurrence of similar evils will be found in our own vigilance.

Resolved, That the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, conducted successfully for six years, under great disadvantages, and great embarrassment, in less than one-third of the College building, has commended itself to public confidence, and given assurance of ultimate and entire success.

Resolved, That the indomitable energy, untiring perseverence, generous liberality, and self-sacrifices of the turstees, as well as pressing forward the work upon the College and other necessary buildings and supplying the funds required, as in securing from Congres the grant of land to the several States which should provide Colleges for the benefit of Agriculture and the mechanic arts, commend them to the public confidence and esteem.

Resolved, That vitally important as are "The Experimental" and the "Model Farms," the completion of the College building, the erection of the Barn, the President's and Professor's houses and necessary outbuildings, were still more important; and these, requiring an expenditure of fifty thousand dollars beyond the funds of the institution, are a full justification of the trustees against the imputation, of negligence.

Resolved, That the endowment arising from the investment for the proceeds of the sale of the Agricultural College Land Scrip, which cannot exceed thirty-seven thousand dollars a year, is absolutely required to render the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania what it should be, and that the same can be more economically and beneficially expended in one than in more than one institution.

Resolved, That the literary and sectarian institutions of the State, whose officers and agents have, for the last two years, been soliciting the Legislature for a portion of the proceeds of the Agricultural Land Scrip, under the pretence that they will qualify themselves to discharge the duties required, have no just claim thereto; and that a grant of the appropriations (), would the palpable violation of the trust imposed by the act of Congress and a consequent forfeiture of the fund.

Resolved, That the Industrial classes of Pennsylvania, constituting more than three fourths of our entire population, are deeply interested in the success of the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, the only literary or scientific insitution in the State subject to their control. And that we therefore pledge ourselves and our consitutents to sustain and protect it from the assault fo prejudice upon manual labor institutions protect it against the combination of our sectarian colleges to secure for themselves, respectively, portions of the proceeds of the lands donated by Congres, and against the further embarassments of poverty, by which it has been prevented from accomplishing what it would otherwise have accomplished.

Address.

The undersigned committee, appointed by the delegates from the State and County Agricultural Societies, electors to the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, most respectfully submit to their constituents, the industrial classes of Pennsylvania the following Address:

The literary colleges of our country furnish men well qualified to fill the learned professions, but whether the sons of professional men of the sons of agriculturists and mechanics, the students generally leave those institutions of learning with an utter distaste for manual labor and are wholly unqualified for any of the industrial pursuits of life. This great defect in our educational system has been long felt and sincerely deplored.

The Pennsylvania State Agricultural Society and the several county Agricultural Societies have been productive of much good. They have introduced thorughout the State the best implements and machinery and have greatly improved the productiveness of the soil. The annual exhibitions are admirably calculated to arouse the agricultrual community from their lethargy, but they are too ephermeral to fix their attention and guide them by the light of science, or to protect them form the frauds that are from time to time perpetrated upon them. The wants of the age, thus unsupplied by our educational institutions and agricultural societies, seemed to require a permanent institution, in which the sciences bearing upon the practical duties of life should receive marked and special attention. An institution in which more time should be devoted to physics and less to metaphysics--more to the living and less to the dead languages, than in our ordinary literary colleges--an industrial college founded upon the principle that all labor, whether manual or mental, which conduces to man's comfort, is equally honorable--a College immediately connected with an experimental and with a model farm on which this great truth should be developed and illustrated from day to day by the Presdient, Professor and Students--an institution in which the results of the experiments, whether successful or unsuccessful, should be faithfully recorded in books provided for the purpose, open at all times to visitors and to publications for the benefit of the commmunity--an institution to which agriculturists could resort as well for social intercourse and consultaiton with each other, the President and Professors, as for the improvement of their seeds, grains, vegetables and farm stock--an institution so distinguished for the productions of its model farm, for the luxuries of its orchards and gardens, and the beauty of the shrubbery in its Campus as to make the students proud of the labor of their hands--an institution at which the sons of farmers and mechanics could be furnished a thorough, practical, scientific education at an expense not incommensurate with the limited incomes of that class of the community.

In an effort to supply these wants, with a a capital of but fifteen thousand, the Agricultural college of Pennsylvania had its origin. The enterprise, however, so commended itself to public favor that the Legislature of Pennsylvania appropriated one hundred thousand dollars--the State and county Agricultural Societies contributed seventy-five thousand dollars; and the Congress of the United States granted lands ot the several States which should provide colleges for the benefit of agriculture, and the mechanic arts, equal to thirty thousand acres for every Senator and Representative in Congress to which the States were respectively entitled--which grant, amounting to seven hundred and eighty thousand acres, the Legislature of Pennsylvania on the 1st of April, 1863, accepted and appropriated the annual interest accruing therefrom to the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania for the endowment, support and maintenance thereof.

The trustees of the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, thus supported and encouraged, have secured four hundred acres of good limestone land, susceptible of the very highest degree of improvement, an have erected theron a college, a barn, dwelling houses for President and Professors and other necessary buildings, at an expenditure considerably exceeding two hundred thousand dollars. These structures far surpass in permanence and adaptedness to the purposes for which they are intended, any Agricultural College buildings in the United States. The completion of the college building, within the last year, has increased the capacity of the insitution for the accomodation of students from one to four hundred. For six years it has under great disadvantages, been successfully conducted, in less than one-third of the college building. Thus enlarged, with a President and corps of Professors, unsurpassed by those of any similar insitution in the world, the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania is now presented to the public--now opened for the accomation of the sons of the industrial classes of our State--now, open to add dignity to manual labor--now open to demonstrate the truth of the motto of one of her literary societies that "Labor guided by science approximates Omnipotence.

Will you sustain and protect this institution, combatting the long fostered prejudices of the great majority of our literary men, and literary instituions, against the connection of manual labor with the acquisition of scientific knowledge? Will you sustain it against the combination of literary and sectarian institutions throughout the State, to obtain from the legislature an appropriation to themselves of the proceeds of the lands donated by Congress to endow Colleges, "the leading object of which is to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and mechanic arts," under pretence that they will qualify themselves for the discharge of the trust? Will you protect it from the embarassments of poverty, under which, from its very organization to this moment it has been continually suffering? that poverty which has been a bar to the establishment of the "Experimental farm"--that poverty which has prevented the formation and improvement of the "Model Farm" and the erection of the additional barn, required on the Experimental farm--that poverty which has prevented the stocking of the farm with the choicest breeds of horses, cattle, sheep and hogs--that poverty which but for the indomitable energy, untiring perseverance and generous liberality of the trustees would have blighted all its prospects?

And yet this institution, thus struggling for life, thus excused because because of its poverty, by all who know it, for not being what it should be, is said by our literary sectarian institutions to be "too rich, too liberally endowed," although not one dollar has been yet realized from the grant. But suppose the entire land scrip converted into money at eighty cents per acre, the highest price for which it can be sold, it would amount to but six hundred and twenty-four thousand dollars, which, invested at six per cent, would produce but thrity-seven thousand, four hundred and forty dollars annually, an income greatly below that arising from the respective endowments of Harvard University, Yale and Columbia colleges and other mere literary Institutions of our country; an income, every dollar of which could be most economically exepended yearly, in the necessary current expenses of the Agricultural College. And how beneficially the entire income derivable from the students could be expended, let the indebtedness of the institution and the remedies for the evils and the supply for the wants, to which we have just referred, answer. The learned professions have their colleges and schools, the Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Catholic and others have their denominational institutions scattered thorugh the length and readth of the land. The schools of law are conducted by lawyers, the schools of medicine by doctors, the literary sectarian institutions by the respective denominations at whose instance they have been incorporated and endowed. The industrial classes of Pennsylvania constitute three-fourths of our entire population, and yet what institution of learning within the bounds of the Commonwealth do you govern or control. Not one, except the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania. Here and here only, is your voice heard through the representatives of the State and Agricultural societies at every recurring annual election of trustees.

You can mould the policy of the Institution to advance the interest of the great masses of the community to which they belong.

Electors of the Trustees, you are the sovereigns of the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania.

Over what other institution can you exert such control? Nay, over what other institution of learning can you as a class, exert any control? And will you suffer this Agricultural College originated as we have seen, by the wants and necessities of the age and thus far crippled by poverty, to be deprived of the endowment mainly secured by its founders and absolutely necessary to its success; deprived of it too by institutions which we have seen despise industrial Colleges and only propose "to teach such branches of learning as relate to Agriculture and the mechanic arts" because they love "the goodly Babylonish garment an the wedge of gold" which they expect the proposition to bring.

The preamble, resolutions and address were unanimously adopted, and three thousand copies ordered to be printed for general circulation.

The meeting was then addressed by Mr. McAllister, of Centre, and Mr. Heister, of Dauphin, explaining in as clear a manner as possible all the transactions of the board of trustees in relation to expense, progress and present condition of the Insitution.--After which the meeting adjourned.

A CARD.

On behalf of the electors of the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, consisting of delegates from Philadlphia, Montgomery, Berks, Dauphin, Cumberland, Columbia, Clinton, Huntingdown, Erie, Lycoming county and Pennsylvania State Agricultural Society, the undersigned were requested to return the thanks of said representatives for the kind and liberal hospitality extended to them by the citizens of Bellefonte and Centre county during their visit to the county, including a very agreeable visit to the coal mines on the summit of the Allegheny mountain, upon the Bellefonte & Snow Shoe Rail Road.

A. BOYD HAMILTON,
WM. H. HOLSTEIN,
S.MILES GREEN,
Committee.

In a loathsome prison cell of this State with wo burglars and a negro ravisher for companions, is incarcerated a pious young Catholic priest, for the crime of having preached the word of God, without having first obtained a State license to do so. To obtain this license he should have taken, not merely an oath of loyalty for the future, but also an oath of loyalty for the past, declaring that he had never thought or sympathised otherwise than the authorities think he should have done during the war. That oath he might have probably taken, if he would only degrade his manhood an his priesthood, by kneeling at the throne of the Governor--a beggar for permission to preach the Gospel of the King of kings.--Another devoted priest is now awiating his trial at Jefferson City for the same offense. This clergyman has been from the beginning a strong Union man, and was editor of the German Catholic paper of this city, which was all but radical. The Jefferson City Times classes his offense with "gambling and selling whiskey without license," and says he will be tried for each offense.--In a previous number the same paper mentions that some persons are of opinion that a religious war is at hand, a war chiefly against Catholics, and intimates that as the war against slavery commenced in Kansas, that against Catholicity will commence in Missouri.

The vulgar bigotry of this paper would place it below all criticism or authority, if there wre not indications that there is a spirit alive--the infidel and guillotine spirit of the French Revolution--bold and wicked enough to dare such a persecution. The fact that only Catholic priests have been arrested, though it is notorious that they never preached politics nor rebellion,k and never even preached against the new constitution--points in this direction. But the few wretched radicals that would advocate such a persecution, and have in fact commenced it, can never prosecute it. The respectable men of their own party (who are all against the new constitution) will scarecely stain it with blood in its infancy.--The honest men of every religious denomination, who feel that it is not popery, but Christianity in every form, these infidels would destroy, will rally round the persecuted--feeling that their turn may come next. The great American principle of perfect religious freedom, which is now showing itself in the condemnation of this enactment by the Eastern papers, of every shade of opinion, is arrayed against the persecutors. Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist will unite against them and that church which shall sufer mots, and show most fortitude in leading the van of the followers of Christ, will receive the plaudits of the Amercian people, and show itself the work of God!

We think that there can be no resonable doubt the radicals, headed by Wade, Sumner, Stevens, Phillips, & Co., will bitterly opposed the admission of the Southern States into the Union next December, precisely as they resisted and prevented the admission of Louisiana, during the lifetime of President Lincoln; and the main ground of their opposition will be the refusal or unwillingness, of the applying States, to grant universal suffrage to the freedmen. But, constitutionally they cannot make this a ground of objection, or they would have done so in the case or Louisiana. In that instance it was the irregular and unrepublican character of the government, erected according to Mr. Lincoln's proclamation, which stated that the participation of one-tenth of the legal voters, would justify him in accepting their actions. Upon this government Mr. Sumner heaped the fiercest abuse, styling it "nothing but a stupendous hoax"--"a mere seven months' abortion begotten by the bayonet in criminal conjunction with the spirit of caste, and born before its time, rickety, unformed, unfinished--whose continued existence will be a burden, a reproach, and a wrong." And he was successful in opposing the admittance into congress of its delegates. So, to avoid another and similar resistance to the admittance of Louisiana, Andrew Johnson has abolished the government of that State, and appointed a provisional governor, and directed a new constitution to be framed, and steps, in all respects similar to those taken by the other Southern States, to be pursued. Louisiana, and all the other States, will present themselves with free constitutions, but such as do not recognise the right of negro suffrage! And, then, what a terrible hullaballoo will be raised about the "distinctions of color," and the right of the "freedmen," and the "contumacy" of the South; and the "not dead but sleeping spirit of slavery," all culminating in the assertion that the members cannot constitutionally be admitted until they subscribe to the oath regarded by act of June, 1862, forbidding all who had voluntarily aided or abetted war from seats in congress. And, then what howls of demoniac glee will go up from the vituperative Sumner, should some decline, or others be proved ineligible. How will Beecher riotously cachinate in his paper and bellow infidel nonsense! And how will Greeley rave and rant, and roar and "expectorate," in the Tribune, and heap abuse and ridicule upon the "Southern chivalry'" and altogether, they will raise such a tremendous dust that the eyes of many will be blinded, and they will vote against the Southern delegates, contrary to all right, reason or justice.--Well let us take things coolly.

Let us in the first place, if necessary, elect men, such as can show a Union record, men who have not been in the army; or, if they did, were forced by conscription--men who can swear that they did not voluntarily aid the Confederacy, and that they have not voluntarily taken up arms against the United States.

We can afford to take things coolly, as the United States needs us and our services; they wish for us to be prosperous, that we may help pay the mighty load of debt incurred by the war; they need cheap cotton goods which they cannot obtain till social order is restored in the South; the world needs and is languishing for our products, and will not obtain them till civil order, peace and quiet allow us to restore our disorganized labor machinery; the North needs our trade, but until we can raise produce and make money we cannot trade; nor will our people feel like turning themselves to productive industry until all these disturbing influences in regard to the Union, and State severments are settled and settled satisfactorily to us.

So peg away, Messrs. Radicals, peg away! you are only gnawing at the vitals of the Union itself.