Faculty: A Gilded Age Golden Promise

During Vanderbilt’s first decade, faculty molded the institution’s reputation, students, and community. From Cornelius Vanderbilt’s founding gift and Civil War spoils emerged a Gilded Age faculty, who embodied changing educational, racial, civic, and economic networks. Corralled by Methodism and blessed with Vanderbilt family donations, faculty created one of the South’s premier postbellum universities to accompany older antebellum Duke and Emory.