A further provision of the Constitution specified the immediate appointment of a President. The old plan was not considered suitable for an American college. This sentiment was so strong that the Convention was unwilling to leave this matter to the discretion of the Regents and therefore they made action imperative. All that was necessary now was the adaptation of the organic Act of the University to the new Constitution. This was accomplished on April 8, 1851, when a new Act was adopted, in essentials far simpler and more general in its terms than the old one, which left the University free to enter upon the remarkable growth and expansion which began with the administration of President Tappan. CHAPTER IV THE FIRST ADMINISTRATIONS The new University Act had charged the Regents with the duty of electing a President immediately. It was some time, however, before they found the right man, Henry Philip Tappan, LL.D., who was inaugurated as the first President of the University of Michigan on December 22, 1852. Dr. Tappan's name was first suggested by George Bancroft, the historian, who was also considered for the position, but there was some opposition, which seems to have centered about the fact that Dr. Tappan had once consulted a homeopathic physician, and he was not elected until August 12. President, or as he was often called, Chancellor Tappan was a man of wide culture, of established reputation as a scholar, and an author on philosophical and educational subjects. His personality was magnetic and commanding, but it was combined with a frank and fatherly attitude toward his students which won their immediate and life-long friendship. Born at Rhinebeck on the Hudson, of mixed Dutch and Huguenot ancestry, on April 18, 1805, he came to Michigan in time to give his best years to his new work. Many of his friends may well have been astonished at his acceptance of a post in a tiny college far on the outskirts of a village in the Western wilderness, which carried with it the munificent salary of $1,500, together with a house and an additional $500 for traveling expenses. Yet he came. The principles of the University agreed with the ideals he had received in his long study of European methods and his personal experiences in German schools. He determined to make a real university in the West; he fixed his glance upon the opportunities for future development rather than the bareness and inevitable crudity of pioneer life. For the first time he found his cherished ideas embodied in the provision for a state university; and though he realized they had not been made effective, he believed that in the West, if anywhere, was his opportunity to put them into actual practice, unhampered by the traditions which had grown up everywhere in the East.