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    Louisiana State University
    Louisiana State University
    Louisiana State University
    Ebook199 pages1 hour

    Louisiana State University

    By Barry Cowan and Dr. William L. Jenkins

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    About this ebook

    Louisiana State University began in 1860 as a small, all-male military school near Pineville. The institution survived the Civil War, Reconstruction politics, and budgetary difficulties to become a nationally and internationally recognized leader in research and teaching. A devastating fire destroyed the campus in 1869, and the school moved to Baton Rouge, where it has remained. Successive moves to larger campuses in 1887 and 1925 created greater opportunities in academics, student life, and athletics. Academics began with classical and engineering courses. New majors in the arts, literature, engineering, agriculture, and the sciences evolved, along with research in those fields. Student life changed from military regimentation to coeducation and students freedom to live off campus and make their own decisions. Intercollegiate athletics began in 1893 with baseball and football games against Tulane, and the LSU Tigers have since won numerous championships. These evolutionary steps all helped to create Louisiana s flagship university.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateNov 4, 2013
    ISBN9781439644232
    Louisiana State University
    Author

    Barry Cowan

    Author Barry Cowan selected images from the LSU Archives and the Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections in the LSU Libraries� Special Collections at Hill Memorial Library. Cowan is the assistant archivist in the LSU Archives and is the coauthor of Historic Photos of LSU Football. He has also contributed articles to the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and KnowLA: Encyclopedia of Louisiana History, Culture, and Community and writes a column in LSU Alumni Magazine.

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      Book preview

      Louisiana State University - Barry Cowan

      INTRODUCTION

      Louisiana State University began with the name Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy, a small school for boys tucked away in Rapides Parish in central Louisiana. Classes began on January 2, 1860, with a handful of students, called cadets because military discipline was the rule, and a curriculum of mathematics, ancient and modern languages, theoretical engineering, and chemistry under Supt. William Tecumseh Sherman.

      Just as the Seminary was getting started, the Civil War began. Louisiana seceded from the Union, and Sherman resigned, as he said he would if Louisiana left the Union. He offered his services to the Union Army. The school opened and closed several times as students and faculty left to join the fighting, but closed for good in 1863. During the war, the building was used as a headquarters and hospital by the Union Army. Sherman, now a general, asked that the school be saved from destruction.

      After the war ended, only the building survived. David Boyd, a professor before the war, became superintendent and began the rebuilding process. Louisiana’s economy was in shambles, but Boyd was determined to get the school restarted. Classes began once more in the fall of 1865. The library was replaced, and by 1869, was one of the best in the South. Many of the volumes were donated by Sherman, or through his influence, and he remained a lifelong friend of the institution. In 1869, the first commencement was held for eight graduates.

      Disaster struck on the night of October 15, 1869. A fire broke out in a storeroom near the kitchen and soon the entire building was in flames. All of the library books and some of the scientific equipment were saved, but the commissary stores and other supplies, valued at $20,000, were destroyed. The seminary would have to start over again.

      By November 1, 1869, the seminary had found temporary quarters at the Louisiana Institute for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind in Baton Rouge. Temporary being a relative term, the school would remain here until 1887. Quarters here were cramped, with cadets sleeping 8 to 10 to a room and having to share kitchen and dining areas with the inmates of the institute. There was little room for a library or laboratories and cadets drilled in the city streets. On the upside, Baton Rouge offered better availability of food than Rapides Parish, always a sore spot with cadets and faculty, and faculty could live off campus. Several attempts were made to get funding to rebuild the seminary in Rapides, but none was available.

      In 1870, the name of the seminary was changed to Louisiana State University. Funds dwindled during the 1870s and the university became a victim of party or factional politics. A rival institution, the Louisiana Agricultural and Mechanical College, opened in New Orleans in 1874. A pet of radical Republicans, the college took funding that might have gone to LSU and was allowed to take advantage of the Morrill land grants where LSU was not. In 1877, the two schools merged to become Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College.

      The next 10 years would be relatively stable, but finances were still uncertain; the university owed debt that the legislature would not help alleviate. David Boyd, who almost singlehandedly steered the institution through the toughest times it would ever see, was forced out as president in 1880. Financial boom and bust would be a recurring theme right up to the present.

      In 1887, LSU was, after many years of requests, able to move into the Baton Rouge Arsenal that had not been used in years. The 200-acre site had serviceable buildings and enough room to build more. The curriculum also grew, allowing, for example, agricultural and veterinary science classes to be held on campus. Between 1900 and 1915, the campus experienced a building boom, adding laboratories, the first purpose-built library, and a

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