“In 1765 Sherman accepted the position of Treasurer of Yale College, filling it until 1776, when the cause of American independence demanded all his energies. He came to this office during the last years of President Clap’s administration, and held it through most of the long interregnum during which Professor Daggett was acting President. It was, as I have said, a dark time for the College; a day of small things. Daggett and Sherman were for some years the only permanent officers. The means of the institution were slender, and the utmost economy was necessary to secure its maintenance. Sherman’s prudence and business judgment were here of substantial service, though the struggle of the College then was more to live than to grow.
“He was also in a position to befriend it, where it then much needed support, before the Legislature. There was a long and strong effort during the last half of the eighteenth century to bring it under State control. Here, writes President Stiles in his Literary Diary, he was ‘ever a friend to its interests, and to its being and continuing in the hands of the clergy, whom he judged the most proper to have the superintendency of a religious, as well as a scientific, college.’[34]
“In 1792, while he was a Senator in Congress (to which position he had been elected the year before), that controversy came to a peaceful close. The General Assembly offered the College a grant of what was estimated to be worth about thirty thousand dollars, provided it would admit the Governor and Lieutenant Governor and the six senior assistants as, for all time, Fellows of the Corporation. This left the clergy still in full control, for they held twelve seats, and could dictate the election of the President to occupy another. Nevertheless, the clerical Fellows were divided in opinion, as to the policy of agreeing to this friendly overture. One of them, Rev. Nathaniel Taylor of this town, was especially reluctant to take this step. He consulted Sherman, whose pastor he had formerly been, and by his advice yielded to the rest, and so made the vote of acceptance an unanimous one.[35]
“This was almost Sherman’s last service to Yale. In the next year, under date of July 23, in Stiles’ Diary, we find this entry:
“ ‘About VII^h, or about sunsetting, a bright Luminary set in New Haven: the Hon. Roger Sherman, Esqr. died æt. 72¼, mayor of the city & Senator in Congress.’[36]
“He died at his residence on Chapel Street, which is still standing opposite Vanderbilt Hall, and, on July 25, his funeral was attended from the North (now the United) Church. President Stiles was one of the officiating clergyman, and the students and tutors of the college headed the procession to the grave.[37] His pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Edwards, preached the funeral sermon. Edwards was a metaphysical theologian. One of the audience wrote of this sermon, a few days later, to a friend in a neighboring town: ‘To do the Doctor justice he preached better than I expected to hear him, and seemed to keep almost free from moral obligation, cause and effect, etc.’[38]
“The discourse is in print, and a few of the personal touches in it may give a clearer idea of how Sherman appeared to his friends and fellow-townsmen at home.
“ ‘I need not inform you,’ said Dr. Edwards, ‘that his person was tall, unusually erect and well proportioned, and his countenance agreeable and manly.... As he was a professor of religion, so he was not ashamed to befriend it, to appear openly on the Lord’s side, or to avow and defend the peculiar doctrines of grace.... In private life, though he was naturally reserved and of few words, yet in conversation on matters of importance, he was free and communicative.’
“The theology of the day appeared in the concluding observations, in which the preacher referred to the loss they had sustained by this bereavement as a token of ‘divine displeasure.’
“President Stiles, during the same week, records his estimate of Sherman in these terms: