August 5, 1868

President John Raymond presented a paper on “Liberal Education of Women” at the fifth annual University Convocation of the State of New York, convened by the Regents of the State University of New York in Albany. Accompanied at the convocation by Professor of English Truman J. Backus, Raymond emphasized the disparity in endowment support for women’s education, specifically citing the struggle of Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary, for whose pioneering work an appropriation of $5,000 had been proposed and commended by Governor DeWitt Clinton but was never granted. Arguing, as reported in The New York Times, that “liberal education must be comprehensive, scientfic and careful,” “harmonious” and without “haste,” he said, the “school that gives this should be endowed, for liberal education is not governed by the laws of supply and demand, and if left to these rules alone our highest civilization would perish from the face of the earth.”

“The Regents,” The Times account continues, “had fixed the sum for the endowment of a college at $130,000, but how do the girls’ seminaries compare to this? Only two in the State have a sum of over $15,000 or $20,000 over ther debts…. This lack of endowment means ill-paid Professors, insufficient appartatus and poor buildings. No finished education can be gained with these.”

President Raymond was invited by the Regents to supply “a sketch of the late Matthew Vassar, the founder of Vassar College,” who had died on June 23, 1868, for inclusion in the published procedings of the convocation.

The New York Times, Proceedings of the Fifth Anniversary of the University Convocation of the State of New York.