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HOWARD UNIVERSITY.
5
the plan, and the writer was the one
chosen by the other two of the committee,
and the one who actually drew it. All
teachers were to give their services with
out charge until permanent arrange
ments could be made ; and as both teach
ers and prospective scholars were engaged
during the day hours the sessions were
to be at night.
Referring to the commencement, March
i, 1871, when he graduated in medicine,
he says:
As I stood on that historic day in a
class of five, one at least of the class slave-
born, going forth with our diplomas on
the divine mission to heal the sick, surely
it was a small beginning. But it was a
small beginning too when a group of men
gathered at the foot of the Capitol grounds
in Washington, a group of workmen
armed with picks to pick the cobble
stones for the coming of comfort and
speed, for the beginning of the fulfilment
of prophecy, “ Behold I make all things
even.” Behold the beautiful city now.
One who viewed that beginning writes
this sketch, made the report named, was
one of the founders of the University, one
of the five who looked into the future and
the glorious triumph of right over might,
one who read the future in the words of
Faber:
But right is right since God is God, and right the
day must win ;
To doubt would be disloyalty, to falter would be
sin.
The prophecy has been more than ful
filled. The little one has become a power,
a resistless force. Those who gave mo
tion to this force have passed to the be
yond or are on waiting orders. The
worker dies, but the work goes on. The
810 students in the University this year
confirm what I say.
From the day I received my diploma
from Gen. O. O. Howard, then the Presi
dent of the University, until now, when I
am over 83 years old, I have not received
as much as a dime for medical services ;
one dozen sweet oranges in Florida is the
sum total of what the world would call
fees. I held a commission from higher
authority than human to go forth and
teach righteousness; to the second com
mission the first was joined, and I have
been ministering to the body by teaching
as well as to the soul.
Dr. Robert Reyburn, the only member
of the first Medical Faculty, who is also
a member of the present one, was asked
to write up
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE MEDICAL
DEPARTMENT AND ITS FIRST
SESSION.
He writes that
The close of the Civil War in 1865
left such a chaotic condition of society in
the Southern States of our Union as can
hardly be realized in our day, except by
those who were living and witnessed it
at the time. Eight millions of people
had been emancipated and thrown upon
their own resources, and in order to pro
vide for their educational, industrial, so
cial and religious development, the Bureau
of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned
Lands (commonly called the Freedmen's
Bureau) was founded and placed under
the charge of General Howard. The ed
ucation of the freed people of the South
was, for the time being, zealously cared
for by the various educational associations
which were established for that purpose
in the Northern, Eastern and Western
States of our Union at the close of the
war. In order to give an opportunity
for the children of the freed people to
receive a higher education than could be
given in the ordinary schools, Howard
University was founded. It was char
tered by Congress, entitled to confer
degrees, and authorized to establish Col
legiate, Medical, Legal and such other
departments as usually belong to mod
ern universities.
After these preliminary remarks, Dr.
Reyburn, continuing, gives in a condensed
form the information contained in the
University and Medical Faculty records,
as follows :
At a meeting of the Board of Trustees,
January 8, 1867, a committee, consisting