President of Washington College

President of Washington College
10/02/1865 AD hired

The financially-ruined Lee was offered several business opportunities but he instead choses to accept an offer to become Washington College's president. Lee states the reason he chose to become the college's president was because he had a desire to train "young men to do their duty."

During his tenure, Lee established the first journalism courses (which were limited and only lasted several years), and added engineering courses, a business school, and a law school to the college curriculum, under the conviction that those occupations should be intimately and inextricably linked with the liberal arts. That was a radical idea: engineering, journalism, and law had always been considered technical crafts, not intellectual endeavors, and the study of business was viewed with skepticism.

Lee's emphasis on student self-governance for Washington College remains the distinguishing character of the student-run Honor System today. And, ardent about restoring national unity, he successfully recruited students from throughout the reunited nation, North and South.

However, it has been argued that one of Lee's failings as president of Washington College was an apparent indifference to crimes of violence towards blacks committed by students at the college. Historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor notes that students at Washington College formed their own chapter of the KKK and were known by the local Freedmen's Bureau to attempt to abduct and rape black schoolgirls from the nearby black schools. There were also at least two attempted lynchings by Washington students during Lee's tenure. Yet Lee seemed to punish the racial harassment more laxly than he did more trivial offences, or turned a blind eye to it altogether.

Lee died on October 12, 1870, after five years as Washington College president.[19] The college's name was almost immediately changed to Washington and Lee University, linking Lee's name with Washington's.

Lexington, VA

Lattitude: 37.7838° N
Longitude: 79.4427° W
Region: North America

Modern Day United States

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