History of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Article 41 of North Carolina Constitution set forth to establish affordable schools and universities for the instruction of the young people in the state.

[2][3] A political leader in revolutionary America, William Richardson Davie, led efforts to build legislative and financial support for the university.

[4] The site of New Hope Chapel was chosen for "the purity of the water, the salubrity of the air and the great healthfulness of the climate", as well as its location at the center of the state, at the intersection of two major roads.

[5][6] David Ker, who conducted the local high school in Chapel Hill, was chosen as the first presiding professor of the university.

He received the document in 1796 before he left to assist Andrew Ellicott with determining the boundary of the United States after the Treaty of San Lorenzo with Spain.

The school depended on donations of money and land, "but North Carolinians did not give these generously, feeling that the university was too expensive, too difficult to reach from all areas of the state, and that its liberal and skeptical teachings were insufficiently Christian".

Black workers labored through the summer heat to clear a main street for the village of Chapel Hill and to construct the foundations of Old East, the first building at the University of North Carolina.

Through this growth, the university began to move away from its original purpose, to train leadership for the state, as it added to the curriculum, first starting with the typical classical trend.

They attacked faculty with clubs, stones, and pistols; sang ribald songs; violently rang the university bell; stole farmers' produce and animals; and perpetrated assorted vulgar and dangerous pranks.

"Cheating became a sport for many students, who transformed it into 'a trial of wit between the class and the Professor, and it was considered good fun to win.'

They cut holes in classroom floors, put good students under them, and passed questions down by a string—what was called "working the telegraph.

"[21] Following up on this, a lengthy letter to the editor soon appeared; signed only "Alumnus" (a student), the author was identified by university historian Kemp Battle as Joseph A.

[22] [C]an the Trustees of our own State University invite pupils to the institution under their charge with the assurance that this main stream of education contains no deadly poison at its fountain head?

...[O]ught he not to be "required to leave," at least dismissed from a situation where his poisonous influence is so powerful, and his teachings so antagonist to the "honor and safety" of the University and the State?

....We must have certain security, under existing relations of North with South, that at State Universities at least we will have no canker-worm preying at the very vitals of Southern institutions.

In addition to the letter of Hedrick and preliminary remarks, it concludes with an abolitionist speech at the University of North Carolina by Judge William Gaston.

Citing as his "political teachers", besides Jefferson, fellow Southerners George Washington, Patrick Henry, James Madison, Edmund Randolph, Henry Clay, as well as Benjamin Franklin and Daniel Webster, "I cannot believe that slavery is preferable to freedom, or that slavery extension is one of the constitutional rights of the South.

"[26] He was hung in effigy; faculty disowned him; parents threatened to withdraw their sons; and alumni joined the public in calling for his dismissal.

[27] He refused to resign and since "Mr. Hedrick had greatly, if not entirely, destroyed his power to be of further benefit to the University", he was terminated within a week, though his salary was paid through the end of the term.

For example, it undertook a massive program to support farmers by conducting scientific analyses of fertilizers and their effectiveness in relation to different crops and soil types in North Carolina.

The pedestal (plinth) and plaques were removed shortly afterwards on instructions from then-Chancellor Carol Folt (who announced her resignation in the same letter[37]).