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L R W Lee Biography & Facts

Washington and Lee University (Washington and Lee or W&L) is a private liberal arts college in Lexington, Virginia. Established in 1749 as Augusta Academy, it is among the oldest institutions of higher learning in the United States. Washington and Lee's 325-acre campus sits at the edge of Lexington and abuts the campus of the Virginia Military Institute in the Shenandoah Valley region between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Allegheny Mountains. The institution consists of three academic units: the college itself; the Williams School of Commerce, Economics, and Politics; and the School of Law. It hosts 24 intercollegiate varsity athletic teams which compete as part of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA Division III). History The classical school from which Washington and Lee descended was established in 1749 by Scots-Irish Presbyterian pioneers and soon named Augusta Academy, about 20 miles (32 km) north of its present location. In 1776, it was renamed Liberty Hall in a burst of revolutionary fervor. A number of prominent men from the area acted as its original trustees, including Andrew Lewis, Thomas Lewis, Sampson Mathews, Samuel McDowell, George Moffett, William Preston, and James Waddel. The academy moved to Lexington in 1780, when it was chartered as Liberty Hall Academy, and built its first facility near town in 1782. The academy granted its first bachelor's degree in 1785. Liberty Hall is said to have admitted its first African American student when John Chavis, a free black, enrolled in 1795. Chavis accomplished much in his life including fighting in the American Revolution, studying at both Liberty Hall and the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), becoming an ordained Presbyterian minister, and opening a school that instructed white and poor black students in North Carolina. He is believed to be the first black student to enroll in higher education in the United States, although he did not receive a degree. Washington and Lee enrolled its next African American student in 1966 in the law school. In 1796, George Washington endowed the academy with $20,000 in the form of 100 shares of James River Canal stock, at the time one of the largest gifts ever given to an educational institution in the United States. The shares were originally a gift given to Washington by the Virginia General Assembly. Washington's gift continues to provide nearly $1.87 a year toward every student's tuition. The gift rescued Liberty Hall from near-certain insolvency. In gratitude, the trustees changed the school's name to Washington Academy; in 1813 it was chartered as Washington College. An 8-foot-tall (2.4 m) statue of George Washington, carved by Matthew Kahle and known as Old George, was placed atop Washington Hall on the historic Colonnade in 1844 in memory of Washington's gift. The current statue is made of bronze; the original wooden statue was restored and now resides in the library.The campus took its current architectural form in the 1820s when a local merchant, "Jockey" John Robinson, an uneducated Irish immigrant, donated funds to build a central building. For the dedication celebration in 1824, Robinson supplied a huge barrel of whiskey, which he intended for the dignitaries in attendance. But according to a contemporary history, the rabble broke through the barriers and created pandemonium, which ended only when college officials demolished the whiskey barrel with an axe. A justice of the Virginia State Supreme Court, Alex. M. Harman, Jr. ('44 Law), re-created the episode in 1976 for the dedication of the new law school building by having several barrels of Scotch imported (without the unfortunate dénouement). Robinson also left his estate to Washington College. The estate included between 70 and 80 enslaved people. Until 1852, the institution benefited from their enslaved labor and, in some cases, from their sale. In 2014, Washington and Lee University joined such colleges as Harvard University, Brown University, the University of Virginia, and The College of William & Mary in researching, acknowledging, and publicly regretting their participation in the institution of slavery. During the Civil War, the students of Washington College raised the Confederate flag in support of Virginia's secession. The students formed the Liberty Hall Volunteers, as part of the Stonewall Brigade under Confederate States Army general Stonewall Jackson and marched from Lexington. Later in the war, during Hunter's Raid, Union Captain Henry A. du Pont refused to destroy the Colonnade due to its support of the statue of George Washington, Old George. Lee years In the Fall of 1865, the financially ruined former general of the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee, was offered several business opportunities but he instead chose to accept an offer to become Washington College's president. Lee stated 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 white men as 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. The college's name was almost immediately changed to Washington and Lee University to honor Lee. On February 4, 1871, the name change was formalized by the Virginia General Assembly. The university's motto, Nōn Incautus Futūrī', meaning "Not unmindful of the future", is an adaptation of the Lee family motto. Lee's son, George Washington Custis Lee, followed his father as the institution's president. Robert E. Lee.... Discover the L R W Lee popular books. Find the top 100 most popular L R W Lee books.