The History of Dartmouth College Part 12

The above gentlemen const.i.tuted the permanent Faculty at this period.

In view of all the circ.u.mstances they determined to surrender the college buildings and library to their opponents, and the Trustees determined to test their rights before the courts, the action being brought against the former Treasurer, who adhered to the "University"

party.

"The action: 'The Trustees of Dartmouth College _v._ William H.

Woodward,' was commenced in the Court of Common Pleas, Grafton County, State of New Hampshire, February Term, 1817. The declaration was trover for the books of record, original charter, common seal, and other corporate property of the college. The conversion was alleged to have been made on the 7th day of October, 1816. The proper pleas were filed, and by consent the cause was carried directly to the Superior Court of New Hampshire, by appeal, and entered at the May Term, 1817. The general issue was pleaded by the defendant, and joined by the plaintiffs. The facts in the case were then agreed upon by the parties, and drawn up in the form of a special verdict, reciting the Charter of the college and the acts of the Legislature of the State, pa.s.sed June and December, 1816, by which the said corporation of Dartmouth College was enlarged and improved, and the said Charter amended.

"The question made in the case was, whether those acts of the Legislature were valid and binding upon the corporation, without their acceptance or a.s.sent, and not repugnant to the Const.i.tution of the United States. If so, the verdict found for the defendants; otherwise it found for the plaintiffs.

"The cause was continued to the September Term of the court in Rockingham County, where it was argued; and at the November term of the same year, in Grafton County, the opinion of the court was delivered by Chief Justice Richardson, sustaining the validity and const.i.tutionality of the acts of the Legislature; and judgment was accordingly entered for the defendant on the special verdict.

"Thereupon a writ of error was sued out by the original plaintiffs, to remove the cause to the Supreme Court of the United States, where it was entered at the term of the court holden at Washington on the first Monday of February, 1818.

"The cause came on for argument on the 10th day of March 1818, before all the judges. It was argued by Mr. Webster and Mr. Hopkinson, for the plaintiffs in error, and by Mr. Holmes and the Attorney-general (Wirt), for the defendant in error.

"At the term of the court holden in February, 1819, the opinion of the judges was delivered by Chief Justice Marshall, declaring the acts of the Legislature unconst.i.tutional and invalid, and reversing the judgment of the State court. The court, with the exception of Mr.

Justice Duvall, were unanimous."

The arguments in the New Hampshire court by Messrs. Mason, Smith, and Webster for the college, and Messrs. Sullivan and Bartlett for Mr.

Woodward; the decision of that court, and the cause in the Supreme Court of the United States, are an important part of our country's judicial history. The result was logically based upon prior decisions of the Supreme Court. We invite special attention to one point in Mr.

Webster's argument. If, in the lapse of time, under the strong light of careful research or elaborate criticism, all the other brilliant colors of this remarkable fabric shall fade or vanish, this central figure will remain forever, to ill.u.s.trate the relations of the college to the State.

"The State of Vermont is a princ.i.p.al donor to Dartmouth College. The lands given lie in that State. This appears in the special verdict. Is Vermont to be considered as having intended a gift to the State of New Hampshire in this case, as, it has been said, is to be the reasonable construction of all donations to the college? The Legislature of New Hampshire affects to represent the public, and therefore claims a right to control all property destined to public use. What hinders Vermont from considering herself equally the representative of the public, and from resuming her grants, at her own pleasure? Her right to do so is less doubtful than the power of New Hampshire to pa.s.s the laws in question."

Thus closed one of the most important contests in the history of American jurisprudence.

Law, politics, literature, and religion combined to make it a subject of national concern. The decision gave to a large cla.s.s of chartered inst.i.tutions a security never enjoyed before. The lapse of more than half a century enables us to consider the question calmly and candidly, uninfluenced by interest, prejudice, or pa.s.sion.

The case was attended with serious embarra.s.sments. Neither counsel nor court had thorough knowledge of the history of the school and the college, and the relations of each to the other. Had they possessed this knowledge, the line of argument in some respects would have been very different, although perhaps with the same general results. More than this, there were no precedents. Indeed, at that early day questions of const.i.tutional law had occupied very little of the attention of the American courts.

There would have been embarra.s.sment had the British Parliament, before our Revolution, a.s.sumed the right to alter materially the Charter of the college. Changes in chartered inst.i.tutions in America, especially, by that body, although within the scope of its power, were usually met with the sternest protests. After the Revolution, there were wide differences of opinion as to who had power over charters granted antecedent to that event. In the case of Dartmouth's Charter any one of several opinions might have found plausible support. To determine whether it was a fit matter for State or national legislation, or judicial control, we must revert to the history of the Charter. There we find that it was the unvarying purpose of the founder, adhered to through a long period of severe and persistent effort, to obtain a Charter which would enable him to locate his school or schools in any of the American colonies. He was determined to be as free as possible from local obligations and local control. There can be no doubt that in securing the Charter of the college he believed that he had accomplished a similar purpose. The Charter appointed as a majority of the first Board of Trustees residents in Connecticut,--making it for the time being, by design of the founder, for good and sufficient reasons, in a sense, a Connecticut inst.i.tution,--with a provision that after the lapse of a brief period a majority of the Board should be residents in New Hampshire. In writing upon this subject to a business correspondent, in June, 1777, President Wheelock says, referring to a third party: "Let him see how amply this incorporation is endowed, and how independent it is made of this government or any other incorporation," and adds that "a matter of controversy" relating to the township granted by the king to the college nearly at the same time with the Charter, "can be decided by no judicatory but supreme, or one equal to that which incorporated it, _i. e._, the Continental Congress."

The views of no one person will be received by all, as conclusive on a subject of so much importance. But certainly, Eleazar Wheelock had a right to construe the provisions of an instrument which in almost every line bore his impress, never possessed by any other individual.

Had John Wheelock presented his grievances to the National Legislature,--only in a limited sense, it is true, if at all, the successor of that king, whose grant of Landaff, in addition to the College Charter, made him, in a sense, according to c.o.ke, the founder of the college,--he might, in all probability, have obtained what he desired in a peaceful manner, although an important judicial decision might never have occupied its present place in American law.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHARACTER OF PRESIDENT BROWN.--TRIBUTES BY PROFESSOR HADDOCK AND RUFUS CHOATE.

In Sprague's "Annals of the American Pulpit," we find, in substance, the following notice of President Brown:

Francis Brown was the son of Benjamin and Prudence (Kelley) Brown, and was born at Chester, Rockingham County, N. H., January 11, 1784. His father was a merchant, and had a highly respectable standing in society. His mother was a person of superior intellect and heart, and, though she died when he had only reached his tenth year, she had impressed upon him some of the most striking of her own characteristics; particularly her uncommon love of order and propriety, even in the most minute concerns, and her uncompromising adherence to her own convictions of truth and right. In his early boyhood he evinced the utmost eagerness in the pursuit of knowledge, and never suffered any opportunity for intellectual improvement to escape him. At the age of fourteen, he ventured to ask his father to furnish him with the means of a collegiate education; but, in consideration of his somewhat straitened circ.u.mstances, he felt constrained to deny the request. By a subsequent marriage, however, his circ.u.mstances were improved; and the new mother of young Brown, with most commendable generosity, a.s.sumed the pecuniary responsibility of his going to college. He always cherished the most grateful recollection of her kindness; and, but a few days before his death, he said to her with the deepest filial sensibility, "My dear mother, whatever good I have done in the world, and whatever honor I have received, I owe it all to you."

In his sixteenth year he became a member of Atkinson Academy, then under the care of the Hon. John Vose, and among the most respectable inst.i.tutions of the kind in New England. His instructor has rendered the following testimony concerning him at that period: "Though he made no pretensions to piety during his residence at the academy, he was exceedingly amiable in his affections and moral in his deportment. It is very rare we find an individual in whom so many excellencies centre. To a sweet disposition was united a strong mind; to an accuracy which examined the minutiae of everything a depth of investigation which penetrated the most profound. I recollect that when I wrote recommending him to college, I informed Dr. Wheelock I had sent him an Addison."

Of the formation of his religious character little more is known than that it was of silent, yet steady growth. It was not till the year that he became a tutor in college that he made a public profession of his faith, by connecting himself with the church in his native place.

In the spring of 1802 he joined the Freshman cla.s.s of Dartmouth College, and, during the whole period of his collegiate course, was a model of persevering diligence, of gentle and winning manners, and pure and elevated morality. From college he carried with him the respect and love of both teachers and students. Having spent the year succeeding his graduation as a private tutor in the family of the venerable Judge Paine, of Williamstown, Vt., he was appointed to a tutorship in the college at which he had graduated. This office he accepted, and for three years discharged its duties with great ability and fidelity, while, at the same time, he was pursuing theological studies with reference to his future profession.

Having received license to preach from the Grafton a.s.sociation, he resigned his tutorship at the Commencement in 1809, with a view to give himself solely to the work of the ministry. After declining several flattering applications for his services, he accepted an invitation from the Congregational Church in North Yarmouth, Me., to become their pastor; and he was accordingly ordained there on his birthday, January 11, 1810. Within a few months from this time, he was chosen Professor of Languages at Dartmouth College; but this appointment he was pleased, greatly to the joy of his parishioners, to decline. For the succeeding five years he labored with great zeal and success among his people, while his influence was sensibly felt in sustaining and advancing the interests of learning and religion throughout the State. He was the intimate friend of the lamented President Appleton; and no one, perhaps, cooperated with the president more vigrously than he, in increasing the resources and extending the influence of Bowdoin College.

He was inaugurated President of Dartmouth College, on the 27th of September, 1815.

During the period when the college controversy was at its height, and it seemed difficult to predict its issue, Mr. Brown was invited to the presidency of Hamilton College,--a respectable and flourishing inst.i.tution in the State of New York. He did not, however, feel at liberty to accept the invitation, considering himself so identified with the college with which he was then connected that he must share either its sinking or rising fortunes.

President Brown's labors were too severe for his const.i.tution. He was not only almost constantly engaged during the week in the instruction and general supervision of the college, but most of his Sabbaths were spent in preaching to dest.i.tute congregations in the neighborhood; and, during his vacations, he was generally traveling with a view to increase the college funds. Soon after the Commencement in 1818, he began to show some symptoms of pulmonary disease, and these symptoms continued, and a.s.sumed a more aggravated form, under the best medical prescriptions. His last effort in the pulpit was at Thetford, Vt., October 6, 1818. In the hope of recovering from his disease, he traveled into the western part of New York, but no substantial relief was obtained. In the fall of 1819, with a view to try the effect of a milder climate, he journeyed as far south as South Carolina and Georgia, where he spent the following winter and spring. He returned in the month of June, and, though he was greeted by his friends and pupils with the most affectionate welcome, they all saw, from his pallid countenance and emaciated form, that he had only come home to die. As he was unable to appear in public, he invited the Senior cla.s.s, who were about to leave college at the commencement of their last vacation, to visit him in his chamber; and there he addressed to them, with the solemnity of a spirit just ready to take its flight, the most pertinent and affectionate farewell counsels, which they received with every expression of grat.i.tude, veneration, and love. In his last days and hours he evinced the most humble, trusting, child-like spirit, willing to live as long as G.o.d was pleased to detain him, but evidently considering it far better to depart and be with Christ. His last words were, "Glorious Redeemer, take my spirit."

He died July 27, 1820.

His wife Elisabeth, daughter of the Rev. Tristram Gilman, a lady whose fine intellectual, moral, and Christian qualities adorned every station in which she was placed, survived him many years, and died on the 5th of September, 1851. They had three children, one of whom, Samuel Gilman [now President Brown], is a professor in Dartmouth College.

The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon President Brown by both Hamilton and Williams Colleges, in 1819.

The following is a list of President Brown's published works: "An Address on Music," delivered before the Handel Society of Dartmouth College, 1809. "The Faithful Steward:" A Sermon delivered at the ordination of Allen Greeley, 1810. "A Sermon delivered before the Maine Missionary Society, 1814." "Calvin and Calvinism;" defended against certain injurious representations contained in a pamphlet ent.i.tled "A Sketch of the Life and Doctrine of the Celebrated John Calvin;" of which Rev. Martin Ruter claims to be the author, 1815. "A Reply to the Rev. Martin Ruter's Letter relating to Calvin and Calvinism, 1815." "A Sermon delivered at Concord before the Convention of Congregational and Presbyterian Ministers of New Hampshire, 1818."

The following is from Prof. Charles B. Haddock, D.D.: "My acquaintance with the President was, for the most part, that of a pupil with his teacher; an undergraduate with the head of the college. And yet it was somewhat more than this; for it was my happiness, during my Senior year, to have lodgings in the same house with him, and to eat at the same table, in the family of one of the professors, and as one of a small circle, all connected with college, and a good deal remarkable for the freedom and vivacity of their conversation. After graduating, I saw him only occasionally, until the last few months of his life, which he pa.s.sed here, near the close of my first year's residence at the college as a teacher,--months in which the greatness of his character was still more signally manifest than in any other circ.u.mstances in which I had seen him.

"In recording my youthful impressions of so uncommon a personage, I may, therefore, hope to be thought to speak not altogether without knowledge, though it should be with enthusiasm.

"Dr. Brown came to preside over the college at the age of less than thirty-two, and in circ.u.mstances to attract unusual attention to his administration. It was during a violent contest of opposing parties for the control of its affairs, and immediately after the removal of his predecessor from office. His qualifications and his official acts were, of course, exposed to severe scrutiny, and could command the respect of the community at large only by approving themselves to the candid judgment even of the adverse party. And I suppose it would be admitted, even in New Hampshire, that no man ever commended himself to general favor, I may say to general admiration, by a wiser, more prudent, or more honorable bearing, amid the greatest and most trying difficulties. Indeed, such was his conduct of affairs, and such the n.o.bleness of his whole character, as displayed in his intercourse with the government of the State, with a rival inst.i.tution under the public authority, and with all cla.s.ses of men, that not a few who began with zeal for the college over which he presided, came at last to act even more from zeal for the MAN who presided over it.

"The mind of Dr. Brown was of the very highest order,--profound, comprehensive, and discriminating. Its action was deliberate, circ.u.mspect, and sure. He made no mistakes; he left nothing in doubt where certainty was possible; he never conjectured where there were means of knowledge; he had no obscure glimpses among his ideas of truth and duty. Always sound and always luminous, his opinions were never uttered without being understood, and never understood without being regarded. There was a dignity and weight in his judgments which seem to me not unlike what const.i.tutes the patriarchal authority of Washington and Marshall.

"If not already a man of learning, in the larger sense of that term, it was only because the duties of the pastoral relation had so long attracted his attention to the objects of more particular interest in his profession. Had his life been spared, however, he would have been learned in the highest and rarest sense. His habits of study were liberal, patient, and eminently philosophical; and within the sphere which his inquiries covered, his knowledge was accurate and choice, and his taste faultless. The entire form of his literary character was beautiful--strong without being dogmatic; delicate without being fastidious.

"His heart was large. Great objects alone could fill it; and it was full of great objects. There was no littleness of thought, or purpose, or ambition, in him--nothing little. The range of his literary sympathies was as wide as the world of mind; his benevolence as universal as the wants of man.

"His person was commanding. Gentle in his manners, affable, courteous, he yet, unconsciously, partly by the natural dignity of his figure, and still more by the greatness visibly impressed on his features, exacted from us all a deference, a veneration even, that seemed as natural as it was inevitable. His very presence was a restraint upon everything like levity or frivolity, and diffused a thoughtful and composed, if not always grave, air about him, which, never ceasing to be cheerful and bright, never failed to dignify the objects of pursuit and elevate the intercourse of life. A gentleman in the primitive sense of the word, he was, without seeking to be thought so, always felt to be of a superior order of men.

"On the whole, it has been my fortune to know no man whose entire character has appeared to me so near perfection, none, whom it would so satisfy me in all things to resemble.

"How much we lost in him it is now impossible to estimate, and it would, perhaps, be useless to know. His early death extinguished great hopes. But his memory is a treasure, which even death cannot take from us."

Hon. Rufus Choate writes thus: "It happened that my whole time at college coincided with the period of President Brown's administration.

He was inducted into office in the autumn of 1815, my Freshman year, and he died in the summer of 1820. It is not the want, therefore, but the throng, of recollections of him that creates any difficulty in complying with your request. He was still young at the time of his inauguration--not more than thirty-one--and he had pa.s.sed those few years, after having been for three of them a tutor in Dartmouth College, in the care of a parish in North Yarmouth, in Maine; but he had already, in an extraordinary degree, dignity of person and sentiment; rare beauty,--almost youthful beauty, of countenance; a sweet, deep, commanding tone of voice; a grave but graceful and attractive demeanor--all the traits and all the qualities, completely ripe, which make up and express weight of character; and all the address and firmness and knowledge of youth, men, and affairs which const.i.tute what we call administrative talent. For that form of talent, and for the greatness which belongs to character, he was doubtless remarkable. He must have been distinguished for this among the eminent. From his first appearance before the students on the day of his inauguration, when he delivered a brief and grave address in Latin, prepared we were told, the evening before, until they followed the bier, mourning, to his untimely grave, he governed them perfectly and always, through their love and veneration; the love and veneration of the 'willing soul.' Other arts of government were, indeed, just then, scarcely practicable. The college was in a crisis which relaxed discipline, and would have placed a weak instructor, or an instructor unbeloved, or loved with no more than ordinary regard, in the power of cla.s.ses which would have abused it. It was a crisis which demanded a great man for President, and it found such an one in him. In 1816, the Legislature of New Hampshire pa.s.sed the acts which changed the Charter of the inst.i.tution, abolished the old corporation of Trustees, created a new one, extinguished the legal ident.i.ty of the college, and reconstructed it or set up another under a different and more ambitious name and a different government. The old Trustees, with President Brown at their head, denied the validity of these acts, and resisted their administration. A dominant political party had pa.s.sed or adopted them; and thereupon a controversy arose between the college and a majority of the State; conducted in part in the courts of law of New Hampshire, and of the Union; in part by the press; sometimes by the students of the old inst.i.tution and the new in personal collision, or the menace of personal collision, within the very gardens of the academy; which was not terminated until the Supreme Court of the United States adjudged the acts unconst.i.tutional and void. This decision was p.r.o.nounced in 1819; and then, and not till then, had President Brown peace,--a brief peace made happy by letters, by religion, by the consciousness of a great duty performed for law, for literature, and for the Const.i.tution,--happy even in prospect of premature death. This contest tried him and the college with extreme and various severity. To induce students to remain in a school disturbed and menaced; to engage and inform public sentiment, the true patron and effective founder, by showing forth that the principles of a sound political morality, as well as of law, prescribed the action of the old Trustees; to confer with the counsel of the college, two of whom--Mr. Mason and Mr. Webster--have often declared to me their admiration of the intellectual force and practical good sense which he brought to those conferences,--this all, while it withdrew him somewhat from the proper studies and proper cares of his office, created a necessity for the display of the very rarest qualities of temper, discretion, tact, and command, and he met it with consummate ability and fortune. One of his addresses to the students in the chapel at the darkest moment of the struggle, presenting the condition and prospects of the college, and the embarra.s.sments of all kinds which surrounded its instructors, and appealing to the manliness and affection and good principles of the students to help 'by whatsoever things were honest, lovely, or of good report,' occurs to recollection as of extraordinary persuasiveness and influence.

"There can be no doubt that he had very eminent intellectual ability, true love of the beautiful in all things, and a taste trained to discover, enjoy, and judge it, and that his acquirements were competent and increasing. It was the 'keenness' of his mind of which Mr. Mason always spoke to me as remarkable in any man of any profession. He met him only in consultation as a client; but others, students, all nearer his age, and admitted to his fuller intimacy, must have been struck rather with the sobriety and soundness of his thoughts, the solidity and large grasp of his understanding, and the harmonized culture of all its parts. He wrote a pure and clear English style, and he judged of elegant literature with a catholic and appreciative but chastised taste. The recollections of a student of the learning of a beloved and venerated president of a college, whom he sees only as a boy sees a man, and his testimony concerning it, will have little value; but I know that he was esteemed an excellent Greek and Latin scholar, and our recitations of Horace, which the poverty of the college and the small number of its teachers induced him to superintend, though we were Soph.o.m.ores only, were the most agreeable and instructive exercises of the whole college cla.s.sical course.

"Of studies more professional he seemed master. Locke, Stewart, with whose liberality and tolerance and hopeful and rational philanthropy he sympathized warmly, Butler, Edwards, and the writers on natural law and moral philosophy, he expounded with the ease and freedom of one habitually trained and wholly equal to these larger meditations.

"His term of office was short and troubled; but the historian of the college will record of his administration a two-fold honor; first, that it was marked by a n.o.ble vindication of its chartered rights; and second, that it was marked also by a real advancement of its learning; by collections of ampler libraries, and by displays of a riper scholarship."