President Blackwell
Kern's resignation in 1899 brought to the fore a new name: Robert E. Blackwell. When James A. Duncan refused the office, the secretary of the board proposed that the election be deferred until February 1900, and that Blackwell be made chairman of the faculty. The move was defeated, but it suggests Blackwell's prominence among the professors. The record of his election to the presidency in 1902 shows either a remarkably casual attitude on the part of the board or a plan that was systematically arranged before the meeting. In any event, that election occurred in a manner different from all the others. The Committee on the Faculty, chaired by Bishop Granbery, president of the board, reported its recommendations and Items 1, 2, 3 were read and adopted. Item one was We recommend that R. E. Blackwell, prof. of Eng. and French, be elected President of Randolph-Macon College for the ensuing year, with a salary of $2,000.00 and a house. The language certainly suggests a temporary expedient. Much the same attitude is exhibited the next year. On the final day of the board's meeting in June 1903, the Committee on the Faculty recommended Blackwell's election as president. B. F. Lipscomb successfully offered an amendment: for the ensuing year. Despite the reluctance exhibited by these provisos, Blackwell eased into a permanent presidency that would last until 1938.
Blackwell, an alumnus of the college (earned M.A., 1874), had been a professor there since 1876, carrying on Price's work in English. Blackwell's way was paved with golden bricks. The name had ancient associations with the college (e.g., the first alumnus was John C. Blackwell, and John D. Blackwell had been president-elect in 1876). Perhaps more important, Blackwell was the son-in-law of the late and venerated James A. Duncan. He was also a cousin of Chancellor William Waugh Smith (whose mother was a Blackwell) and both of them hailed from Culpeper. Family ties, collegiate traditions, and an impeccable Methodist background would quiet many a half-asked question on the part of the clerical wing of the board. His appointment continued the uneasy secular tradition begun by Smith's election. Unlike Smith, Blackwell represented an emphasis on academic achievement rather than on fund raising. Blackwell's reports to the trustees over the years indicate that he considered money raising, on the one hand, and the spiritual state of the students, on the other, to be very subordinate to the academic achievements of his students. In this he was very different from his predecessors. He was not altogether disinterested in money questions (see chapter 8, following), but he leaves the reader of his papers with the impression of his diffidence in pursuing the topic-if not his distaste.
He was not without his critics on the board. John A. Anderson of Baltimore commented in 1908:
I note what you say about the presidency of R.M. I do not know that any considerable number of the Trustees feel as I do upon the subject of Dr. Blackwell's lack in administrative ability. In my Judgment he is a superior Prof. of Eng. a most admirable Christian gentleman, but wofully [sic] lacking in some of the qualities necessary in the position he holds as President of R.M. ...I am told by J. T. Mastin of the Va Conf. Trustees that a number of them feel as I do upon the subject, that R.M. needs a change in the presidency.
Blackwell's survival in that office owes something to the great distraction of the board with the question of the ownership of the college. They had quite enough to worry about without trying to ditch Blackwell (if indeed they were of that mind). His successor might then have been forced upon them by the conference and have proved far worse. By the conclusion of the controversy in 1913, it was probably too late to make a change.
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Reprinted from Professor James Scanlon's Randolph-Macon College: A Southern History 1825-1967