The History of Dartmouth College

by Baxter Perry Smith

President Wheelock lived to see his earnest efforts to promote sound learning crowned with a good measure of success.

The graduates of this period attained such eminence, in nearly all the paths of professional usefulness, as to indicate most plainly that they had laid good foundations in college. They were honored as teachers, as divines, and as legislators. The condition of the college and the country gave them abundant opportunities for appreciating the inscription on the armor of the Dartmouth family: "Gaudet tentamine virtus."

Instead of burning the "midnight oil" of the modern student, they kept the midnight watch against savage foes, at least at certain periods. To us, this all looks like romance. To them, it was stern reality.

In a fitting tribute to President Wheelock,[31] Rev. Dr. Allen says:

[31] Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit.

"If it should be asked what success attended the efforts of Dr. Wheelock to communicate the gospel to the Indian nations, it may be replied that he accomplished something for their benefit, and that great and insuperable obstacles in the providence of God prevented him from accomplishing more. It was soon after he sent out missionaries into the wilderness, that the controversy with Great Britain blighted his fair and encouraging prospects. During the last four years of his life there was actual war, in which many of the Indian tribes acted with the enemy. Yet the Oneidas, to whom Mr. Kirkland was sent as a missionary, kept the hatchet buried during the whole Revolutionary struggle, and by means of this mission, probably, were a multitude of frontier settlements saved from the tomahawk and the scalping-knife. But even if nothing had been accomplished for the benefit of the Indians, yet the zeal which chiefly sought their good, reared up a venerable institution of science, in which many strong minds have been disciplined and made to grow stronger, and nerved for professional toils and public labors, and in which hundreds of ministers have been nurtured for the church of Christ.

"For enlarged views and indomitable energy, and persevering and most arduous toils, and for the great results of his labors in the cause of religion and learning, Dr. Wheelock must ever be held in high honor. He early placed one great object before him, and that object held his undivided attention for nearly half a century. It is not easy to describe the variety of his cares and the extent of his toils. When he removed to Hanover his labors were doubled. The two institutions—the school and the college—were ever kept distinct; in both he was a teacher; of both he was the chief governor. He was also the preacher of the college and village. In the government of his school and college, Dr. Wheelock combined great patience and kindness with the energy of proper and indispensable discipline. He was of a cheerful and pleasant temper and manifested much urbanity in his deportment."

This clear and forcible language has additional weight when we consider, that, during nearly the whole period of his administration, he had only the aid of tutors, with no other professor.

President Wheelock's usefulness in the great field of education was not confined to the sons of the forest, during his residence in Connecticut. He sought out John Smalley, the son of one of his parishioners, in his humble home, prepared him for college, and thereby gave him the primary impulse and aid, without which one of New England's ablest theologians, and the teacher of others of widely extended influence, might have remained in life-long retirement. He took Samuel Kirkland, the son of a worthy but indigent brother in the ministry, and, to use his own language, "carried him" in his arms, till he had completed a thorough preparation for the ministry, and finally furnished him a wife from his own kindred and his own household. His distinguished beneficiary, beside all his other labors, laid the foundation of Hamilton College, and gave to Harvard the president of its "Augustan age," his son, John Thornton Kirkland. He left the impress of his intellectual and religious character upon his pupil, Benjamin Trumbull, the records of whose life give him a conspicuous place among the earnest preachers and careful historians of his day. The valuable influence of others of his early pupils will be felt in ever extending circles, down to "the last syllable of recorded time."

There was no need that Eleazar Wheelock should found a college at that advanced period of life when men naturally seek a measure of repose, in order to secure for his name an honorable position in the long and brilliant catalogue of American educators. The crowning act of his life, in the mellowed maturity of age, was scarcely more or less than the logical, inevitable result of what preceded it.