Excerpt from The Record, Vol. 54: Annual Report and Honor Roll of Donors, 1974-75In 1876 times were rather desperate for the South, hampden-sydney was no exception. The modest endowment of the College was lost, Confederate bonds had proved to be a poor investment. Reconstruction days permitted little affluence. Even so, President John M. P. Atkinson, who had led the College since 1857, determined to recognize the centennial year. At his request Mr. Hugh Blair Grigsby, a well known historian in Virginia, delivered the commencement address which traced the first hundred years of hampden-sydney's history.Our greatest opportunity in commemorating the two hundredth anniversary stands on the shoulders of such determination and devotion. The Bicentennial Commission undertook the responsibility for presenting a celebration which would extend over the four years the Class of 1976 was in college. Their purpose was to stir an intellectual enthusiasm on the campus, to strengthen an appreciation of the heritage of the college, and to create a vision of the role of hampden-sydney during her third century of service. At the growing edge of the college community, i.e., among those who have a confidence in the College's aspirations for continuing excellence and a commitment to work for the realization of those aspirations, the years of celebration have been effective.Among student leaders, for example, there have been strong men who joined with faculty in seeking to stress the academic purposes of the College. The 1974-75 Bicentennial Committee, with the emphasis on America's cultural heritage, brought outstanding programs in art, literature, music, and religion to the campus. Enduring memorials of this year are the mural created by Mr. Morton Sacks and placed in the library, the addresses printed in the Record, and the addresses delivered by Dr. Crawley, Dr. Howard, Dr. Shanley, Dr. Spiller, and Dr. Stovall, which are to be printed in a book bearing the title of The American Character, the title of the symposium in which they participated.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.