Lewis W. Green

Lewis Warner Green (January 28, 1806 – May 26, 1863) was an American Presbyterian minister, educator, and academic administrator. He was the president of Hampden–Sydney College, Transylvania University, and Centre College for various periods between 1849 and 1863.

Born in Danville, Kentucky, baptized in Versailles, and educated in Woodford County, Green enrolled at Transylvania University but transferred to Centre College to complete his education. He graduated in 1824 as one of the two members of the school's first graduating class. He enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1831 but returned to Kentucky in 1832 before graduating. After one year as a professor at Hanover College, he returned to Centre in 1839. He then left again the next year for a position at Western Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he spent six years. He then went to Baltimore to preach full-time, though he resigned after just over a year and a half due to poor health.

Green was elected president of Hampden–Sydney College in January 1849. He was recruited by numerous other institutions after his eight-year term. Among these institutions was Transylvania, which recruited him to their presidency shortly following the establishment of a normal school by the Kentucky General Assembly. The bill that created the normal school was repealed after a year and a half and he resigned in late 1857. Green was elected president of Centre College that year and entered office in January 1858. After leading the school through the start of the Civil War, he died in office in 1863 from an illness which he caught after helping wounded soldiers. He was buried in Danville's Bellevue Cemetery. He was a member of the Stevenson political family through the marriage of his daughter; as a result, he was the father-in-law of vice president Adlai Stevenson I, the great-grandfather of Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson II, and the great-great-grandfather of senator Adlai Stevenson III.

Early life and education Lewis Warner Green was born on January 28, 1806, in Danville, Kentucky, the twelfth and youngest child of Willis Green and Sarah Reed. Lewis was orphaned as a young boy—his father died when he was five years old and his mother died two years later—and afterwards he lived with his oldest brother. His first education was in Latin and Greek and he began attendance at a classical school directed by Louis Marshall in Woodford County, Kentucky, at the age of thirteen. In a speech to the board of trustees, he called for the school to enlarge its libraries and secure and retain professors as his main and immediate goals. He also promoted the concept of the development of "the whole Man", according to the Hampden–Sydney historian John Brinkley, as a way of campaigning for the college to prioritize well-roundedness of the students. Despite entering the office still suffering from poor health—according to Brinkley, Green told a friend before taking the presidency that he "had come to the college to die"—he quickly recovered and returned to preaching throughout Virginia, including in the chapels of the Hampden–Sydney College church and that of the Theological Seminary. During his tenure at Hampden–Sydney, the school's enrollment and finances both increased. Enrollment jumped from 27 students to 100 after his first year and to 145 the year after. The school's endowment had increased by $80,000 by the time he left office. Further, he spent vacations and time away from the college recruiting potential students and securing additional increases in funding. During Green's presidency, a disagreement between the faculty of the Richmond Medical College (now the VCU Medical Center) and the Hampden–Sydney Board of Trustees, which oversaw them, resulted in the Medical College effectively becoming an independent institution.

Green's teaching responsibilities were largely focused on classes for fourth-year students and included subjects such as evidences of Christianity, mental and moral philosophy, political economy, sociology (then called "history and philosophy of social progress"; John Brinkley wrote that Green was an "American pioneer" in the teaching of this subject), mathematical philosophy, agricultural chemistry, geology, and Ancient Greek philosophy. He was a popular professor and preacher among students. As with much of the faculty, he was a member of a literary society and took part in their debates.

Like they had during Green's pastorate in Baltimore, the leadership of Jefferson College, in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, reached out to him in an attempt to recruit him to their presidency, though he declined the offer again; he also declined an offer to return to Danville as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. This became a theme of his time at Hampden–Sydney. The Synod of Kentucky chose him to take a professorship at the New Albany Theological Seminary in 1850, he was reelected to his prior position at the Allegheny Seminary in 1853, and he was the prospective choice for the inaugural chair of biblical literature at the new Danville Theological Seminary in 1854. He declined all of these offers. The exception came in 1856 when Transylvania University elected Green to their presidency. He traveled to Lexington to see the college and was received enthusiastically. The Hampden–Sydney board of trustees were unsuccessful in convincing him to stay—one strategy involved the proposal of a 50% salary increase—and he resigned the presidency of Hampden–Sydney upon his return to Virginia. It took effect on September 1, 1856, four days before the start of the next academic term, by which time he had already moved to Lexington. Albert L. Holladay succeeded him as president but died before he could take office. As a result, John M. P. Atkinson took the position.

Green was elected president of Centre College on August 6, 1857, and officially assumed office on January 1, 1858, succeeding John C. Young. He gave his inaugural address on October 14, 1858, in Lebanon, Kentucky, at a meeting of the Kentucky Synod. By April, he was named co-pastor of Danville's Second Presbyterian Church alongside Alfred Ryers. He held this position until the church building was destroyed in a fire and the congregation merged with that of the First Presbyterian Church. Even then, he preached at that church every other Sunday despite not being its pastor. In writing to a friend near the beginning of his term, he considered a plan to retire after six years in the position, with a goal of bringing 300 new students to Centre. Enrollment declined drastically from 1861 due to the Civil War and the proximity of the fighting to Centre; the school's 172 students before the war had fallen to 57 after two years. Confederate soldiers occupied several campus buildings beginning September 27, 1862. On October 9, the day after the Battle of Perryville took place about from Centre, with whom he had two children. Sometime after moving back to Kentucky following his term at Hampden–Sydney, Green increased his enslaved workforce; he held ten people as slaves during his time as Centre president. His daughter, Letitia, married Adlai Stevenson I of the Stevenson family, later vice president of the United States. As a result, he was a great-grandfather of Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson II and the great-great-grandfather of senator Adlai Stevenson III. Green's grandson, Lewis Green Stevenson, was named for him.

Green contracted a disease in late May 1863 after attending to sick and injured soldiers. (Brinkley says that Green was ministering to the soldiers, while Weston says that he was helping to treat them and Sanders's The Cost of War just says "helping".) He was the second consecutive Centre College president to die in office, as Young had also done so. Green was succeeded in that position by William L. Breckinridge.