History
In 1937, Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan successfully established the Great Books curriculum at St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland, which continues to the present day. In 1946, Barr resigned the presidency of that institution "with the hearty good wishes of the board of trustees" to found a new college.
According to Glen Edward Avery, Barr thought St. John's had grown too large and feared that its land was about to be seized by the U.S. Navy for its own academy. The first such threat had been made in 1940; St. John's was saved only by the direct intervention of President Roosevelt and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. A 1946 newspaper story says that "the college's Damocles sword again threatened to drop in 1944, by which time St. John's had lost its two greatest friends in the government." The college's board of trustees was unable to get a definite answer from Congress, then in control of Federal land-taking, on whether St. John's land would be taken, and Barr wanted to secure "a home free of the endless menace of eviction."
Charles A. Nelson, in Radical Visions, his biography of Barr and Buchanan, says they were convinced that "the navy would never accept final defeat... They were wrong, but their judgement at the time is hard to fault. No one who can recall the temper of those times will forget how powerful the navy was."
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