dent whom he had sized up as
a ring-leader in class disturbances. This man was always elaborately
innocent when trouble was brewing, but the young professor was sure he
was right in his suspicions as to the seat of the trouble. Finally he
delivered an ultimatum: "I see either you or I must leave the
University." The student pleaded not guilty but Professor White
insisted, suggesting that the Regents might feel the same as he in the
matter. After some diplomatic passages, in which the student seemed not
unimpressed by the importance given him, he acknowledged that perhaps he
had been a little foolish and suggested that they try to live together a
little longer. He afterwards became a strong friend of the young teacher
and later fell at the head of his brigade at Gettysburg.

The success with which Professor White and his contemporaries labored
among their students is shown by his later statement that from among
them came senators, congressmen, judges, professors, lawyers, heads of
great business enterprises, and diplomats. One became his successor in
the Professorship of History and later in the Presidency of Cornell, and
a well-known American historian of his time. Another became his
predecessor in the Embassy to Germany. Professor White left Ann Arbor in
1863, partly because of business interests, partly because of his
election to the New York State Senate and the Presidency of Cornell
University.

With these men as leaders Michigan boldly embarked on a series of
departures from educational precedents. Though the time was not ripe for
graduate study, its desirability had been recognized emphatically in the
annual catalogues. In their class rooms several of the Faculty
endeavored to do more than follow the accepted textbooks, through
lectures, assigned readings, and exercises designed to develop the
individual powers of each student. Professor White was particularly
fertile in these expedients. The claims of comparatively new subjects,
foreign to the traditional curriculum, were recognized in chairs of
history, English literature, the modern languages, and above all the
sciences, where true laboratory work was gradually introduced until
Michigan had under Professor Douglas what was probably in its early
years the largest chemical laboratory in any American university. The
new scientific course, which was established within the Literary
Department and not as a separate school, was particularly significant of
the progre