The History of Dartmouth College Part 36

During these years he became a leading member of his profession, was often in offices of trust in city affairs, at different times in both houses of the Legislature, and a member of Congress from 1853 to 1855.

After a.s.signing "pride of ancestry and name" as one reason for Mr.

Wentworth's munificence to Dartmouth, Judge Crosby says:

"Another reason for the gift to the college is found in his appreciation of the value, the power, and the beauty of education. He had had hard experience in relation to it. He had hungered for it when he could not get it. He had obtained it in limited departments, by hard work, at great odds and under great embarra.s.sments, when other claims must be postponed in its behalf. And as he looked over our college studies he found many branches he had never pursued and could not approach."

"The fund is not given for scholarships, professorships, libraries, or buildings. It is given for the support of the inst.i.tution, to make instruction independent, learned and cheap; given to invite the youth to come here, and to give them the best opportunities of cultivation at lessened expense, to lay foundations of learning and mental enlargement for any department in life. It will maintain ten learned professors or twenty tutors, or give 20,000 volumes of books annually, as the honorable Trustees shall think the demands of the college require.

"It may enlarge, repair, or ornament these grounds; it may be turned into laboratories, museums of natural history, or art; it may raise the curriculum to higher studies and extended courses. It is not restrained by his personal judgment and direction in the future, but left to the better judgment of living mind."

Should Dartmouth ever lose her maiden name, she would not hesitate in regard to the new one.

William Reed was born at Marblehead, Ma.s.s. Compelled to abandon the hope of a public education, he afterwards engaged in mercantile pursuits, which he followed with great energy and activity and with a good degree of success.

Having by his untiring energy and perseverance, and by his strict habits of economy come into possession of a considerable amount of property, he devoted the latter part of his life to philanthropic and benevolent purposes.

As a citizen he was distinguished for activity, public spirit and true patriotism. The many marks of attention and respect which he received from his fellow-citizens evinced the high estimation in which he was held by the community.

In 1811 he was elected to a seat in the Congress of the United States, a station which he filled for four years with honor to himself, with satisfaction to his const.i.tuents, and with advantage to his country.

While the cause of Foreign Missions received the largest share of his Christian sympathies and the largest amount of his charitable donations, yet he was deeply interested in all the benevolent operations of the day. His sound judgment was sought in the management of various public inst.i.tutions. In 1826 he was elected a member of the Board of Visitors of the Theological Seminary at Andover, and occupied that station until his death. He was for several years a Trustee of Dartmouth; also of Amherst.

Dr. George Cheyne Shattuck was born in Templeton, Ma.s.s., in the year 1783, in the sixth generation from William Shattuck, who was born in England in the year 1621, and died in Watertown, Ma.s.s., in the year 1672, Dr. Benjamin Shattuck graduated at Harvard College in 1765, and having studied medicine, settled in Templeton. His youngest son inherited thirteen hundred dollars, and this sufficed for his support, fitting for college, and college and Medical education, commenced at Hanover and continued in Philadelphia and Boston, with such addition as he was able to make by school-keeping. There were no public conveyances when he went from Templeton to Hanover, and he bought a horse on which he rode to Hanover and then sold it, taking the pay in board. He received four degrees from his Alma Mater; the first in the year 1803 and the last, of Doctor of Laws, in 1853. He settled in Boston in the year 1807, and for the s.p.a.ce of forty-seven years devoted himself to the practice of his profession. He secured the esteem, respect and affection of his patients, and gathered a handsome estate. He gave liberally to his Alma Mater for an Observatory, for books, and for portraits of distinguished alumni. He founded a professorship in the Medical Department of Harvard University and endowed scholarships in the Academical Department. He gave liberally to various charities during his lifetime, as well as to public inst.i.tutions, and the poor and needy never appealed to him in vain. He died in Boston in the year 1854, in the profession of the faith in which he had been educated both at home and at college.

George H. Bissell was born at Hanover, N. H. He is descended from a family of Norman-French origin, which came from Somersetshire, England. His mother came of Belgic and Holland descent. One of his ancestors was the first settler at Windsor, Ct., in 1628. The late Gov. Clark Bissell, of Connecticut, and Gov. William H. Bissell, of Illinois, were relatives. In 1846, after successful teaching elsewhere, on the organization of the High School in New Orleans Mr.

Bissell was elected its first princ.i.p.al over many compet.i.tors.

Subsequently he was chosen superintendent of the public schools in that city. His remarkable administrative abilities and high qualifications as a scholar were of great service in his onerous position. The schools reached a discipline and prosperity before unknown. He is also a member of the legal profession.

In the development of petroleum Mr. Bissell was a leading pioneer; perhaps he justly deserves the preeminence in this great work. Mr.

Bissell is a self-made man. We quote a portion of his letter to President Smith, announcing his munificent donation for a gymnasium:

"In acceding to your wishes, my dear sir, I can but recall that day, now twenty years since, when, leaving Dartmouth, alone and unaided, I felt that 'Tentanda via est, qua me quoque possim tollere humo.'

"It affords me unqualified pleasure now to be able to gratify a wish then cherished, to aid in some degree my Alma Mater, and in that manner which you a.s.sure me is the most effectual."

"Gen. David Culver was born in Lyme, N. H. In the year 1832 he left the parental roof, and after a residence in Hartford, Conn., and New York City, for some years, where in both cities he was actively engaged in lucrative business pursuits, he returned to his beautiful ancestral home in Lyme, in 1855. The residue of his years he spent in pleasant agricultural life, on the old farm of his strongly-endeared childhood, memory, and attachment. In the rural district of this home he was ever apparently content and happy, and, much to his praise, seemed greatly beloved by his neighbors. His townsmen many times by their united suffrage gave him important offices of public trust and confidence. Of the Congregational Church of Christ, in Lyme, he was for many years a highly valued helping member, and for the gospel ministry was a liberal supporter, giving of his means in so quiet a manner that he appeared not to wish his good deeds blazoned to the world.

"For the needy, suffering poor of his personal acquaintance, especially the helpless poor, he had a sympathizing heart, and so deeply pitied them, in many instances, as to greatly alleviate their sufferings by ministering pecuniarily to their relief.

"To the cause of general education in the community,--elementary, common, agricultural, and collegiate,--he was always a warm-hearted, deeply-interested friend. In many instances, to aspiring youth in indigent circ.u.mstances, who were striving after the acquisition of the needful knowledge to prepare themselves and others for usefulness, he has been known to bestow pecuniary a.s.sistance to aid them on their way.

"And so agreeably bland was he in his mode of conferring his favors, as to greatly augment the value of them, and at the same time heighten the esteem of the recipients for the donor." Outside of her alumni Dartmouth had few warmer friends than General Culver.

Samuel Appleton was a native of New Ipswich, N. H.

His enterprise and his liberality have given his name a conspicuous place in New England history. We append a portion of one of his letters to President Lord, which shows his generous appreciation of liberal culture.

"It affords me much pleasure to have it in my power to do something for the only college in my native State which has done so much to establish a sound literary character in the country. Dartmouth has done her full proportion in educating for the pulpit, the bar, the healing art, and the senate, good and great men who have done honor to their names, to the college, and to the country."

In closing this record, we can only allude to other leading benefactors, among whom are John D. Willard, who gave to Dartmouth some of the fruits of his busy, earnest life. Salmon P. Chase, loyal to his Alma Mater to the last. John Wentworth, who still lives to witness her work. Henry Bond, loving her scarcely less than his kindred, "according to the flesh." Frederick Hall, who gave his money, and what he valued more. John Phillips, whose name will live as long as Dartmouth, or Andover, or Exeter, shall exist. Israel Evans, the patriot divine, who cherished for Washington and Wheelock similar affection. Aaron Lawrence, the conscientious Christian merchant.

Jeremiah Kingman, the busy agriculturist, who cultivated his mind as well as his fields. Mrs. Betsey Whitehouse, the parishioner of Abraham Burnham, by whose labors her valuable Christian and general character was largely moulded, and E. W. Stoughton, who fully realizes the close connection between a healthy body and a sound mind.

The services of Dartmouth's Trustees should not be pa.s.sed over in silence.

We give a statement of the character of the Board half a century ago, when the College was in "middle life," from Mr. William H. Duncan.

"Of the members of that Board, there was Elijah Paine, of Vermont, who had received his appointment as District Judge of the United States for the District of Vermont from Washington, a graduate from Harvard, 'a Roman of the Romans,' one who would have done honor to Rome in her n.o.blest and best days for the purity, integrity, and elevation of his character. Charles Marsh, who held for many years the unchallenged position of the leader of the bar in Vermont, a cousin of that giant in the law, Jeremiah Mason, whom he greatly resembled in many of his intellectual characteristics,--a high-toned gentleman, and a devout and reverend believer in Christianity. Moses P. Payson, a graduate of the College, of the cla.s.s of 1793, a lawyer of courteous and elegant demeanor, and of high social position. Judge Edmund Parker, a sound lawyer, a man of good sense, and excellent judgment, and above all a man of unspotted character, a brother of the distinguished ex-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire. Israel W. Putnam, D.D., a graduate of the cla.s.s of 1809, so long and so favorably known in New Hampshire as a clergyman. John H. Church, D.D., a graduate from Harvard, a man of apostolic solemnity and dignity of character, whose praise is in all the churches. John Wheeler, D.D., an accomplished scholar, afterwards President of the University of Vermont. Bennett Tyler, who was still a Trustee, although he had resigned his position as president, a man of commanding dignity of presence, an unrivaled logician, and one of the best pulpit orators it has ever been the good fortune of the writer to listen to. Judge Samuel Hubbard, of Boston, one of the best lawyers of New England, who for many years was the rival and the peer of the leaders of the Suffolk Bar. When on the bench of the Supreme Court of Ma.s.sachusetts, he was numbered among her most eminent jurists, and was ranked with Fletcher and Shaw. He was a man of the finest sensibilities, and a devout and reverent Christian.

Mills Olcott, of the cla.s.s of 1790, who had been the Secretary and Treasurer of the College before he was a Trustee, whose father had served before him for twenty years in the same capacity, a man of remarkable sagacity and enterprise in business affairs, of a.s.sured social position, and of great elegance and dignity of manner.

"And of this body of men was Ezekiel Webster, the elder brother of Daniel, a man of remarkable intellectual endowments; in sagacity and judgment, in the opinion of those who knew them both, fully equal to his distinguished brother, well read, as all the gentlemen of the old school were, in the old English authors; a profound lawyer, and, at times when he could be prevailed upon to speak, as eloquent as his brother; of commanding personal presence, which in no way can be so well described as by borrowing a Homeric epithet, for he was truly a 'king' among 'men.'

"Such was the body of men whose grave and majestic air used to impress the writer of this sketch, when the Commencements came round, in his college days, with the same feeling of awe and reverence with which the barbarians' were inspired when they first looked in upon the Roman Senate, supposing that they were looking upon an a.s.sembly of kings."

If to these we add the names of the eminent men who were the colleagues of the founder, and of Nathaniel Niles, Jonathan Freeman, Thomas W. Thompson, Stephen Jacob, Timothy Farrar, Samuel Bell, Asa McFarland, Seth Payson, Samuel Prentiss, George Sullivan, John Aiken, William Reed, Samuel Delano, Samuel Fletcher, Nathaniel Bouton, Silas Aiken, Joel Parker, Richard Fletcher, and the honored Governors of the State, we are fully impressed with the fact that the interests of the college have been in the keeping of wise and prudent guardians.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

LABORS OF DARTMOUTH ALUMNI.--CONCLUSION.

As Dartmouth was founded as an evangelizing agency, and every stone was laid in firm reliance upon Him to whom all was consecrated, there was good ground of hope that it would be a strong and durable pillar in the great temple of Christian learning. Its record is a realization of the hopes of its n.o.ble and devoted founders.

In his "Narrative" for 1771 (p. 29) Dr. Wheelock, alluding to the period immediately following his removal to Hanover, says: "there were evident impressions upon the minds of a number of my family and school which soon became universal, insomuch that scarcely one remained who did not feel a greater or less degree of it, till the whole lump seemed to be leavened by it, and love, peace, joy; satisfaction and contentment reigned through the whole. The 23d day of January (1771) was kept as a day of solemn fasting and prayer, on which I gathered a church in this college and school, which consisted of twenty-seven members."

His biographer, writing early in the present century, says: "The college has been repeatedly favored with remarkable religious impressions on the minds of the students. These showers of divine grace have produced streams which have refreshed the garden of the Lord, and made glad the city of our G.o.d. The young men in this school of the prophets have, at these seasons, been powerfully and lastingly affected; they have gone forth as 'angels of the churches;' the work of G.o.d has prospered in their hands; many of their people have been turned to righteousness."

Of President Tyler's administration it is said that the most remarkable thing was "a powerful revival of religion." All the later decades have been marked by manifestations of the Divine presence in the college. Scarcely a year has pa.s.sed in which some of its members have not joyfully consecrated intellect and heart and life to the service of Him who gave them.

Not a few have been "bright and shining lights" in the church. Of Jesse Appleton, Rev. Dr. Anderson says: "I have been placed in circ.u.mstances to see much of not a few great men in the Church of Christ, but I have been conversant with only a few, a very few, whose attributes of power seemed to me quite equal to his. The clearness of his conceptions was almost angelic. If I am fitted to do any good in the world, I owe what intellectual adaptation I have very much to his admirable training, especially as he took us through his favorite Butler."

Few American divines have had a wider or more varied sphere of influence than Dr. Appleton's cla.s.smate, Ebenezer Porter, a _pioneer_ in sacred Rhetoric, one of the originators of the American Tract Society, the most prominent of the founders of the American Education Society, which he adopted as his child and heir, the beloved and honored first president of the oldest Theological Seminary in the United States.

Of Samuel Worcester, the distinguished opponent of Channing, we have the following valuable record: "When the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was formed, his labors as the Corresponding Secretary, with the whole system now in operation for the conduct of missions abroad, required the same processes of original evolution and determination of principles and rules, as so signally characterized the formation of our Federal government. Here was displayed his peculiar, if we may not say his transcendent, power among his eminent a.s.sociates. The great value of 'the Const.i.tution of the Board, as a working instrument,' 'the nicely adjusted relations of the voluntary and ecclesiastical principles,' the 'origination of what is peculiarly excellent in the Annual Reports, and also in the Instructions to Missionaries,' and the '_American_ idea' of 'organizing the missions as self-governing communities,' are justly ascribed to him by the present senior Secretary, [Dr. Anderson] as conclusive witness of his extraordinary 'sagacity' and of his being far 'in advance of the age.'"

Philander Chase could found parish and diocese and seminary with equal facility, performing a work for the Episcopal Church in America unrivaled by that of any contemporary.

Nor should we overlook such names as Asa Burton, teacher of teachers in theology, who could successfully measure swords with Emmons; Samuel Wood, whose impress never left the mind of Webster; Daniel Story, a pioneer of Marietta; Mase Shepard, Jonathan Strong, Walter Harris, Ethan Smith, Alvan Hyde, William Jackson, Rufus Anderson, the honored father of a not less honored son; John Fiske, Abijah Wines, Eliphalet Gillett, whose home missionary zeal in Maine made a lasting impression upon the rising state; Kiah Bailey, who first effectually moved the springs which gave to the same State the Bangor Theological Seminary; John Smith, an earnest and honored teacher in that Seminary; Theophilus Packard, whose pupils have performed honorable service for the Master in both hemispheres; Peter P. Roots, Bezaleel Pinneo, Asa McFarland, Caleb Jewett Tenney, a leading founder of the East Windsor (now Hartford) Theological Seminary; Thomas A. Merrill, Abraham Burnham, George T. Chapman, John Brown, Daniel Poor, the pioneer in Christian learning in Ceylon and Madura; Austin d.i.c.kinson, to whom the world is under large obligations for a higher type of periodical literature; Levi Spaulding, the worthy coadjutor of Poor; Nathan W.

Fiske, Daniel Temple, who carried the first missionary printing-press to Western Asia, and made for cla.s.sic lands a Christian literature; William Goodell, the leading founder of two flourishing Christian missions on heathen soil, and the translator of the whole Bible into the Armeno-Turkish language; Ephraim W. Clark, John S. Emerson, and Austin H. Wright, of similar spirit; Benjamin Woodbury, Aaron Foster, a leading founder of the American Home Missionary Society, and John K.

Lord, whose early death in the Queen City of the West, was as the falling of "a standard-bearer."

To these we might add many eminent living heralds of the cross, and a Hovey and a Townsend in leading Theological Seminaries. We cannot more fitly close on this head than by remarking that of the last forty-four subjects in the second volume of Sprague's invaluable "Annals of the Pulpit," eleven were Dartmouth alumni, while all the others, save eight, numbered her alumni among their teachers.

Dartmouth has an honorable record in the various departments of Law and in statesmanship. Most naturally we dwell upon the name of Daniel Webster, towering in strength and grandeur, like the mountain beside which he was born, amid the surrounding granite, who left the impress of his genius upon the jurisprudence of his native State, upon the Const.i.tution of his adopted State, and upon nearly every conspicuous page of America's civil or political history for half a century; who loved Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill with an undying affection, dwelling alternately beside the one or the other; who cherished as the apple of his eye his Alma Mater and the nation for whose service she had prepared him; who in early life and middle life and old age advocated the universal brotherhood of man, whether pleading in behalf of the oppressed African, or the oppressed Greek, or the oppressed Hungarian; who gave all his sympathy and all his influence in aid of every pursuit, enterprise, and inst.i.tution which could enn.o.ble the human race; who made all other human law pay homage to the Const.i.tution of his country, and all human law to the Divine Revelation; who gave to Dartmouth a more enduring fame throughout America, and to America a more enduring fame over the whole earth: of Levi Woodbury, who as Governor of his native State clearly comprehended and carefully regarded its various interests; as a Senator commanded the profound respect of the National Legislature; as a Cabinet minister, inaugurated "a series of reforms which pervaded the whole department, and penetrated to every branch of the service,"

and who upon the Supreme Bench of the United States gave judicial opinions which are "monuments of patient research, ripe, and rarely erring judgment, enlarged and liberal views, and eminent attainments:"

of Thaddeus Stevens, of whom his biographer says: "Thoroughly radical in all his views, hating slavery with all the intensity of his nature, believing it just, right, and expedient, not only to emanc.i.p.ate the negro but to arm him and make him a soldier, and afterward to make him a citizen, and give him the ballot, he led off in all measures for effecting these ends. The Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation was urged upon the President by him, on all grounds of right, justice, and expediency; the Fourteenth Amendment to the Const.i.tution was initiated and pressed by him:" of Rufus Choate, who combined in more majestic and graceful proportions than any other American lawyer, the ripe scholar and the successful advocate; who with the beauty and power of his language could captivate a jury, a popular audience, or the American Congress with equal facility; who gave to English literature some of its most brilliant gems, and who in his immortal eulogy upon Webster, in the opinion of competent judges, gave to the world one of the most finished and impressive examples of elegiac eloquence to which it has listened since the days of Pericles: and of Salmon P. Chase, who, when our government needed, gave to it the "sinews of war," and in the eloquent language of Evarts, "Whether by interposing his strong arm to save Mr. Birney from the fury of a mob; or by his bold and constant maintenance in the courts of the cause of fugitive slaves, in the face of the resentments of the public opinion of the day; or by his fearless desertion of all reigning politics to lead a feeble band of protestants through the wilderness of anti-slavery wanderings, its pillar of cloud by day, its pillar of fire by night; or, as Governor of Ohio, facing the intimidations of the Slave States, backed by Federal power and a storm of popular pa.s.sion; or in consolidating the triumphant politics on the urgent issue which was to flame out into rebellion and revolt; or in his serene predominance, during the trial of the President, over the rage of party hate which brought into peril the coordination of the great departments of government, and threatened its whole frame,--in all these marked instances of public duty, as in the simple routine of his ordinary conduct, Mr. Chase asked but one question to determine his course of action,--'Is it right?'"