The Lost History of Washington and Lee: New Discoveries: A Historical Performance Audit

By Kent Wilcox

Forty years in the making, this book constitutes an unveiling of hitherto unrecognized archival records pertaining to the founding of Washington and Lee University. These startling records created by men of the highest reputations and character disclose long-held secrets both shocking and at the same time assuaging. In the process, the true character of the universitys founding first president is illuminated as is his astounding significance to the history of the Great Valley of Virginia and to all the nations lovers of liberty.

Within a vast array of pearls of wisdom are disclosed serving to quash long-held but mistaken notions and several myths exposed as utterly false narratives concerning when the institution was founded and by whom. The institutions current mistake on this subject is only wrong by twenty-five years. Some of those who are today heralded as founders turn out had nothing whatever to do with establishing Washington and Lee. Within these pages lies the unmistakable evidence of who was responsible and when the historical miscalculations were committed.

Empty assertions too numerous to mention here are discredited as are many of their perpetrators. Some of those named were merely credulous and or too disinterested to scrutinize unauthenticated assertions of the past. Others, more agenda driven, failed to rise above their predispositions and selective perceptions, all failing to exercise due diligence in preserving the heritage and legacies of their forebears. The vast majority of the conclusions presented here for the first time since 1850 are virtually incontrovertible, at least by critics employing empirical standards nearly universally accepted since the dawn of the enlightenment.

Footnotes are liberally employed to emphasize facts and uncover truths, as well as giving citations of authority. A bibliography is also attached, as are several important appendices. In a few select cases, those with the intent to deceive or cover up are specifically exposed. In the case of one particular false narrative, its exponent is held up to just ridicule for knowingly publishing a malicious and unjust traducement of a noble paragon of virtue, Rev. William Graham.

In all, Washington and Lee University and its founding first president, William Graham, are shown in an entirely new light. The university is compellingly demonstrated to deserve to be considered the most progressive American institution of higher learning of the eighteenth century. As the new nation gave to the world an unprecedented democratic vision of freedom, this book reveals Washington and Lee University in its infancy (Liberty Hall Academy), introducing a vision of higher education for men and women of all races. This chartered degree-granting institution was then the only such institution with its doors open to all. Then the only campus in America where one might observe a black or female regular undergraduate student was at Lexington, Virginiaa sight never yet seen at Harvard, Yale, or even Princeton in the eighteenth century.

This noble idea unfortunately died when the universitys founder, William Graham, died. His vision in this regard is but a part of his heretofore mostly unknown legacy. Although unheralded, he was, nevertheless, unquestionably the only educator in America who dared to prove that a black man, if given the opportunity, can succeed in securing a college education. A powerful lesson that once learned remained a powerful and enduring truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984530486

Kent Wilcox

The author grew up in Lansing, Michigan, and resides in East Lansing with his wife, Donna. He is a rare book dealer and amateur historian. He began his professional career as the Director of a state government agency. At the same time, he served on numerous boards and commissions as an active member. As Director, he was an advisor to Governors and Legislative leaders on matters pertaining to public policy. He also served for several years on an advisory committee to the chief administrator of the Michigan Supreme Court and was appointed the Chair of a public utility research funding committee by the Chairman of the Public Service Commission. During this period, he also taught as an adjunct instructor on consumer law and politics at Eastern Michigan University and at a local Community College. After his governmental career, he founded Claverhouse Associates, a national performance auditing firm that conducts federal and state arbitration audits. He has been the President and Senior auditor for twenty five years.

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Copyright © 2018 by Kent Wilcox.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2018906220

ISBN:              Hardcover                978-1-9845-3050-9

     Softcover                 978-1-9845-3049-3

                        eBook                       978-1-9845-3048-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 05/31/2018

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The Lost History of Washington and Lee:

New Discoveries

(A Historical Performance Audit)

2018

(Including, a Brief Sketch of the Origins of Washington and Lee University, Based on Primary Sources)

Petition of the Liberty Hall Academy Trustees to the Virginia Synod,¹ September 1792:

(An extract)

For it was under Wm. Graham that our Academy first received its existence and it is chiefly owing to his extraordinary exertions that it has persevered through all the convulsions of a calamitous War and the many vicissitudes which have taken place through the operations of various causes for the space of about 16 years .…²

Samuel Lyle

Alex. Campbell

Wm. McKee

Wm Alexander

James Ramsay

Jno. Wilson

Joseph Walker

John Lyle

Samuel Houston

Claverhouse Associates

East Lansing, Michigan

Contents

Preface

Statement of Purpose

Introduction

Prolegomenon   (A Critical Introduction)

I      Key Historical Facts

II     Key Historical Errors

III    Key Early Historical Sources

IV    A Brief Sketch of the Early History of Washington and Lee University

V     Analysis of Selected Author’s Errors

(Chronologically arranged)³

*********************************************************************

(From here forward, the authors are taken out of the original order)³

To this list might well be added the Washington and Lee University’s website (2017) because here the university, once again, restates the history of its founding incorrectly by predating its origins by twenty-five years.

VI    Conclusions and Recommendations

VII   Bibliography

Appendix 1 - Origins Timeline

Appendix 2 - Checklist of Rev. William Graham’s Writings

Appendix 3-America’s First Black College Enrollee and Graduate, John Chavis

Appendix 4 - America’s First Female College Student,Sarah (McBride) Priestley

Appendix 5 - William Graham’s Nonexistent Defense of Slavery

Appendix 6 - Biographical Sketch of President William Graham

*********************************************************************

Below is a list of authors/sources who were assessed and found to have also made serious errors concerning the founding of Washington and Lee University or about its founding first president William Graham but are not included in the report due to time and space requirements. In all, seventy-four assessments were conducted.

Note: Any of the above-named authors who wrote after 1850 and referred to the university’s founding, incorrectly deemed its origins to be twenty-years (or thereabouts)⁴ prior to when the university was actually founded.

Preface

A performance audit typically provides for an independent review of someone or something. This performance audit is particularly unique and, in a broad sense, may be unprecedented because it addresses the broad spectrum of the major historical treatments of an institution instead of its operations in light of regulatory requirements or financial matters. Its utilitarian value will no doubt be determined by the way in which this report’s legitimacy and objectivity is received by the institution and the history community. Irrespective of how it is received, however, the accuracy of the audit’s findings should not be ignored because they are incontrovertible and consistent with all of the best evidence known to exist.

It is entirely reasonable to subject a public institution’s represented history to the same standards that are commonly applied in commercial settings because representations of what purports to be true may or may not, in fact, be accurate. The value of an audit will depend entirely upon several criteria. These criteria include the following: the expertise of the firm or auditor conducting the audit; the reputation of the auditors for applying close and careful scrutiny and analysis of selected aspects of that which is being assessed; the reputation of the auditors for possessing a willingness to publish controversial or embarrassing results that might otherwise be suppressed or couched in vagaries designed to obscure uncomfortable facts, as well as the recognized independence of the auditor.⁵

This historical performance audit was designed to specifically examine and analyze written historical accounts of the origins and early history of Washington and Lee University. The audit covers historical accounts included in published histories as well as those accounts that were authorized histories created at the behest of the university’s governing body, which was initially the Hanover Presbytery of Virginia,⁶ but which was transferred, in the main, to a Board of Trustees.⁷ In addition, this assessment includes commentary about the institution’s founder and first president, Rev. William Graham, and because Mr. Graham and the school are so intertwined during the college’s important first twenty years, it follows that anything written about either Mr. Graham or the school may very well impact upon the perceived character and reputation of the other.

The principal auditor is Kent S. Wilcox, who is currently president and co-owner of Claverhouse Associates, a national performance auditing firm since 1991.* Claverhouse Associates has conducted numerous performance audits pursuant to the Magnuson-Moss Federal Warranty Act and various regulations promulgated by the Federal Trade Commission and also at the behest of several state regulatory entities pursuant to various state regulatory authorities. In this regard, Claverhouse Associates has conducted more than fifty federal and state audits of national and state arbitration programs representing several Fortune 500 companies. The firm’s twenty-five years of existence has resulted in a multitude of institutional changes implemented for the purpose of either enhancing the quality of the programs under review or, in many cases, bringing a company or institution into compliance with federal or state law. In some cases, regulators have even initiated changes in their methods of applying the regulations under which they operate as a result of Claverhouse recommendations.

This historical performance audit was initiated and designed by the firm’s president, Mr. Wilcox. It is a unique design created for this specific purpose. The nature of the numerous suspected inconsistencies, errors, and inappropriate omissions necessitated the unique design of the audit review process and the report.

The genesis of the audit project was occasioned by the principal auditor being made aware of the rather unique fact that Washington and Lee University appears to have the unique characteristic of being possessed of not one but two entirely different and inconsistent early histories, a fact that immediately struck the auditor as necessarily improper. This unique characteristic was brought to the auditor’s attention by Dr. Ollinger Crenshaw, who had written a two-volume history of Washington and Lee, entitled General Lee’s College,⁸ which originally included an appendix entitled The Problem of the Origins. This provocative appendix title led, in part, to the auditor initiating a preliminary investigation into this seeming paradox which, in turn, led eventually to this performance audit project.

This audit was independently initiated and has been written on an entirely pro bono basis. The report is copyrighted, and any errors contained herein are the sole responsibility of the principal auditor, Kent S. Wilcox. The report was not initiated by or on behalf of Washington and Lee University and, therefore, Washington and Lee University bears no responsibility for the text of the audit.

There are several historical authors who deserve special recognition for their important contributions to the history of Washington and Lee University and/or, its founding first president,⁹ Rev. William Graham, and the terribly important and unique role played by the Presbyterian Church in promoting public education in the British colonies of North America and then later in the United States. Some of the authors included in the report deserve special recognition despite any historical mistakes they may have made about the college’s founding or concerning the character of the institution’s founding first president, William Graham. They include Justice (Rev.) Caleb Wallace, whose understandably brief first authorized institutional history of the founding of what was initially and unofficially referred to by the Hanover Presbytery as Augusta Academy,¹⁰ and later, officially, as Liberty Hall Academy is free of error; Professor and Trustee Edward Graham, Esq., who wrote the first published history of the college’s founding included in his Memoir of the Late President William Graham, which included much important information pertaining to the early history of the college; Dr. Henry Ruffner, often referred to as the first true historian of Washington College. His important manuscript history was written in the 1840s at the suggestion of the Trustees but was allowed by the Board of Trustees to lie unpublished, not because of the quality of the work, but to spite the work’s author, with whom the Trustees were unhappy. Eventually, the Trustees ordered the publication of Ruffner’s manuscript, and it was included in the first volume of the institution’s Historical Papers in 1890.¹¹ Despite Ruffner’s several errors, his history is a valuable record of events. His understanding of the character of the college’s first president, however, is embarrassingly flawed in many instances and based upon incorrect information and highly biased and unreliable sources.

Dr. Ruffner’s valuable contribution is terribly tainted by his numerous mistakes concerning the college’s founding first president and his inexplicable final (1857) editing that caused much confusion about the origins of the college. The Trustees’ failure to publish Ruffner’s Early History of Washington College, as it was written, denied the public access to this important work of history for many years.¹² It is entirely possible, however, that the published history was substantively edited (altered) by his well-meaning but, in this case, misguided son and Trustee, William Henry Ruffner; Rev. George Junkin, whose published inaugural address was the occasion for the college’s first authorized published history of the college’s founding;¹³ Dr. Ollinger Crenshaw, whose important history entitled General Lee’s College is comprised of two different versions: (1) The unpublished typescript version in two volumes, with footnotes and an appendix; and, (2) the published Random House version, which bears an imprint date of 1969 and which was released without footnotes and without the vastly important appendix A, The Problem of the Origins; and finally, Dr. I. Taylor Sanders who provided the world with the most definitive treatment of the institution’s first president, Rev. William Graham in the first two chapters of his Now Let the Gospel Trumpet Blow.¹⁴ Notwithstanding these last two listed authors’ important contributions to the university’s history, it is disappointing that they also failed to realize that the post–Civil War version of the origins of the college was wrong in dating the founding before the October 13, 1774. Importantly they both also failed by assuming a link between Liberty Hall Academy and one or both of the local preparatory schools of Robert Alexander and/or Rev. John Brown, when in fact no such link whatsoever exists. This fact was never in doubt during the college’s first ninety years of existence, and none of the several authors who published a history of the college before 1850 made that mistake.

Surprisingly, neither Dr. Crenshaw nor Dr. Sanders cited Liberty Hall Academy’s first authorized history written by Rev. (Later Justice) Caleb Wallace, whose brief written history was created at the behest of the Hanover Presbytery, then the governing authority of the Academy. This historical account constitutes the institution’s first authorized written history. Amazingly, this inchoate history, as best the auditor could ascertain, has never been published or even cited as an authority by any historian, and yet its existence is palpable and its legitimacy is beyond question. The account is understandably cursory because the school was only founded in October of 1774 and Wallace’s history was written in May of 1776, less than two years after its nativity. Given Wallace’s status as a paragon of virtue and integrity as well as his professional standing in both the legal and clerical professions, it came as a great shock that his vastly important history had gone unheralded even to this day. It is entirely inexplicable that this critically important document seems to have been overlooked by virtually everyone given its appearance in the first few pages of the college’s record book containing the Board of Trustees’ very first meeting minutes.

The Presbytery’s directive to Clerk Caleb Wallace is found in the Presbytery’s meeting minutes.¹⁵ This rather significant oversight is surprising in that the historical sketch, based on documentary records of the founding and patronizing Presbytery, is located in the Board of Trustees record book containing the Trustees’ meeting minutes covering its earliest years and is easily located in the first several pages of the Trustees’ first record book. The Presbytery’s recorded directive, in this regard, was admittedly only in reference to the Prince Edward Academy, but the two Academies were created at nearly the same time and the clerk obviously realized that what he was directed to provide to Prince Edward Trustees should also be provided to the Augusta Academy’s Trustees. It is not uninteresting that the clerk who created the first authorized documentary history for both of these venerable institutions of higher learning was also the only man in Virginia who served as a Trustee on the Boards of Trustees of both of these colleges. Caleb Wallace would go on to become a Justice of the then highest court in Kentucky.

The opening lines of Judge Wallace’s history of Liberty Hall Academy deserve to be repeated frequently, which this report has done. They are:

The Present Academy of Liberty Hall began under the Direction and Patronage of the Presbytery of Hanover as the following minutes fully evince.

At a session of the Pby of Hanover at Cub Creek Oct. 13, 1774, the Pby resumed consideration of a school for the liberal education of youth which we unanimously judge to be of great importance. We do therefore agree to establish and patronize a public school which shall be confined to the county of Augusta in this colony. At present it shall be managed by Mr. William Graham, a Gentleman properly recommended …¹⁶ (Emphasis added)

Note: Not one author who has asserted that Washington and Lee University’s origins are to be found in the local common or preparatory schools of Robert Alexander and/or Rev. John Brown bothered to provide any credible evidence in support of that claim. Most who have made such a claim have also erred by asserting Robert Alexander was a graduate of one of two possible European Colleges located in the British Isles, but Dr. Ollinger Crenshaw investigated those claims and concluded that Mr. Alexander attended neither of these institutions. (See Dr. Crenshaw’s General Lee’s College, Typescript version, Appendix A, The Problem of the Origins.)¹⁷ Their failure in this additional regard reflects poorly on their credulity generally.

Claverhouse Associates wishes to acknowledge the cooperation and assistance of the library staffs of Washington and Lee University (Leyburn Library), Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, and Princeton Theological Seminary—all of which have provided important assistance in locating scarce and early records of the Hanover Presbytery, as well as records of the Trustees of Liberty Hall Academy (now Washington and Lee University.) Of paramount importance is the assistance of the Library at Princeton Theological Seminary which provided a photocopy of the original manuscript of Rev. Archibald Alexander’s manuscript Memoir of Rev. William Graham written in the 1840s.¹⁸

The research foundation upon which this audit was constructed was built over the course of more than forty years. The auditor has had the distinct advantage of time, computer technology, and the cooperation of many individuals associated officially and unofficially with Washington and Lee University. From the beginning of this process in 1972 until the present, the auditor has enjoyed the willing cooperation of the university, its administrators, and its faculty. In the earliest days of this project, the auditor communicated with the librarian, Betty Ruth Kondayan, who provided much valuable material, and the auditor had an unscheduled on-site interview at the university with the venerable Dean, James G. Leyburn for whom the current library is named. Many years ago, the auditor communicated with the late Dr. Diehl, the well-known local Rockbridge County historian. More recently, the auditor has communicated with both Dr. Taylor Sanders, Dr. McDaniel, and Dr. Theodore DeLaney whose works and helpful comments are herein acknowledged and have been most appreciated.¹⁹ The auditor also acknowledges the assistance and cooperation of the staff of the Library at Princeton Theological Seminary who made copies of rare and valuable manuscript resources available for the auditor’s use in conducting this audit.

The auditor has been a rare book hobbyist/dealer for over forty years and has relied heavily on numerous scarce and even rare written materials that he has in his own personal library. Many of these books, pamphlets, and journals are now available online through various vendors like Google Books, and the auditor has downloaded several of these in order to print selected pages containing possible material to be extracted and then quoted in our report. Since the auditor possessed most of the original materials, we have only cited in the report’s bibliography and footnotes the printed source originally relied upon. There are some materials referred to in the report that we obtained via Google Books and are not in the auditor’s library, but none that comes to mind was of critical importance to the reports’ fundamental conclusions. Where the auditor relied solely on material from one of Google’s Books, he has acknowledged Google Books as his source for the material. If the auditor has overlooked any of these, he extends his apologies to Google Books and to Google’s founder Mr. Page. Mr. Page grew up in the auditor’s East Lansing, Michigan, neighborhood. Thanks to Mr. Page and his Google Books, those who may want to fact-check this report will be able to do so with much greater ease than in the past.

*Claverhouse Associates is a national performance-auditing firm that has been in business since 1991. The firm is an independent, well-known enterprise, widely recognized by numerous federal and state regulators that regulate national and state arbitration programs operating pursuant to the Federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and its associated administrative regulation CFR Part 703. Most audits conducted by Claverhouse Associates are mandated by Federal or state law, and the principal recipients of the audit reports are the governing regulatory agencies. The purpose of the audits is to ensure annually that the arbitration program administrators and their trained arbitrators have carried out their regulated programs in compliance with the governing regulatory requirements. The primary recipients of the audit reports generated by Claverhouse Associates are the United States Federal Trade Commission and selected state regulatory agencies.

Some of the corporate entities that have been a part of audits conducted by Claverhouse Associates include Acura, Ford Motor Co., Chrysler Corp., General Motors, Honda, Toyota, Lexus, Mercedes Benz, Porsche, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, and Volkswagen.

The founding president and senior auditor is Kent S. Wilcox. Mr. Wilcox was for many years director of an agency in the State of Michigan named the Michigan Consumers Council, which had the responsibility for advising the governor, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and both houses of the Michigan Legislature, on all pending legislation that impacted Michigan consumers, including banking, public utilities, insurance, and retail sales, as well as all licensed occupations. In this capacity, Mr. Wilcox sat on the public policy committee of the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators. In addition, Mr. Wilcox was appointed to numerous Boards and Commissions, task forces, and special committees by governors and various regulatory agency administrative heads. A recognized expert on Consumer Law, he has lectured on and taught classes on Consumer Law at Eastern Michigan University. He was also appointed by the Michigan Supreme Court’s administrative division to a special advisory committee concerning administrative rules and procedures where he served for several years.

During his tenure in state government, Mr. Wilcox appeared on hundreds of television and radio programs, including multiple appearances on national broadcasting programs like, NBC’s The Today Show and CBS Morning News. His national performance-auditing firm is the longest operating firm of its type in the nation, and his company’s mandated performance audits have gone unquestioned and unchallenged by any federal or state regulator for twenty-five years.

Disclosure: The auditor, Kent S. Wilcox, is related to several families who long ago lived in Rockbridge County, Virginia. His fifth great-grandfather, for example, is that Samuel Lyle who was one of the original Trustees of Liberty Hall Academy and was for many years the Trustees’ treasurer. The enclosed assessments, however, are in most every case not subject to any form of significant familial bias because they are in most every case based on incontrovertible documentary records, as well as the published eyewitness testimony of unimpeachable witnesses most of whom testified in print or in eighteenth-century letters.

Statement of Purpose

Claverhouse Associates’ original purpose in conducting this historical performance audit was to reveal the true nature of the irreconcilable assertions²⁰ referenced by the preeminent historian of Washington and Lee University, Dr. Ollinger Crenshaw, in the following true statement below:

It is evident even from cursory investigation that the institution [W&L] had adhered to one version of its history prior to 1865, and to another in the post-bellum era.²¹ (O. Crenshaw, General Lee’s College, Typescript version, Appendix, The Problem with the Origins) (Emphasis added here does not represent an error.)

In addition, to identify the more egregious of the inexplicable and seemingly innumerable written historical mistakes as they relate to the early history of Washington and Lee and its founding first president, Rev. William Graham, that have been repeated in variant forms by historians, genealogists, and pamphleteers of every imaginable sort since 1850. This includes significant errors of omission concerning the first black college graduate in America as well as the first female college student in America and concerning the university’s founding first president, Rev. William Graham.

Note: The two currently competing versions of the founding are as follows:

CORRECT VERSION

a) The college was created by the Hanover Presbytery, an association of ministers and church elders to establish and patronize a public Academy in Augusta County, Virginia, on October 13, 1774, under the direction of Rev. William Graham;

INCORRECT VERSION

b) The college began with a private preparatory school conducted by a Mr. Robert Alexander in Augusta County in 1748, 1749, or 1752, which was subsequently conducted by Rev. John Brown and which later evolved into Washington and Lee University. Note: This version appears in various forms, some of which may only refer to one or the other of these two named educators.

Quite obviously, both renditions cannot be true. As the audit will demonstrate, version (a) is undeniably correct while version (b) is demonstrably incorrect.

Note: The principal errors of omission refer to students John Chavis and Sarah Priestley. Both of these students were accepted at Liberty Hall by its first president William Graham. The only two such college students who attended chartered institutions of higher learning in the United States during the eighteenth century. They also include other various failures of the university to adequately recognize and honor the many important contributions made by the university’s founding first president William Graham. His contributions to higher education as well as to Virginia and to the nation as a political philosopher and an advocate for religious freedom and civil liberties associated with the nation’s Bill of Rights. Moreover, as a leading proponent of the American Revolution who took to the field as a captain of militia on more than one occasion during the war. Finally, the university has failed to make their founding first president’s known writings available to the public by reprinting his known works.

Introduction

In 1972, the author received a letter from his barely known father announcing that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Thus began a forty-year investigation that was precipitated by a desire to learn more about the man I then only vaguely knew and about the family I had never known.

During a quickly arranged visit to Oklahoma for a final visit, I was introduced to my eldest living relative, a great-aunt from Muskogee, who put me in touch with her younger sister in Sacramento that possessed a rare family history. This book turned out to be an astounding tome filled with amazing revelations, one of which led me the Great Valley of Virginia. Here, I discovered several links to Washington and Lee University, including the fact that my fifth great-grandfather, Samuel Lyle, was one of the original Trustees, appointed two months before the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. This was how the author discovered why the then college was initially named Liberty Hall Academy. But that was just the first of a series of discoveries that would stretch to over forty years of periodic amazing revelations.

In time, my research unearthed certain disturbing anomalies and inconsistencies that could not be reasonably rectified. As a professional performance auditor, these inconsistencies were becoming increasingly annoying, and I became plagued by a need to rectify representations that did not seem to be possible. These fragmentary miscues began to appear as pieces to a puzzle. As each small error was corrected, a place into the partial picture the actual image began to form a recognizable form. In time, everything became clear. What began as a series of small mistakes became a monstrous hoax as inconsistencies began to call into question professional reputations and historians with an agenda that went into a predictable cover-up mode. Most of the historians that have been assessed and discovered to have added to the long list of errors went astray due to carelessness. Only a few knew or should have known that what they were publishing was not true. Unfortunately, one of them was an author of great reputation who was relied upon when he should not have been.

Fortunately, there are extant records and documents that allow for correcting the mistakes of the past; but for some unknown reason, historians, genealogists, and researchers since 1850 neglected to consult these obscure archival treasures. Hopefully, once the existence of the records that are now being highlighted are consulted and analyzed by professional historians, a cogent history of the founding of Washington and Lee will be published and with it a restoration of the true history of that period.

Perhaps the most egregious mistakes that have been identified herein relate to the unmerciful maligning of the character of the man who was most responsible for the erecting the first institution of higher learning south of the Potomac and west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Rev. William Graham.

Rev. Graham was summoned by the leading Presbyterians of Virginia, to come south for the stated purpose of managing the launching of an educational institution. The envisioned seminary or "college²²"—if you were able to obtain a charter from the governing authorities—was to be for the purpose of preparing educators and clergymen. There was, at the time, an increasing demand for ministers and teachers as the nation was realizing its manifest destiny to expand its environs both southward and westward.

This noble objective Mr. Graham met and indeed far exceeded its original intent. In the end, he had become the most sought-after educator and divine south of the Potomac. A fact, that today is mostly obscured from view in the vicinage of the Valley of Virginia. At the same time, this fact was well recognized by the leading men of that early period. Men like Patrick Henry, James Madison, George Mason, Edmund Randolph, and Rev. Archibald Alexander, founding president of the Princeton Theological seminary, all of Virginia. Even founding fathers like Graham’s preceptor, Rev. John Witherspoon, president of Princeton and signer of our famous Declaration of Independence, and Witherspoon’s son-in-law, who succeeded Witherspoon as president of Princeton, Samuel Stanhope Smith understood the unusual gifts of Rev. Graham. It was this Smith who had the honor of summoning Graham to Virginia at the behest of the Presbyterian Clergymen of Virginia. Smith and Graham and their mutual schoolmate at Princeton, James Madison, were all critically involved in Virginia’s great struggle for religious liberty that flowered into the establishment clause of the nation’s Bill of Rights. These men knew Rev. Graham in ways that today’s leading men of the Great Valley do not.

It is one of the author’s objectives to shine a bright light on obscurities that have hidden Graham from view and allowed fictionalized characterizations to camouflage from view the true nature of the man who deserves to be feted as the father of that institution known to many in that day as the Princeton of the South. As these facts emerge, they will assist in appropriately assigning to the dung-heap of history the great fabrication that Rev. William Graham was a defender of African slavery. An invidious distinction that could only come from someone who did not know the measure of this man. A discovery that will allow for a well-deserved restoration of the unstained character of the university’s founding father.

A later unearthing that will do much for the prestige of Washington and Lee is the unchallengeable fact that Graham’s Liberty Hall Academy holds the distinct honor of being the first and only degree-granting college in North America to have accepted into its undergraduate ranks, a man that would be distinguished as the first black college graduate in the United States of America. The documentary evidence that makes this a certainty emerged from the rich storehouse of ancient archival records located in various libraries in Virginia. Records that will allow posterity an opportunity to reevaluate many questionable notions that have served to distort and misinterpret various important historical occurrences in Virginia during the last half of the eighteenth century.

In the course of the author’s research, it was also revealed that it was at Washington and Lee that women in America first found an open door to higher education. Indeed, a married woman, Mrs. Sarah (McBride) Priestley, found in Rev. William Graham a welcoming educator who made her a member of the college’s regular academic program. This disclosure will open the door to more in-depth research into Washington and Lee’s unprecedented foray into progressive education and into the colorful lives of Mrs. Priestley and her husband. Dr. James Priestley.²³ Together these two early students at Liberty Hall later oversaw educational endeavors for men and women in various parts of the country. Mrs. Priestley burdened, at the time of her matriculation with two young children, was unable to complete her program at Liberty Hall, but she advanced sufficiently that she later oversaw a successful school for women in Baltimore. This school was operated in conjunction with her husband’s Academy there.

The importance of the matriculation of Mr. Chavis and Mrs. Priestley has heretofore not been fully appreciated in the history of higher education in America. That this occurred under Rev. William Graham without any known associated social disturbances in the then-largest slaveholding state in the nation is an astounding revelation pregnant with research possibilities. The author determined that these shocking realities deserved to be placed before the reading public.

Analysis of the extant historical literature covering the second half of eighteenth-century Virginia made clear that some of the existing assumptions about affairs in the Valley relied upon by historians were not sustainable when scrutinized. Highly significant hoaxes and dishonesty also emerged that are shocking due to the participation by some important historians will call into question numerous sacred cows, like the reliability of the long accepted legitimacy of the works of William Henry Foote. A careful study of his two heretofore valued Sketches of Virginia, Historical and Biographical will henceforth become a much more cautiously cited source. Foote’s monumental historical misdeeds played a central role in the 1865 inappropriate and surreptitious repudiation of Washington and Lee’s original and now proven legitimate history of its founding. This and the institution’s misguided adoption of a fictionalized and easily proven bogus account of its founding by a credulous Board of Trustees in 1865 embarrassingly resulted in an apparent magical expansion of the university’s life by twenty-five years. The culmination of the embarrassment was the celebration and fanfare that took place in Lexington throughout the 1998–99 academic year.²⁴

The necessary redundancies associated with the unfortunate repetitions by so many different writers, each presenting their variations on the same theme, are regrettable. This rather comprehensive collection of assessments, however, will serve as a handy reference guide for avoiding further repeats of the same common mistakes.

The author laments not being possessed of the writing skills this endeavor deserves. His hope is that his findings and discoveries will assist someone more worthy with the important task of rewriting the early history of the university and its founding first president, William Graham—a man who Dr. Samuel L. Campbell once described thus:

Mr. Graham came to this country with the character of a gentleman of genius, scholarship, and piety, which character he supported through life.²⁵

(Dr. Samuel L. Campbell, History of Washington College …

Southern Literary Messenger, 1838.)

Prolegomenon

(A Critical Introduction)

For it was under Wm. Graham that our Academy first received its existence and it is chiefly owing to his extraordinary exertions that it has persevered through all the convulsions of a calamitous War and the many vicissitudes which have taken place through the operations of various causes for the space of about 16 years …

(Liberty Hall Academy Board of Trustees’ Petition to the Virginia Synod of the Presbyterian Church, Sept. 1792)

The multifarious nature of this historical performance audit report suggests the appropriateness of providing a rather critical introduction in order to better understand the several laudatory revelations that emerged from the investigation upon which the reports’ findings are based. Clearly, Washington and Lee University’s reputation will be greatly enhanced by the findings in two material ways. First, because it has been revealed that without question Washington and Lee University was the only eighteenth-century chartered American college that accepted a black college student. The student, John Chavis, is not just the only known black student to have been accepted into the regular academic course of a recognized college in the United States, he also went through the regular academic course.²⁶ As such, he is the first black college graduate in the nation. This fact, Chavis himself asserted as part of a court filing, and fortunately it was officially recorded and memorialized in a Rockbridge County Court order, signed by every one of the then sitting magistrates, one of whom, William Lyle, was also a Trustee of Washington College. Many years later, Chavis’ status as a college graduate of Washington and Lee University was alluded to in a written essay by yet another Trustee of the college, William Henry Ruffner²⁷ whose father had been an early president of the college.

Secondly, Washington and Lee was the only American college in the eighteenth century to accept a female student, Sarah (McBride Priestley) into its regular academic program. In both cases, our audit uncovered records that prove both of these assertions. That Mrs. Priestley was enrolled as a regular student in the regular academic program is unassailable.²⁸ The auditor’s exhaustive search failed to locate any other college that claims to have had a regular undergraduate black student in the eighteenth century or a female student.

There is also a significant finding that calls for a major correction by the administration to restore the university’s correct narrative that describes the institution’s origins and its official founding by those responsible for its existence. The early account (1776) was consistently provided to the administrators, governors (Trustees), students, faculty, alumni, and the public during the college’s first seventy-five years. This well-documented history was, however, radically repudiated and inappropriately revised in 1865 without explanation and without the support of any credible evidence or justification. This revisionism took place in the aftermath of a great conflagration that engulfed our nation between 1861 and 1865 and which decimated the lives and infrastructure of Virginia, including the college destined to become Washington and Lee University. Today, much of the true history has been restored as a result of this audit. A more thorough history remains to be properly written by others more suited to the task, but now, that can be accomplished based on documentary-based facts. The current public representation is based entirely on fragments of mere assumptions, gossip, gratuitous assertions, and easily disproved hearsay. The history of the college’s founding and its origins as currently represented in most-published histories and by the university is an absurd and easily proven fiction.

Dr. Ollinger Crenshaw

To date (Summer 2017), the undisputed premier published history of Washington and Lee University is General Lee’s College, by Dr. Ollinger Crenshaw, late professor of history at Washington and Lee published by Random House in 1969. More important, however, in many ways, is a slightly earlier version written by Crenshaw, which, in its typescript form, contains a multitude of enlightening footnotes and an invaluable appendix entitled The Problem of the Origins. This version has yet to be published.²⁹

Crenshaw’s book in either format comprises the broadest and most thoroughly researched historical treatment of Washington and Lee University that currently exists. At the same time, the book’s initial chapters on the early days of the college are inexplicably sprinkled with several of the worst common errors committed by Dr. Crenshaw’s antecedent sources, most of whom arose in the aftermath of the Civil War. The lone exception being the earlier and fallacious account of the college’s founding published by William Henry Foote in 1850. Foote based his repudiation of the long-established documentary-based institutional history, on a brief phrase in a very dubious letter, ostensibly written by Rev. Samuel Houston. Relying on this scant piece of evidence, if indeed it actually exists, Foote repudiates all of the numerous historical published articles and institutional records that were created between 1774 and 1849. All of the early records and publications were generally consistent as regards to who created the college and when it was created, and importantly, they all contained a completely contrary account to that perpetrated by the grossly mistaken Mr. Foote. The records and publications which all agreed that the college was founded by the Hanover Presbytery in October of 1774 had been the universally accepted account during the college’s first seventy-five years.

It was Dr. Ollinger Crenshaw who discovered the amazing fact that the university holds the distinction of being the only known long-established American University that possesses two entirely unique histories of its founding and its origins. One that was consistently maintained during the institution’s first seventy-five years, and the other one astoundingly fashioned in the fertile imaginations of a credulous Board of Trustees in 1865. It was this 1865 Board which, in that same year, presumably authorized the rewrite of the history of the college’s nativity.³⁰ A revision based, in the main, on the utterly false undocumented narratives published by William Henry Foote.³¹ Crenshaw, however, made no attempt to unravel the mystery of these Trustees’ motivations or to explain who were the driving forces behind the revisionism.

Disappointingly, Crenshaw declined to declare that the account of the founding currently represented by most modern-day historians is clearly false. Instead, he mysteriously adopted the incorrect account currently represented by Washington and Lee and left the responsibility of calling that current account exactly what it is to others. Of course, what the currently represented history is, is an inexcusably incorrect fiction lacking any credible eighteenth-century evidence to support its accuracy.

Any serious assessment of the founding by an experienced auditor would quickly discover the undeniable truth of all of this report’s major findings including the fact that the university’ currently asserted history of the founding is undeniably false and foundationless. A consideration of the full complement of the important known facts leads inescapably to our conclusions. Moreover, no credible evidence exists to support the university’s current claim that the college was founded earlier than 1774.³² Neither is there any credible evidence to support the idea that the college was linked in any way to the eighteenth-century educational endeavors of either Robert Alexander or Rev. John Brown.

Robert Alexander’s educational endeavors are indistinguishable from most all of the other early private efforts in rural America to provide elementary instruction to the local rural residents, including those of his brother, Archibald (Old Ersbel)Alexander. Ersbel as he was referred to, provided elemental instruction to one of Liberty Hall’s original Trustees, Samuel Lyle, in the same period and same neighborhood where Robert was carrying out his educational instruction. These facts were related by Mr. Lyle to Ersbel’s grandson, Archibald Alexander, who provides a cursory description of these efforts by his grandfather in his Memoir of Rev. William Graham. Certainly, Archibald Alexander, a noted historian of early Presbyterian educational activities in Colonial America, would hardly have failed to credit his grandfather’s brother Robert if he had any reason to believe that Robert’s educational endeavors were worthy of being noted as anything exceptional, but, of course, he did no such thing. The well-published Rev. Archibald Alexander had myriad opportunities to credit his close relations in print had he thought it appropriate. Indeed, he did just the opposite, as is noted in his vastly important Address to the Alumni of Washington College, wherein he gives all the credit to William Graham for being the school’s father and first chief executive officer.³³ A sentiment shared by the entire eighteenth-century Board of Trustees as reflected in its petition to the Virginia Synod of the Presbyterian Church in the early 1790s.

Crenshaw, concerning the vastly important notion of the college’s founding, declined to bring the embarrassing truth to the attention of the university that was both his employer and his financially supporting partial underwriter for conducting the research necessary for writing General Lee’s College. It comes as no great shock then that Crenshaw demurred when confronted with the embarrassing reality that no one at the university, after 1865, had ever bothered to thoroughly research their own early records in order to discover their proper history. Instead, they all essentially relied upon William Henry Foote or Foote’s many credulous adherents including Trustee Bolivar Christian.

Unfortunately, when Random House decided to publish General Lee’s College, it purged Crenshaw’s original manuscript version of General Lee’s College of its numerous and important footnotes and its vastly important appendix A entitled The Problem of the Origins. The rationale for the publishing house’s decision in this regard is unknown to the auditor. Its decision, whatever its reasons, served to conceal from public view the true history of the university’s founding.

If the institution’s history department had exercised proper due diligence, however, someone on the faculty would have long ago revealed that which this report makes abundantly clear, which is that the university’s earliest records contain all that is necessary to establish what entity created the college and precisely when it took place. Alas, no one in the History Department or any other university official, after 1865, ever cited, or even referenced the institution’s first written and authorized history of the founding of the college.

While the college was created on October 13, 1774, the creators, the members of the Hanover Presbytery, withheld giving the school an official name, reserving that honor for the prospective Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees was created by the Hanover Presbytery on May 6, 1776,³⁴ and then at the Trustees’ first meeting a week later (May 13), the Board’s first official and recorded Act was to give its school the name Liberty Hall Academy. These facts are easily located in the university’s first record book which was used to record the meeting minutes of the Board of Trustees. Embarrassingly, the facts are located on this precious artifact’s first page of text,³⁵ which is undeniably the college’s first authorized history, is a clear and concise detailing of the events leading up to and including the official decision to establish and patronize a public seminary for the education of young men, and especially those who were predisposed to preaching the Holy Gospel. A history that as far as the auditor could determine has never been published, nor even cited as an authority during the last two hundred years. This fact is admittedly as astonishing as it is incomprehensible.

In appendix A, Dr. Crenshaw explained that Washington and Lee University, unlike any other institution in the nation, has represented to the public two altogether conflicting histories detailing how and when the institution was founded. The university’s earliest representation of the founding and it activities during its early years is based on official documentary records of the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Records of both the Hanover Presbytery, which created the school, and served as its first governing authority and those of the college’s Board of Trustees which accepted most of the governance responsibilities once the incipient operation was transferred from its temporary headquarters at Mount Pleasant to the new campus buildings on lands adjacent to the Timber Ridge Presbyterian Meeting House.

The second and conflicting history was adopted by the college in the iconic year of 1865. At this time, the college’s misguided Trustees arbitrarily altered the university’s birthdate by extending its existence by twenty-five years. Somehow, the world of American history seems to have failed to take cognizance of the seemingly paradoxical inconsistency of claiming to have two entirely different dates of birth. A difference of two-and-a-half decades. Crenshaw left to posterity the means by which to begin solving the mystery of two competing histories, but he declined to rock the Lexington community’s boat, so to speak. He was a messenger who apparently sought to avoid the likely wrath of some in the greater Lexington community for delivering an unpopular message that would likely ruffle the feathers of some influential local Lexington area families. Some of these families, it seems, have long been representing an ancient connection to the university that actually does not exist. His reluctance, in this regard, is, therefore, more understandable than justified.

The revised adopted history of Washington and Lee that the university has adhered to since 1865 is an unadulterated fiction bearing little resemblance to the truth. It is an incontestably embarrassing representation, and like fairytale air castles, it was built without the benefit of any historical foundation whatsoever. Indeed, the revision was an action of paramount significance that went entirely unnoticed to and unexplained to the public. Instead, the Trustees buried their newly revised history of the founding in a mostly in-house article in a larger piece called in its short title, Charter and Laws.³⁶

Crenshaw in his appendix A, The Problem of the Origins then, did not include the inescapable conclusion and chose to merely point out the inconsistency between what the university represents today and what the college’s institutional guardians represented during its first seventy-five years of existence. In other words, he didn’t say the 1865 Trustees were wrong. He said its action in this regard was inconsistent.

This report, however, explains what transpired in this regard and demonstrates just how all the collected documentary evidence known to exist on the subject is consistent with the institution’s early history as originally represented. It also demonstrates that the currently represented institutional history is inconsistent with all the known eighteenth-century documentary evidence known to exist. The currently asserted history is offered without benefit of authority, and this is for good cause, which is that there is no credible authority or evidence to support the revised account. None that is, which existed prior to Foote’s publishing of his two books on Virginia. Thereafter, there were many such accounts, but all were, at its root, based on Foote’s false account, and none of them ever bothers to even identify the inconsistency between the 1865 revised history and the one adhered to by the institution for nearly a century (1774–1865.)

The first public appearance of a published revised version of the college’s founding took place in the 1850 publication of William Henry Foote and was contained in the first volume of Sketches of Virginia, Historical and Biographical. The second appearance of any note also came from Foote. This account appeared when he released his second Series of Sketches of Virginia …, in 1855. While Foote’s two accounts vary, they are, nevertheless, both wrong. Neither of Foote’s published accounts of the college’s founding was based upon any credible evidence, and both seriously conflict with all known previous publications and all of the known documentary evidence created in the eighteenth century.

Foote, who eschewed the use of citations of authority, fully admits this amazing fact in the introduction to the first volume of his two Virginia historical treatments. Understandably, he fails to provide any credible substantiation for his inconsistent account. He implies, however, that his account is based upon an alleged letter, supposedly written by Rev. Samuel Houston. We say supposedly because as best as the auditor was able to learn, no one but Mr. Foote has ever had the pleasure of seeing the referenced letter. This letter is a topic thoroughly treated with in this report. In sum, if indeed the letter ever existed, its content, as represented by Foote, is both replete with easily demonstrated historical errors of consequence, and its content in the first book, as represented by Foote, was altered and corrected by Foote without notice or acknowledgment in his second book. It is, therefore, neither credible nor competent evidence in support of Foote’s preposterously mistaken representations about the origins of Washington and Lee University.

Foote quotes from Houston’s alleged letter full of significant errors and then later publishes another altered version as though no changes had been made. In short, Foote altered what he said the letter contained in an apparent attempt to make the letter seem more credible. Had he acted in this way before a Court of law, Foote would have found himself in jail for, at least, perjury, and possibly for forgery. As it stands, he is simply an unmitigated obvious fraud. His guilt is proven by his own conflicting quotations of the same original text. Foote simply wanted the letter to say something other than what it apparently did say. The original quoted text is so patently false that the letter’s author would have no credibility as a knowledgeable source pertaining to the creation of the college. This was apparently a fact that Foote discovered some time after he released his first volume of Virginia history. The Houston letter is the only possible evidence ever presented in print that Foote could possibly have relied upon for revising the university’s early history that was consistently represented for seventy-five years³⁷(1774–1849).³⁸

Institutional representations of the origins of the institution did not change from the original accounts until the landmark year of 1865. It was at this time that the Board of Trustees apparently experienced their extraordinary historical epiphany. Then, without fanfare or even a recognition of what was about to happen, the Board of Trustees of Washington College published in an official institutional document³⁹ an entirely different history of the school’s founding, one that silently repudiated all of the early documentary evidence and the credible evidence written by Presbyterian Church leaders and early students of the institution who had matured into eminent scholars (e.g., Professor Edward Graham, Rev. Dr. Archibald Alexander, Dr. Samuel. Campbell, and John Holt Rice).

The Trustees chose instead to embrace a series of undocumented foundation less theories postulated by a misguided attorney and amateur historian named Bolivar Christian. Mr. Christian—having been appointed a Trustee of the college several years prior to the conflict between the States, and who had the distinction of being a law partner of John Randolph Tucker—made the unfortunate decision to expand his amateur status as would-be historian and apparently persuaded his colleagues on the Board of Trustees that all their predecessors had been wrong about when and how the college was founded.

Mr. Christian’s venture into history as fiction does not reflect his only misadventure that seriously and negatively impacted the college’s history; however, because, as pointed out by Dr. Crenshaw, he also perpetrated the so-called Edward Graham manuscript hoax⁴⁰ which culminated in Mr. Christian pawning off an old sheet of undated and unsigned rough draft notes as a long-lost history written by a professor of the college.⁴¹ Not content with writing a preposterous advocacy piece⁴² falsely representing the document and its contents, Trustee Mr. Christian also desecrated one of the university’s most sacred archives by inserting into the college’s very first record book (the Trustees’ only record of their first meeting minutes) this spurious document, which now, thanks to the misdeeds of Mr. Christian, is placed in the position of page one of the book’s text despite the fact that it has no provenance, and its author and the date it was written are both mysteries. It is very much akin to the millions of sheets of paper stuffed into faculty file cabinets bearing discarded notes without a signature or any indication as to what the sheet represents, if anything.

By this act, Christian rendered this archive a partial forgery, passing it off as the college’s first authorized history, when in fact, the document has no historical value whatsoever. No one knows what it is, what it represents, what its purpose was, or when and by whom it was written. Forensically, we only know that it is foolscap with writing on it.⁴³ Trustee Christian’s actions make the university’s guardians (Trustees) appear foolish for credulously accepting the representations of one of their own who had completely altered the long-established history of the college without bothering to authenticate any of the numerous gratuitous assertions upon which his revised history is based.

This report will explain in some detail that Mr. Christian’s supposed source, Edward Graham, wrote a memoir of his elder brother William Graham in 1821, which was published by another early student of Liberty Hall, John Holt Rice. Edward Graham’s 1821 article delineates precisely when the college was established and by whom. This account is in direct contravention of the revisionist narrative published by Foote in 1850 and by the college in 1865.⁴⁴

Noteworthy is the fact that Edward Graham was later credited by several historians with having supplied them with valuable information concerning the college’s earliest years, and in every case, these authors subsequently published accounts consistent in all important respects with Edward’s 1821 account and inconsistent with Mr. Christian’s baseless assertions. The subsequent accounts published by the historians who had relied upon Edward Graham’s written communications stretched over time until shortly before Edward’s death in 1840; therefore, the inconsistent narrative jotted down on a scrap of foolscap upon which Mr. Bolivar Christian relied for his evidence overturning seventy-five years of documentary history, do not, and could not represent Edward’s permanent view about the founding of the college.⁴⁵ Since the document is unsigned and undated, history will likely never be able to know what the document truly represents. The truth about what this document is, or means, is likely not discoverable. Regardless, it does not repudiate the many official records still extant that were created by the authorities that created the college.

A century and a half later, Dr. Crenshaw wrote out his shocking twentieth-century exposé in a dedicated appendix entitled The Problem of the Origins. That appendix lay dormant for yet another forty-five years. It was this appendix A that served as the seminal precipitating impetus behind the conducting of this historical performance audit. The auditor came upon this revealing document somewhat accidentally, but upon reading it, he realized immediately that the reality which Dr. Crenshaw describes is not simply a historical paradox but constitutes a historical inconsistency that is seemingly without parallel in the history of American higher education, an inconsistency that is factually, irreconcilable. Note: Numerous historians have attempted to reconcile these seeming inconsistencies including the renowned late Dr. Herbert B. Adams of the University of Virginia who tried valiantly to untangle the frustrating web of faulty assumptions and gross misinterpretations of official records of the Hanover Presbytery between 1771 and the end of 1776, but as Dr. Crenshaw explains, even Dr. Adams threw up his hands in despair and gave up.⁴⁶

What is abundantly clear is that either the initial seventy-five-year history was wrong, or the revised history is in error, they simply cannot both be true. The audit was designed, in part, to discover which history, if either, was true. The task of discovery, while in this case proving to be inordinately time-consuming, in retrospect, need not have been as difficult as it proved to be. Had the auditor only done that which he and all Valley historians should all have done and started by researching the earliest extant records, he and all of the others would have quickly discovered that the official documentary evidence unquestionably debunks the revised history of 1865. As it stands, it has taken more forty years to bring this assessment to fruition.

The process can reasonably be said to have begun in 1973 when the auditor received a letter from Betty Ruth Kondayan in response to an earlier inquiry. Ms. Kondayan, the university’s then-librarian, listed several sources of obscure information concerning Washington and Lee University and President Graham that could be copied for a nominal