lished itself in several departments of education as a pioneer university of the West, having a large and constantly growing influence in the intellectual and moral progress of the country. Its founders were men of high principle and broad views, leaders in thought, and prominent in the business and professional circles of St. Louis. At its head as President, and in later years as Chancellor also, was the Rev. William G. Eliot, D.D., of venerated memory. The first Chancellor was Joseph G. Hoyt, of Exeter, N. H., a man equally remarkable for his scholarly attainments, his broad views of the higher education, and his executive ability, and whose early death was deeply lamented. Prof. William Chauvenet, LL.D., famed throughout the United States as a mathematician, the author of treatises on "Plane and Spherical Trigonometry," "Spherical and Practical Astronomy," and "Elementary Geometry," was called to the chancellorship in 1860, and continued in that office until a short time before his death in 1870.
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SAMUEL TREAT.
In January, 1860, the Board of Directors of Washington University appointed a committee to take into consideration the subject of establishing a Law Department in the University. The Committee was composed of Samuel Treat, Thomas T. Gantt, John M. Krum, and Henry Hitchcock. On the 19th of March, 1860, the Committee, through Judge Krum and Mr. Hitchcock, submitted a lengthy report recommending the establishment of a Law Department. In this they said:—
"It is believed that the proper conduct of such a department, wherein should be taught the principles of law, not alone as they are embodied in statutes or expounded in text-books, but as the broad expressions of truth, justice, and order among men and nations, might well exercise a beneficial influence, and even impart a higher tone to the entire institution."
The recommendations of the Committee were approved by the Board, and it was resolved to put the new department into practical operation as soon as possible.
But 1860 was a momentous year to the American people. The mutterings of the approaching storm were already heard; and the dark days of the civil war which followed, disastrous to all interests in a border State like Missouri, put a stop for the time being to further efforts towards opening the proposed law school.
The war was scarcely over before the efforts, so inopportunely suspended, were renewed; and in 1867 the Directors adopted an ordinance establishing the Law Department of Washington University, which was thereafter called, and has ever. since been known as, the St. Louis Law School.
The first Faculty included Rev. William G. Eliot, D.D., President; William Chauvenet, LL.D., Chancellor; Hon. Samuel Treat, Judge of the United States District Court, with Mr. Alexander Martin as his assistant; Hon. Nathaniel Holmes, then Justice of the
