Nathaniel Macon Crawford 1854-1856; 1858-1866
- Minister, theologian, educator (1811-1871); A.M. and D.D. degrees; married to Anne Katherine Lazar (c1840)
- Accepted the presidency during a time of internal turmoil and denominational controversy
- Supported the creation of a military company on campus in 1861, leading one student to write: "We have about one hundred & five in our company. Prof. [Shelton P.] Sanford is our Captain & he is an excellent drill officer too. I tell you what the old fellow marches us around these old fields here considerably every Saturday."
- Ensured that classes continued throughout the Civil War and that the university survived, while numbers of other institutions closed and never reopened
- Found it necessary to reduce the faculty to three in 1862, raised professors' salaries to $3,000 in 1864 during a period of inflation, and then found it impossible to pay the faculty in 1866 at the close of the war
- Provided boarding for eleven students in his home in 1860-1861
- Described by John Leadley Dagg as a man of learning, talent, and popularity, and by Henry Holcombe Tucker as a "living encyclopaedia who never failed to supply me with information"
Letter from NMC to B. P. Oneal, father of a prospective student/boarder, July 21, 1863:
"For admittance into college a boy must be acquainted with Arithmetic, have read a Latin Caesar, 6 books in Virgil, & four orations of Cicero; a Greek he must have read the Greek Reader."
"Board next term will probably be thirty four dollars (perhaps 40) a month, exclusive of lights, washing &c. It was down last term but money was lost by it. Our people have to buy every thing & the common necessaries of life are so high that those who have boarded will have either to raise the price or close their houses."
"My own house is all already full."
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