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

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.