"Congratulations, venerable mother ...! You alone, among all the
colleges, have lived as long as the Republic." That inscription, in
Latin, greeting the visitors to the celebration of the completion of
Georgetown's first century in 1889, reminded them of the university's unique
origin as an American Catholic institution of higher learning.
Two seemingly unrelated events created the conditions for this establishment
of the first Catholic college in the United States: the Suppression of the
Society of Jesus and the American Revolution. When Pope Clement XIV under
pressure from the courts of Europe suppressed the Jesuit order in 1773, the
Reverend John Carroll, a Marylander who had entered the Society in Europe in
1753 and remained there to teach in Jesuit colleges, returned home in 1774.
Had the Society not been suppressed, it is highly unlikely that Carroll
would ever have seen America again. A year later he became a staunch
supporter of the revolution against England. For Catholics the revolution
meant the opportunity to free themselves from the civil disabilities that
had plagued them and other minorities in most colonies, including Maryland.
With independence Catholics were now able, at least theoretically, to vote,
hold office, worship publicly, and educate their children in their own
schools.
No one saw more clearly the needs and possibilities for the education of the
Catholic community in the young Republic than did Carroll, whom Rome
appointed as first head of the American church in 1784. Carroll wanted to
take full advantage of the unprecedented freedom given to the church in the
United States to establish a school in the liberal arts tradition that had
so distinguished Jesuit education for over two hundred years. He wanted his
academy to be "the mainsheet anchor" of American Catholics, an
institution that could uniquely "give consistency to our religious
views in this country," by fostering an education that would combine
the best of the Catholic and republican cultures. Under Bishop Carroll's
leadership, ex-Jesuits established Georgetown in the late 1780's. In 1789 he
secured the deed to some sixty acres of ground on a hill overlooking the
village of Georgetown, a thriving tobacco port in Maryland. A few months
before the academy opened in January of 1792 the bishop learned that the
capital would be established in the neighborhood. It "gives a weight to
our establishment," he noted, "which I little thought of when I
recommended that situation."
Lack of resources - money, faculty, students - severely crippled the college
during its first two decades. With the partial restoration of the Society of
Jesus in 1805, the order was given the direction of the institution. For the
next forty years European Jesuits constituted a substantial portion of the
faculty and were responsible for the significant contributions that
Georgetown made in the sciences in the second half of the century, most
notably in astronomy. A year after the complete restoration of the order in
1814, the college secured its first charter from the United States
government.
In accordance with Carroll's determination that his academy be no Catholic
ghetto but "open to Students of every religious Profession,"
nearly a fifth of the students during the first ten years were Protestants.
By the 1830's Jews were attending the college. Throughout the nineteenth
century religious pluralism characterized Georgetown's student population.
From the beginning, Georgetown was a national, indeed international school.
Its proximity to Washington with its diplomatic community was obviously a
major reason for its cosmopolitan character but not an exclusive one (in the
1790's, for instance, nearly 20 per cent of the students came from the West
Indies). Its faculty was as diverse in origin as its students, not only
Jesuit emigrants from Poland, Italy, Germany, and Belgium, but Sulpician
refugees from France between 1791 and 1815.
By and large, however, Georgetown was a southern college in the antebellum
period. Of its alumni who served in the Civil War, more than four-fifths
were Confederates. The war nearly closed the college. The student body fell
from 313 in 1859 to 17 in the fall of 1861. Federal troops briefly occupied
the campus in the first month of the war. In the fall of 1862 several of the
college buildings were turned into a hospital for four months after the
Second Battle of Bull Run (Manassas).
In the postwar decades the college increasingly became more northern and
Catholic, but the majority of students continued to range between the ages
of ten and sixteen. By 1871 Georgetown consisted not only of the
college on the hilltop but two professional schools of medicine and law in
the city, founded by local doctors and lawyers in 1849 and 1870
respectively. Two presidents in the last three decades of the century
attempted to convert these loosely connected schools into a university. The
Rev. Patrick Healy, S.J., the son of a Georgia planter and his common law
slave wife, as prefect of studies (1868-1878) and president (1873-1881)
reformed the college's curriculum with a new emphasis on history and the
natural sciences. To provide adequate library, classroom, laboratory, and
residential facilities he constructed the magnificent Flemish Renaissance
structure that now bears his name. At the professional level he oversaw the
lengthening of the programs in both medical and legal education from two to
three years. In 1880 he founded the Alumni Association.
The Rev. Joseph Havens Richards, S.J., the son of an Episcopalian priest,
continued Healy's efforts during his decade-long presidency (1888-1898).
Richards began graduate courses in the arts and sciences, built new
facilities for the law and medical schools, including a hospital, and
thwarted efforts to transfer the professional schools to the new Catholic
University of America. During these years Georgetown began to establish a
national reputation in baseball and football.
Expansion at the professional level continued in the new century. The
Washington Dental College was acquired in 1901. Three years later the
Nursing School was founded to provide support for the university hospital.
By 1914 the total university population was 1,378, of whom 912 were
attending the law school, one of the nation's largest, and exclusively a
night school until 1921. (A college degree was not yet required to study
law.) Dr. George Kober, dean from 1901 to 1927, ably led the School of
Medicine through the period of reform that revolutionized American medicine
in the early part of this century.
World War I caused a brief decline in the professional schools. On the main
campus the entire student body was mobilized by law into the Students' Army
Training Corps. In 1919 the Preparatory School completed its separation from
the university with its relocation in suburban Maryland. That same year the
School of Foreign Service was founded under the direction of Rev. Edmund
Walsh, S.J., to prepare students for careers in diplomacy or international
business. Within five years the enrollment reached five hundred.
In the 1920's university enrollment nearly doubled, with substantial
increases in all schools except law. New facilities - New North, Copley,
White-Gravenor, the Medical-Dental building - reflected the growth. The
football team, a national power since 1914, peaked under coach Lou Little in
the late twenties. The Depression was a period of consolidation for
Georgetown. Under the presidency of Arthur O'Leary, S.J., the Graduate
School was formally organized and faculty recruited for selective programs
in mathematics, the natural sciences, economics, history, and government.
Father O'Leary also revitalized the Alumni Association with James Ruby as
first director. He was also responsible for the brief return to prominence
in intercollegiate football under Jack Hagerty in the years preceding World
War II.
The second "Great War" transformed the main campus from a college
to a testing center for the Army Specialized Training Center. By 1943 there
were but 130 students at the Law School. The Medical School alone kept its
prewar enrollment. In 1944 the Graduate School admitted women for the first
time.
As in the twenties the enrollment virtually doubled, and the GI Bill opened
the university's doors to many who could not have considered such an
education before the war. Temporary buildings accommodated the overflow of
students. Substantial numbers of lay faculty were hired, not only on the
main campus but at the Medical Center where Dr. Harold Jaeghers reorganized
the departments and curriculum. The new hospital was opened in 1947. Under
Father Edward Bunn, S.J., (1952-1964) the university entered the modern
world of higher education with the restructuring of schools and the
introduction of professional standards for faculty. Two new schools were
divided from the School of Foreign Service: the School of Languages and
Linguistics (1949) and the School of Business Administration (1955). The
School for Summer and Continuing Education was organized in the 1950's.
The last two decades have been a remarkable period of growth and development
for the university. The building boom on all three campuses is but the most
visible sign. The undergraduate students rank among the finest in the
country, as the growing number of Rhodes, Marshall, and Mellon fellowships
won over the past several years attests. The faculty are increasingly
gaining recognition in the world of scholarship. The Graduate School is
concentrating on attaining distinction in certain fields commensurate with
its resources. The Medical Center continues to build upon the excellent
tradition of research in cardiology, renal medicine, and other fields that
it has established in the past forty years, while making major commitments
to newer fields, most notably cancer research. The Law Center has not only
become again one of the largest schools in the country but now ranks among
the top ones in the quality of its faculty and programs. To support this
complex network of schools, institutes, and programs, the university has
quintupled its endowment in the last dozen years, from forty million to two
hundred million dollars.
As she begins her third century, Georgetown, in becoming one of the most
dynamic universities in the country, has gone far to fulfil Carroll's
vision.
--Robert Emmett Curran, S.J.