Williamsburg lost its metropolitan honors in 1779, when Richmond became the capital of Virginia. The effect was disastrous, and its population decreased from two thousand in 1776 to twelve hundred in 1795. Many of the houses became tenantless, and the population of the place never rose above sixteen hundred in after years. But the old city still retained its college, which, despite many vicissitudes, continued to maintain its influence in the Union. Indeed, William and Mary College holds a unique position in the history of the United States. In its antecedents, it is the oldest of American colleges; in actual operation, it is second only to Harvard. It is the only college that received its charter direct from the Crown under the seal of the Privy Council in England. It was the first college to have a full faculty of professors. It was the first to abandon the Oxford curriculum and adopt the “elective system,” which it did in 1779. It was the first to adopt the “honor system,” which discountenances the custom prevailing at some colleges even now of spying and informing on students. It was the first college in America to widen its curriculum into the scope of a university by establishing chairs of law and medicine, in addition to the classics and the sciences. It was the first to establish schools of modern languages, history, political economy and constitutional and political law. It was the first to establish, in the Phi Beta Kappa Society, an intercollegiate fraternity, having for its object purely literary improvement; and it was the first to award strictly collegiate prizes, as manifested in the gold medals donated by Lord Botetourt in 1771. Of the seven Presidents born in Virginia, three--Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and John Tyler--were educated at William and Mary. To these men is to be ascribed the annexation of Louisiana, Florida, Texas and most of the Western territory, thus trebling the original area of the Union. Four out of five judges contributed by Virginia to the Supreme Bench of the United States were educated at William and Mary. The most illustrious commander of the Federal armies down to 1861, General Winfield Scott, was a William and Mary man. Of twenty-seven Senators from Virginia (1789-1861), sixteen, and of the four Speakers of the House of Representatives from Virginia, three, of three ministers plenipotentiary to England, two, and of six ministers to France, four, were alumni; and John James Beckly, first Librarian of Congress and first Clerk of the House of Representatives, was a William and Mary man.