Following the hiatus of the Civil War, the trustees named Thomas William Humes president in July 1865, but it was not until a year later that the institution could resume operations. Humes was a Knoxville native and an 1830 graduate at the age of fifteen from East Tennessee College. During Humes's administration, great strides were taken to reorganize and rehabilitate the once war-torn campus, including the erection of several new buildings, the addition of new faculty, increased enrollments reaching a high of 315 in 1874, the addition of medical and dental departments located in Nashville, the establishment of an agricultural experiment station, and the redesignation of the institution by the legislature in 1879 as the University of Tennessee. But much of the Humes years were taken up by bitter contention between those who would shift the University's curricular emphasis to the agricultural and mechanical arts and those who would retain the traditional academic framework of classics and humanities. Humes stood with the traditionalists, and this led to his unfortunate downfall. The trustees asked for his resignation, and on August 24, 1883, Humes complied.