Whig's Wilson

The oldest U. S. college debating organization is Princeton's American Whig Society. Established in 1769, its early membership was composed of hot-headed Colonials who congregated on the top floor of Nassau Hall, fomenting juvenile sedition. Until the last decade, Whig and its rival, the Cliosophic Society, one year younger, held positions of social importance on the campus. Undergraduate lassitude caused them to merge into one Hall last year. But many an oldtime Whig and Clio debater has made good in after life as a pedagog or politician. Two U. S. Presidents, five presidents of Princeton, were Whigs. One night last week Whig observed its 160th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of the graduation of a member who was both a Princeton and a U. S. President --Thomas Woodrow Wilson.

It was the first recognition by a Princeton undergraduate body of Wilson's death. Wilson's fellow Whig and classmate in Princeton's most famed class of 1879, Editor Robert Bridges of Scribner's/- talked about his friend "Tommy" Wilson, brilliant conversationalist, Whig Speaker, undergraduate leader, "warm, human." Editor Bridges remembered the '79 reunion in the White House (1919), spoke feelingly of his classmate. Said he: "Wilson was not an austere bundle of principles. . . . He was always companionable, and there was no pose. . . ."

/- Other famed 79ers: Frank Presbrey (advertising), Trustee Cyrus Hall McCormick (Board Chairman of International Harvester Co.): Trustee Edward Wright Sheldon (Manhattan lawyer); onetime Princeton Dean William Francis Magie; the late financier Cleveland Hoadley Dodge; the late famed Judge Alfred Salem Niles of Baltimore; the late Banker Trustee Parker Douglas Handy of Manhattan; Robert Harris McCarter, onetime (1903-08) Attorney-General of New Jersey; the late Peter Joseph Hamilton of Mobile, author, onetime (1913-21) Judge of Porto Rican District Court.

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