The History of Dartmouth College

by Baxter Perry Smith

In July, 1827, having received an invitation to succeed Professor Dana in the chair of Chemistry at Dartmouth College, Mr. Hale accepted, and delivered his inaugural address on the day after Commencement. His esteemed and able colleagues in the Medical College were Reuben D. Mussey, M.D., Prof. of Anatomy and Surgery; and Daniel Oliver, M.D., Prof. of Theory and Practice of Medicine. It should be noted that at that period the importance of physical studies was not fully appreciated at Dartmouth. The college had not taken a scientific periodical in half a century. There was no cabinet of minerals. "There was not," writes Dr. Oliver, "a single modern volume in the college library upon either Mineralogy or Geology; and scarcely one, if one, upon Chemistry, later than the days of Fourcroy or Vauquelin. The prevailing taste was decidedly anti-physical. It was directed another way, and not only so, but there was among the college Faculty a disposition to undervalue the physical sciences." Dr. James F. Dana, the predecessor of Professor Hale, writing of the college in reference to physical science, used the following remarkable expression: "It was anchored in the stream, and served only to show its velocity." When Professor Hale was engaged, his duties comprised a course of daily lectures to the medical class through the lecture term, to which lectures the members of the Senior and Junior classes were to be admitted; and instruction to the Junior class in some chemical text-book by daily recitations for five or six weeks. This was all.

Professor Hale, however, addressed himself to his work with characteristic activity and zeal. He proceeded to give each year to the college classes a separate course of over thirty lectures, and discharged the expenses of them himself. He substituted a larger and more scientific text-book for that in use, and obtained an allowance of forty or more recitations instead of thirty. He laid the foundation of the cabinet of minerals by giving five hundred specimens, classifying and labeling all additions, leaving the collection in respectable condition with 2,300 specimens. He gave annually about twenty lectures in Geology and Mineralogy; and for some years was the regular instructor of the Senior class in the Philosophy of Natural History. For two years, also, he took charge of the recitations in Hebrew, and occasionally took part in other recitations; and, with another, served as building committee during the whole process of repairing and erecting the college edifices.

December 11, 1827, Professor Hale wrote, in a family letter, "I have made out a plan, for the repair of the College building, and the addition of a building for libraries, etc., for the use of Trustees at their next session. It takes with the president mightily, and I think they will make it go."

And in another family letter, the first after returning from a journey, under date of March 20, 1828, he wrote:

"My arrival at Hanover was very opportune. I was looked for for sometime, and letters were about being despatched for me.... I have the honor of being one-half of the building committee, Professor Chamberlain being the other moiety, and we are commencing operations. The prospects of the College are now so bright, that the plan I at first proposed, and which was adopted by the Trustees, is abandoned, and we are preparing to erect two brick buildings, three stories in height, and fifty feet by seventy. One for students' rooms, and the other for public rooms.... And what is more comforting, our funds are improving so much that the building will not distress us very much if the $30,000 should not be realized. A good many old debts have been collected, and are coming in, by which one building could be erected. About $13,000 have already been subscribed, and subscriptions are daily arriving."

All this was voluntary and gratuitous work. It is no wonder that students thus cared for should respond, as they did, with enthusiasm and regard. Happily, in this department as well as in all others, Dartmouth College is now in motion, and fully up with the foremost in the current of physical study.

During his last three years, Professor Hale was President of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. His portrait, presented, it is believed, by the members of that society, now hangs in the college library.

While at Hanover, Professor Hale thought it his duty to resume his purpose of preaching, and was accordingly ordained Deacon by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Griswold, Bishop of the Eastern Diocese, September 28, 1828, at Woodstock, Vt.; and Priest by the same bishop, in St. Paul's, Newburyport, January 6, 1831. In taking this step he violated in no respect the charter of the college, he undertook nothing which conflicted with the duties of his professorship, he acted neither obtrusively nor illiberally; but while he occasionally preached in neighboring churches, he always, in Hanover, scrupulously observed the appointment at the village meeting-house. On Sunday nights, however, he held a service in his own house, for his own family, and the family of Dr. Oliver, and such other communicants of the Episcopal Church, and friends, as might desire to attend. Difference in sentiment on religious subjects, between Professor Hale and the Trustees of the college, and action on their part which can hardly be regarded as justifiable, led to the termination of Professor Hale's connection with the college, in 1835.

In 1835, Professor Hale published two works, "A Valedictory Letter to the Trustees," and "Scriptural Illustrations of the Liturgy." In August of that year he attended the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church as a delegate from the Diocese of New Hampshire. In October, 1836, the degree of D.D. was conferred upon him by Columbia College. In December, having had a severe attack of bronchitis, he sailed to St. Croix to spend the winter. His published letters under the signature of "Valetudinarius" were very pleasant to the reading public.

In the course of the next year he entered upon the laborious and high duties of an office which occupied the remaining years of his active life. He was elected, August 2, 1836, to the Presidency of Geneva College, N. Y., and entered upon his duties in the following October; delivering an inaugural address on the 21st of December. It is of course impossible here to give the varied and interesting details of his presidential life. To this institution he freely gave the wealth of his well stored and acute mind, his tried experience, and his cheerful, patient resolution. The trials were sometimes great, the laborers few, the support scanty, and there were times when it seemed as if the one man only stood between the life of the college and its death. As one of the Trustees wrote, "Life was already nearly extinct, and death would have soon followed, had not the president given himself wholly to the work with a faith that never faltered, a perseverance which strengthened with difficulties, and a thorough conviction that his work, if well done, would promote the glory of God and his church through all time." And he was successful, as much so as it was within the power of one man to be, both in correcting the evils which he found existing, and in securing the stability of the college beyond all peradventure. Wherever he was, in the recitation room, in the academic circle, in the Medical School of which he was ex officio president, in the Board of Trustees, in the councils of the bishop and the Diocese, in the conferences with the Vestry of Old Trinity Church, before the Board of Regents, before the Legislature of the State, he was always the learned, sagacious, loyal, and inspiring president; respected and beloved always, by all who entered the circle of his influence; and illustrating daily in his own character, the symmetry, strength, and purity of the principle by which he was governed.