1799 - Faculty Members Resign
Erika Lindemann explains: “Apart from individual cases of student misconduct, the early history of the University was punctuated by several student rebellions. The week-long student revolt in Spring 1799 against Principal Professor James Smiley Gillaspie left only about seventy students at the college and led the faculty to tender their resignations.”
Lindemann cites a letter from John London, a student and member of the Dialectic Society, to Ebenezer Pettigrew (1783-1848). The letter, dated September 29, 1799, explains that that "our President has got a horsewiping [sic] from a boy which he and the Teachers had expelled unjustly and we have been in great confusion in taking his part for he was liked by all the boys but every thing [sic] is put to rights again only our president relished the wiping so badly as to retire.”
SOURCES
Battle, Kemp P. History of the University of North Carolina, vol. I: From Its Beginning to the Death of President Swain, 1789-1868. Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton Printing Co., 1907. 155. Rpt. in Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/battle1/battle1.html.
Connor, R.D.W. A Documentary History of the University of North Carolina: 1776-1799, edited by Louis R. Wilson and Hugh T. Lefler, vol. 2. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1953. 436. HathiTrust Digital Library,https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b112541.
“Pettigrew Family Papers, 1776-1926” [finding aid]. Collection no. 00592, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/00592/.
Lindemann, Erika. “Early Student Rebellions.” True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina. 2005. Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, https://docsouth.unc.edu/true/chapter/chp01-04/chp01-04.html.
“London, John Rutherford (b. 1786).” Documenting the American South. University Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005, https://docsouth.unc.edu/global/getBio.html?type=bio&id=pn0001027&name=London,%20John%20Rutherford%20(b.%201786).