Ezra Cornell was deeply involved in the construction of the new campus and was known to hover over workers, to whom he offered "sharp admonishments." Yet one of the workers remembered: "He stood among us like a fond and anxious father." Still, Cornell's "peremptory" manner antagonized more than a few faculty members. Goldwin Smith focused on Cornell's strengths, calling him a man "whose ignorance of [education] quenches the lightnings of the gods ... He has been praised highly and with greatest justice for his munificence; and he not unpardonably takes the praise as extending to his wisdom in the management of his foundation."

Adapted by George Lowery from Morris Bishop's "A History of Cornell."