Moses Waddel

Life and work

Born in 1770 in Rowan County, North Carolina, Waddell graduated in 1791 from Hampden–Sydney College with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.). He was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Hanover (of Hanover County, Virginia).

Waddell (pronounced Wa-dell) began his ministry in the South Carolina Lowcountry; but coming to view Charleston's sophistication as sinful, he departed for the backwoods Upcountry. In 1794, he founded his first 'log cabin academy' at Carmel near Appling in Columbia County, Georgia. In 1801 Waddell moved back across the Savannah River, to Vienna (now defunct), South Carolina, and then to Willington, where he founded the famous Willington Academy in 1804.

These college-preparatory schools trained the future elite of Georgia and South Carolina with a strict classical education, in an environment shrewdly calculated by Waddell to foster self-reliance and self-motivation. Graduates generally entered university at the junior year. The Debating Society in Augustus Baldwin Longstreet's Georgia Scenes takes place at Willington and, as written by Longstreet himself, "is as literally true as the frailty of memory would allow it to be."

In 1819, Waddell further enlarged his fame with Memoirs of the Life of Miss Caroline Elizabeth Smelt. Difficult reading today for its overwrought and pious sentimentality, Memoirs was a smash bestseller reprinted in the U.S. and Great Britain.

Waddell's Willington Academy was considered to be the high point of his career. It was often called 'Eton in the woods,' as a comparison to Eton College in the UK which produced the leadership of Britain. Students were required to memorize, translate, and recite 250 lines of classic Greek or Latin every night – and they did, often several times that much. Later, the record was held by SC Governor George McDuffie, who once recited 2,212 lines of Horace.

Considered the foremost educator in the South, Waddell "received an urgent and persistent invitation" to revitalize the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens. He became the fifth president and served from 1819 until his resignation in August 1829. Waddell found the school "nearly extinct, consisting of only seven students with three professors." With great industry he scoured the state and soon built enrollment to one hundred students. He acquired money for the library, garnered state funding, and raised three new buildings: Philosophical Hall (1821), New College (1823) and Demosthenian Hall (1824). As said by Longstreet, "The effect of his coming to this Institution was magical. It rose instantly to a rank which it had never held before, and which, I am happy to add, it has maintained ever since."

Waddell was said to possess an ordinary intellect, but he combined it with an iron will. This 'Cromwell of the Classroom' produced a generation of Southern leaders including William H. Crawford, Madison’s Secretary of the Treasury and 1824 US Presidential candidate; Hugh S. Legaré, editor of the Southern Review; Governor and U.S. Senator George McDuffie of South Carolina; Judge James L. Petigru, the Unionist who famously stated that South Carolina was too small to be a nation and too large for an insane asylum; Governor George Rockingham Gilmer of Georgia; Judge Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, author of Georgia Scenes and president of two universities, and John C. Calhoun. Andrew Jackson is said to have (perhaps mistakenly) claimed Waddell's influence.

According to Dr James McLeod's book The Great Doctor Waddell (page 8), the list of students from all of Waddell's schools includes: two Vice-Presidents, three Secretaries of State, three Secretaries of War, one Assistant Secretary of War, one US Attorney-general, ministers to France, Spain and Russia, one US Supreme Court Justice, eleven governors, seven US Senators, thirty-two members of the US House of Representatives, twenty-two judges, eight college presidents, seventeen editors of newspapers or authors, five members of the Confederate Congress, two bishops, three Brigadier-generals, and one authentic Christian martyr.

More on Waddell's students: At one time, five SC governors in a row were his students. In the Presidential election of 1824, three of the five candidates were his students; and when the electoral dust settled, the winning President and Vice-President were both South Carolinians who had studied under Waddell – Andrew Jackson and John C Calhoun.

Waddell died on July 21, 1840, in Athens, Georgia.

Waddell Street in Athens was named in his honor.