Lewis Warner Green (January 28, 1806 – May 26, 1863) was an AmericanPresbyterian minister, educator, and academic administrator. He was the president ofHampden–Sydney College,Transylvania University, andCentre College for various periods between 1849 and 1863.

The Reverend Lewis W. Green
9thPresident of Hampden–Sydney College
In office January 10, 1849 – September 1, 1856
Preceded by	Patrick J. Sparrow
Succeeded by	Albert L. Holladay
8th President ofTransylvania University
In office November 18, 1856 – January 1, 1858
Preceded by	Henry Bidleman Bascom
Succeeded by	Abraham Drake
5thPresident of Centre College
In office January 1, 1858 – May 26, 1863
Preceded by	John C. Young
Succeeded by	William L. Breckinridge
Personal details
Born	(1806-01-28)January 28, 1806 Danville, Kentucky, US
Died	May 26, 1863(1863-05-26) (aged 57) Danville, Kentucky, US
Resting place	Bellevue Cemetery
Spouse(s)	Eliza Montgomery ​ ​ (m. 1827; died 1829)​ Mary Fry Lawrence ​ (m. 1834)​
Children	Letitia Julia
Education	Transylvania University Centre College
Signature

Born inDanville, Kentucky, baptized inVersailles, and educated inWoodford County, Green enrolled at Transylvania University but transferred to Centre College to complete his education. He graduated in 1824 as one of the two members of the school's first graduating class. He enrolled atPrinceton Theological Seminary in 1831 but returned to Kentucky in 1832 before graduating. After one year as a professor atHanover College, he returned to Centre in 1839. He then left again the next year for a position atWestern Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he spent six years. He then went toBaltimore to preach full-time, though he resigned after just over a year and a half due to poor health.

Green was elected president of Hampden–Sydney College in January 1849. He was recruited by numerous other institutions after his eight-year term. Among these institutions was Transylvania, which recruited him to their presidency shortly following the establishment of anormal school by theKentucky General Assembly. The bill that created the normal school was repealed after a year and a half and he resigned in late 1857. Green was elected president of Centre College that year and entered office in January 1858. After leading the school through the start of theCivil War, he died in office in 1863 from an illness which he caught after helping wounded soldiers. He was buried in Danville'sBellevue Cemetery. He was a member of theStevenson political family through the marriage ofhis daughter; as a result, he was the father-in-law ofvice presidentAdlai Stevenson I, the great-grandfather ofIllinois governorAdlai Stevenson II, and the great-great-grandfather of senatorAdlai Stevenson III.

Lewis Warner Green^[1] was born on January 28, 1806, inDanville, Kentucky,^[2] the twelfth and youngest child of Willis Green and Sarah Reed.^[3] Lewis was orphaned as a young boy—his father died when he was five years old and his mother died two years later^[4]—and afterwards he lived with his oldest brother.^[5] His first education was inLatin andGreek and he began attendance at aclassical school directed byLouis Marshall inWoodford County, Kentucky, at the age of thirteen.^[2] He wasbaptized atPisgah Presbyterian Church inVersailles, Kentucky, in March 1820 alongside his brother Willis. Lewis fell seriously ill with a fever for several weeks during his second year at the school. At one point he was given only a slim chance of survival, though ultimately he recovered.^[6] Afterwards, Green enteredTransylvania University and completed the coursework through hisjunior year but transferred in 1822 toCentre College because of a lack of support by KentuckyPresbyterians for Transylvania presidentHorace Holley.^[7] He graduated from Centre in 1824, becoming one of the two members of the school's first graduating class.^[2] Green took brief interest in law and medicine following his graduation, studying the former with his brother, John, and the latter with physicianEphraim McDowell, each for a short time.^[2] Green went on to study theHebrew language atYale College and enrolled at thePrinceton Theological Seminary in 1831, where he was a classmate ofHenry Augustus Boardman.^[8] He did not earn a degree from either institution as he left upon being elected to teach at Centre.^[9]

Green was first given a chance to enter academia when he was elected professor of Greek at Centre College in August 1831, though he declined the position in order to study at Princeton, where he had just enrolled. He returned to hisalma mater in August 1832, when he was elected to teachpolitical economy andbelles-lettres. He was licensed as a preacher on October 4, 1833, at Harmony Church inGarrard County, Kentucky,^[9] and thereafter preached in Danville, its surroundings, or elsewhere in Kentucky nearly every Sunday.^[10] In August 1834, some months after his marriage to Mary Lawrence, he obtained a two-yearleave of absence from Centre and sailed with his wife from New York toLiverpool in order to learn more about, and improve his skills in, the ministry; they arrived on September 15, 1834. The pair spent two weeks inLondon before traveling toBerlin, and Green heard lectures fromAugust Neander andErnst Wilhelm Hengstenberg.^[11] In mid-1835 they traveled throughoutGermany andSwitzerland and Green spent the following winter inHaale studying underAugust Tholuck,Karl Ullmann, andWilhelm Gesenius. Afterwards, the pair went toBonn andParis before returning to the United States sometime after December 1835.^[12]

Green was offered the pastorate of the Presbyterian Church ofShelbyville, Kentucky, after preaching a sermon there in 1837, though he declined in order to remain at Centre.^[13] The following year, he was elected by theSynod of Kentucky to teach oriental and biblical literature at the theological seminary atHanover College, and he moved toHanover, Indiana, to accept the new job.^[14] Shortly after starting there, he was offered the presidency ofTransylvania University inLexington, Kentucky, in an effort on the school's part to return a Presbyterian to the office, though Green declined so as to avoid negatively impacting Danville and its status as thede facto center of the church in Kentucky.^[15] After the 1838–1839 academic year, he left Hanover and returned to Danville. Upon his arrival, he was elected vice president of Centre College and returned to his former positions teaching political economy andbelles-lettres. He also became co-pastor at Danville'sFirst Presbyterian Church alongside Centre presidentJohn C. Young.^[2]

In May 1840, Green was called away from Kentucky once again after thePresbyterian General Assembly unanimously appointed him professor of oriental literature and biblical criticism atWestern Theological Seminary,^[2] on the recommendation ofCharles Stewart Todd.^[16] Around this time, in the midst of his move from Kentucky, aslave state, to Pennsylvania, afree state, hemanumitted the 25 to 30 people he held as slaves, who were technically his wife's property as an inheritance.^[17][18] He originally planned to have them sent toLiberia with the help of theAmerican Colonization Society, but when they were not willing to go, Green freed them and allowed them to remain in the United States.^[17] The same year, he received an honorarydoctor of divinity degree from Centre and gave an inaugural address in Pittsburgh;^[19] the address was well-received, and he received invitations to speak atJefferson College,Lafayette College, andMiami University over subsequent years.^[20] He resigned his teaching position in Pittsburgh in October 1846, which was effective in February 1847. After, he moved toBaltimore, Maryland, to devote himself to preaching full-time at the Second Presbyterian Church.^[21] Shortly after his arrival, he fell ill and became weak, which prompted him to recuse from the position for a time. He ultimately resigned his position effective October 10, 1848.^[22]

In mid-1848, Green was invited to speak atHampden–Sydney College; at that time, the trustees were considering him for the school's presidency,^[23] which had been left vacant byPatrick J. Sparrow in 1847.^[24] On June 1,^[25] he was unanimously elected to the position.^[26] He began his duties as president near the start of the academic year and formally succeeded Acting PresidentCharles Martin upon his inauguration on January 10, 1849.^[26][24] In a speech to the board of trustees,^[27] he called for the school to enlarge its libraries and secure and retain professors as his main and immediate goals.^[28] He also promoted the concept of the development of "the whole Man", according to the Hampden–Sydney historian John Brinkley, as a way of campaigning for the college to prioritizewell-roundedness of the students.^[29] Despite entering the office still suffering from poor health—according to Brinkley, Green told a friend before taking the presidency that he "had come to the college to die"^[30]—he quickly recovered and returned to preaching throughout Virginia, including in the chapels of the Hampden–Sydney College church and that of the Theological Seminary. During his tenure at Hampden–Sydney, the school's enrollment and finances both increased. Enrollment jumped from 27 students to 100 after his first year and to 145 the year after.^[31] The school'sendowment had increased by $80,000 (equivalent to $2,800,000 in 2024) by the time he left office.^[32] Further, he spent vacations and time away from the college recruiting potential students and securing additional increases in funding.^[33] During Green's presidency, a disagreement between the faculty of theRichmond Medical College (now theVCU Medical Center) and the Hampden–Sydney Board of Trustees, which oversaw them, resulted in the Medical College effectively becoming an independent institution.^[34]

Green's teaching responsibilities were largely focused on classes for fourth-year students, and included subjects such as evidences of Christianity,mental and moral philosophy, political economy,sociology (then called "history and philosophy of social progress"; John Brinkley wrote that Green was an "American pioneer" in the teaching of this subject), mathematical philosophy,agricultural chemistry,geology, andAncient Greek philosophy.^[35] He was a popular professor and preacher among students.^[36] As with much of the faculty, he was a member of a literary society and took part in their debates.^[37]

Like they had during Green's pastorate in Baltimore, the leadership of Jefferson College, inCanonsburg, Pennsylvania, reached out to him in an attempt to recruit him to their presidency, though he declined the offer again; he also declined an offer to return to Danville as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church.^[38] This became a theme of his time at Hampden–Sydney. The Synod of Kentucky chose him to take a professorship at theNew Albany Theological Seminary in 1850,^[39] he was reelected to his prior position at the Allegheny Seminary in 1853, and he was the prospective choice for the inaugural chair of biblical literature at the new Danville Theological Seminary in 1854. He declined all of these offers.^[40] The exception came in 1856 when Transylvania University elected Green to their presidency. He traveled to Lexington to see the college and was received enthusiastically.^[39] The Hampden–Sydney board of trustees were unsuccessful in convincing him to stay—one strategy involved the proposal of a 50% salary increase^[18]—and he resigned the presidency of Hampden–Sydney upon his return to Virginia.^[39] It took effect on September 1, 1856, four days before the start of the next academic term,^[41] by which time he had already moved to Lexington.^[42]Albert L. Holladay succeeded him as president but died before he could take office. As a result,John M. P. Atkinson took the position.^[24]

Green arrived at Transylvania in the midst of major change at the school. In March 1856, theKentucky General Assembly passed an act which reorganized Transylvania, established anormal school there, and gave the college a new board of trustees.^[43] He was the school's first permanent president since the resignation ofHenry Bidleman Bascom in 1849.^[44] His direct predecessor was the professorJames B. Dodd, who had been serving as acting president since that time.^[45] When the normal school opened in September 1856, it had an enrollment of around eighty students, and it made Kentucky the eighth state with such a school.^[46] Green was inaugurated as president on November 18, 1856.^[42] In his first months, he led a campaign in support of thetemperance movement.^[47] He concluded his first year at Transylvania on June 24, 1857, and the large crowd present at commencement that day was seen by local press as a promising sign that the school might be leaving its recent struggles behind. During this first year, Transylvania's existing academic departments remained through the reorganization and attendance stayed level with 170 total students, including 72 at the normal school, enrolled to begin the 1857–1858 academic year.^[48] This changed during the ensuing General Assembly winter session, during which the bill which had established the normal school was repealed by a large majority. The repeal took effect on June 15, 1858. This decision was condemned by many on campus and the Kentucky superintendent of education, who remarked that the move would result in a quarter-century setback for the state's public education. Favoritism during the selection of students and the appropriation of funding for the normal school from the budget of the university at large—which was illegal—were among the arguments that led to the repeal in the legislature.^[49] As the now-dissolved normal school was among the main reasons Green had gone to Transylvania, he resigned in late 1857 and formally left the position January 1, 1858. He was succeeded byAbraham Drake.^[47][50]

Green was elected president of Centre College on August 6, 1857, and officially assumed office on January 1, 1858, succeeding John C. Young. He gave his inaugural address on October 14, 1858, inLebanon, Kentucky, at a meeting of the Kentucky Synod.^[51] By April, he was named co-pastor of Danville's Second Presbyterian Church alongsideAlfred Ryers. He held this position until the church building was destroyed in a fire and the congregation merged with that of theFirst Presbyterian Church. Even then, he preached at that church every other Sunday despite not being its pastor.^[52] In writing to a friend near the beginning of his term, he considered a plan to retire after six years in the position, with a goal of bringing 300 new students to Centre.^[53] Enrollment declined drastically from 1861 due to theCivil War and the proximity of the fighting to Centre; the school's 172 students before the war had fallen to 57 after two years.^[54]Confederate soldiers occupied several campus buildings beginning September 27, 1862.^[55] On October 9,^[54] the day after theBattle of Perryville took place about 12 miles (20 km) from Centre,^[55] there were only six students on campus and the faculty decided to cease holding classes and suspend college operations. The college did not reopen until October 27. Classes were held in the new library, a project completed earlier that year, since Old Centre, the college's main building, was still occupied and being used, in part, as a hospital. At one point, nearly 3,500Union soldiers were situated in Danville.^[54] Old Centre's capacity as a hospital was around 150 and the rooms functioning as such were not physically separated from the parts of the building involved with college operations; some students had to pass throughautopsies in progress on their way to a professor's office.^[56] During this time, Green continued to preach and teach classes in the place of several absent professors, though not without some physical trouble caused by overwork, his weakened immune system, and the conditions at Centre during the war.^[57]

Green married Eliza J. Montgomery, daughter of CongressmanThomas Montgomery, in February 1827. At the time of their marriage, Montgomery was suffering from an "advanced stage" oftuberculosis, according to the biographerLeroy Halsey,^[58] and the couple were married for slightly longer than two years before she died in 1829.^[59] The couple lived on Eliza's family farm before her death.^[60] He remarried on April 9, 1834, to Mary Fry Lawrence,^[61] with whom he had two children.^[62] Sometime after moving back to Kentucky following his term at Hampden–Sydney, Green increased his enslaved workforce; he held ten people as slaves during his time as Centre president.^[63] Green was a member of theStevenson family through the marriage of his daughter,Letitia, toAdlai Stevenson I, latervice president of the United States.^[64] As a result, he was the great-grandfather ofIllinois governorAdlai Stevenson II and the great-great-grandfather of senatorAdlai Stevenson III. Green's grandson,Lewis Green Stevenson, was named for him.^[65][66]

Green contracted a disease in late May 1863 after attending to sick and injured soldiers.^[a] A five-day period of illness included chills,delirium,paralysis, and finally unconsciousness. Throughout, Green was in "extreme agony", according to Halsey.^[54][67] He died as a result on May 26, 1863.^[54] He was interred atBellevue Cemetery in Danville, Kentucky.^[68] He was the second consecutive Centre College president to die in office, as Young had also done so.^[69] Green was succeeded in that position byWilliam L. Breckinridge.^[70]

• Baker, Jean H. (1997).The Stevensons: A Biography of an American Family.New York, New York:W. W. Norton & Company.ISBN 0-393-03874-2.OCLC 32132114.
• Brinkley, John Luster (1994).On This Hill: A Narrative History of Hampden–Sydney College, 1774–1994.Hampden Sydney, Virginia:Hampden–Sydney College.ISBN 1-886356-06-8.OCLC 32407235.
• Craig, Hardin (October 1967).Centre College of Kentucky: A Tradition and an Opportunity.Danville, Kentucky:Centre College.OCLC 856258.
• Halsey, Leroy Jones (1871).Memoir of the Life and Character of Rev. Lewis Warner Green, with a Selection from His Sermons. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.OCLC 937904081.
• Weston, William J. (2019).Centre College: A Bicentennial History.Danville, Kentucky:Centre College.ISBN 978-1694358639.OCLC 1142930784.
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• Wright, John D. Jr. (2014).Transylvania: Tutor to the West.Lexington, Kentucky:University Press of Kentucky.ISBN 978-0813191676.OCLC 960203188.