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One of the University's original trustees and faculty members, Waddel was
36 when he came to The University of Mississippi in 1848, where he remained
until the Civil War. An ordained Presbyterian minister, Waddel had
served as commissioner of army missions for the Confederate Army in 1863
and had preached many sermons to troops. After the war, he was a highly
influential and stabilizing force for the University and the community,
encouraging the revival of the Alumni Association and student
organizations. With the idea of revising the curriculum here, he
visited leading universities in the North and East, ultimately achieving
a new curriculum similar to that of the University of Michigan. Waddel was
a graduate of the University of Georgia, where his father had served as
president. He worked as a cotton farmer in Alabama, taught at the
Willington Academy in South Carolina, and established the Montrose
Academy in Jasper County, Mississippi, before he was elected chair of the
Ancient Languages Department at The University of Mississippi. He resigned
the Chancellorship to become secretary of education for the Presbyterian
Church of the United States.
