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Beginning of Collegiate Education West of the Appalachians, 1795-1833

Author: 
Year:
Pages:416
ISBN:0-7734-5447-0
978-0-7734-5447-7
Price:$259.95
This book chronicles the life and work of Charles Coffin, who, in the transitional period between 18th century Enlightenment rationalism and 19th romanticism, set out in hopes of transplanting the New England culture he grew up with to the southwestern frontier and labored to establish a Harvard-like college in Greeneville in East Tennessee. The educational theory of this institution, as is implied in surviving evidence, assumes that the purpose of collegiate learning was the fostering of a class of gentlemen who would form a leadership for their communities by practicing their professions and occupying positions of political influence. Charting Coffin’s successes and trials at Greeneville, his presidency at the East Tennessee College in Knoxville, his later return to Greeneville and the merging of his college with another competing institution, this study illustrates the life of a man who sought to establish Atlantic seaboard culture and a classical collegiate curriculum in the American frontier.

Reviews

“The State of Tennessee was but four years old when he arrived in the hamlet of Greeneville in 1800. Like his Puritan forebears, Charles Coffin was on ‘an errand into the wilderness’ to bring Christianity and education to the men and women on the expanding frontier. Thanks to Dr. James Patrick’s years of labor and prodigious research, at last we have a book-length biography of this extraordinary preacher, teacher, and college president.” – (from the Foreword) Professor William Bruce Wheeler, University of Tennessee

Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
I. Introduction
II.Newbury
III.Harvard
IV.Conversion
V. Journey South
VI.Frontier of Ideas
VII.Greeneville College
VIII.President
IX.East Tennessee College
X.Home Again
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index