Presidential Gallery

Silas Totten
Second President of the University of Iowa, 1859 — 1862

The outlook for the future of the university was very discouraging when Silas Totten assumed the presidency in 1859. The treasury was empty, most courses were temporarily closed, land sales to raise funds were not proceeding as expected, and tensions leading to the Civil War were mounting. Amid these difficulties, the university’s Board of Trustees elected Totten and requested that he prepare a new plan of organization for the institution. For the first time, the university developed independent departments, each with its own distinct classes and course of study.

Like his predecessor, Amos Dean, Totten graduated from Union College in Schenectady, New York. In 1833, he was ordained as an Episcopal minister and joined the faculty of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, becoming its president in 1841. From 1841 until moving to Iowa City in 1859, he was a member of the faculty at William and Mary College in Virginia.

Totten had publicly expressed sympathy with the South during the Civil War, prompting angry local reaction. In 1862 a pro-Union crowd pursued his son, a university student also sympathetic to the Confederacy. Totten’s son escaped, never to return again. The incident caused Totten to resign on August 19 of that year. Totten returned to the ministry in Illinois, and, later, Kentucky.

Totten was born on March 26, 1804, in Scoharie County, New York. He died on October 7, 1873, at age 69.

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