Abraham Baldwin (November 22, 1754-March 4, 1807) was an attorney, educator and politician, He was a signer of the Constitution of the United States, member of Congress and U.S. Senator.
He graduated from Yale University and, in 1781, was offered the professorship of divinity there. He served as chaplain in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and later studied law. In 1783 he was admitted to the bar, elected to the state assembly, and later chosen as a representative from Georgia to the Constitutional Convention.
In 1785, he founded and became the first President of the University of Georgia, which was the first state-chartered university in the United States.
Through his far-sighted efforts, he secured for the university 40,000 acres of land. His expertise in law and ministry was manifest in his writing of the Charter of the College of Georgia:
<As it is the distinguishing happiness of free governments that civil order should be the result of choice and not of necessity, and the common wishes of the people become the laws of the land, their public prosperity and even existence very much depend upon suitably forming the minds and morals of their citizens.
When the minds of the people in general are viciously disposed and unprincipled, and their conduct disorderly, a free government will be attended with greater confusions and evils more horrid than the wild, uncultivated state of nature.
It can only be happy when the public principles and opinions are properly directed, and their manners regulated.
This is an influence beyond the reach of laws and punishments, and can be claimed only by religion and education.
It should therefore be among the first objects of those who wish well to the national prosperity to encourage and support the principles of religion and morality, and early to place the youth under the forming hand of society, that by instruction they may be molded to the love of virtue and good order.
Sending them abroad to other countries for their education will not answer these purposes, is too humiliating an acknowledgement of the ignorance or inferiority of our own, and will always be the cause of so great foreign attachments that upon principles of policy it is inadmissible.> 1754AB001
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1754AB001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Abraham Baldwin, 1785, Charter of the College of Georgia. Charles C. Jones, Biographical Sketches of the Delegates from Georgia (Tustin, CA: American Biography Service), pp. 6-7. Tim LaHaye, Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers, Inc., 1987), pp. 146-147.