“A Time of Fruits and Flowers”

This chapter considers the last years of Horace’s presidency, his departure from Lexington, his plans for a traveling academy, his arrival in New Orleans, and the last days and months of his life. The relief controversy speeded the rise of Jacksonian populism, and in 1824 Kentuckians elected Democratic Republican Joseph Desha as governor. Presbyterian opponents now joined with populists in common cause and helped force Horace’s resignation. But new challenges offered new opportunities, and Horace now set his sights on a traveling academy, a scheme to take the sons of Louisiana’s wealthiest planting families to Europe for an extended educational experience. He was frustrated by a lack of enthusiasm for this plan but then reinvigorated by another: the same families who sent their sons to Lexington for their education desired a university closer to home and encouraged Horace to become the institution’s first president. However, the promise of yet another educational venture would not come to pass, and Horace died from yellow fever just weeks after accepting the offer. This chapter places Horace Holley in the context of larger social and political trends and posits a different interpretation of the decades that proceeded his administration.