A History of the McGuffey Readers | Page 9

and experience emphasized his lessons.
In 1839 he was honored with the degree of Doctor of Laws conferred upon him by the Indiana University, of which his former teacher and friend, Dr. Wylie, was then president.
The income of the Ohio University came chiefly from the rents of two entire townships of land which had been given it for an endowment. This land was lawfully revalued at the end of ten years. The revaluation was contested in the courts by the tenants. The Supreme Court decided in favor of the university; but the farmers induced the legislature in 1843 to pass a law which fixed the income of the university from these lands at a sum so low as to cause the doors of the institution to be closed for five years.
Dr. McGuffey returned to Cincinnati and was for two years a professor in Woodward College, now Woodward High School.
[University of Virginia]
In 1845 he was appointed professor of Natural and Moral Philosophy in the University of Virginia. This position he filled with credit to himself and with great acceptance to the students in that institution for more than a quarter of a century and until his death on May 4, 1873.
Dr. McGuffey's classes in the University of Virginia were well attended. His lectures were delivered extempore, in language exactly expressing his thoughts. His illustrations were most apt. He taught "with the simplicity of a child, with the precision of a mathematician, and with the authority of truth."
[Method of Teaching]
A portion of the lecture hour was given to questioning the members of the class. In this he used the Socratic method, leading the pupil by a series of questions to the discovery of the incorrectness of his reasoning or the falsity of his grounds. By this process the students were led to question their own reasoning, to think clearly and to express their thoughts accurately.
Dr. McGuffey once told a pupil that he had preached three thousand sermons and had never written one. Until late in life he had never written his lectures. Shortly before his death he began the preparation of a book on Mental Philosophy. This was never completed.
Dr. McGuffey was twice married. By his first wife. Miss Harriet Spinning of Dayton, he had several children. One daughter, Mary, married Dr. William W. Stewart of Dayton; another, Henrietta, married Professor A. D. Hepburn who was for a time president of Miami University. Professor Hepburn's son, in turn inheriting his grandfather's faculty of teaching, is a professor in the University of Indiana.
[Interest in Public Schools]
In 1837 Professor Calvin E. Stowe went to Europe to investigate the organization and method of elementary schools. On his return he published, in 1838, his report on the Prussian system. Subsequently Dr. McGuffey labored in Ohio with Samuel Lewis and other public-spirited men for the passage of the general school law under which the common schools of Ohio were first organized. He carried to Virginia the same zeal for the education of all the children of the state to prepare them for the duties of life. One of his first acts on assuming the duties of his professorship in the university was to make a tour of the state advocating the introduction of a public school system in Virginia. To this first appeal for common schools, open alike to rich and poor, there was then but a feeble response; but, twenty-five years later, Dr. McGuffey had the satisfaction of seeing the public schools organized with one of his own friends and a former pupil at its head,--Hon. W.H. Ruffner.
Dr. McGuffey was a man of medium stature and compact figure. His forehead was broad and full; his eyes clear and expressive. His features were of the strongly marked rugged Scotch type. He was a ready speaker, a popular lecturer on educational topics, and an able preacher. He was admirable in conversation. His observation of men was accurate, and his study of character close.
[Trip Through the South]
After the Civil War and while the reconstruction was in progress it was extremely difficult in the North to obtain a correct view of the situation in the South. State governments had been established in which "carpet-baggers" had more or less control. Nearly all the whites in the South had taken part in the war. They were largely disfranchised and their former servants often became the legal rulers. The Klu Klux Klan had begun their unlawful work, of which the papers gave contradictory reports.
As business men, the publishers of McGuffey's Readers desired to learn the truth about the situation of the South and its probable future. They asked Dr. McGuffey to take a trip through the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi and make report to them at Cincinnati. This he did, visiting all the larger towns where he was usually the honored guest of