Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"At the time of independence the United States contained nine colleges, all with religious connections. . . . In 1815, thirty-three colleges existed in the United States; by 1835, sixty-eight; and by 1848, there were 113. . . . Eighty-eight were Protestant denominational colleges; the remaining nine, Roman Catholic. Catholic educational initiatives in the United States were largely the work of religious orders. They included Georgetown and Fordham (both Jesuit), Notre Dame (Order of the Holy Cross), and Villanova (Augustinian). . . . A distinctive feature of antebellum American colleges was the course on moral philosophy, typically taught to seniors by the president of the college. . . . The dominant school of thought was that of the Scottish philosophers of 'common sense,' Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart, plus Adam Smith (whom we remember mostly for his work in economics, then a branch of moral philosophy). These philosophers were valued for their rebuttal to the atheistic skepticism of David Hume, their reconciliation of science with religion, and their insistence on the objective validity of moral principles." [Howe: What Hath God Wrought, p. 457-63]