ALS, two pages, 5.25 x 7.75, November 24, 1901. Letter to Mr. Noah C. Rogers of New York City. In full: “Mrs. Wilson and I greatly appreciate your kind invitation to be guests of honor at the Annual dinner of the Presbyterian Union…and are very deeply disappointed that we are obliged to decline.
Literally all of my college work in the class-room comes on Mondays and Tuesdays, and I cannot meet an engagement at a distance on either of the evenings without a positive and serious neglect of duty.
Pray express to the Executive Committee of the Union our warm thanks and deep regrets. I am sure that they will deem me no worse Presbyterian for performing my university duties to so tempting a pleasure.” Letter is archivally sleeved in acid-free Mylar. In fine condition, with intersecting folds and some very trivial toning.
Wilson, a devout Presbyterian himself and the son of a Presbyterian minister and theologian, must truly have been disappointed by being unable to attend the event mentioned here. His schedule would become no less congested the following year, upon his appointment as president of Princeton University. In that capacity, Wilson revised hiring practices, eliminating previously conservative Protestant orthodoxy and personally selecting educators based on their records, resulting in a more scholarly and diverse faculty. Despite his strong faith, Wilson would maintainthat Princeton was “a Presbyterian college only because the Presbyterians of New Jersey were wise and progressive enough to found it….The College is based on nonsectarianism.” To be sure, that nonsectarianism belief was later employed by Wilson as the nation’s twenty-eighth chief executive. Pre-certified John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and RRAuction COA.
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