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- By 1849 an ambitious young man joined the Tulip community. He was a twenty-four year old graduate of Washington College in Virginia (later Washington and Lee). His name was George D. Alexander. Alexander established a school in Tulip in August 1849, calling it the Alexander Institute. The institute showed much promise, and as a result, in the summer of 1850, Alexander traveled to Virginia and brought back with him Thomas O. Benton, a likely young man who had just graduated from the Virginia Military Institute.
- Now all seemed to be clear. Alexander planned to establish at Tulip a military institution as well as a seminary for young women. It was to be managed on a larger scale than the Alexander Institute. He had backing, financial and moral, by the local gentry. In the Alexander Institute both males and females had attended school together. The headmaster had taught the boys and John T. Garvin had taught the girls.
- During the winter of 1850 the most celebrated gentlemen in the Tulip area secured a charter from the State of Arkansas, for the Arkansas Military Institute and the Tulip Female Collegiate Seminary. The charter was granted late in that year, December 17. Late in the previous summer these men had met and made plans for establishing these schools. There was one man present who was so enthused with this proposed school system and with its Board of Guardians that he addressed, under the signature of "Spirit of '76," the following note to the people of Arkansas:
- "It is true, I have seen finer dressed gentlemen, great display of pendantry, and ostentation, more ceremony, &c.; but I have not met any where of men of more practical and comprehensive morality, more devotion to the cause of literature, or who seemed to entertain a more enlightened conception of their duty to the rising generations (2)."
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- 2. Arkansas Gazette, August 30, 1850.
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