Washington Literary Society and Debating Union - History

History

The Washington Society was founded sometime in the years from 1834 to 1836 from the merger of two earlier societies, the Academics and The Association for Mutual Improvement in the Art of Oratory. Like other student activities in the early years of the University, its interactions with the faculty were turbulent, at one point leading the Board of Visitors to forbid students from delivery of public speeches.

In its early years, the society was active in University affairs with a literary focus, co-sponsoring from 1847 to 1851 (with the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society, the Philomethean, and Aesculapian Societies) a literary magazine called the Jefferson Monument Magazine, whose purpose was both to raise funds for a memorial to the University's founder and to provide a literary outlet for the students. Following the collapse of the Jefferson Monument Magazine, the society co-sponsored the University Magazine with the Philomathean and Jefferson Societies, beginning in 1851.

Like many student organizations at the University, the Washington Society was politically active in the secessionist cause in the years prior to the American Civil War. A resolution that had been in place since 1858 to avoid debate questions that "would bring up any of the political issues now distracting the country" was lifted in January 1860, and the society subsequently debated the questions of a state's right to secede (answering in the affirmative) and whether Virginia should secede from the union if Lincoln were elected president (also answering in the affirmative). In 1861, after the secession of Virginia from the Union, the Society voted to send its surplus treasury (about $200) to the Governor of the Commonwealth for the defense of the state.

All student activities, including the Washington Society, were suspended from 1861 through 1865 for the duration of the Civil War, but the Washington Society was the first to reactivate, holding its first postbellum meeting on October 14, 1865. The Society cooperated with the Jefferson Society in raising money for the erection of a memorial to the University's Confederate casualties in the University Cemetery.

In 1913, the Washington Society joined forces again with the Jefferson Society to sponsor a "speaking league" for public and private high school students throughout the state. However, the activity of the society subsequently fell off until it completely died out during the 1920s. Briefly reforming in 1939 as a society with the aim of "encouraging intellectual curiosity, gentlemanliness, congeniality and the idealization of the Virginia gentleman," it soon became extinct again until its modern refounding in 1979.