Lincoln Memorial University (LMU) is a private university in Harrogate, Tennessee. LMU's campus borders on Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. As of fall 2019, it had 1,975 undergraduate and 2,892 graduate and professional students. LMU is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). In March 2019, the LMU Duncan School of Law received full accreditation by the American Bar Association. The university's Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum houses a large collection of memorabilia relating to the school's namesake, Abraham Lincoln, and the Civil War. The collection was initially formed from donations by the school's early benefactor, General Oliver O. Howard, and his friends. History In the 1880s, an entrepreneur named Alexander Arthur (1846–1912) and several associates established a firm called American Association, Ltd., the primary purpose of which was to develop the iron ore and coal resources of the Cumberland Gap area. Arthur founded Middlesboro, Kentucky for the company's employees and furnaces, and constructed a railroad line connecting Middlesboro with Knoxville, Tennessee. Arthur believed Middlesboro would grow into a large industrial city, the so-called "Pittsburgh of the South." In 1888, he founded the city of Harrogate, which he envisioned would someday be a suburb for Middlesboro's elite. Arthur and American Association spent some two million dollars developing Harrogate, the jewel of which was the Four Seasons Hotel, a 700-room structure believed to have been the largest hotel in the U.S. at the time. The hotel included a lavish dining hall, a casino, and a separate sanitarium. The economic panic of the early 1890s and the subsequent collapse of Arthur's London financial backers doomed American Associates and the Four Seasons was sold and dismantled. In 1896, General Oliver O. Howard, a former Union officer who had helped establish Howard University (named for him), embarked on a lecture tour. Howard's agent, Cyrus Kehr, suggested Howard establish a university as a living memorial to President Abraham Lincoln. On June 18, 1896, Howard spoke at the Harrow School, an elementary school at Cumberland Gap founded a few years earlier by Reverend A. A. Myers. After the lecture, Myers asked Howard for assistance in establishing a college for the Cumberland Gap region. Howard related to Myers a conversation he had with Lincoln in 1863 in which the president expressed a desire to do something to help the people of East Tennessee, a majority of whom remained loyal to the Union during the