Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/66

 40 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO thousand dollars is secured as the beginning of an endowment, and twenty-five thousand dollars for a new building by next May. [A few days after this date Mr. Walker added twenty thousand dollars to the above offers.] .... A provisional board has been appointed to inaugurate the movement. Assur- ances have been received that make it certain that the larger half of the first one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars can be raised here. Against my protest, and without my knowledge I have been invited to lead the effort

Although no answer to this letter was asked for, one came very promptly. On July 5 Mr. Rockefeller wrote: I regret to say I cannot add anything to my previous letters in regard to the proposed university. I hope wisdom will be given you to determine your duty. It was. Mr. Goodspeed promptly decided to continue in his serv- ice to the Theological Seminary. The way now seemed closed. In reality, however, it was just opening. For while all these things were going on, an event had happened of the first importance in its relation to the future University of Chicago. The American Baptist Education Society the organiza- tion through which Mr. Rockefeller was destined to act in the founding of the University had been organized. This Society played an essential part in preparing the way for the coming of the University. It owed its existence to the wisdom, public spirit, and persistence of Dr. Henry L. Morehouse, corresponding secre- tary of the American Baptist Home Mission Society. Dr. More- house was a man of unusual foresight, executive ability, fearlessness, pertinacity, religious zeal, and public spirit, and for more than thirty years exerted perhaps a wider influence upon Baptist denominational activities, north of the Ohio River, than any other man. In the development of denominational policies and in bringing them to effectiveness he had no equal. The first steps looking toward the organization of the Education Society had been taken by Dr. Morehouse in 1887. In the annual report of the Board of Managers of the Home Mission Society presented in May, 1887, at Minneapolis, Minnesota, Dr. More- house had turned aside from his theme of home missions to describe in a few incisive paragraphs the feeble and chaotic condition of