page_title: Georgetown University
section_title: Post-Civil War expansion
hierarchical_section_title: Georgetown University / History / Post-Civil War expansion
caption_attribution_description: Union soldiers on the Mason's Island (Theodore Roosevelt Island) in 1861. Behind them is the Potomac Aqueduct Bridge and Georgetown University on top of the hill. During the Civil War (1861-1865), the island served as a storage and distribution site, and also as a training camp for Union troops.
context_page_description: Georgetown University is a private research university in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll in 1789 as Georgetown College, the university has grown to comprise ten undergraduate and graduate schools, among which are the School of Foreign Service, School of Business, Medical School, Law School, and a campus in Qatar. On a hill above the Potomac River, the school's main campus is identifiable by its flagship Healy Hall, a National Historic Landmark.
  Georgetown is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit institution of higher education in the United States. The Jesuits have participated in the university's academic life, both as scholars and as administrators, since 1805. However, the university has always been governed independently of the church, and the majority of Georgetown students are not Catholic.
  Georgetown is a highly selective school, accepting 15 percent of undergraduate applicants for its class of 2024. The university offers degree programs in forty-eight disciplines, enrolling an average of 7,500 undergraduate and 10,000 post-graduate students from more than 135 countries.
context_section_description: The U.S. Civil War greatly affected Georgetown as 1,141 students and alumni enlisted in one army or the other, and the Union Army commandeered university buildings. By the time of President Abraham Lincoln's May 1861 visit to campus, 1,400 troops were living in temporary quarters there. Due to the number of lives lost in the war, enrollment levels remained low until well after the war. Only seven students graduated in 1869, down from over 300 in the previous decade. When the Georgetown College Boat Club, the school's rowing team, was founded in 1876 it adopted two colors: blue, used for Union uniforms, and gray, used for Confederate uniforms. These colors signified the peaceful unity among students. Subsequently, the school adopted these as its official colors.
  Enrollment did not recover until during the presidency of Patrick Francis Healy from 1873 to 1881. Born in Georgia as a slave by law and mixed-race by ancestry, Healy was the first head of a predominantly white American university of acknowledged African descent. He identified as Irish Catholic, like his father, and was educated in Catholic schools in the United States and France. He is credited with reforming the undergraduate curriculum, lengthening the medical and law programs, and creating the Alumni Association. One of his largest undertakings was the construction of a major new building, subsequently named Healy Hall in his honor. For his work, Healy is known as the school's "second founder."
  After the founding of the Law Department in 1870, Healy and his successors hoped to bind the professional schools into a university, and focus on higher education. The School of Medicine added a dental school in 1901 and the undergraduate School of Nursing in 1903. Georgetown Preparatory School relocated from campus in 1919 and fully separated from the university in 1927. The School of Foreign Service (SFS) was founded in 1919 by Edmund A. Walsh, to prepare students for leadership in diplomacy and foreign commerce. The School of Dentistry became independent of the School of Medicine in 1956. The School of Business was separated from the SFS in 1957. In 1998 it was renamed the McDonough School of Business in honor of alumnus Robert E. McDonough.
  Besides expansion of the university, Georgetown also aimed to expand its resources and student body. The School of Nursing has admitted female students since its founding, and most of the university classes were made available to women on a limited basis by 1952. With the College of Arts and Sciences welcoming its first female students in the 1969–1970 academic year, Georgetown became fully coeducational.
caption: Union soldiers on the Potomac River across from Georgetown University in 1861
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