The History of Dartmouth College

by Baxter Perry Smith

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 passed 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 circumstances 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 classmate, 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 associates. The great value of 'the Constitution 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 Dickinson, 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 classic 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 Constitution 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 institution which could ennoble the human race; who made all other human law pay homage to the Constitution 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 emancipate 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 Emancipation Proclamation was urged upon the President by him, on all grounds of right, justice, and expediency; the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution 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 passion; 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 coördination 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?'"

Nor should we forget others who have left a lasting impression upon the jurisprudence of New England, and indeed our whole country. Among them Samuel S. Wilde, who had few peers as an advocate in Maine, or as a judge in Massachusetts; Ezekiel Webster, who as lawyer and statesman left a monument in New Hampshire which shall never crumble; Richard Fletcher, "whose legal acumen, clear, distinct, and precise statement, closely reasoned argument, and conscientious mastery of his subject, adorned the bench no less than the bar;" Joseph Bell, who as advocate and legislator, in ability as in station, towered above most of his associates; Ichabod Bartlett, "the Randolph of the North," who could measure swords with Mason or Webster or Clay, without either shield or shame; and Joel Parker, who honored alike the bar, the bench, and the lecture-room.

As members of one branch or the other of our National Legislature, we record other honored names in alphabetical order: