THE GEORGIA REVIEW

VOLUME V  SPRING 1951   NUMBER 1

EDITORIAL

THE Charter of the University of Georgia is one of the most significant documents in the history of America . Dated January 27, 1785, nine years after the Declaration of Independence and two and a half before the Constitution of the United States, it marks the earliest American example of the putting into practice of the principle that education is the responsibility of the state and should be state controlled.

The principle had been stoutly stated by the Georgia Legislature on February 25, 1784, in an act granting forty thousand acres of land “for the endowment of a college or seminary of learning” and appointing seven Trustees “to do all such things as to them shall appear requisite and necessary” for the establishment of the institution. One of the Trustees, Abraham Baldwin, Yale graduate and former teacher there, set about preparing a charter. He wrote to Ezra Stiles, President of Yale, asking for a copy of Yale's charter, and there is unmistakable evidence that Baldwin had Yale's charter at hand. The Yale and Georgia charters, however, are as widely dissimilar as were the purposes for the founding of the two institutions. Whatever his model, Baldwin held uppermost the advanced principle that the state should care for the education of its citizens, even to the extent of having all public schools organized into one body and “considered as parts or members of the University.”

The Charter of the University of Georgia is remarkable not only for its historic importance. Some of the administrative machinery which it provided soon proved too cumbersome and had to be modified, but its prime essentials still stand as the foundation and code of government for the University, and the Charter has served as a model for the founding of numbers of younger institutions. Particularly in the preamble, it has a dignity and clarity that characterize eighteenth century prose at its best. Chancellor David C. Barrow is quoted as having said that he could never read the Charter without a feeling of being uplifted. Dr. Willis H. Bocock, for fifty years Professor of Classics at the University, ranked the first sentence of the preamble among the five or six great sentences in the English language. And Richard Malcolm Johnston thought that the Charter showed Baldwin “the full equal of Thomas Jefferson in lawgiving wisdom, and possibly his superior in cultivation.” 

Written in ink on two faded and yellowed sheets of vellum, 19 ½ by 32 ½ inches, the Charter is kept in the Rare Books Room of the University of Georgia Library . About 1920 it was sent to the University from the State Capitol by Mr. S. G. McLendon, Secretary of State. Prior to that time its importance had not been recognized. From its preparation and signing in Savannah , it had gone with the State files to Augusta , Louisville , Milledgeville, and Atlanta , and it bears evidences of having been crumpled, soiled, and wetted. There is a legend that a little while prior to the Charter's being sent to the University, a janitor at the State Capitol had found it in a pile of papers to be burned, noticed its heavy texture, and brought it in to Mr. McLendon.

The Charter has been printed approximately a dozen times, but all printings are at variance with the original. Apparently, the first printers, Robert and George Watkins in A Digest of the Laws of the State of Georgia Through 1799, are the only ones who ever worked from the Charter itself. All later printers seem to have used the Watkins version or one of its followers. Most of the Watkins' misreadings or emendations remained, and as later printers added others of their own, the gap between the printings and the original gradually widened. Although some of the deviations from the original are slight and insignificant, others vitally affect the meaning: entrust for commit, communities for countries, may for shall. The most radical deviation is the insertion of the word her in Section 11. Numbers of writers have pointed to the word as evidence that the University's founders in 1785 envisioned co-education, and orators have praised the far-seeing lawmakers. A recent writer states, “Upon this ‘her' was based in later years a successful argument for the legal admission of women to the University.” But the simple fact is that “this her” is not there - either in the Charter or in the first printing of it. Horatio Marbury and William H. Crawford in their Digest of the Laws of Georgia in 1802 changed the Watkins' accurate reading of the phrase “on account of his or their speculative sentiments” to “on account of his, her, or their speculative sentiments,” and all future printing that have been found retain the prophetic her.

Because of the lack of a correct copy of the Charter, Dr. E. Merton Coulter and the present writer, reading glass in hand, have carefully read the original and produced the copy which follows. Every effort has been made to reproduce the exact wording, the often inconsistent punctuating and capitalizing, and even the archaic or incorrect spelling   With this first perfect printed version of the University Charter, the Review opens its Sesquicentennial Number - in recognition of a document both historically and intrinsically worthy to be carefully preserved and proudly honored.