Free Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted by Gerald Imber Md Page B

to power the locomotives, and the railroads were forced to shut down. Income for the already financially extended railroads ceased; all were hit hard and many were forced into bankruptcy. Hopkins, who remained financially stable through diversified investments, was able to advance the B&O large sums of money to meet its interest obligations, thereby averting disaster for the company and solidifying his already lofty position in Baltimore business circles.
    During the war, Hopkins’s sympathies lay strongly with the Union. Remaining true to the Quaker faith’s opposition to slavery, Hopkins was a “peaceful abolitionist,” and he employed all peaceful and legal means at his disposal to end the practice. He communicated with President Lincoln and openly supported Union causes. He encouraged the encampment of Federal forces in Baltimore and placedthe facilities of the B&O railroad at the disposal of the Union Army. When the war ended, feelings among Baltimore’s citizens, which were already frayed by partisanship, became hardened by economic strife. Hopkins remained successful during and after the struggle, and attempted to heal the wounds and divisions while doing what he could to help undo the wrongs done the blacks.
    Unmarried, with no direct heirs, and his extended family on firm financial footing, Hopkins planned to use the bulk of his fortune “for the good of humanity.” His initial charitable bequest was $1 million for the establishment of the Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum. The same trustees named to oversee the orphanage would also lead the university to be built bearing his name. On April 24, 1867, he incorporated both The Johns Hopkins University and The Johns Hopkins Hospital. That year Hopkins spent $150,000 to purchase 13 acres on Loudenschlager’s Hill, the site of the Maryland Hospital for the Insane, which was to be moved elsewhere. The purchase was predicated upon the city’s closing the streets within the site so that the new hospital and medical school could be self-contained.
    At his death, on Christmas Eve of 1873, the Baltimore Sun estimated Johns Hopkins’s wealth at $8 million, the equivalent of $160 million current value. His estate consisted of $2.25 million in Baltimore and Ohio railroad stock, $1 million in bank stock, and the remainder in real estate and commercial paper. Of this sum, $7 million had already been earmarked for the university bearing his name. It was the largest single philanthropic bequest in the history of the United States, and The Johns Hopkins University became the most richly endowed university in the country.
    Hopkins’s plans were farsighted and proudly utopian but grounded in the plain words and vision of a successful businessman. The cause of higher education would benefit from the creation of the first true university in the country, offering both undergraduate and graduate courses of study, including law, medicine, and the humanities. Thoughinitially organized under a single board of 12 trustees, the university and medical school would be financially separate from the hospital. Half of the $7 million would go toward construction of the hospital; the other half for the university, including the medical school. Hopkins had stipulated in his will that the capital for the hospital would be invested in stocks and real estate, and the interest from these investments would fund construction, staffing, and operation, without invasion of the principal.
    In an 1873 letter to the trustees, written nine months before he died, Hopkins outlined the principles of his hospital. The plan would consist of an initial building, with symmetrical additions, that would “ultimately be able to receive four hundred patients” and “compare favorably with any other institution of like character in this country or in Europe.” The hospital would treat the “indigent sick of this city and its environs without regard to sex, age or color.” The indigent would be admitted