very high standard of efficiency and that
it now meets fully the requirements of the Association of American
Medical Colleges.

The Law Department was organized October 12, 1868, with Mr. John M.
Langston[519] as professor and dean. In December of the same year, A.
G. Riddle was associated with him on the faculty and the school began
actual instruction on January 6, 1869.[520] During the years of the
financial difficulties of the University, however, the Law School
passed through a distressing experience. The attendance of the
students was uncertain, falling off rapidly when the Freedmen's Bureau
passed out of existence; for many of the students who were employees
serving the Bureau during the day attended lectures at night. These
left in large numbers when the Bureau closed, depriving the Law School
of a part of its estimated income. Losing thus this revenue, this
department was either actually suspended or barely kept open with a
single teacher and a handful of students. Mr. Langston retained his
position as dean under the then trying conditions until 1874, when he
resigned.

The department gradually recovered with the mending fortunes of the
University under President Patton and as a result of the demand in the
District of Columbia for a school of law admitting students without
racial restrictions. In 1881 B. F. Leighton was appointed to the
deanship of this department, a position which he has to the present
time filled with marked success. He took charge of the department when
it was barely existing and brought it to its present position of
usefulness. For many years he had associated with him A. A. Birney one
of the most distinguished members of the District of Columbia bar.
From that reconstruction of the department dates the period of its
real growth. In 1881 these two professors lectured to a class of seven
students, five of whom were graduated at the close of the session.
Since that time the courses have been broadened in keeping with the
advancing standards of legal study, the student body has increased ten
fold and the faculty has been strengthened in accordance with these
demands.

Although the Theological Department was the first in the plan of the
founders of the University, it was not put into operation until
January 6, 1868, when D. B. Nichols and E. W. Robinson, both
clergymen, began without pay, to give theological instruction twice a
week to a number of men already accredited as preachers and othe