Famous Student in First Class—De Witt Clinton      13

the Erie Canal, the Columbia delegation made an impressive show,
with the students marching in collegiate robes and with the jani¬
tor at the head, carrying a huge allegorical banner.

After Clinton's death, his son Charles gave to Columbia the
chair that Clinton died in; during Nicholas Murray Butler's ten¬
ure, this was kept in the President's office; it is now in Columbiana.
A portrait by Henry Inman, presented in 1857, hangs in Low
Memorial Library; another portrait, by an unknown artist, is in
the jMen's Faculty Club. Clinton himself felt that his collection
of scientific specimens, which had been gathered by friends all
over America and by sea captains from foreign parts and «'hich
was particularly strong in geology and ichthyology, was his great¬
est bequest to Columbia. Unfortunately this collection has dis¬
appeared. But, for scholars in the political, economic, social, sci¬
entific and literary issues of the early nineteenth century, an even
more valuable gift was the Clinton Papers, which were presented
in 1902 by AVilliam C. Schermerhorn, class of 1840 and Trustee,
1860-1903. Ably catalogued by Adelaide Rudolph, these Papers
represent one of the most valuable and most widely consulted sets
of manuscripts in Special Collections-a fitting memorial at Colum¬
bia to the achievement of one of the first three of her entrants,
De Witt Clinton.*

* .\11 manuscript citations, unless otherwise noted, arc from the Clinton Papers.