The Lives of
Eighteen from Princeton
Copyright, 1946, by Princeton University Press
London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press
Printed in the United States of America by
Princeton University Press at Princeton, New Jersey
ro THE {MEMORY OF
v. LANSING COLLINS
Biography, in its purer form, confined to the
ended lives of the true and brave, may be held the
fairest meed of human virtu* one given and re-
ceived in entire disinterestedness since neither can
the biographer hope for acknoivledgment from the
subject, nor the subject at all avail himself of the
biographical distinction conferred.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Foreword
THE casual visitor to Princeton is certain to be struck by the
beauty and impressiveness of the campus, set in what is for
America an ancient village; the aura of history surrounding
Nassau Hall; the neo-Gothic splendor of dormitories and
chapel. His eyes tell him at once that Princeton has been richly
dowered in the two hundred years of its existence. And so it has,
though its endowment, contrary to general belief, is inconsid-
erable when compared with that of universities with which it is
usually ranked. Princeton, among American colleges, is the
faithful servant unto whom two talents (not five nor one)
have been given. To the nation, whose senior it is by thirty
years, it has made a rich return. Faithful over the few, but
essential, things it has tried to do well, it has been set over
many things.
We are proud to show our guests through our handsome
house, but what we take most pride in are the sons of that
house. This book was planned to do them honor ; and* not these
eighteen alone but all the sons of Nassau Hall who have ac-
complished Woodrow Wilson's ideal for the University that
it should stand, in days of quiet and trouble alike, "for the
nation's service."
In our search for a title we thought at one time of calling
our book "Representative Princetonians." The idea was aban-
doned because it seemed a shade immodest in view of the fact
that two of these representative men are the two Princeton
graduates who became Presidents of the United States. All the
same there would have been point in such a title. Paterson and
Rush and Madison represent those amazingly brilliant days of
the College of New Jersey when it was in fact a "seminary of
statesmen," providing more of the genius required to found the
Republic and make it secure than any other of the colonial
colleges. Kirkland and Lindsley are only the most notable of
the early founders of academies and colleges which established
the humanism of the Princeton New Lights on distant fron-
tiers. "Light-Horse Harry" Lee stands for that line of southern-
ers, still streaming north to Nassau Hall, a company already
so numerous in Jefferson's day that he hastened to found the
University of Virginia, among other good reasons, in order to
Vlll FOREWORD
keep at home the best young minds of the Old Dominion. There
could be no fitter man to represent the typical graduate of the
College of New Jersey during the years of its subserviency to
the Princeton Theological Seminary than Charles Hodge, the
only begetter of the Princeton Theology which was a major
force in nineteenth century American intellectual history Parke
Godwin is here, in the first place, because he, better than any of
the other seventeen except the professional statesmen, exempli-
fied the life of the ideal Princeton graduate as Woodrow Wil-
son was later to define it. He stands, too, disguised by his
urbanity and his beard, for the Princeton radicals, from "that
rascal Freneau" (as Washington petulantly called him) to Pax-
ton Hibben whose ashes the Soviet government inurned with
honor in the Novo-Devichy Monastery.
To those enlightened friends of Princeton who will wonder
why we included Rush and not Stockton (another Princeton
signer of the Declaration of Independence), Dallas and not
Nicholas Biddle (also an eminent Philadelphian), Henry Lee
and not Aaron Burr, Joseph Henry and not John Torrey, it is
only fair to say that there was, in every instance, a sufficient
reason. We who have written these lives wished to show what
Princeton, through her graduates, has meant in the life of this
country, generation after generation, in the several professions,
and in different regions. We have balanced names well known,
like Witherspoon and Wilson, against those of men like Pater-
son and Blair whom their countrymen have ungratefully for-
gotten. In some cases the preference of the biographer deter-
mined the choice an excellent way for an editor to be sure he
will get a labor of love and not of duty only.
Two members of the Princeton Faculty who were not Prince-
ton graduates, Joseph Henry and Paul Elmer More, have been
deliberately included here, the first to represent Princeton's
great tradition of teaching and research in the sciences, the sec-
ond to represent her humanists from Jonathan Edwards, and
Samuel Davies to Capps and Osgood and Morey. It has seemed
to us that there was a special significance in the relations of
these men to the Princeton traditions which they represent.
Both owed as well as contributed much to these traditions, and
both were men of action as well as distinguished scholars.
Henry, with a reluctant backward look, left his Princeton home
FOREWORD IX
and laboratory at the height of his fame as a creative scientist
to accept a public trust ; More, after turbulent years on the liter-
ary hustings, came to Princeton to find the peace in which he
did his finest writing. Both felt that "no task, rightly done, is
truly private. It is part of the world's work." That both found
their intellectual home in Princeton tells us something about
the traditions they here represent which we could not other-
wise know.
For sentiment's sake the lives of these eighteen Princetonians
have been written by twenty others from Princeton, graduates,
sometime students in the Graduate School, past and present
members of the Faculty. The discerning who read the "Who's
Who of Contributors" will note that biographer and subject
are in many instances elective affinities.
This book would have been richer in content and wider in
scope if Hoyt Hudson, James Boyd, and David Bowers had
lived to write the chapters they had planned If they had lived
our title would have been "The Lives of Twenty-One from
Princeton."
WILLARD THORP
Acknowledgments
SEVERAL of the biographers have asked for the opportunity of
stating their indebtedness to various persons who have helped
them in the preparation of their biographical sketches.
Mr. Goldman, the author of the study of David Graham
Phillips, wishes to acknowledge the assistance of the Messrs.
Charles S. Bryan, Samuel T. Dodd, C. P. F. Joyce, and Francis
H. White, all of the Princeton Class of 1887.
Mr. Lane records his thanks to Mr. P. Blair Lee of Phila-
delphia, who graciously gave permission to use the Blair-Lee
Papers deposited in the Princeton University Library. In pre-
paring his biography of F. P. Blair, Mr. Lane made constant
use of W. E. Smith's invaluable The Francis Preston Blair
Family in Politics.
For much of the material by and about F. Scott Fitzgerald
which Mr. Mizener used in his sketch, he is indebted to Mr.
Edmund Wilson and to his collection of Fitzgerald material in
The Crack-Up (New Directions, 1945). A portion of Mr.
Mizener's study of Fitzgerald appeared in the Sewanee Review
(Winter, 1946) and is reprinted here with the permission of
the editor of that periodical.
For assistance in the writing of his life of President S. S.
Smith, Mr. Monk wishes to thank Dr. Jacob Beam of Prince-
ton and Dr. J. D. Eggleston of Hampden-Sydney College in
Virginia.
In documenting his study of Philip Lindsley, Mr. Pomfret
relied on the earlier researches of F. D. Davenport and Donald
R. Come.
Mr. Thorp notes that he could not have compiled his biog-
raphy of Samuel Kirkland if he had not had access to the large
collection of Kirkland materials at Hamilton College, gathered
and carefully put in order by Dr. Joseph D. Ibbotson, Librarian
Emeritus of the College.
The chapter on Joseph Henry, by the Messrs. Wheeler and
Bailey, appeared in the October 1946 issue of the American
Scientist.
Contents
WILLIAM PATERSON I
SAMUEL KIRKLAND 24
BENJAMIN RUSH 51
JOHN WITHERSPOON 68
SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH 86
HENRY LEE III
JAMES MADISON 137
PHILIP LINDSLEY 158
GEORGE MIFFLIN DALLAS 178
CHARLES HODGE 192
PARKE GODWIN 212
JOHN SHARPENSTEIN HAGER 232
FRANCIS PRESTON BLAIR JR. 243
JOSEPH HENRY 265
WOODROW WILSON 282
PAUL ELMER MORE 302
DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS 318
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD 333
William Paterson [1745-1806]
FORERUNNER OF JOHN MARSHALL
BY JULIAN P. BOYD
M
R. PATERSON/' wrote William Pierce of
Georgia in one of his incisive pen por-
traits of members of the Federal Conven-
tion of 1787, "is one of those kind of Men whose powers break
in upon you, and create wonder and astonishment. He is a Man
of great modesty, with looks that bespeak talents of no great ex-
tent, but he is a Classic, a Lawyer, and an Orator ; and of a
disposition so favorable to his advancement that everyone seemed
ready to exalt him with their praises." William Paterson was
forty-two when Pierce cast an appraising eye upon him. He was
a member of the most brilliant assemblage of talent and worth
ever gathered in America. Even in such a setting, Pierce was able
to see Paterson as history would see him: a man of modest de-
meanor, generous friendliness, warm loyalties, and with a dis-
position to live usefully and harmoniously with his fellow man,
all of which may have evidenced an admirable character rather
than an aggressive and forceful personality, had it not been that
now and again his powers would "break in upon you and create
wonder and astonishment." Even William Maclay, that keen
chronicler of Federalist foibles, was deceived by the difference
between what Paterson appeared to be and what he was. Of all
the members of the Senate, declared Maclay, "the conduct of
Paterson surprised me most. He has been characterized to me as
a staunch Revolution man and genuine Whig ; yet he has in every
republican question deserted and in some instances betrayed us. I
know not that there is such a thing as buying members, but,
if there is, he is certainly sold." It was Maclay's judgment that
had betrayed him, not Paterson.
For Paterson was indeed a "staunch Revolution man." He
was equally stanch as a framer of the Constitution, as a
Federalist senator, and as a member of the nation's highest
court. Like John Marshall, Alexander Hamilton, and others,
he had plunged into the Revolution with "wild and enthusiastic
notions." But, like them, he came to fear that liberty might lead
2 WILLIAM PATERSON
to licentiousness, to insurgency and rebellion, to attacks on
courts and lawyers, to paper-money evasions, and to stay laws
on debts and mortgages, all likely to be as unsettling in peace as
revolution had been in war. He was an eighteenth-century lib-
eral, but the democracy that James Wilson advocated in the
Federal Convention left him as unconvinced as it did most of
the framers of the Constitution. What Paterson wanted most
was the assurance of law and order and the peaceful progress
toward a nation of free citizens, led by a natural aristocracy
of "persons eminent for station, learning, and genius," and
with protection alike to property and to the rights of men. He
was a zealous revolutionary when these values seemed threat-
ened by a British parliament. Quite as plausibly and quite as
zealously, he was an advocate of federal strength when the same
values seemed threatened by the demoralization of peace and
by the intoxication of individual states with the idea of their
own sovereignty.
From his earliest youth Paterson was under the eyes of those
who "seemed ready to exalt him with their praises" and to
advance him from one post of public service to another. For his
Irish immigrant father, peddling tin wares and other utensils,
chose to settle in Princeton in the spring of 1750 rather than
in Philadelphia, New Castle, New London, Norwich, or the other
towns to which his journeyings carried him. By this fortuitous
move Richard Paterson gave his five-year-old son such an op-
portunity to see and be seen by the great of the colonies as could
scarcely be found elsewhere in America. William Paterson lived
his formative years on the main street of Princeton, the principal
highway between the two most populous centers in British
America. Along this thoroughfare moved the traffic of com-
merce, as well as such symbols of empire as colonial governors
and British generals. What is more, at the age of nine or ten,
Paterson saw the laying of the foundations of Nassau Hall,
directly opposite his father's house. Nowhere else in America
in the 1750*8 could an impressionable boy of ten have witnessed
so enlightening a spectacle. The very size of Nassau Hall, its
importance as a topic of excited talk in the town, and the reality
of its growth from foundation to cupola must have impressed
upon Paterson at a very early age the wonder of a world beyond
the village world.
FORERUNNER OF JOHN MARSHALL 3
Other boys in other colonial towns could be impressed only
by the size of a brickyard, a tannery, or an inn, and reflect upon
their value in the business of living. But here before Paterson's
eyes was growing a symbol that had no obvious connection with
farming and merchandising and innkeeping. Learning must
be important if its scale dwarfed everything having to do with
the processes of life as young Paterson saw life. Learning must
be vitally important if it attracted the attention and received
the support of the town leaders such as the Stocktons, the
Boudinots, the Tennents, the FitzRandolphs and others, and
if, moreover, it brought into its orbit the wise and learned from
many places men such as Aaron Burr, Jonathan Edwards,
Samuel Davies, Samuel Finley, and, speaking the language of
Scottish philosophy and breathing its sturdy independence,
John Witherspoon. Governors, trustees, distinguished clergy-
men, and students from many colonies were drawn to this new
edifice. Princeton had been a small village world when Pater-
son first saw it, its gateways leading to the North and South.
Now it was one of the colonial nerve centers, a centripetal force,
not merely a post-town for a change of horses to accommodate
passers-through. Men came from New England and from the
South to preside over and to teach in this new seat of learning.
Paterson, observing what he called "the pomp of parade of a
commencement" from across the way, could scarcely avoid this
compelling force. The road on which ambition beckoned to a
village tinsmith's boy no longer led northward to New York
or southward to Philadelphia, but directly ahead to Nassau
Hall.
Paterson was one of the first of a long line of Princeton
townsmen who possessed the advantage of intimate association
with college life extending beyond the customary four years
of undergraduate experience. All who entered Nassau Hall
in the 1760*5 gained four years of association with fellow stu-
dents who, to a remarkable degree, were destined for public life.
For Paterson this advantage was not confined to his under-
graduate years, but extended from 1756 to 1769. In those years
he knew many students whose later public careers touched his
own at many points. The men who were in college during his
undergraduate years included Benjamin Rush, David Caldwell,
Thomas Henderson, Ebenezer Hazard, Jonathan Dickinson
4 WILLIAM PATERSON
Sergeant, and others who became leading public figures. He was
easily the most distinguished member ot his own class of 1763,
with the possible exception of Tapping Reeve, who became one
of the great law teachers of America. But it was with the college
students of the five years following his graduation that Pater-
son, a sort of elder statesman among the undergraduates, found
his closest friendships. Among these were John McPherson,
who lost his life at the opening of the Revolution, Samuel
Kirkland, David Ramsay, Theodoric Dirck Romeyn, Jacob
Rush, and three who would become colleagues in the Federal
Convention Luther Martin, William Churchill Houston, and
Oliver Ellsworth. He was absent from Princeton, beginning
a rural law practice, when the distinguished class of 1771 was
graduated, but he must have known Bedford, Brackenridge,
Freneau, and Madison, who were its brightest ornaments. He
was back in Princeton in 1772 and Aaron Burr, who was gradu-
ated in that year, became one of his close friends. PaUrson
counseled him and others in oratory and wrote graduating ora-
tions for more than one aspiring student. "Light-Horse Harry 1 '
Lee, Philip Fithian, William Bradford, William Linn, Morgan
Lewis, Brockholst Livingston who succeeded Pater son on the
United States Supreme Court bench William R Davie,
Jonathan Dayton, and others who passed through Nassau Hall
on the eve of the Revolution, belonged to the generation that
would be called upon, as Paterson was, to help create a new
fabric of nationality. No less than eight of Paterson's college-
mates sat with him in the Federal Convention
He graduated in the fateful year 1763, the year that brought
peace and with it the beginnings of dissent and disunion. It was
the year that closed the struggle between England and France
for the domination of North America and marked the begin-
ning of a type of imperialism that seemed logical enough to the
statesmen at Whitehall, but was viewed with other eyes in
America where the word "Liberty" was coming to mean the
sum of all values. During his first year in college, Paterson had
no doubt witnessed the unveiling of a portrait of George II in
Nassau Hall and had listened to President Davies' sermon on
the death of that monarch, a sermon ringing with protestations
of loyalty to the Crown of England. But within a decade the
germinating influences of Princeton, spread by talented young
WILLIAM PATERSON
FORERUNNER OF JOHN MARSHALL 5
men throughout the length and breadth of the colonies, would
cause one distinguished Loyalist to refer to the college as a
seminary of sedition.
As an undergraduate, Paterson acquired Latin and Greek,
some natural philosophy, and a great deal of rhetoric. He de-
voted an uncommon amount of time to monthly orations, ac-
quiring a public reputation as an orator, and delivering in
1766 a speech on patriotism in which, according to the New
York Gazette, "elegance of composition and Force of Action
were equally conspicuous. " He filled his commonplace book with
maxims, quotations, and aphorisms from Shakespeare, Pope,
Addison, Epictetus, the General Magazine, and a variety of
other sources, bracing these genteel and sometimes gloomy ob-
servations on love, honor, friendship, marriage, and conduct
with sharp-edged passages from Swift and Voltaire, together
with such heresies as "The Unbeliever's Creed" and such flip-
pancies as "The Statutes of the Drinkomanni." In the mass of
records that he left, Paterson provided us with as comprehensive
an insight into the collegiate mind of the 1760*5 as can be found
anywhere. He declaimed in defense of the polite amenities, in-
cluding dancing and the theater, he spoke on music criticism,
he debated the subject of "gravity" in a manner that was far
from grave, he moralized in the best manner of the newly
awakened intellect over the degeneracy of public life and over
the indifference of the world to matters of taste and learning.
Along with Tapping Reeve, Luther Martin, Oliver Ellsworth
and Robert Ogden he founded The Well-Meaning Club, he
wrote poems on the "Belle of Princeton" and a "Satire on
Betsey's Suitors," and engaged in long and affectionate cor-
respondences with his former classmates.
He was in short a typical college youth of the 1760*8, a little
more accomplished as an orator than the average, a little more
en gaging in the geniality of his disposition than most, a little
more apt to win the commendation of his elders for his sense,
sobriety, and observance of the current conventions. Most of
his classmates chose the ministry, but Paterson chose oratory and
law. His choice was wise. For the commencement of 1763 sig-
nalized for Paterson, as it did for all America, that the decades
ahead, involving the creation of new governments and the order-
ing of new concepts of law, would set a premium on those
6 WILLIAM PATERSON
skilled in jurisprudence. Princeton, by drawing under her guid-
ance some of the best youths of the colonies in this critical
juncture, gave the young men of Connecticut and of the Caro-
linas a sense of their common identity as Americans. It was not
merely a college diploma that Paterson received in 1763 : it was
a passport to fame as one of the founders of a great nation.
As he entered upon his apprentice years under Richard Stock-
ton, his eye was no doubt focused on the summits achieved in
his profession by Mansfield, Blackstone, Camden, and other
great names in the law. These were the remote gods of his early
ambition, but in the towns of the British colonies in America,
from Boston to Charleston, there were names that also called
forth admiration and gave a public stamp of dignity to the
profession he had chosen Otis, Dulany, Dickinson, Ingersoll,
Henry, Andrew Hamilton, and many others, some of whom
had sat in the Inns of Court and had brought back to the colonies
some of the luster of that ancient seat of law. Paterson was an
industrious student and a discriminating one.
Six years of arduous law practice in the village of New
Bromley, traveling about to attend the quarter sessions courts,
supplementing his meager income by keeping a general store,
drawing up wills and deeds, brought Paterson to the threshold
of his career. His was an irksome rural apprenticeship. His total
fees for four terms of court in 1770 amounted to less than a
pound sterling. But there were other compensations. He was
slowly coming to the notice of the leading men in the province.
He had ample time for study and, through correspondence with
his former college-mates, he kept in touch with the increasing
tempo of American affairs. By 1775, though he had scarcely
established a professional livelihood, Paterson was ready to
embark upon a career as a public servant. In that year he was
appointed a delegate to the New Jersey Provincial Congress,
later becoming its secretary through various sessions. He
plunged at once into the task of organizing the defense of the
province. With President Witherspoon and Jonathan D. Ser-
geant he was associated in the drafting of the New Jersey Con-
stitution of 1776, a charter of government that lasted longer
FORERUNNER OF JOHN MARSHALL 7
than any of the other fundamental laws adopted by other states
during the Revolution. After more than a year of responsible
authority in the transition to full statehood, Paterson, at the
age of thirty-one, was appointed attorney-general of the state,
an office which he filled until the close of the war in 1783.
He could scarcely have chosen a more thankless office any-
where in the American union. Even in such overwhelmingly
united commonwealths as Virginia or Massachusetts, the two
lodestones of rebellion, an office charged with the responsibility
of prosecuting treason in time of civil conflict was not an easy
one. But New Jersey was a middle ground, a thoroughfare for
spies and double-dealers, a tragic symbol of the divisive cruelties
of revolution. Families and friends were separated by their
allegiances, and Paterson must have known that former college-
mates, friends, and clients, some of them of great influence,
would come under suspicion of treason and that it would be his
duty to investigate and punish. Even his former preceptor,
Richard Stockton, signer of the Declaration of Independence
who had been imprisoned by the British, was reported to have
abjured his oath of allegiance to the American cause. New Jer-
sey, Paterson declared in a remarkably forthright speech, was
particularly unfortunate because the depredations of the enemy
had encouraged timid patriots to demand a moderate course.
Whigs had been mistreated by government, and Tories had been
allowed to pursue their treasonable practices. He would temper
firmness with mercy, but he called public authorities to witness
that "all the Whigs who have been plundered or driven from
their homes ; all who have been taken and carried into captivity,
all who have been starved to death or murdered" owed their fate
to the "weak, timid and ill-judged policy which has been pursued
by the several public bodies of this state." Nests of disaffected
persons in various parts of the state had been allowed to pursue
their course with nothing more serious to answer for than a
reprimand. "The Tories, insured in their estates, have not borne
arms, have not so much as paid anything by way of equivalent.
... In short they have nothing to fear from the enemy if they
should prove successful, and they have nothing to fear from us."
This speech, coming as it did at a critical point in the Revolu-
tion, is one of the remarkable utterances of the war. Paterson,
as others did, could have chosen a less aggressive course. That he
8 WILLIAM PATERSON
did not do so is a testimony of the purity of his devotion to the
patriot cause.
His activities during the critical war years, committing and
trying disaffected persons for high treason, journeying from
one court to another, continued almost without interruption, a
"mere round of drudgery . . . intricate and disagreeable." It
was so arduous that by 1 780 he was moved to declare : "I am
tired of writing, tired of reading, tired of bustling in a crowd,
and by fits heartily tired of myself alas, that I cannot be more
at home." Though he was a conscientious public prosecutor, he
was not intolerant : in 1 779 he married the daughter of a promi-
nent Loyalist who would thereafter hold "no communciation
with his daughter after her marriage to so staunch a patriot."
And, as many another had done in New Jersey and elsewhere, he
purchased the confiscated estate of a Tory, making it his home.
In the midst of this strenuous life, he yet found time to teach
law to Frederick Frelinghuysen, William Churchill Houston,
John Young Noell, Robert Troup, Aaron Burr, Andrew Kirk-
patrick, and others, most of them Princeton graduates who had
turned to him for instruction. In 1780, he was elected to the
Continental Congress, but he declined the office on the ground
that his duties as attorney-general, involving an "intricate and
expensive" round of criminal prosecutions, claimed prior atten-
tion. The close of the war and his resignation as attorney-general
caused him to think of "new connections to form, new politicks
to enter upon" in New York or elsewhere. In the end, exhibiting
an inclination to which he gave expression throughout a busy
life, he concluded: "I wish to pass the remainder of my life in
quietude." Retirement, however, was only an illusory hope. He
was soon immersed in one of the most active law practices in
the state, secure in his position at the bar, esteemed by his
fellow citizens, and active in public affairs.
With the realization of the dream of independence, the
cohesive bonds of an exalted purpose that had united Americans
during war began to loosen. The ensuing years provided a
salutary lesson for Paterson and many other thoughtful leaders
on the advantages of a strong union. No state was in a better
FORERUNNER OF JOHN MARSHALL 9
position to heed the lesson. Impoverished and laid waste by war,
New Jersey saw its reviving commerce strangled by the hostile
tariff laws of New York and Pennsylvania. The debt-ridden
people of New Jersey demanded laws suspending the payment
of debts and laws for the printing of paper money. Lawyers and
courts, whose business was the protection of property and the
enforcement of contracts, received the aroused hostility of a
debtor class. In consequence, from the very beginning, New
Jersey assumed a position of leadership in the advocacy of
clothing the national government with more of the attributes
of national power. On the matter of the sanctity of contracts
and the importance of paying creditors in money of the same
value received by the debtors, Paterson was as eloquent as he
had been in the great cause of human rights for which the
Revolution had been fought. His publications on paper money
voiced a position that men of property have held before and
since, but it was not a popular doctrine: "Where the guards
set upon property are liable to be removed at the whim or
pleasure of the supreme power in a state, a person has not any-
thing that he ... is sure of for a moment. . . . What encour-
agement can there be for industry, when a man having gleaned
together a little money, and, confiding in the certainty and sta-
bility of the law, has put it out upon use in expectation of re-
ceiving a full return of the principal at the day appointed for
payment, is paid in paper which, though its nominal value is
equal to the sum he lent, in fact represents not more than one
third of it? Why be industrious? A set of drones, or of idle,
extravagant wretches live upon earnings of others, run in debt,
unable to pay, and then make a noise and clamor about the
scarcity of money. Will the legislature aid them in getting rid
of their debts?"
There were many changes rung by Paterson and others upon
this single theme, changes that gave small consolation to the
farmer ridden by debts and facing attachment of his property
or to the widows of Revolutionary patriots scraping together
their meager remnants to satisfy a landlord who perhaps had
no need to scrape. But this theme, no matter how often or how
variously stated, pointed in one direction only to the need of a
strong federal government. (Paterson would one day deliver
one of his stirring orations on the Fourth of July, pointing to
IO WILLIAM PATERSON
the fabled origins of commonwealths whose beginnings were
shrouded in the mists of unrecorded history, but hailing the
glory of a great people, who, for the first time in history, had
banded together in defense of freedom and liberty to create a
new nation. That was an exalted ideal and would remain so.
But its fruits were harsh and realistic.) Paterson in 1786 in-
veighing against the evils of paper money and the threat to law
and order in the violation of contracts was speaking the same
language in support of the same principle when, in 1798, he
attacked the excesses of Jacobinism and Jeffersonianism. The
ideal of the rights of men incorporated in the Declaration of
Independence included equal rights before the law, but it in-
cluded neither the tyranny of autocracy nor the tyranny of the
majority. Liberalism of the age of enlightenment demanded
balance balance in the powers of government, balance in the
delegation and exercise of power, balance between the rights of
men and the rights of a man. But this was not perfectly under-
stood either by the individuals or by the states that had created
this new nation and so a decisive step was necessary a reorder-
ing of the powers of government. Paterson and his colleagues of
the Federal Convention of 1787 would have thought of them-
selves as men of liberal views. But history, for all the greatness
of their achievements, has stamped them conservatives. They
were conservators engaged in redressing the balances. The war
had been fought in defense of freedom. Stability, order, and
property had suffered in consequence. It was time to protect these
without damage to the gains that had been made.
Paterson's instructions as a delegate to the Federal Conven-
tion informed him that he was appointed "for the sole purpose
of revising the articles of confederation and reporting to Con-
gress and the several legislatures." On the margin of the rough
draft of the plan that he himself drew up and submitted at one
of the critical points in the Convention, he pledged himself "not
to support opinions of my own. Not to say what is the best
government or what ought to be done. What can we do con-
sistently with our powers ; what can we do that will meet with the
approbation of the people, their will must guide." What Paterson
meant by "the people" was not necessarily what subsequent gen-
erations would think he meant. But it is important to note that
FORERUNNER OF JOHN MARSHALL II
here, in the most important task that a representative could ever
be called upon to face that of framing a fundamental law for a
whole nation Paterson entered upon his duty with a complete
and literal acceptance of a theory of representation that would
have made impossible any fruitful outcome of the Federal Con-
vention and a theory that stands in marked contrast to one he
underwrote when elevated to the judiciary.
It must be admitted that Paterson's part in the Federal Con-
vention consistently reflected the views and interests of the state
he represented. The central problem facing the Convention was
that of balancing the necessity of what Hamilton had called
a "solid coercive union" against the necessity or what was
thought to be the necessity of preserving the powers of the
sovereign states. The Articles of Confederation, though de-
scribed as a perpetual union, was only a loose-knit alliance of
states. It had no taxing power, no power over commerce, no
compulsion over the citizens within its borders. Because of these
defects, the Continental Congress had called the Federal Con-
vention together merely for the purpose of revising the Articles
of Confederation so as to make them "adequate to the exigencies
of the union." But the great powers in this assemblage of dele-
gates from states that thought themselves sovereign nations
Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia revealed a con-
certed purpose that profoundly disturbed Paterson, Ellsworth,
Martin, and many of the other delegates who represented smaller
states. This purpose, disclosed almost at once, was to create a
new organic law, one that would provide a national and not
merely a confederate government. "Patching up the old federal
system," bluntly declared George Read, "would be like putting
new cloth on an old garment." It was this disregard for the
instructions of the political authority that had called the Con-
vention into being that caused Patrick Henry and many another
states-rights recalcitrant to say, "What right have they to say,
We, the Peopled . . . Who authorized them to speak the lan-
guage of We, the People! Instead of We, the States'!"
Paterson, voicing the same view in the Convention, stuck nar-
rowly to the instructions that he had received from his state. On
June 15, two weeks after the Virginia plan for a strong national
government had been introduced, Paterson laid before the Con-
12 WILLIAM PATERSON
vention the so-called Paterson or New Jersey plan. "I came
here," he declared, "not to speak my own sentiments, but the sen-
timents of those who sent me. Our object is not such a govern-
ment as may be best in itself, but such a one as our constituents
have authorized us to prepare, and as they will approve." If the
confederacy was radically wrong, the delegates should return to
their respective sovereignties and obtain enlarged powers, "not
assume them of ourselves." Legalistically, his position was un-
assailable. The Thirteenth Article of the Articles of Confedera-
tion provided that no alteration should be made without unan-
imous consent. Declaring that "we have no power to vary the
idea of equal sovereignty," Paterson proposed amendments to
the Articles that would give Congress the right to levy taxes in
proportion to population, to control foreign affairs, and to im-
plement its power by a legislature representing states, voting
equally as states regardless of wealth or population
This plan, opposing itself to the Virginia proposals, plunged
the convention at once into a dramatic and perilous conflict.
There were other lawyers in the Convention, James Wilson and
James Madison being among the ablest, but they took no narrow
legalistic view of their authority. With regard to the power of
the Convention, declared Wilson, "he conceived himself author-
ized to conclude nothing, but to be at liberty to propose any-
thing" Pinckney of South Carolina went further and impugned
Paterson's sincerity: "The whole comes to this . . . give New
Jersey an equal vote, and she will dismiss her scruples and con-
cur in the national system." And Randolph of Virginia, employ-
ing the rationalization that statesmanship as well as political
trickery finds so useful, declared, "When the salvation of the
republic was at stake, it would be treason to our trust, not to
propose what we found necessary."
It was at this critical juncture that Roger Sherman, William
Samuel Johnson and Paterson's friend and classmate, Oliver
Ellsworth, came forward with the Connecticut Compromise.
This was the great compromise of the Convention which solved
the insoluble problem of "putting salt on the tail of sovereignty"
by leaving the decision to the future. It provided neither a con-
federacy of sovereign states nor a purely national government,
but what Paterson himself ten years later referred to as a gov-
FORERUNNER OF JOHN MARSHALL 13
ernment bearing a "mixed character' 1 : a national government
clothed with all of the essential powers of nationality, with local
governments reserving all undelegated powers to themselves, and
with a national legislature representing individuals in one part
and representing states in another.
Paterson left the Convention shortly after his plan was de-
feated. But he was not so intransigent as his college-mate Luther
Martin, who refused to sign the completed Constitution. Pater-
son not only returned to Philadelphia to sign the document but
he also fought for its ratification in New Jersey. Moreover, his
plan had brought forward one provision which turned out to be
the bolt that held the whole together : the provision that acts of
Congress and treaties were to "be the supreme law of the re-
spective states."
Paterson's phrase became "the supreme law of the land" as
finally adopted. It was this concept of the supremacy of the
national law that Paterson devotedly upheld throughout the re-
mainder of his career. His espousal of a narrow view of state
sovereignty had no doubt reflected the views of his constituency
and it certainly had foreshadowed one of the central themfcs of
American political growth for the next three-quarters of a
century, but it had come near wrecking the Federal Convention.
On that fateful July 17, 1787, when the representatives of the
large states delivered what amounted to an ultimatum and met
in caucus to determine what steps to take, Paterson in a letter
to his wife revealed his true sentiments, sentiments that would
have astonished James Madison, Edmund Randolph, and those
other ardent nationalists whose views he had opposed: "The
business is difficult ; it unavoidably takes up much time ; but I
think we shall eventually agree upon and adopt a system that
will give strength and harmony to the union and render us a
great and happy people. This is the wish of every good, and the
interest of every wise man." He did not, as some historians have
supposed, become a convert to Federalism after the Constitution
was established. His course from the very beginning was that of
a believer in the solidarity and harmony of the union. But his
public course in the Convention had been that of a lawyer repre-
senting a client. If he had not been so good a lawyer, he would
have been a better statesman and truer to his own convictions.
14 WILLIAM PATERSON
4
When he became senator in 1789, his most important and
undoubtedly his most congenial task had to do with the framing
of the Judiciary Act. His old friend of The Well-Meaning Club
at Princeton, Oliver Ellsworth, was a colleague in the Senate.
Both were members of the committee on the judiciary. Paterson
and Ellsworth were chiefly responsible for the famous twenty-
fifth section of the Judiciary Act, authorizing writs of error to
the Supreme Court on judgments of state courts and thus, by
implication, giving the Supreme Court power to pass upon the
validity of state legislation. What John C. Calhoun, the greatest
of all spokesmen for the doctrine of state sovereignty, had to
say about the twenty-fifth section is the most eloquent testi-
mony to Paterson's support of the doctrine of national suprem-
acy : this, he declared, was the entering wedge, destroying "the
relation of coequals and coordinates between the Federal gov-
ernment and the government of individual states. . . . Without
it, the whole course of the government would have been dif-
ferent."
This was Paterson's chief service during a short term in the
Senate, but it was a service that buttressed the "strength and
harmony of the union" more securely than any other single act
of his. His ardent Federalism went further in this epochal
First Congress : he supported the entire funding and fiscal poli-
cies of the Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, so
enthusiastically that Maclay declared him to be "A sumntum jits
man, a lawyer and retained by the Secretary." No action by
Paterson as senator could have given comfort to the supporters
of state sovereignty. "We are laying the foundation of a great
empire," he wrote to his wife when the Funding Act was up.
"The prospect widens and brightens as we proceed; and to
every enlarged mind must give the highest pleasure." His use
of the term "empire" was significant, not because it was unique
with him but because Hamilton, Marshall, Washington, and
other great advocates of national supremacy used it constantly
in this bright dawn of power.
If Paterson as senator was a summum jus man to the end of
the chapter, as Maclay declared, his subsequent course was no
less so. He resigned as senator in 1790 to become Governor and
FORERUNNER OF JOHN MARSHALL 15
Chancellor of New Jersey. Even in this office his most conspicu-
ous act was one of service to Alexander Hamilton the granting
of a perpetual monopoly of almost unprecedented liberality as
to tax exemption and as to control of water power at the Great
Falls of the Passaic. Hamilton's Society for the Establishment
of Useful Manufactures, under this grant, continued uninter-
ruptedly to control water power in the town of Paterson
and on all the headwaters of the Passaic until recently. It
was unquestionably the most successful monopoly in the years
of "the foundation of a great empire." As governor and chancel-
lor Paterson also undertook the codification of all statutes of
Parliament that ran in New Jersey prior to 1776, the codifica-
tion of the criminal law, and, in short, the complete revision
of the legal system of the state. What he did in discharging
this monumental task was so complete a restatement of the
colonial experience with English law as to reflect both his own
and his state's satisfaction with the traditional forms. Those
scholars of the law who wish to implement the frontier theory
of a distinctive American jurisprudence, inaugurated in the
"formative period" following the Revolution, must look to such
things as the great legal reforms of Jefferson, Wythe, and
Pendleton in Virginia, not to the work of William Paterson in
New Jersey. His codification was a restatement of the law, not
a reform. There was, indeed, in his revision of the applicable
British statutes, a passage in vehement language prohibiting
any court of law or equity from receiving as law, evidence, or
precedent, any English decision, law, or commentary subsequent
to July 4, 1776. But this extreme expression of anti-British
feeling was that of the legislature, not of Paterson. Even the
legislature thought better of it two decades later.
In 1793 Paterson assumed the scarlet-and-black robe of an
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
For the next twelve years he gave judicial support on every
proper occasion to the doctrines of Federalism. Respected for
his probity, he was not so ardent a political judge as some of
his colleagues in the federal judiciary. But he did all in his
power to enhance the prestige of the Supreme Court, to promote
the influence of the federal government, and to protect the in-
terests of the propertied group. The case of Van Home's
Lessee v. Dorrance, which brought forth Paterson's most fa-
l6 WILLIAM PATERSON
mous decision, gave him what seemed a unique opportunity to
embrace all three objects in a single cause.
This was a test case involving the long and bitterly fought
contest between Connecticut and Pennsylvania claimants to
lands along the North Branch of the Susquehanna. The real
litigants before Pater son were not Van Home's Lessee and
John Dorrance, but groups and forces contesting for the in-
struments of power. A few wealthy Philadelphia land specula-
tors with paper titles in their pockets were arrayed against
several thousand small farmers who had brought schools,
churches, and settlements to the upper Susquehanna and who,
at the cost of many lives, had defended their possessions against
Tories and Indians, against the land speculators, and against
the Pennsylvanian government. On one side of the case were
Paterson's friends, clients, and colleagues on the Supreme
Court, such as Robert Morris and James Wilson, all men of
substance and influence. On the other side were few men of
prominence, but all were independent and quite determined
that "If the laws will not do us justice, our muskets shall." These
were important litigants and their cause urgently needed to be
settled. It had dragged on for more than a quarter of a century,
had cost many lives and large sums of money, had retarded
the development of Pennsylvania, and more than once had
threatened the Union itself. A simple and ancient legal maxim
would have brought all this to a close in aequale jure melior
est conditio possidentis. But this easy, expedient, and probably
just recognition of rights established by uninterrupted posses-
sion would have barred the cause of the most powerful of all
the unseen litigants in Van Home's Lessee v. Dorrance the
power and prestige of the federal government against its op-
ponents, and, above all, the supremacy of the judicial power
against the instruments of legislation. On all three invested
wealth against individual farmers, Federalism against anti-
Federalism, judiciary against legislature Paterson, with elo-
quence and ringing phrases, found for the plaintiff.
Other federal judges had already declared some state laws
unconstitutional, but Paterson in his charge to the jury in
Van Home's Lessee v. Dorrance was the first to elucidate the
concept of judicial review in bold and unequivocal terms. Dis-
regarding a quarter of a century of possession and improvement
FORERUNNER OF JOHN MARSHALL IJ
of the property of the defendant, Paterson found "the keystone
of the defendant's title" in the so-called Confirming Act of
1787. In his opinion, this Act, repealed by the Pennsylvania
legislature in 1790, opened "an extensive and important field for
discussion." Thereupon Paterson delivered not so much a
charge to a jury as an address to the American people on the
nature of written constitutions and the rightful duties of courts
in determining the bounds of legislative power. "In short, gen-
tlemen/' he declared, "the Constitution is the sun of the political
system, around which all legislative, executive, and judicial
bodies must revolve. Whatever may be the case in other coun-
tries, yet, in this, there can be no doubt, that every act of the
legislature repugnant to the Constitution, is absolutely void."
What this implied, of course, was that only one of the sun's
satellites the judiciary could say what the constitution,
"reduced to written exactitude and precision," meant when its
clauses permitted more than one interpretation.
Few judges ever made a longer reach to drag in an obiter
dictum on the doctrine of judicial review, though the decision
itself was popular with the Philadelphia land speculators who
crowded the courtroom. They caused it to be printed in pamphlet
form and distributed throughout the country. It was again
brought forth in 1801 when Jeffersonian Republicans attacked
the doctrine of judicial review. At that time it was commonly
reported that this decision, which foreshadowed the more fa-
mous statement by Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, cost Pater-
son the chief justiceship and gave it to Marshall. This ironic
twist belongs more to gossip than history. Even so, there was
irony enough. Cornelius Van Home's lessee, awarded the title by
Paterson's direction to the jury, never acquired the land that
John Dorrance and his descendants continued to occupy. More,
the solidity of the Union was again endangered by a movement
to create another Vermont in Pennsylvania as a direct result
of this decision. Finally, the Pennsylvania legislature settled the
great controversy in 1799 in precisely the manner that Paterson
had declared was a "shame to American legislation" and com-
parable to "the mandate of an Asiatic Prince." The real settle-
ment of this dangerous issue was brought about not by the
court over which Paterson presided, but by the collapse of land
speculation which drove Robert Morris to a debtor's prison and
l8 WILLIAM PATERSON
Associate Justice Wilson to an absconder's death. All that
Paterson achieved in his effort to embrace three great objects
in one cause was a place in the encyclopedias giving him credit
for being the first to declare a state law invalid. Even this small
primacy was erroneously awarded.
I* 1 *795 Washington offered Paterson the portfolio of the
State Department and, shortly afterwards, the office of at-
torney-general, both of which he declined. He had obviously
reached that station in government in which he believed he
could do most for the union relatively free from the turmoil
of partisan politics. Above all, his love of the law and his de-
votion to the judiciary committed him to the strengthening of
that branch of the government. In 1796 in the case of Ware v.
Hylton he again underscored the supremacy of the judiciary by
invalidating a state law that contravened a treaty. Here he was
in reality interpreting a provision of the Federal Constitution
which he had first introduced in the Federal Convention as a part
of his New Jersey Plan, a provision which declared that treaties
should be the supreme law of the land. The decision was not
only an unpopular one but also had led to partisan attacks. Such
valiant anti-Federalists as Patrick Henry, aiming to protect
American debtors against British creditors and at the same time
to strengthen the states-rights' position, had made this a cele-
brated cause. Henry had argued the case in the circuit court
of Virginia in one of his greatest orations. The court, almost
overcome by his eloquence, had in the end decided that the
statute of Virginia was invalid as contravening the treaty with
England. On appeal, Paterson and his associate justices reaf-
firmed this decision. Again in the following year, the case of
Hylton v. the United States a case remarkable for the fact that
it was a moot trial arranged by agreed-upon fictions for the pur-
pose of testing the constitutionality of an act of Congress gave
Paterson an opportunity to affirm again the doctrine of judicial
review with reference to Federal legislation.
Within the next few years, Paterson was required to construe
a series of laws that Thomas Jefferson thought "to be a nullity
as absolute and as palpable as if Congress had ordered us to
fall down and worship a golden image." Confronted with these
laws, he showed, as on other occasions, that judges do not
always look upon partisan legislation with Olympian detach-
FORERUNNER OF JOHN MARSHALL 19
raent "The constitution of a state is stable and permanent,"
Paterson had declared in the Van Home case, "not to be worked
upon by the temper of the times, nor to rise and fall with the
tide of events; notwithstanding the competition of opposing
interests, and the violence of contending parties, it remains
firm and immovable, as a mountain amidst the strife of storm,
or a rock in the ocean amidst the raging of the waves." What
this implied indeed, what the whole philosophy of judicial
review implied was that legislatures either did not understand
their constitutional powers or would not refrain from transcend-
ing them. What it further implied was that the courts both
understood and would respect the substantive law.
In the summer of 1798 Congress, disturbed by a wave of
anti-Jacobinism, enacted a series of Alien and Sedition Laws,
under which undesirable aliens were liable to deportation and
anyone guilty of publishing anything false or malicious against
the President, the Congress, or the government exposed himself
to a heavy fine and imprisonment. The Court, ruling that the
British common law ran in the jurisdiction of the United States,
had already sowed the seed of a widespread assault upon the
entire judicial system by punishing crimes and offenses not
recognized by Congressional enactment or by Constitutional
provision. But it was the enforcement of the Alien and Sedition
Acts by Paterson and his colleagues that built up the opposition
to mountainous proportions. The first to be convicted under
the Sedition Law was Matthew Lyon of Vermont, a Congress-
man who charged President Adams with a "continual grasp for
power . . . and unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish
adulation and selfish avarice/' This brought forth the charge
that Lyon had tried "to stir up sedition and to bring the Presi-
dent and government of the United States into contempt."
Under Paterson's charge to the jury he was convicted, sentenced
to four months in jail and the payment of a fine of one thousand
dollars. Anthony Haswell, Thomas Cooper, James Thompson
Callender, Charles Holt, and others, hounded by a judiciary
frightened at the specter of Jacobinism and Jeffersonianism,
followed Matthew Lyon to jail. To this palpably unconstitu-
tional infringement of the right of free speech Paterson and his
Federalist colleagues interposed no objection. Not only in his
decisions, but also in his charges to grand juries and in his
2O WILLIAM PATERSON
public speeches, Paterson, in common with his brother judges,
"lectured and preached on religion, on morality, on partisan
politics," always warning of the dangers of democracy. At least
it can be said that Paterson did not go so far as some of his
brother judges in their effort to stir up indictments against
publishers who sought to criticize the Federalist regime. But
his respect for a stable order would never have permitted him to
join Thomas Jefferson in declaring: "If there be any among
us who would wish to dissolve this union or to change its re-
publican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the
safety with which error of opinions may be tolerated where
reason is left free to combat it."
Even such loyal service to the party as a Supreme Court
judge did not bring Paterson the Chief Justiceship when Ells-
worth resigned in the fateful year 1800. "With grief, astonish-
ment and almost indignation," wrote Jonathan Dayton to
Paterson, "I hasten to inform you, that, contrary to the hopes
and expectations of us all, the President has this morning
nominated General Marshall, the present Secretary of State,
for the office of Chief Justice of the United States. The eyes
of all parties have been turned upon you, whose pretensions he
knew were in every respect the best, and who, he could not be
ignorant, would have been the most acceptable to our country."
John Marshall himself, according to Dayton, had exerted his
influence with President Adams in behalf of Paterson. But
"the President alone was inflexible, and declared that he would
never nominate" Paterson. It was small comfort to Paterson
that so ardent a Federalist as Dayton, exhibiting in private
the kind of language that Paterson had sent men to jail for
publishing, declared Adams to be a "wild freak of a man" whose
"debility or derangement of intellect" would have exposed the
country to destruction if he had been permitted another four
years' administration. Others declared it a "pity that the
feelings of so honorable and able a judge should be wounded
. , . by having a younger lawyer, not more eminent in that
line, put over his head." The real reason was probably that given
by Thomas Jefferson that the Federalists, scurrying before
the Revolution of 1800 that Paterson and his fellow judges
had done so much to foment, "have retreated into the judiciary
as a stronghold." In that citadel, so Adams must have thought,
FORERUNNER OF JOHN MARSHALL 21
the doctrine of national supremacy would need a judicial states-
man of the first order, sound in his Federalism, unflinching in
his devotion to the consolidation of national power, and re-
sourceful in withstanding the onslaught of Jeffersonian de-
mocracy. Paterson was a faithful and loyal supporter of all
these doctrines, but he was not a fearless leader. John Adams
had correctly taken the measure of the man needed for the post,
and no one realized it more acutely than John Marshall's great
antagonist, Thomas Jefferson.
But even with such an oak to lean upon, Paterson was far
from happy in the midst of the turbulent blasts in the Jefferso-
nian capital. "I avoid politicks/' was his constant refrain in
private letters, varied occasionally by a wish to retire into quiet
seclusion and by such expressions as "I hate noise/' Noise there
was aplenty, especially for Federal judges who had used their
high office for a decade as an instrument of partisan politics.
The effort at impeachment of Judges Pickering and Chase, the
stormy debate over the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1 80 1, the
demand in many of the states and even in Congress for consti-
tutional amendments authorizing the removal of Supreme Court
judges, and the total rejection by Jefferson and most of his fol-
lowers of the doctrine that the judiciary was the sole organ of
government empowered to pass upon the constitutionality of
legislation these and many other straws in the wind caused
Paterson to fear for his country's liberties.
There is little doubt about the purpose of the Judiciary Act
that had been passed in the closing days of Adams' administra-
tion. Its design, declared Jefferson, "was too palpable to elude
common observation" the design of entrenching Federalism
in the judiciary. When that act was repealed early in 1802,
Chief Justice Marshall corresponded at length with Paterson
and the other associate justices, asking in private correspondence
whether the law should be obeyed or declared unconstitutional.
The Act of 1801 had abolished the hated circuit duty of the
Supreme Court judges; the Act of 1802 restored that duty.
Chase, violent as usual, declared that Congress had no right to
assign circuit duties to Supreme Court judges. No doubt
22 WILLIAM PATERSON
Paterson would have been gratified at the opportunity to invali-
date a statute so objectionable. But his way was blocked. He
not only had helped to draft the Judiciary Act of 1789 which
was precisely similar in respect to Circuit Court duty but, from
1793 until 1 80 1, he had ridden the circuits and thus had given
tacit approval of the constitutionality of such an act. His
opinion in private correspondence was, therefore, the same as
that which he announced for the court in Stuart v. Laird : "Prac-
tice and acquiescence . . . for a period of several years, commenc-
ing with the organization of the judicial system has fixed the
construction. It is a contemporary interpretation of the most
forcible nature. This practical exposition is too strong and
obstinate to be shaken or controlled. Of course, the question is
at rest and ought not now to be disturbed/ 1 In a private letter
to Paterson, before this case came on to trial, Chief Justice
Marshall had declared : "I have no doubt myself that policy dic-
tates this decision to us all. Judges, however, are of all men those
who have the least right to obey her dictates."
Though Paterson and other judges may have felt frustrated
on this occasion, he must have taken a profound satisfaction in
the great obiter dictum in Marbury v. Madison running to more
than nine thousand words and setting forth the doctrine of
judicial review as expounded by Paterson himself years earlier.
He would have been even more gratified if he had lived to
witness the great extension of the authority of the national
government under Marshall's doctrine of inherent power a
concept that Paterson had hinted at in 1800 in Cooper v. Telfair
when, in the absence of constitutional definition, he had invoked
"a power that grows out of the very nature of the social compact
. . . inherent in the legislature." But his judicial career closed
on a less hopeful note the disagreeable one of hearing a case
with a Jeffersonian Republican on the bench and of witnessing
the refusal of Cabinet officers and even department clerks to
obey the summons of the august tribunal. In the face of this
mounting tide of indignity, Paterson "in disgust immediately
left the Bench on the plea of ill health." The plea was valid, but
the disgust was no less real.
Devoted to his country, unswervingly loyal to his colleagues,
generous, kindly, and steadfast with family and friends, Pater-
son was a man of unimpeachable integrity. If the major part of
FORERUNNER OF JOHN MARSHALL 23
his career exhibits a fear of the dangers of democracy, it should
not be forgotten that he stood as steadfast as any in the days
that tested the two fundamental doctrines on which the Amer-
ican republic was erected : that all government flows from the
people for the protection of certain inalienable rights and liber-
ties and that the power of government is limited by the source
that created it. On these great propositions, Paterson was as
bold and uncompromising as Thomas Jefferson or Thomas
Paine. But, these rights having been won, the enduring problem
of establishing, in the words of Hamilton, "that happy mean
which marks the salutary boundary between power and privi-
lege, and combines the energy of government with the security
of private rights" found Paterson on the side of Hamilton and
Marshall. He was a political judge only because he feared the
tyranny of the majority. Nor, in any just appraisal, should the
influence of Blackstone be omitted. On the eve of the Revolu-
tion, when young lawyers were forsaking the black-letter
Whiggism of Coke for "the honeyed Mansfieldism of Black-
stone," a turning point in the history of the American legal
profession was at hand. Paterson, no less than John Marshall,
followed the prevailing trend. Perhaps the most revealing com-
mentary on Paterson's public career is his statement that he
intended to administer to his own law students "the drug of
Coke and the tonic of Blackstone." This was his doctrine when
he himself had lately been graduated from a "seminary of
sedition," long before he began jailing men for seditious
utterances.
Samuel Kirkland [mi-isos]
MISSIONARY TO THE SIX NATIONS; FOUNDER
OF HAMILTON COLLEGE
BY W1LLARD THORP
S
| AMUEL KIRKLAND was late in arriving at the
College of New Jersey for the winter term of
1762-1763. The passage from Chelsea (via
New London) to New York was so stormy that he feared he
might never set foot on shore again. The ship put in at Old
Fields Point on Long Island, and Samuel went ashore. He
"eat nothing but twice in said time," and he was still queasy
after three days of seasickness. He reached Nassau Hall finally
on November 17. The future founder of Hamilton College met
with a kind reception there, as one might expect, for he was a
protege of the Rev. Eleazar Wheelock, whose religious views
resembled those of the "New Light" Presbyterians who were
nurturing the infant college in New Jersey.
At Mr. Wheelock's behest young Kirkland asked for admis-
sion to the sophomore class. According to the rules he should
have been examined and required to undergo a two weeks' trial
before being permitted to recite with the class of 1765, but he
told the Reverend President, Dr. Finley, and the tutors that if
they insisted on the examination he should not attempt to stand
for the sophomore class, as he knew himself "to be in no measure
prepared as to the languages." The faculty waived the exam-
ination. Perhaps they sensed already the power and virtue of
their candidate. Possibly they wished to do the Rev. Mr. Whee-
lock a favor.
Young Kirkland got quickly to work. He bought himself a
copy of Thomas Salmon's "geography" [probably his New
Geographical and Historical Grammar] and Modern Universal
Gazetteer, a Tully, John Ward's A System of Oratory, a singing
book, a treatise on logic, and an English grammar. The cur-
riculum for the sophomore year required the student to "prose-
cute the study of the languages, Homer, Longinus, etc., and
FOUNDER OF HAMILTON 25
enter upon the sciences, rhetoric, logic, and the mathematics."
Kirkland reported to Wheelock on January 20, 1763 : "I recite
with my class in Geography ; in the Greek Testament [a fresh-
man subject which he was having to make up] at present by
myself to S m . Blair, our Tutor; I shall likely joyn with them in
Longinus, in the Spring; and in those Latin Authors, which
they shall study." In the same letter he notes that the college is
in a flourishing situation and the "Labours of Mr. President
and Tutors for its welfare are indefatigable."
Because he was a charity student Kirkland kept a careful
account of his expenses during his first year. Every item is put
down in his "Account with the Christian World," dated from
Princeton June 29, 1763. We know from this what he paid for
a year's tuition and board (17-7-6), for "calicoe for 2 sum-
mer gowns," for mending his old blue coat, for pulling a tooth
(one shilling), and for inoculation for the small pox, dieting,
etc. (5-14-6). One is glad to observe that he permitted him-
self tea by the rules of the college the young gentlemen were
"indulged to make a dish of tea in their apartments provided it
be done after evening prayer." Once during the year he pur-
chased a quart of rum (one shilling, four pence), and there is
an item of four shillings, two pence, for pipes and tobacco.
He was also out of pocket seven shillings, eleven pence, for
curing a "filthy Disease call'd the Itch."
Nassau Hall and the President's House, designed by the
eminent Philadelphia architect Robert Smith, had been made
ready for their occupants only five years before Kirkland came
to Princeton. In the meantime the seventy students who removed
from Newark in 1757 had increased to more than a hundred,
so that a second floor of Nassau Hall had been finished and a
kitchen building erected to release more space for students'
rooms. The college building was the largest and handsomest of
its kind in the colonies. The library of nearly 1,300 volumes
was so notable though defective in books about the mathe-
matics and the Newtonian philosophy that the trustees had
issued a proud catalogue of it in 1760.
Through its graduates the College of New Jersey was already
beginning to play an illustrious role in the intellectual life of
the nation to be. Their company would be augmented by men
who were studying at Nassau Hall with Kirkland. In his class
26 SAMUEL KIRKLAND
were three other young men who would help to establish new
colleges in the land : Theodoric Dirck Romeyn, a "son of thun-
der" in the pulpit, who would found Union ; John Bacon, des-
tined to be one of the original trustees of Williams ; Jonathan
Edwards, Jr., son of the greater Jonathan, who, in 1799, would
become Union's president. At six o'clock morning prayer Kirk-
land sat in the "elegant hall of genteel workmanship" and at
evening prayer sang psalms to the "exceeding good organ" in
the company of a future president pro tern of the Continental
Congress, David Ramsay of the class of 1765; a future dele-
gate to the Constitutional Convention, William Paterson, 1763,
whose name belongs to one of New Jersey's great cities ; a future
Chief Justice of the United States and Envoy Extraordinary to
France, Oliver Ellsworth, 1766. There were future senators
also, Revolutionary officers, jurists, and theologians. In their
midst was one incipient "traitor" who would take the side of
King George and find it convenient to seek refuge in England.
Samuel Kirkland was born December i, 1741. His father,
the Rev. Daniel Kirkland, a graduate of Yale, was at that time
minister in the township of Norwich, Connecticut. Samuel
was the tenth in a family of twelve children and the harassed
father must have welcomed, in 1760, the opportunity of hav-
ing him educated at the school in Lebanon, Connecticut, pre-
sided over by the Rev. Dr. Wheelock. Moor's Charity School,
so called in honor of the benefactor whose name headed the list
of contributors to its foundation, existed for one purpose
to train missionaries to the Indians. There is no way of know-
ing whether young Kirkland would have chosen that vocation
but from his early letters we judge that he was more than
reconciled to it. He learned the Mohawk language from three
Indians who were his fellow pupils and in the year before
going to Princeton made an exploratory trip into the Mohawk
country.
Since for the first ten years of his adult life the fortunes of
Samuel Kirkland are inextricably bound up with the mis-
sionary enterprises of Eleazar Wheelock, it will be useful to
consider for a moment the career of his patron and future rival.
The founder of Dartmouth College was a Yale graduate of
1733. Quite without humor and often without the tact which
successful promoter requires, he was possessed by a domi-
FOUNDER OF HAMILTON 27
nant passion, the desire to convert to Christianity the Indians of
the Six Nations and to civilize them in the interests of peace
on the white man's frontier. He was an active participant also
in the Great Awakening which in the 1730*8, with the aid of
Jonathan Edwards and the saintly George Whitefield, was
shaking dissenters out of their spiritual apathy.
Wheelock was pastor of the church at Lebanon from 1735
until 1770 but his heart was entirely in the school for Indians
and whites he founded in 1754. Between 1761 and 1768 he
trained at Lebanon eight white missionaries to labor in the
field in New York; between 1754 and 1768 he educated, or
tried to educate, forty to forty-five male Indians, about a
third of whom he also sent west as missionaries or school-
masters.
Kirkland as a pupil in the Lebanon school had impressed
his master and he impressed in the same way his teachers at
the College of New Jersey. President Finley speaks warmly
of him in a letter to Wheelock dated April 3, 1764:
"P.S. April 6. having a few more minutes I broke open the
letter, to tell you, that not only your son has done well, but
also Kirkland, for whom you have been concerned, gives me
pleasure, and raises my hopes. It grieves me, that his circum-
stances are so strait, and had I not been so constantly hurried
as to cause me to forget again and again, I would have tryed to
get him some small assistance here, before now; but I still
resolve to do so."
Wheelock's son Ralph, an epileptic, was enrolled in the
college during Kirkland's stay, and it is evident that he had
been requested to watch over the unfortunate boy for his let-
ters to Wheelock contain careful reports of Ralph's condition.
There is further evidence that Kirkland's Princeton record
was exceptional. Without dissent by faculty or trustees his
degree was granted in absentia at the September Commence-
ment of 1765. He had been away from the college for ten
months on a difficult mission to the Seneca Indians in western
New York. While his classmates were concluding their studies
by "revising the most improving parts of the Latin and Greek
classics, part of the Hebrew Bible, and all the arts and sci-
ences," and carrying on public disputation on Sundays "before
a promiscuous congregation/' he was enduring cold and hunger
28 SAMUEL KIRKLAND
and the danger of death by treachery in the untracked regions
lying between the Mohawk River and Lake Geneva.
This momentous journey Kirkland began on January 17,
1765, setting out from Johnson Hall beside the Mohawk River
where Sir William Johnson, the seigneur of the valley, ruled
over a whole region. Taking an affectionate leave of Sir Wil-
liam, Kirkland headed into frontier country. His first miles
were measured along the placid Mohawk River, then, as now
in the days of the Barge Canal, a convenient waterway for
travelers. German settlers from the Palatinate had penetrated
this region as early as 1723. At German Flats (Herkimer),
seventeen miles southeast of what is now Utica, a few scattered
farmers offered hospitality. Beyond them stretched the "wilder-
ness," inhabited only by the Oneidas whose life centered in two
principal "castles" near the present village of Vernon.
To secure this region the British in 1725 had built two forts,
replaced in 1758 by Fort Stanwix from which the city of Rome
has grown. This bastion was strategically placed. Travelers by
water customarily left the dwindling Mohawk River under its
protection and made the one-mile portage to navigable Wood
Creek which flows westward into Oneida Lake. Beyond the
Oneidas was another tribe of the Six Nations, the Onondagas,
who inhabited the region around modern Syracuse. Still farther
west, visited only by explorers and traders, lived the Cayugas
and the Senecas. The Senecas in particular had resisted sullenly
the slight efforts that had been made to Christianize them.
Kirkland was the first Protestant missionary who sought to
live among them and win them for the Lord. It was a bold un-
dertaking for a youth of twenty-three.
A born woodsman, Kirkland adapted himself quickly to the
ways of the Indians. Later he was reproached for lowering the
dignity of his office by conforming himself to their modes of
eating and dressing, but much of his extraordinary power over
them evidently came from his lack of fastidiousness and pride
of office. He describes the second night of his two hundred mile
journey as calmly as if he were setting forth on a camping trip :
"My convoy [two Senecas] unslung their packs and were very
FOUNDER OF HAMILTON 29
active in making the necessary preparations for a comfortable
night's repose. One of them went with his little axe to cutting
wood for a fire, the other shovelling away the snow, and then
gathered an armful of hemlock boughs for my bed. I was forbid
to do anything but sit on the log near by and rest myself. . . .
We sat round our dish, and ate like brethren, and a better supper
I have seldom made. Could I have conversed freely with them,
we should have had a sociable evening."
Arriving at Kanonwalohule, the principal village of the
Oneidas, Kirkland explained to them the purpose of his mis-
sion to the Senecas. The chief begged him to spend a year in
their midst before going on. He replied that he could not re-
linquish his design till Providence stopped the path, or hedged
up his way. Two years later Providence did "stop the path" and
bring him back to the Oneidas to whom he ministered during
the rest of his life.
At Onondaga, where the central council fire of the Six
Nations burned in the long house, Kirkland delivered the sub-
stance of the message he was carrying to the Senecas from
Sir William Johnson. His speech, interpreted by one of the
Indians in his convoy, was constantly interrupted with the cry
of "Athoo toyeske" "It is so; very true." When the speech-
making was over, the old chief, who had spoken like a De-
mosthenes, came to Kirkland, took him by the hand, and kissed
him on one cheek and then the other. The young man was equal
to the occasion : "I supposed I must return the compliment. I
accordingly kissed his red cheek [s], not disgusted at all with
the remains of the paint and grease, with which they had lately
been besmeared. He gave me many benedictions while he held
me by the hand. Then came one after another to shake hands
with me, perhaps nearly ohe hundred in all. The board of
Sachems all gave me their benediction in different ways."
On the seventh of February Kirkland and his guides reached
Kanadasaga, the Seneca village at the foot of Seneca Lake,
nine miles from their sacred Bare Hill, where the Creator caused
the ground to open and the ancestors of the Seneca nation to
emerge into the world. The remains of the village now lie within
the boundaries of the city of Geneva.
The next day at noon the council convened. The chiefs ap-
plauded Sir William's message, though Kirkland noted that a
3O SAMUEL KIRKLAND
small minority kept silent. The head sachem thanked him for
showing so much love for Indians by traveling those many
miles in winter to teach them. In the house of the head sachem,
where he was then placed, a stream of visitors came to stare at
him and to ask "what put into his mind to leave his father's
house, and his country." With the help of a Dutch trader in
the village Kirkland answered these queries as well as he could.
A few weeks later he was adopted into the family of the head
sachem. At the ceremony, which moved Kirkland deeply, he
could not keep back his tears "of joy and gratitude, for the
kind Providence which had protected me through my long
journey, brought me to the place of my desire, and given me so
kind a reception among the poor savage Indians " His adopted
father's house being crowded, Kirkland was sent to live with
a "sober and temperate man and honest/' his wife, and niece.
Beginning with a vocabulary of two words, "otkayason"
"what do you call this?" and "tointaschpayati" "speak it
again," he learned the language rapidly.
The scene which had opened so auspiciously was soon clouded.
Shortly after Kirkland moved to the house of the sober and
honest Indian his host died suddenly in the night. The crowds
which came to view the corpse looked "very forbidding" toward
Kirkland. Though the head sachem tried to reassure him, plainly
there was trouble in the air. Runners had gone out to the other
villages and a council was soon in session. The night of the
funeral Kirkland slept with his "elder brother" in a blockhouse
built by Sir William in 1754 or 1755 but never garrisoned with
white soldiers. The next day his "youngest brother" gave him
a gun, took one himself, and the two of them went off into the
woods under the pretense of shooting partridges. Their destina-
tion was a distant sugar-hut where they hid out for several days.
When the council broke up, Kirkland's "family" reassembled
m the blockhouse. Visitors assured him "all is now only peace."
But it was made clear to him that he must not try to communi-
cate with Sir William without interpreting his ktters for the
duels. From Mr. Wemp, a Dutch trader in the confidence of
the Indians, Kirkland learned that the head sachem had opened
the council with an eloquent defense of the preacher and words
of caution to the Senecas to take counsel, "under our great
loss, with a tender mind. 9 ' Onongwadeka, a chief possessing
FOUNDER OF HAMILTON 31
great influence, had then tried to inflame the Senecas to kill the
white man as satisfaction for the death of their brother, warn-
ing them that if they received men like Kirkland the spirit of
the warrior and the hunter would no longer be among them.
"Brothers, attend," he had pleaded, "we shall be sunk so low as
to hoe corn and squashes in the field, chop wood, stoop down and
milk cows, like the negroes among the Dutch people." The
widow of the dead man had then been questioned. Did Kirkland
ever "come to the bedside, and whisper in your husband's ear
or puff in his face?" She replied : "No, never; he always sat or
lay down on his own bunk, and in the evening, after we were
in bed, we could see him get down on his knees and talk with a
low voice." The head sachem then spoke again, long and per-
suasively, concluding with the sobering words: "Who among
us can lift up his hand to smite an innocent man? I should
[rather] die myself than wish to live and see the evils which
would fall upon our nation, should such a thing take place." His
wisdom prevailed and the council fire was raked up.
Though Kirkland returned to the village and lived in har-
mony with the Senecas thereafter, his troubles were by no means
at an end. By March provisions were "exceeding scarce." He
sold his shirt for four cakes which he would have devoured at
once if prudence had not restrained him. For several days he
lived on white acorns fried in bear's grease, which diet brought
on a severe colic. At last hunger so far reduced him that he
could endure to eat, though tears dropped into his spoon as he
did so, bear soup from which white animalculae fell to the floor
and scampered "about like lusty fellows."
At the end of April food was so scant that Kirkland resolved
to take his "brother" Tekanada and his family to Johnson Hall.
The streams were swollen, so the trip could be made entirely
by water. A bark canoe was built for the party of two men, two
women, and four children. In crossing Oneida Lake a sudden
storm overtook the travelers and the canoe began to leak.
Tekanada untied a squirrel skin containing a magic powder use-
ful in such crises, but the grains he cast on the water did not
calm the storm. Kirkland prayed and his prayer was answered ;
half an hour later they ran up on the shore, the canoe breaking
to pieces the minute they struck. At the campfire that evening
Kirkland used their deliverance as an occasion for pointing up
32 SAMUEL KIRKLAND
the story of Jesus on the lake of Gennesaret. Tekanada gener-
ously admitted that his sacred white powder had failed and that
the Great Spirit had heard Kirkland's prayer. When the party
struggled through to Johnson Hall, Kirkland showed his de-
votion to his foster family by living with them in the lodge
Tekanada built "some two or three miles" from the Hall. There
Tekanada's wife died of a quick consumption.
When Sir William saw the emaciated young missionary for
the first time after his return (May 3, 1765) he greeted him
with astonishment: "Good God, Mr. Kirkland, you look like
a whipping post!" He gave him every assistance in making
ready for the return journey, presenting him with a bateau
which would carry him more safely than a birch canoe.
Kirkland's tender care of Tekanada's wife and the fact of
his having preferred to live with his family in the lodge near
the Hall were bruited about Kanadasaga, and life went easily
with him for a time. Soon his old enemy, the chief who had
sought to have him killed, began to make trouble on the pretext
that Kirkland was poisoning the minds of the young warriors
with white men's notions. As Kirkland was returning home
one evening, "trotting along on his pony and singing hymns,"
he saw one of Onongwadeka's men picking the flint of his gun
behind a clump of bushes. Looking over his shoulder he saw
the gun raised and heard the lock snap. The Indian called after
him to stop. Setting his horse into full gallop Kirkland got
safely away through the willow swamp.
At this point Kirkland's journal of his life among the Senecas
breaks off. From letters covering the remaining months of his
stay, we know that though he was forced to take up quarters in
a mean house in the woods in January 1 766 he was in the main
treated with kindness and permitted to do his work. He had
completed a Senecan grammar and dictionary when a letter
came from Wheelock bidding him come to Connecticut to be
ordained. Wheelock instructed him to persuade the tribe to
empower him to be their minister and, if possible, to bring
along their chief sachem and some boys to add to the impres-
siveness of the ordination ceremonies. On June 19, 1766 Kirk-
land was ordained at Lebanon. That same day he received his
commission as an Indian missionary from the Connecticut
FOUNDER OF HAMILTON 33
Board of Correspondents for the Honorable Society in Scotland
for Propagating Christian Knowledge.
Kirkland's commission from the Board of Correspondents
stated only that he was to instruct, teach, and preach the gospel
to the Indian tribes and others wherever the providence of God
should call him. From his own preference or by Wheelock's
direction he returned, not to the Senecas, but to the Oneidas.
Some effective missionary work had been done with this tribe,
and it was doubtless considered advisable to strengthen what
had already been established and to use the mission as a base
for further enterprises in the western country.
Kirkland set out from Lebanon on July 7, 1766 accompanied
by a Yale undergraduate, David McClure, Aaron Kenne who
had been studying with Wheelock, and four Indians, one of
whom was Tekanada. McClure's diary of the journey contains
a detailed picture of their adventures. Kirkland taught his
novices how to live in the woods and the etiquette of the Indian
campfire that it was not good form, for instance, for white
men to lie down when Indian women were in camp. The
mission came first to Old Oneida Castle, a settlement of fifteen
or so log or bark houses. Their destination was the upper castle,
Kanonwalohule, ten miles distant, where, in the midst of forty
dwelling houses, there was a small church of logs. Here Kirk-
land preached for a few sabbaths with the aid of an interpreter.
He and McClure at once began to compose a grammar of the
Oneida language. Kirkland soon was instructing his charges in
their own tongue while McClure busied himself in organizing
an English School. In November McClure departed to take up
his studies in Lebanon. Kirkland was left alone to wrestle with
the recurrent problems of famine, drunkenness, and the cor-
ruption imported by cruel and unrighteous traders, "Dutch
Christians," he called them, "whose constant aim was to
destroy the poor Indians as fast as possible."
In his semiofficial reports to Wheelock and others, one reads
of Kirkland's progress in his warfare against the devil: the
chiefs have agreed to help him destroy all the liquor they can
find ; in that dark corner "which a few months ago was a habi-
34 SAMUEL KIRKLAND
tation of cruelty and gross paganism, there is now a blessed nest
of Christians." From his more intimate letters one senses the
loneliness and feeling of inadequacy bf the young man of twen-
ty-five. Writing to David McClure in December, 1766, he speaks
from a heart which often felt a dangerously unchristian despair.
ONIDA 20 DECEMB. 1766*
My dear Friend,
Your animating Lines by Johnson from Shoemakers
came safe to hand, was glad to hear you arrived there well,
as I fear'd a bad time thro the woods. I hope you may have
a kind Journey home, w th some agreeable Reflections of
your tower [tour] among these savage mortals. Yesterday,
my dear Sir, the first leisure Moment since 90 days labour
upon my house, oh how sweet was the retired hour ! how
Soul reviving the Study of Gods precious word. I cou'd
not refrain a tear for joy, tho while I walk'd musing
thro my little Room, turning my Eyes from Corner to
Corner, found the absence of a dear friend, whose com-
pany while present, I cou'd not enjoy, I sigh'd, and dropt
a second Tear But alas how soon the scene changes. I am
now ready to shed a Thousand. I must be deprived of this
so long hop'd for and wish'd for [?] Retiredness, and
denied a smile from you or a little sympathy to cheer a
drooping Spirit. I go to-morrow like a poor forsaken pil-
grim alone thro* the Desert, to seek after meat. I go without
money, no purse, no staff, little Bread ; broken shoes, rag-
ged coat, no blanket, poor pilgrim indeed. Methinks I see
you drop a Tear and offer your self to bear the hardships
of this Journey, comforting tho't, tho' a million of Tears
cou'd not fetch you here. Heaven forbid you shou'd have
my fortune, not that I complain of more than I deserve,
far be it, vile wretch! I recall my thoughts; one smile
from the dear saviour wipes every tear dry, and gives Joy
unspeakable. Oh may you begin in season your acquaint-
ance w tt the Father of Spirits, and not let a day pass w* 1
[out] knowing something of the transforming Power and
1 This letter, from which the sixteen-line postscript is here omitted, is in
the Princeton University Library.
FOUNDER OF HAMILTON 35
Efficacy of the holy Spirit, renewing and sanctifying the
Soul, w th the Love of it shed abroad in your heart [ ?] con-
straining you to every good work. I desist, having six Let-
ters to write this evening and set out for the Flats and
Kagnawage [Fonda] at tomorrow's dawn.
Yours most affectionately,
S. KIRKLAND
Kirkland was for a time in such extreme poverty that his
lowly way of living hurt his character and influence among the
Indians. Some thought he must be a poor, worthless fellow
since he lived more like a dog than a Christian minister. In the
first months of his mission he was dependent on such bounty
as Wheelock could, by begging around, provide him. Early in
1769 a Scotch admirer sent him 30, "having, from good au-
thority, a most savory account of his uncommon labor and love
in his Master's service." In thanking this distant friend Kirk-
land noted that it was the first money he had ever had, that he
might in any sense call his own "except a few dollars given me
last spring by the liberality of some friends in Boston, to pro-
cure books."
In October 1770 Kirkland began negotiations which trans-
ferred him from the care of the Connecticut to that of the Bos-
ton Board of Correspondents. They granted him an annual
allowance of f 100, with a further allowance of 30 for his
having, at great pains and expense, learned the principal dialects
of the Six Nations so that he did not require the service of an
interpreter. His reputation was high with the Boston Board and
he procured for his Oneidas many benefits which would help to
civilize them: in particular a sawmill, a grist mill, farming
utensils, and a blacksmith shop where the boys could learn the
craft.
One of Kirkland's reasons for placing himself under the
Boston Board was to free himself from the increasingly irksome
patronage of Wheelock. The differences between them had been
steadily growing. The roots of their quarrel were many. Though
Wheelock never himself preached to or taught the Indians in
New York he was constantly making plans to extend his in-
fluence among them, plans which Sir William Johnson, who
36 SAMUEL KIRKLAND
would have preferred to have only Church of England mis-
sionaries in his domain, did not intend should be carried out.
Meanwhile, Kirkland, by his devotion to their good, won the
allegiance of most of the Oneidas, who desired to have their
children instructed by him and his assistants rather than send
them to Wheelock's school in Lebanon. Kirkland chafed under
the kind of subservience in which, it seemed, Wheelock was
trying to keep him and resented the jealous meddling of Ralph,
Wheelock's epileptic son. Ralph, he learned, had said before
several persons: "Mr. Kirkland is to have no salary; we think
it best to keep him dependent. " In 1766, 1767, and 1768 Whee-
lock sent his son to report on the state of the mission in New
York and accepted the untruths he brought back. Not until 1771
did he learn that Ralph had behaved so insolently toward the
Indians that Kirkland's patient work of years was nearly un-
done. In Kirkland's own words, the chief cause of the disaf-
fection between him and Wheelock was "the misunderstanding
and variance between his son and me."
In the interests of Christian harmony the quarrel was patched
over. After reporting to the Boston Board in the fall of 1771,
Kirkland went on to Hanover where a document was drawn up
entitled "Articles of Agreement between the Reverend Dr.
Wheelock and the Reverend Mr. Kirkland." It contained seven
declarations in which concessions and explanations were set
forth. The two signers agreed never to receive ill reports of
each other without consulting to learn exactly what had been
done or said.
The quarrel was in some respects a family as well as a clerical
row. In September 1769 Kirkland had married Wheelock's
niece, Jerusha Bingham, a woman of "uncommon energy of
character and of sterling good sense." Wheelock was jealous of
her loyalty to her husband. Jerusha went at once with Kirkland
to the Oneida country, waiting, until her husband's log house
could be rebuilt and enlarged, at the home of General Herkimer
in German Flats. There the following August she gave birth to
twin boys whom Kirkland named in honor of his English pa-
trons and friends, George Whitefield and John Thornton. When
the mother took the babies to Oneida, the Indians adopted them
into the tribe, giving George the name of Lagoneost, and John,
the future president of Harvard, that of Ahganowiska or Fair
SAMUEL KIRKLAND
FOUNDER OF HAMILTON 37
Face. In the summer of 1772 Mrs. Kirkland returned to Con-
necticut where a daughter was born to her and thereafter, since
the state of Indian affairs was very unsettled and the Revolution
was imminent, she continued to live in New England. She
bought a house at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where Kirkland
visited her when he could and where she reared their six chil-
dren. She died in 1788.
In those scenes of the Revolution which were played in eastern
New York Kirkland performed notably in several patriotic
roles : as adviser on strategy at councils held with the Indians,
as treaty maker, and as brigade chaplain. Though he, along
with General Schuyler and General Herkimer, worked valiantly
to hold the Six Nations to the side of the colonists, only the
Oneidas and Tuscaroras resisted the enticements of the British.
That these two tribes were faithful was owing to their regard
for Kirkland. But for his influence in the region, Indian depre-
dations on the Mohawk frontier would have been even more
bloody than they were.
What Kirkland and the generals had chiefly to work against
was the power of the Johnson name. The seignorial Sir William,
Bart., had served excellently as His Majesty's Superintendent
of Indian Affairs. Though he did not approve of Kirkland's
Calvinism, he had evidently liked the man from the time when,
still a senior at Nassau Hall, he first came into that country.
When Sir William died in 1773 his power descended to his
son-in-law, Colonel Guy Johnson, a zealous Anglican and loyal-
ist. Kirkland bore with remarkable patience Colonel Guy's
efforts to turn the Oneidas against him by planting and circulat-
ing false charges. On one occasion Johnson sent a message to
the Oneidas to "inform" them that Kirkland had asked the
governor to grant him four thousand soldiers to thrash the
Indians, "in order to bring them to repentance . . . for nothing
but force of arms would ever humble them."
As late as the fall of 1775 Kirkland, who had been attending
Indian councils in Albany, German Flats, Oneida, and Onon-
daga, still hoped to keep the Six Nations neutral. The following
March, however, he wrote to Schuyler that Colonel Johnson's
38 SAMUEL KIRKLAND
reiterated lie that the colonists would, if victorious, turn on the
Indians and destroy them had taken effect; there was fierce
dissension among the Six Nations, and it was now certain that
the western tribes would go over to the British.
After that the Indians were a terror in the Mohawk valley
until St. Leger was defeated in the fall of 1777 at Oriskany
by the combined strategy of Herkimer, Colonel Gansevoort
(grandfather of Herman Melville), and Benedict Arnold. Dur-
ing those anxious months Kirkland's Oneiclas, as well as the
Tuscaroras, remained neutral. Later they insisted on fighting
for the colonists, and a force of about 250 was organized under
Kirkland's devoted admirer, the Oneida chief, Skenandoa.
The Continental Congress having commissioned Kirkland a
brigade chaplain, he served for a time at Fort Schuyler (Utica)
and in 1779 with General Sullivan in the campaign to destroy
the Iroquois power in western Pennsylvania and New York. He
lived in the general's family and had the great satisfaction of
assisting him in the preparation of a little treatise proving the
existence of a Supreme Being. Sullivan had declared that he
would convince "any Deist (of which there is no want in the
army) from principles of reason, that the Scriptures are of
divine origin."
While the war was on, Kirkland did what he could to keep
Christianity alive among the Oneidas. As soon as peace came
he made plans to resume his mission. In February 1784 he
reported at length to the Board of Correspondents in Boston
on his activities during the war, noting precisely at what times
he had been absent from his mission in the service of the new
nation. His request for reinstatement was supported by letters
from several eminent men and an address from the Oneida
sachems. The board was well pleased with the report and ad-
vised the society in Scotland that Kirkland should be paid for
his missionary work during the decade 1774-1784. This the
society did though, properly enough, they counted out the
time he had acted as brigade chaplain, arguing "that they could
allow no salary to him or to any person who had been in any
shape in the service of those that were in arms against Great
Britain." On his petition Congress paid what was due him as
chaplain and made him an additional grant of 250 for the
special services he had rendered in treating with the Indians.
FOUNDER OF HAMILTON 39
In 1786 the Corporation of Harvard College granted him
313.6.8, lawful money, from Dr. Daniel Williams' legacy
and voted that there be allowed him annually 66.13.4 (^5
sterling).
The penniless missionary who twenty years earlier had gone
into the wilderness a poor, forsaken pilgrim, "without money,
no purse, no staff," was beginning to be a man of substance.
He was soon to be a landed proprietor as well. Under patents
confirmed February 3, 1790 the Indians and the state of New
York granted Kirkland and his two sons a tract of over 4,000
acres on the western side of the line of the Oneida territory
which ran from the northwest to the southeast a dozen miles
west of Utica. In 1789 he had already taken possession of part
of his land, cleared seven acres, and built himself a log house
twenty-two feet by twenty-six.
Although his time was now chiefly occupied in mending
the shattered economy and the depleted spiritual estate of his
dear Oneidas, Kirkland was still called upon to perform many
services for the new state and the new nation. In the treaty of
peace which concluded the war between England and America
no provisions were made for settling Indian affairs, although
sovereignty over the vast Indian lands in New York had been
vested in the United States. Land speculators and even the
state government itself showed no disposition to respect the
old Indian titles. If the federal government had not intervened,
the Six Nations might have been ruthlessly expelled from the
region. At the council held at Fort Stanwix in the autumn of
1784, at the behest of General Washington, Kirkland was
placed in charge of the preparations and acted as interpreter.
In 1788 he was again asked to help in negotiations between
the Indians in western New York and Messrs. Phelps and
Gorham who had "purchased" from Massachusetts a tract of
over 6,000,000 acres in the Genesee country. Though in travel-
ing to Buffalo Creek, through country he had first seen in his
mission to the Senecas in 1764, Kirkland was acting as the
agent of the new proprietors, he protected the rights of the
Indians and won the unanimous commendation of their chiefs
when the treaty was concluded.
Late in 1790 he was called to Philadelphia to assist the
Seneca chiefs who had grievances to lay before Congress and
40 SAMUEL KIRKLAND
to advise the government about Indian hostilities in Ohio. Head-
ing the Indian delegation was the famous chief Cornplanter
whom Kirkland had first met during the negotiations at Fort
Stanwix in 1784. The missionary held many conversations on
points of Christian doctrine with the warrior and had the pleas-
ure of converting him. Cornplanter left Philadelphia, so he said
to his teacher, with a rich "store of spiritual food, out of which
he could take a portion for his mind to feed upon and digest
every day through his long journey."
In letters which Kirkland wrote in the 1790*5 to Timothy
Pickering, Postmaster General and later Secretary of War, one
can see that he was in close touch with Indian affairs from
Oneida Castle to the Mississippi valley. The invaluable informa-
tion which came to him by letters from his Indian friends and
visits of chiefs to his Clinton home was always at the disposal
of the government.
It was ever in Kirkland's mind that the condition of his
Indians could be improved only if they could be weaned by
education from their primitive life to the habits of civilized
men. From his knowledge of the inadequacies of Wheelock's
school at Lebanon and of the vicissitudes of the many ele-
mentary schools for the Indian which missionaries like himself
were incessantly establishing and then having to abandon when
support dried up, he knew what all the difficulties were and
where hope for success might lie. The recent success of Captain
Joseph Brant, "Thayendanegea," in educating the Mohawks
encouraged Kirkland to try again with a bolder and more com-
prehensive plan.
He wanted a school for Indians and whites where the studies
should be both practical and what would now be called liberal.
It was to be in the Oneida territory because time and again the
chiefs had refused to send their sons far from home to be
educated. Children of the white settlers were to be admitted for
two reasons : their tuition money would help pay the costs of
the school; and, more important, if the Indian boys were con-
stantly with the children of "civilized" parents they would learn
the white man's arts easily and naturally. Yet they must be
FOUNDER OF HAMILTON 4!
near home and continue to study their own language lest the
translation from the savage state be so abrupt as to induce a
sense of hopelessness and the "torpid indifference" from which
many Indians suffered while seeking "to discern the difference
between a state of nature and a state of civilization."
In his early planning, the academy which came to be was only
one item in his scheme. He first proposed the establishing of
three schools, one each for the Tuscaroras and the Onondagas,
and a "principal school" at Kanonwalohule for his favorite
Oneidas. In addition a "resident" carpenter and a blacksmith,
both of whom were to be good farmers, well supplied with tools
and gear, were to settle in the region and teach their arts under
the inspection of a superintendent who would visit each village
and tribe at least once a month during the spring and summer.
The masters and scholars in the three schools were to "exercise
themselves one or two hours every day in improving and culti-
vating some part of the glebe." This, in essence, was the scheme
which Kirkland submitted to Washington's Secretary of War,
Henry Knox, in December 1791.
Two months earlier he had drawn up a "Plan of Education
for the Indians, Particularly of the Five Nations," a general
statement of aims which is masterly both in its philosophical
comprehension of the problem and its common sense approach.
During the next three years Kirkland presented his "Plan"
which speaks chiefly of the academy to many influential men.
Soon he had the supporters he needed, a group who could not
resist the powerful appeal of his concluding words : "After more
than twenty years' observation, I am not able to discover any
other repugnancy in the Indian mind to civilization, than what
arises from the mere force of an Indian or pagan education.
That they want capacity cannot be urged, for they discover in
many things great ingenuity and address ; and some marks of
original genius are found among them. That they have such a
viciousness and depravity of disposition as forbids their civiliza-
tion, is not true; for their ideas of right and wrong in many
cases, if known, would do them honor. What I have seen among
them, instead of weakening, confirms to me the opinion of most
philosophers, that the difference between one nation and another
is not so much owing to nature as to education. I think we have
every reason to believe that the present inhabitants of the United
42 SAMUEL KIRKLAND
States owe all their superiority over the native savages of the
wilderness in point of dignity to the cultivation of their minds
in morals and in the civil and polite arts.
"I cannot but believe that this plan, or some one similar to
it, may with the aid and countenance of Government be ex-
ecuted. . . .
"It may be one way in which the United States are to express
their gratitude to Heaven for raising them to such wealth and
eminence, and putting them into quiet possession of so extensive
a part of the territory, once claimed and occupied by the Ab-
origines of America/'
Early in 1793 Kirkland began to forward his plan On Jan-
uary 3 he waited on several gentlemen of the Honorable Board
of Regents of New York State. Five days later he was received
by President Washington in Philadelphia who expressed "his
approbation of the proposed Seminary, as well as that part of
the Plan which has been adopted, for introducing and promot-
ing agriculture among the Indians." The same day Mr. Hamil-
ton cheerfully consented to be a trustee of the seminary and
promised to afford it all the aid in his power. Back in New York
again on the twenty-sixth, Kirkland conferred with the regents
about the petition for chartering the seminary (now officially
named the Hamilton Oneida Academy), his plan of Indian edu-
cation, and the "Rules for Regulating the Academy" which he
had drawn up under eleven heads. The charter, immediately
granted, bears the date January 31, 1793.
For his original group of sixteen trustees Kirkland had se-
cured several gentlemen of importance in state and national af-
fairs in addition to worthies of the region who were substantial
donors to the enterprise. Heading the list is the Hon ble Alex-
ander Hamilton who seems to have contributed only his name
to the academy. The third name is that of a stout supporter of
Hamilton in the national government, the Hon ble Egbert Ben-
son, one of John Adams 1 "midnight judges" and reputed to be
second only to Hamilton in legal learning. He follows the
Hon ble John Lansing, whose long judicial career in New York,
begun in 1790, led to his succeeding James Kent as chancellor
of the state.
While legal negotiations were proceeding Kirkland had busied
himself in getting promises of contributions which would make
FOUNDER OF HAMILTON 43
the academy a physical reality. The seventy-seven subscribers
for the building and establishing of Hamilton Oneida vary in
the munificence of their contributions from Jedidiah Sanger
who gave 100 acres of land in the Unadilla purchase to Silas
Phelps who promised 2 "payable in blacksmith's work." Oliver
Phelps, the over-bold speculator in western New York lands,
was considered to have done well by the academy in furnishing
10 in cash. Kirkland himself gave 300 acres of land "to be
leased and the product applied towards the support of an able
instructor." Several promised clapboards, shingles, and nails. A
handsome contribution was made by the twenty-nine men who
offered their days of labor in getting up the building.
The date of July I, 1794 was remembered in the region. A
notable company assembled in the cleared space on the hilltop
which the academy and the college have ever since dominated. In
the throng were the Honorable Stephen Van Rensselaer, eighth
patroon of his line, and Colonel William North, aide-de-camp
to the Baron von Steuben in the Revolution and his adopted son.
Most observed of all was the great Oneida chieftain, the aged
Skenandoa, once a drunkard but after his conversion to Chris-
tianity Kirkland's devoted adjutant. He was "much delighted
and affected" by the ceremony of laying the cornerstone, by
Mr. Kirkland's prayer, and by the address of von Steuben.
With the devotion of a naturalized American, the Baron
praised the people of his adopted country who, dreading famine
less than ignorance, were erecting seminaries of learning even
while they were converting a wilderness into a garden.
Though the beginning was auspicious, difficulties arose im-
mediately, chiefly because the subscribers, in the stringent times
which followed, could not fulfill their pledges. Loans were
sought in 1794 and 1795, but the frame of the building stood
unenclosed for several years. In 1799 Kirkland released the
trustees from all obligation for debts due him, on the condition
that the sum of $2,000 be applied to finishing the building.
Despite these delays elementary instruction had been given
intermittently. In the winter of 1793-1794 Ebenezer Caulkins,
schoolmaster to the Indians at Oneida, took charge of instruc-
tion at the academy school, which included some Indian youths,
but the session was interrupted by the burning of the school-
house and the Indian boys did not return. The trustees were at
44 SAMUEL KIRKLAND
length able to inform the regents at their meeting of March 5,
1799 that so much of the academy was finished as was sufficient
for the accommodation of a large group. Mr. John Niles, re-
cently instructor at Greenfield Academy in Connecticut, whose
virtue and learning were vouched for by the Rev. Dr. Dwight
of Yale, had arrived to take charge of the twenty scholars ad-
mitted on the previous December 26. More students were matric-
ulating daily. By November 1799 there were "upwards of fifty
scholars and two learned and respectable instructors."
Kirkland must soon have realized that his Indians would
profit little from his academy. Some of the Oneida chiefs were
skeptical from the beginning murmuring that it was not to be
a free school and that Kirkland's proportional plan, under which
boys from other tribes must be admitted, was not fair. But his
main difficulty was with the former supporters of Indian educa-
tion, both in America and Scotland. Kirkland admitted that his
plan was the "last expedient to be tried, and the last effort to
be made, together with agriculture, and the gradual introduction
of the civil arts," for the happiness of the Indians.
In his efforts to get help from the Boston Commissioners for
Propagating Christian Knowledge among the Indians and the
parent society in Scotland he was thwarted by John Sergeant,
the commissioners' missionary to the Indians at New Stock-
bridge, about ten miles distant from the academy. Sergeant
professed to the Boston board to be very happy over the estab-
lishment of the academy, but he could not think it would ever be
of much advantage toward civilizing the tribes of the Six
Nations. He urged continuance of the old way of supporting
elementary schools in the Indian villages. An occasional young
"genius" might be sent from his tribe to the academy. Evidently
the views of Sergeant, the saboteur, prevailed. Kirkland admit-
ted to the board in 1799 that there was only one Indian boy
among the academy's fifty scholars. "A few hundred dollars
annually for the support of some Indian boys is all that is want-
ing to make it answer every purpose with respect to the Indians
that either I or anybody else ever proposed." A few grudging
contributions were put into his hands. In 1803 the Corporation
of Harvard College granted him $100 out of Indian moneys in
its Treasury. Probably the funds had to be used in some way.
The Society for Propagating the 'Gospel set aside an equal
FOUNDER OF HAMILTON 45
amount. The Harvard Corporation also voted to support Isaac
Solegwaston one quarter at the academy, but it required a very
particular account of Isaac's behavior and moral character. Ask-
ing the Great Head of the Church to bless Kirkland's work
among the aborigines, the corporation at the same time admon-
ished him to "look out for assistance from other quarters."
In the annual "Return of Academics in the State of New
York" made to the regents in the early years of the new century
Hamilton Oneida shows itself to be at last in a flourishing con-
dition. Between 1804 and 1808 the students increased from 64
to 121. In lint with other American institutions of higher learn-
ing everywhere and any time, the price of board has gone up;
the income for teachers' salaries has gone down. English gram-
mar and arithmetic are the subjects most in request though the
dead languages are pursued. In 1807 one scholar is struggling
with irregular verbs in French. Moral and natural philosophy
are unfortunately neglected. But the time was not far off when
the school would be raised to the rank of a college. In 1812, four
years after Kirkland's death, his academy, founded in the faith
that it would "meet the approbation of Him who made of one
blood all nations to dwell upon the face of the earth," became
Hamilton College.
With the founding of the Hamilton Oneida Academy Kirk-
land's most important public services came to an end. In 1792
he cleared a few acres at the foot of College Hill and built the
little story-and-a-half house which now stands, after two re-
moves, next to the College Commons, across the quadrangle
from the site of his academy. In that autumn he moved his fam-
ily from Stockbridge. His fixed abode was thus a mile from the
newly settled village of Clinton, but he seems to have been sel-
dom there for any length of time ; he still considered himself the
pastor and special protector of the Oneidas. For a man near ing
sixty his vitality is amazing. His journals for these years show
him constantly on the move, preaching in Indian villages where
there is no stated pastor, exhorting the backsliders to give up
drink and lechery, composing quarrels, interpreting Indian ha-
rangues at councils held with state officials. Preaching at Oneida
4-6 SAMUEL KIRKLAND
early in 1796, he reminds his flock that he has been with them
more than thirty years, and that he has only once been absent
from them for more than six months.
Although in the early iSoo's one third of Vernon township, in
which New Oneida Castle [Kanonwalohule] was located, was
still in the possession of the Oneida and Tuscarora Indians,
white settlers had penetrated the region with a rapidity Kirkland
could scarcely have believed possible. In 1784 Judge White of
Middletown, Connecticut, settled near Fort Schuyler and pres-
ently gave his name to the town which for years dominated the
Utica to which it has now become a suburb. Clintcfn was settled
by twenty families in 1786. The New Hartford settlement on
the Utica road was planted in 1787 by Judge Sanger. Finally the
improvement of the Seneca turnpike at Fort Schuyler turned the
current of emigration from Rome in that direction, and Utica,
so named in 1798 by pulling a name from a hat, began to grow
apace. Kirkland's energy flowed into these settlements. He
helped their first pastors to organize their congregations. Speak-
ing to Indians or to whites as the occasion demanded, he some-
times preached and taught eight hours on a Sunday.
Kirkland's strict Calvinism was often difficult to maintain
against the growing competition of those who could show an
easier way to heaven. The recalcitrant Quakers vexed him by
refusing to assist in straightening out Indian quarrels and by
saying no to his request that they lease him a house in Oneida.
Still worse were the Baptist lay teachers and Methodist exhort-
ers, who did not "support the best character" and by whom the
Brothertown Indians were "torn to pieces." While the burdens
of founding the academy were weighing him down, he had had
to contend with the efforts of a French trader named Peter
Pennet to introduce Catholicism among the Oneidas. In the
spring of 1789 a French Jesuit had boldly established himself
near Oneida Lake. His cause was being supported by Pennet
who claimed to have been sent thither by the French ambassador
in New York and at the request of the Indians. A letter from
Governor Clinton counseled the chiefs not to listen to Pennet's
speeches or pay attention to his "dreams." Pennet had dreamed
that the Oneidas had given him a piece of land five miles square
and he had contrived to obtain a deed making his dream a
reality.
FOUNDER OF HAMILTON 47
The governor's letter did the trick but the Pennet "party" had
a hand several years later in an attempt to get Kirkland removed
from his post. In January 1794 the Board of Commissioners in
Boston received a communication from the Indians, signed by
eleven chiefs, complaining that Kirkland had neglected them,
had often been absent from them, and requesting that a Mr.
Crosby be sent to replace him. A committee of the board came
to the Oneida country in 1796 to investigate the charges and
Kirkland, who was ill with pleurisy at the time of their visit,
was completely vindicated. He subsequently reported at length
on the affair, pointing out that two of the signers were "boys in
years but not in vice" and that most of the others were "pagan
in faith" and some of them infamous and profligate in charac-
ter. The "pagans," Indian and white to Kirkland all who were
not good Calvinists were pagans did not cease to vex him.
Other troubles drained his life away but could not restrain his
activity. The faithful Jerusha had died in I788. 2 His youngest
son, Samuel, who had been entrusted to Mr. Wheelock's Dart-
mouth, died while still in college; in 1806 George Whitefield
Kirkland died at Jamaica. Kirkland's ill health at times required
trips for recuperation to Ballston Springs, which was famous
earlier than Saratoga. In 1792 he suffered a blow on the eye as
he was pushing through the woods on his way to Clinton from
Old Oneida. Doctors in New York and Philadelphia finally
relieved the pain and cured him after months of suffering. In
1800 he was ill of the gravel. Most humiliating of all his vicissi-
tudes was his constant financial stringency. In 1797 Harvard
ceased to honor his drafts. In the same year the Society in Scot-
land withdrew their support of him as missionary to the Indians,
considering, no doubt, that since he was now a landed proprietor
he could manage without their help. There is evidence that John
Sergeant, the society's missionary among the Stockbridge In-
dians, by his misrepresentations of Kirkland's work, influenced
the society's decision to cast him off. Certainly their vote of
dismissal gave scant recognition of his thirty years of arduous
labor in the cause. Apparently the recommendation of the
Boston commissioners that Kirkland be given an annuity re-
ceived no attention from the society, though it should be noted
2 Kirkland married again in 1796, taking care to explain to his Indians why
a good Christian might take a second wife.
48 SAMUEL KIRKLAND
in extenuation that about this time they brought to an end most
of their missionary enterprises in the United States.
The debts of his son George were so heavy that Kirkland was
seriously embarrassed. In September 1798 he addressed a plea
to the Messrs. Charles R. and G. Webster of Albany not to seek
a judgment against him. He stated that cash was so scarce in the
Oneida region that he might be stripped of his land while they
might receive only a tenth of their claim. Two years of sickness
had so deranged his farm business that more than a year would
be required to get his land into production again. He had ad-
vanced the academy upwards of $1,500 for which he had given
the trustees a full discharge. Evidently Kirkland's plea was met
with Christian charity, for he kept his land. Whether the inci-
dental suggestion in his letter that his creditors, "well known/'
as they were, "for public spirit and benevolence," should do
something for the "infant institution/' met with an equally
favorable response the records do not show.
In spite of his troubles with the "pagans," bereavement, sick-
ness, and debt, Kirkland must have known in his last two dec-
ades as much satisfaction with his achievements as a man can
hope for. He had served his country well and his academy was
beginning to flourish. He was mitigating to his Indians, as far
as was humanly possible, the injustices of the white man's civil-
ization. For himself, he was the most noted man in that gateway
region. The good and the great and the merely curious who
passed by sought information from him. In August 1790 the
Italian nobleman Count Adriani brought letters of introduction
from General Schuyler and lingered to hear a congratulatory
address made to him at a grand council of the Oneidas. He
noted that the melody of their music and the softness and rich-
ness of their voices "were equal to any he ever heard in Italy."
In September of the next year John Linklaen, agent for the
Holland Land Company, visited Kirkland. In 1799 no less a
personage than Timothy Dwight, illustrious President of Yale,
compared to St. Paul by the orthodox, known to the irreverent
as "Pope Dwight/' stopped in at the Clinton house. These last
two set down impressions of their visits which give a fine picture
of Kirkland's life at the time.
Linklaen heard Kirkland preach to the Oneidas in their lan-
guage and was surprised at the attention he received. The Indian
FOUNDER OF HAMILTON 49
Good Peter explained the sermon "more particularly" when the
minister finished. Linklaen was especially impressed by the fact
that French Peter (Peter Ot-se-quette), whom the Marquis de
la Fayette had educated in Paris for three years, had returned to
settle among his people and be a leader of them. Kirkland ob-
served to his visitor that the Indians still disliked farming and
preferred to permit Americans to settle on and work their lands,
providing they gave the Indians one third or half the yield, but
he did not despair of their eventually "reaching a condition of
prosperity and happiness."
The Reverend Dr. Dwight was on his way to western New
York in the fall of 1799 when he turned aside, because of the
mud, at New Hartford (which he admired as the most New
England village he had seen since he left Connecticut) to call
on Mr. Kirkland and investigate the state of the Indians in the
region. With the missionary's nephew he visited the Brother-
town Indians settled on lands given them by the state in the
township of Paris. He found their husbandry inferior to that
of the white people but was cheered to note that they were uni-
versally "civil in their deportment. The men and boys took off
their hats, and the girls courtesied, as we passed by them."
Dwight lingered a week in the well-watered, well-forested
region, exploring landmarks and collecting anecdotes of the
Revolution and endeavoring to estimate the state of agriculture
and morals among the settlers. One afternoon he spent at the
Hamilton Oneida Academy, discussing with several of the trus-
tees "its present state, its prospects, and the means of increasing
its usefulness and reputation." His report is favorable :
"This Seminary is already of considerable importance; and
contains fifty-two students, of both sexes, under the care of two
instructors. The scheme of education, professedly pursued in it,
includes the English, Latin, and Greek languages, and most of
the liberal arts, and sciences. An academical building is erected
for it, eighty-eight feet long, and forty-six wide, of three stories,
on a noble healthy eminence, commanding a rich and extensive
prospect. It is, however, but partially finished."
On his return journey Dwight was joined by Kirkland at
Canajoharie and they traveled together as far as Albany. As the
two reverend gentlemen walked their horses up the gentle hills
which form the Mohawk valley, the missionary filled: the college
5O SAMUEL KIRKLAND
president with tales which he would later spill into his famous
Travels in New-England and New-York: how Brant, the Tory
Indian chief, prevented Butler at Cherry valley from butchering
a woman lying in childbed ; how the mild and hospitable Fonda
got an Indian knife in his breast at Caghnawaga (now the
valley village of Fonda) because he had thrust a Seneca Indian,
heated with drink, from his door.
To the end Kirkland kept faith with his Indians. He had lived
among them, eating their disgusting food, sometimes wearing
their dress, his life many times in danger from renegades among
them, preaching in their languages, exhorting and forgiving,
always asking the authorities, civil and religious, to give his
charges another chance. In the appendix to his Journal of 1796-
1797 he put down in four pages his present thoughts of his rela-
tions with them and his plans for future service. It is a pro-
foundly moving document.
He wishes to try once more to instruct and reform the
Oneidas, to complete his Journals, including those covering the
two first years of his mission which, in order to save his life, he
was obliged to burn while in the Seneca country. He wishes to
compose a work on Indian traditions and a vocabulary of their
language. He expresses an "unconquerable reluctance to give
them up for lost," for, as he says, "these poor creatures have
dwelt on my heart by night and by day."
He did not give them up. The last entry in his journal, writ-
ten on February i, 1807, shows him still studious of his pastoral
care:
"LORD'S DAY. At Oneida. Met with a number at a private
house. The weather being very cold and the church open, we did
not think it expedient to repair to it. The Indians told me they
had been trying to procure a house for me, in order that I might
reside a part of my time among them. They have succeeded in
getting one, which, if they can fit it up, I shall probably occupy
for a quarter or perhaps a third of my time."
Kirkland died a year later, on February 28, 1808.
In the Hamilton College cemetery, where sleep his successors
in the academy and the college, high above the valleys of the
Oriskany Creek and the Mohawk, stands his simple monument.
A few feet away is a still plainer stone on which is cut only the
name "Skenandoa."
Benjamin Rush [1745-1813]
UNIVERSAL DOCTOR
BY J. KENDALL WALLIS
AMERICA'S most distinguished eighteenth cen-
tury physician, the only Doctor of Medi-
cine to sign the Declaration of Independence,
the first American Professor of Chemistry, the writer of the
first American text in psychiatry, graduated from the College of
New Jersey in 1760, when he and the College were both four-
teen years old.
Benjamin Rush's father was a farmer, with five hundred
acres in Byberry, near Philadelphia, and also a gunsmith and
blacksmith, having "inherited both his trade and his farm." He
was known for "strict integrity in all his dealings." At his death,
aged thirty-nine, he left a wife and seven children, of whom
Benjamin was the fourth. Benjamin's mother moved into
Philadelphia and opened a store at Second and Market Streets.
Her son describes her as "distinguished by kindness, generosity,
and attention to the morals and religious principles of her
children."
Two years after his father's death Benjamin, then eight
years old, and his next brother, Jacob, were sent away to the
school of his mother's brother-in-law, the Rev. Samuel Finley.
Dr. Finley had come from Ireland twenty years earlier, grad-
uated from the Log College, and taken a church at Nottingham
in Maryland. There he established an academy to prepare young
men for the ministry and in ten years' time made it "the most
respectable and flourishing of any in the middle provinces of
America." The curriculum combined practical agriculture with
the classics and several of the arts and sciences usually taught
in colleges. "His government over his boys was strict, but never
severe or arbitrary," writes his nephew pupil, who remembered
the following scene: "I once saw him spend half an hour in
exposing the folly and wickedness of an offence with his rod in
his hand. The culprit stood all this while trembling and weeping
before him. After he had ended his admonitions, he lifted his
52 BENJAMIN RUSH
rod as high as he could, and then permitted it to fall gently upon
his hand. The boy was surprised at this conduct. There go
about your business (said the doctor). I mean shame and not
pain in the present instance/ "
Benjamin encountered "one disadvantage" as a city boy at
this country school : "the facility with which the amusements of
hunting, gunning and the like are to be obtained is so great as
to overpower the relish for study." Yet when, after five years
at Nottingham, he removed to the College of New Jersey, he
was admitted to the junior class.
The Rev. Samuel Davies, who shortly thereafter assumed the
presidency of the College, was dignified but amiable. He intro-
duced new subjects and "gave old branches of education a new
and popular complexion," a mode of teaching which, Rush said,
inspired him with "a love of knowledge." Davies taught him
also to record in a Liber Sclcctorum passages which struck him
in his reading of the classics, a habit which, Rush said, led him
to the perpetual noting down of facts and opinions which made
his later medical writing so effective. Rush worked to good
purpose during his two years at Princeton though he confessed
that he was still "idle, playful, and I am sorry to add some-
times a mischievous boy."
Since the dominant purpose of the College was the prepara-
tion of ministers for the Presbyterian church, it naturally
seemed to the young Benjamin that "every pursuit of life must
dwindle into nought when divinity appears." Yet he lacked, he
felt, the capacity for the ministry though he could say that "to
spend and be spent for the good of mankind is what I chiefly
aim at." His ability as an orator inclined both him and Dr.
Davies to believe that he should study law. His mother made
arrangements for him to enter a lawyer's office in Philadelphia,
but his uncle, Dr. Finley, did not agree. He told Benjamin that
the practice of the bar was full of temptations and advised him
instead to study physic. " 'But before you determine on any-
thing/ he said, 'set apart a day for fasting and prayer and
ask of God to direct you in the choice of a profession.' I
am sorry to say I neglected the latter part of this excellent
advice, but yielded to the former, and accordingly obtained from
Mr. Davies, whom I saw soon afterwards in Philadelphia, a
letter of recommendation to Dr. John Redman to become his
BI \ I \ M 1 N RUSH
UNIVERSAL DOCTOR 53
pupil On \\hat slight circumstances do our destinies in life
seem to depend."
The fifteen-year old student of physic had "an uncommon
aversion to such sights as are connected with its practice" and
his conflict of interest among the ministry, law, and medicine
was never wholly resolved, to his own dis-ease perhaps, but to
the great advantage of the young American nation.
Rush's medical apprenticeship lasted five years. The first
formal medical teaching in the colonies had just begun in Phila-
delphia with a course in anatomy and surgery offered by Dr.
William Shippen, Jr., and Rush was one of ten students in
regular attendance. In 1765 Dr. Shippen's course and a new
course in Materia Medica, given by Dr. John Morgan, became
the medical department of the College of Philadelphia (later the
University of Pennsylvania) and Rush was enrolled. He lived,
while he studied, in the household of Dr. Redman and was per-
mitted to accompany him on his rounds at the Pennsylvania
Hospital, which the ever-present Franklin had been instrumental
in founding in 1752. After the first year he was allowed to take
full charge of certain cases.
Till late at night Rush studied in his room, translating the
Aphorisms of Hippocrates from the Greek and reading Syden-
ham's and Boerhaave's systems of medicine. Adapting the
Liber Selectorum method that President Davies had taught him,
he made notes on the yellow fever epidemic of 1762.
In 1 766, when he was twenty, Rush sat up every other night
for several weeks with Dr. Finley, then President of the College
of New Jersey, and "finally performed the distressing office of
closing his eyes." The following year he experienced a religious
conversion which he describes in an autobiographical memoir
written in 1800. "The early part of my life was spent in dissipa-
tion, folly and in the practice of some of the vices to which
young men are prone. The weight of that folly and those vices
has been felt in my mind ever since. They have often been
deplored in tears and sighs before God. It was from a deep and
affecting sense of one of them, that I was first led to seek the
favor of God in His Son in the twenty-first year of my life."
54 BENJAMIN RUSH
In 1766 Rush went abroad for three years 5 further medical
study. In anticipation of the trip he brushed up his Latin and
Greek and studied German ; in the first summer in Europe he
mastered French and added a reading knowledge of Spanish and
Italian. He was also tutored in Latin and mathematics, "in each
of which I advanced with a rapidity and pleasure I never had
known before."
On the advice of Dr. Redman, Rush went to Edinburgh, then
the medical center of the world, where he sat at the feet of a
group of as great teachers of medicine as have ever been gathered
together in one place "The two years I spent in Edinburgh," he
wrote, "I consider as the most important in their influence on
my character and conduct of any period of my life.
"The public lectures and private conversations of the Profes-
sors not only gave me many new ideas, but opened my mind to
enable me to profit by reading and observation.
"The easy and friendly intercourse which I kept up with my
fellow students was a constant source of excitement to my mind.
Every meeting in the University and in the Infirmary and every
visit and walk with them was productive of more or less knowl-
edge upon some subject of taste or science. The students of
medicine at that time were collected from several parts of the
continent of Europe, as well as from every part of the British
Empire. . . . Our friendships were warm and disinterested, for
there was no competition of interest to divide us."
Rush's doctoral thesis, prepared under the direction of Dr.
William Cullen, was on "The Digestion of Food in the Stom-
ach." He used his own digestive system in heroic experiments,
again and again taking an emetic three hours after dinner in
order to demonstrate "acetetous fermentation." He received
the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1768 but stayed on for
another summer to attend a private course of lectures on the
Practice of Physic.
Rush was deeply impressed by Dr. Cullen who was the
founder of a new system of medicine and the leading light of the
University. The great teacher was friendly and the range and
breadth of his mind was a revelation to the twenty-two year
old student. After Cullen's death, in 1790, Rush wrote a eulogy
of the physician-teacher which is not only a tribute to his master
but a statement of the ideal he set for his own career :
UNIVERSAL DOCTOR 55
"Dr. Cullen's reading was extensive, but it was not confined
wholly to medicine. He read books upon all subjects ; and he had
a peculiar art of extracting something from all of them which
he made subservient to his profession. . . . His memory had no
rubbish in it. ...
"He was intimately acquainted with all branches of natural
history and philosophy. He had studied every ancient and
modern system of physic. He found the system of Boerhaave
universally adopted when he accepted a chair in the University
of Edinburgh. This system was founded chiefly on the supposed
presence of certain acrid particles in the fluids, and in the depar-
ture of these, in point of consistency, from a natural state. Dr.
Cullen's first object was to expose the errors of this pathology;
and to teach his pupils to seek for the causes of diseases in the
solids. Nature is always coy. Ever since she was driven from
the heart, by the discovery of the circulation of the blood, she
has concealed herself in the brain and nerves. Here she has been
pursued by Dr. Cullen; and if he has not dragged her to public
view, he has left us a clue which must in time conduct us to her
last recess in the human body. Many, however, of the operations
of nature in the nervous system have been explained by him,
and no candid man will ever explain the whole of them, without
acknowledging that the foundation of his successful inquiries
was laid by the discoveries of Dr. Cullen/'
Cullen was concerned not only to explode useless remedies but
to teach the importance for health of proper diet and dress, of
fresh air and exercise. He believed, also, that the mind influences
the physical condition of the body. He took great pains to make
his pupils think for themselves, to destroy the superstitious
veneration for antiquity and encourage a just evaluation of
modern medical theory.
"In his attendance upon his patients," writes Rush, "he made
their health his first object, and thereby confirmed a line between
the mechanical and liberal professions; for while wealth is pur-
sued by the former, as the end of labor, it should be left by the
latter to follow the more noble exertions of the mind. So gentle
and sympathizing was Dr. Cullen's manner in a sick room, that
pain and distress seemed to be suspended in his presence. Hope
followed his footsteps, and death appeared frequently to drop
his commission in a combat with his skill. He was compassionate
$6 BENJAMIN RUSH
and charitable to the poor ; and from his pupils, who consulted
him in sickness, he constantly refused to receive any pecuniary
satisfaction for his services/'
Rush's political awakening also dates from Edinburgh. He
credited it to a fellow student, John Bostock, of whom he
writes :
"He was well informed upon all subjects, particularly upon
history, biography and belles lettres. In the course of our ac-
quaintance he informed me that his father [sic] commanded a
company under Oliver Cromwell. I told him that my first Amer-
ican ancestor held the same rank in Cromwell's army. This was a
discovery of relationship between persons who had previously
behaved as strangers to each other. He now opened his mind
fully to me, and declared himself to be an advocate for the
republican principles for which our ancestors had fought.
"Never before had I heard the authority of kings called in
question. I had been taught to consider them as essential to
political order as the sun is to the order of our solar system.
For the first moment in my life I now exercised my reason upon
the subject of government. More reflection led me to renounce
the prejudices of my education upon it; and from that time to
the present all my reading, observations and reflections have
tended more and more to show the absurdity of hereditary
power and to prove that no form of government can be rational,
but that which is derived from the suffrages of the people who
are the subjects of it."
These radical opinions Rush held for the present as ideals
only. He enjoyed them in theory but they had "no effect upon
my conversation or conduct."
To Rush's years at the University of Edinburgh, Princeton
is indebted in part for the administration of one of her greatest
presidents. Richard Stockton, who traveled from Princeton to
Edinburgh to invite John Witherspoon to the presidency of the
College of New Jersey, introduced Rush to the great exponent
of Common Sense. Witherspoon declined the presidency
because, as Rush saw it, the Doctor's wife was unwilling to
leave her native land. It was Rush, visiting the Witherspoons at
Paisley, who persuaded her to change her mind.
In the fall of 1768 Rush went for six months to London to
attend the medical course of the famous William Hunter at St.
UNIVERSAL DOCTOR 57
Thomas Hospital. He learned much of future value to him and
to America from Sir John Pringle, the court physician, who was
an expert in military hygiene. Rush also visited factories with
a chemist and took notes, for he intended to teach chemistry,
and perhaps natural philosophy in Philadelphia. His acquaint-
anceship was not confined to men of science. At Benjamin
West's he dined with Sir Joshua Reynolds who in turn took
him to dinner with Dr. Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith.
He lived during his stay with Benjamin Franklin who gave him
a generous loan for a trip to Paris, but the serious young man
could find no brighter adjective for the French capital than
"instructing," and he thought French medicine not up to the
British standards.
Upon his return to Philadelphia Rush set up shop in a house
with his brother Jacob, now in law practice, and began at once,
moved by expediency as well as by inclination, to devote his
diligent attention to poor patients. There was a brief period of
waiting before he was appointed by the College of Philadelphia
to the chair of chemistry which Dr. Morgan had held open for
him. At twenty-three he became the first formal professor of
chemistry in America. A year later, 1770, he brought out a
Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry, the first text on
the subject written in this country. His election to the American
Philosophical Society placed him close to some of the best
thinkers of the day, Franklin, Jefferson, and David Rittenhouse,
the astronomer.
Rush's practice increased, in size if not in remuneration, when
he introduced the Suttonian puncture method of inoculating for
the prevention of smallpox which he had observed in London.
Some of his other innovations were less felicitous in their results
since they implied criticism of old and established physicians.
His patients liked the simplified methods of Dr. Cullen, the use
of few drugs and the emphasis on diet, but Rush was perhaps
too outspoken about the errors of Boerhaave. However over-
loaded with patients they might be, his elder confreres, during
the next seven years, would pass no patient on to him.
In 1772 Rush managed to secure an appointment as one of the
58 BENJAMIN RUSH
physicians of the almshouse, called the House of Employment,
whose clinic became the nucleus of the Philadelphia General
Hospital. In 1773 he gave an address before the American Phil-
osophical Society which, with a series of public lectures on
chemistry delivered a year later, brought him favorable recogni-
tion from laymen. In 1774 he presented a second oration before
the Philosophical Society, "An Enquiry into the Natural His-
tory of Medicine among the Indians in North America, and a
Comparative View of Their Diseases and Remedies, with those
of Civilized Nations. " In the same year he became an original
member of the Society for Inoculating the Poor Gratis, which
required him to be at the State House every Tuesday morning.
Rush wrote also for the public press, though frequently under
pseudonyms. His "Sermons to Gentlemen upon Temperance and
Exercise/' published in 1772, were well received but the response
was very different to his next venture, an article on the iniquity
of the slave trade. His thought and style are never more vigor-
ous than when he is pamphleteering in behalf of the oppressed.
"I need hardly say anything in favour of the intellects of the
negroes, or of their capacities for virtue and happiness, although
these have been supposed, by some, to be inferior to those of
the inhabitants of Europe. The accounts which travellers give us
of their ingenuity, humanity, and strong attachment to their
parents, relations, friends and country, show us that they are
equal to the Europeans, when we allow for the diversity of
temper and genius which is occasioned by climate. We have
many well-attested anecdotes of as sublime and disinterested
virtue among them as ever adorned a Roman or a Christian
character. But we are to distinguish between an African in his
own country, and an African in a state of slavery in America.
Slavery is so foreign to the human mind, that the moral facul-
ties, as well as those of the understanding are debased, and ren-
dered torpid by it. All the vices which are charged upon the
negroes in the southern colonies and the West-Indies, such as
idleness, treachery, theft, and the like, are the genuine offspring
of slavery, and serve as an argument to prove that they are not
intended for it. ... There are some amongst us who . . . plead
as a motive for importing and keeping slaves, that they become
acquainted with the principles of the religion of our country.
This is like justifying a highway robbery because part of the
UNIVERSAL DOCTOR 59
money acquired in this manner was appropriated to some reli-
gious use. Christianity will never be propagated by any other
methods than those employed by Christ and his Apostles. Slav-
ery is an engine as little fitted for that purpose as Fire or the
Sword. A Christian slave is a contradiction in terms."
This publication had a wide circulation and did some good,
Rush thought, in removing errors and prejudices but it did him
harm by exciting the resentment of many slaveholders. "It
injured me in another way, by giving rise to an opinion that I
had meddled with a controversy that was foreign to my business.
I now found that a physician's studies and duties were to be
limited by the public, and that he was destined to walk in a path
as contracted as the most humble mechanic/'
Rush declined to be limited in his interests or actions and took
part in the organization of the Pennsylvania Society for Pro-
moting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes
Unlawfully Held in Bondage, the first anti-slavery society in
America.
In a third direction he stepped over the bounds prescribed by
society : he began to put into practical operation the republican
theories he had adopted in Edinburgh and published several
newspaper essays in support of the colonies' claims to exemp-
tion from taxation by the British Parliament. The essays
attracted the notice of those men who "governed the public mind
in Pennsylvania," John Dickinson (author of the Farmer's
Letters), Charles Thompson, Thomas (afterwards General)
Mifflin, George Clymer, James Wilson, and Edward Biddle.
Rush's profession gave him an opportunity of discovering "the
errors and prejudices which hung over the minds of the middling
class of our citizens upon the subjects of liberty and govern-
ment," and these errors he and his friends proceeded to combat
in vigorous pamphlets and articles. Rush wrote under a variety
of signatures "by which means an impression of numbers in
favor of liberty was made upon the minds of its friends and
enemies."
In September 1774 when the first Congress met in Phila-
delphia, Rush went to Frank ford to meet the delegates from
Massachusetts and rode back into town in the same carriage
with John Adams and two of his colleagues. Adams asked him
many questions on the state of public opinion and the characters
6O BENJAMIN RUSH
of the most active citizens on both sides of the controversy.
This acquaintance expanded into a lifelong friendship, on
Rush's side probably the most esteemed of all his connections.
During the next few years he often sat close by John Adams
at meetings of state and marveled at how "he saw the whole of
a subject at a single glance."
After the first Continental Congress convened, Rush was
drawn further and further into its orbit. For nearly six years
his own interests and activities were subordinated to the affairs
of government. As the crisis developed, he found many oppor-
tunities to help the cause, employing his ideas, his abilities, and
his professional services.
Events were now moving rapidly. In the fall of 1774 Rush
was consorting openly with the leaders of the Congress. John
and Samuel Adams lived in his house for a time He dined
with George Washington and then gave a dinner for him. He
talked and drank toasts with others General Mifflin, Richard
Henry Lee, John Dickinson, John Jay, Robert Treat Paine,
and Patrick Henry.
In March 1775, Rush was made president of the United Com-
pany for Promoting American Manufactures, following an ad-
dress in which he showed that the colonies could and should
become independent of England in the weaving of wool and
especially cotton cloth. A factory employing 400 women was
set up, with the first imported jennies.
Having some radical ideas he wanted to impress upon the
people, and being unable to express them himself for certain
private reasons, he talked them over with a new friend, Thomas
Paine, urging him to write a strong tract in behalf of complete
American independence. Paine took up the challenge and worked
away for a number of months. He called his work Plain Truth.
Rush preferred the title Common Sense and persuaded Paine
to use it. Rush arranged for the printing.
The private reason for Rush's restraint was his approaching
marriage. Two years earlier, in 1773, he had become attached
to the daughter of a friend of his mother. This girl, Sarah Eve,
was a lovely creature, with red hair, fine graces, and a cultivated
mind. They became engaged in 1774 and their wedding was
planned for late December. Rush felt he owed it to his bride-to-
be not to alienate his "middling class" patients by open political
UNIVERSAL DOCTOR 6l
activity. Just three weeks before her wedding day Sarah Eve
became acutely ill and died. Rush's grief is expressed in a memo-
rial 'To a Female Character" which he published anonymously
in a weekly journal.
That the temper of the people early in 1775 was still strongly
anti-separatist is evident from their reaction to the publication
in Boston of an intercepted private letter of John Adams in
which he advocated outright independence. In his address on
cotton manufacture in March, Rush had only hinted at some
future possibility of economic independence from the mother
country, but after the battles of Lexington and Concord in
April he became more outspoken in conversation. In June he
attended a dinner with Franklin and Jefferson to celebrate
Washington's appointment by the Second Congress as com-
mander-in-chief of the continental armies. In July the Penn-
sylvania Committee of Public Safety undertook to increase the
manufacture of saltpeter and appointed Rush to the subcom-
mittee instructed to superintend the factory in Philadelphia.
They also began to build a Delaware River fleet of gunboats to
which Rush was assigned as fleet surgeon, a post he held ten
months.
In August 1775, on a visit to Dr. Witherspoon and Richard
Stockton in Princeton, Rush saw the eldest Stockton daughter,
Julia, aged sixteen, whom he had known before as a little girl
of four. He made up his mind to marry this dark-haired, attrac-
tive, well-spoken girl and after a formal courtship in the fall,
became engaged to her. Again he felt obliged to stay for a time
in the background of the independence movement, but his sym-
pathies were with the Congress which separated itself from
Parliament in December. On January n, 1776, Benjamin Rush
and Julia Stockton were married by Dr. Witherspoon at "Mor-
ven," the Stockton estate in Princeton.
Common Sense, published anonymously the day before, was
distributed widely throughout the colonies in the spring of 1776.
Rush was proud of its influence. North Carolina, in April, and
Virginia, in May, swung around to support the trend in Con-
gress, but the Pennsylvania Assembly was heavily Tory and so
was popular sentiment in Philadelphia. In his private notes
Rush called the Tories "timid" and "moderate, double-minded
men." By May sentiment had changed. A popular mass meeting
62 BENJAMIN RUSH
backed the proposal for provincial constitutions and the Whigs
bolted from the Assembly when it voted against the resolution
of Congress for a declaration of independence.
Rush took an active part in the state constitutional confer-
ence which was virtually self -elected, on the strength of the
mass meeting, to replace the defunct Pennsylvania Assembly.
He committed himself fully and publicly when on June 23, 1776,
he offered a motion to draft an address to the Congress in favor
of declaring independence and was appointed chairman of the
committee to write the draft. This state declaration was adopted
the next day. Congress took action, eight days later. Many of
the phrases in the draft of Rush's committee were the same as
those in Jefferson's Declaration adopted in Congress on July 4.
Rush joined that body when he was appointed a delegate by the
state constitutional convention on July 20, and so was one of
those who signed the Declaration of Independence on August 2,
1776.
Rush now dropped his teaching and devoted himself to the
cause of independence. After moving his family to Maryland,
he joined the Philadelphia Militia at Bristol and saw active
service at the battles of Trenton and Princeton. He took charge
of supplying the medical needs of the army and wrote an impor-
tant paper on military hygiene, "Directions for Preserving the
Health of Soldiers/' He retired from Congress in April 1777,
when he was commissioned Surgeon General of the Middle
Department of the Army. He was outraged by the wretched
state of the army hospitals, especially the high mortality, the
laxity, and the graft he found in them. He engaged in a bitter
controversy with Shippen, Director-General of the Medical
Department, who had been his first teacher in medicine, and
resigned in protest after six months of service.
Disillusioned, he retired to "Morven" and considered practic-
ing law in New Jersey. He had become sympathetic with the
Conway Cabal which criticized General Washington. In his
present bitter mood Rush wrote an anonymous letter to Patrick
Henry in this vein ; the contents and authorship were revealed
to Washington. In later life Rush deeply regretted his action.
UNIVERSAL DOCTOR 63
After Philadelphia was evacuated by the British he re-
turned home where he found so much work to do that he soon
got into the swing of medical practice again. He brought his
wife and baby back from Maryland in August. The next month
he was so ill that he did not resume his teaching until Novem-
ber 1778. He continued to protest about the condition of the
sick and wounded in the army hospitals until Dr. Shippen
resigned in January 1781. By the time of the surrender of
Cornwallis in October 1781, Rush's life had virtually returned
to normal. He took up where he had left off in 1774 and carried
on medical practice, teaching, and politics all together.
His greatest single contribution to medical science was his
introduction of humane measures for the care of the mentally
ill. He became a member of the staff of the Pennsylvania Hos-
pital in 1783 and developed its department for the insane. At his
instigation a new wing of the hospital was built in order to
provide mental patients with quarters on a par with those of
other patients In time he arranged for separation of the sexes,
separate buildings for disturbed patients, hot and cold baths,
feather beds and hair mattresses for paying patients, labor, exer-
cise and amusements, well-qualified persons as companions, and
exclusion of visitors, even relatives, who were likely to upset
the patients Still more radical was Rush's insistence upon kind-
ness, respect, and truthfulness on the part of all who dealt with
the mentally ill.
He taught two courses in the medical school between 1781
and 1792. He first took on the course in the Practice of Physic
in addition to chemistry. In 1789 he dropped the chemistry and
gave the course in the Theory and Practice of Medicine, left
vacant by Dr. Morgan's death. In 1792 Rush taught the Insti-
tutes of Medicine and Clinical Medicine. In 1796 he dropped
the course in the Practice of Physic and continued with Theory
and Practice and the Institutes. By the time of his death in 1813
he had taught more than three thousand medical students,
through whom his influence spread from the medical center in
Philadelphia to every corner of the growing nation.
In his teaching Rush stressed observation. He urged his
students to observe not simply the bodily symptoms but also the
mental components of diseases, and not only the physical factors
but the environmental influences affecting the patient. He him-
64 BENJAMIN RUSH
self exemplified in his lectures and clinics the humanistic scientist
who, like Cullen, considered all of life his province. He saw the
body and mind and spirit of the individual as only varying
aspects of the whole person, and that person in turn as a social,
political, and religious being. He hoped to be remembered as
"an advocate for principles in medicine."
Rush's observations and opinions, collected from his endless
notes and then developed into lectures, form his permanent con-
tribution to medical science. The first two volumes of his Medi-
cal Inquiries and Observations appeared in 1789, eight years
after he resumed teaching. A third volume, on the great epidemic
of yellow fever in Philadelphia in 1793, he rushed into print the
very next year because of his sense of the urgency of the situa-
tion. The fourth volume in 1796 contained another collection of
lectures and the promise of an additional volume on mental
diseases. This work, Medical Inquiries and Observations upon
the Diseases of the Mind, appeared in 1812, one year before he
died the first textbook of psychiatry in America. It was seventy
years before another was written. Rush also published, in 1801,
certain medical lectures which he thought would be of interest
to the intelligent layman; more were added in 1811. Many of
his Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical published in 1798,
had appeared first in popular magazines.
In the course of his own practice Rush began to realize that
there was something wrong with the system which had been
handed down to him and which he had originally defended.
Soon after his return from the army he faced the problem.
"For many years after I settled in Philadelphia I was regu-
lated in my practice by the system of medicine which I had
learned from the lectures and publications of Dr. Cullen. But
time, observations and reflection convinced me that it was imper-
fect and erroneous in many of its parts. The discovery of its
imperfections and errors produced a languor in my mind in
discharging the duties of my profession, and a wish at times to
relinquish it. In some diseases my practice was regulated by
theory, but in others it was altogether empirical. I read, I
thought and I observed upon the phenomena of diseases, but
for a while without discovering anything that satisfied me. The
weight of Dr. Cullen's name depressed me every time I ven-
tured to admit an idea that militated against his system. At
UNIVERSAL DOCTOR 65
length a few rays of light broke in upon my mind, upon several
diseases. These were communicated first to my pupils in my
lectures, and afterwards to the public in a volume of observa-
tions and enquiries. ... In the year 1 789 I was chosen successor
to Dr. Morgan in the chair of the theory and practice of physic
in the College of Philadelphia. It now became my duty to deliver
a system of principles in medicine. After much study, and
inquietude both by day and night, I was gradually led to adopt
those which I have since taught from my professor's chair, and
the press. The leading principle of my system was obtruded
upon me suddenly, while I was walking the floor of my study.
It was like a ferment introduced into my mind. It produced in
it a constant and endless succession of decompositions and new
arrangements of facts and ideas upon medical subjects. I was
much assisted in the application of the principles that had
occurred to me, by conversing with my pupils. Their questions
and objections suggested many hints to me which enabled me
to fortify my new principles where they were weak, and to
extend them to new diseases. Dr. Brown's system of medicine
which was published about this time, assisted me likewise a
good deal in my inquiries. I adopted some of his terms in the
new nomenclature of my principles. . . .
"The system I adopted was not merely a speculative one. It
led to important changes in the practice. Where it did not sug-
gest new remedies, it led to circumstances in the exhibition of
old ones, which determined their safety and success. My practice
from this time became much more successful than it had been
before, and I experienced a pleasure in it, which reconciled me
to all its toils, and caused me to rejoice in those acts of provi-
dence which had originally directed and restrained my studies
to medicine/ 1
Where Cullen had emphasized the primacy of the nervous
system, Rush found a readier explanation, in mechanistic terms,
in disorders of the circulatory system. He applied this theory
to mental diseases. It was certainly a misfortune in the history
of medicine that such a pioneer in psychiatry as Benjamin Rush
should overlook the lead of Cullen toward the recesses of the
nervous system, but Rush had worked out his basic principle
in connection with febrile diseases, or rather fever, for he con-
66 BENJAMIN RUSH
sidered them all as manifestations of a single underlying dis-
order.
Since fever presented a picture of overexcitement in the whole
body, the application of Rush's theory called principally for
depletion of the circulation, namely, blood-letting. This was
even more unfortunate than his application of the theory to
mental diseases (for which, incidentally, he also bled). It led
to the sobriquet of "bleeder," when Rush, in desperation during
the terrible epidemics of yellow fever of 1793, 1794, and 1797,
pushed his treatment to the limit and, through the press as well
as in personal communications, urged others to do the same. Yet
his therapy was so broadly founded on supportive and hygienic
measures that in most cases they more than compensated for
any excess of blood-letting, and his results with his patients
measured up to the standards of the day.
Such was the panic in Philadelphia during the yellow fever
outbreaks that people fled from the city or hid within their houses,
leaving the streets deserted save for coffins en route to the
potter's field or a few doctors on their rounds. Rush would labor
manfully from early morn to late at night, more than once even
attending to patients who came to his bedside while he was
himself down with the disease. In the face of chauvinistic dis-
claimers, he publicly declared over and over that yellow fever
was domestic in origin and that gutters and marshes should be
drained, that ships with putrefiable cargoes should be unloaded
at a distance from the city.
He was often subjected, nevertheless, to severe abuse, and
although he asserted that he was "slander-proof ," he was finally
forced, in 1798, to take cognizance of libelous statements in cer-
tain sections of the press and to bring suit against the worst
offender, William Cobbett, an artist in journalistic invective
and, though an Englishman living in America, a vigorous Fed-
eralist. When Rush was awarded damages of $5,000, he gave
the entire sum to charity.
The revealing Memorial, containing Travels through Life, of
Sundry Incidents in the Life of Dr. Benjamin Rush, written by
Himself, completed in the year of the trial, was intended for his
children. (It was privately printed in 1905.) Although he makes
little reference to the suit, he must have felt a kind of inner
UNIVERSAL DOCTOR 67
necessity at this time to answer the various criticisms that had
been leveled at him through many contentious years.
Despite the persistent harm done to his private practice by the
vehemence with which he stated his republican principles, Rush
did not cease to fight for the rights of the great mass of people,
insisting especially, in the revisions of both the state and fed-
eral constitutions, on representation on the basis of population
rather than property. In 1790, with both his candidates, George
Washington and John Adams in office, he withdrew from poli-
tics, feeling well satisfied in the main though still bitter in
certain particulars.
In addition to his professional and political activities, Rush
was at various times founder, president, or a very active
member of nearly every Philadelphia society of standing, as
Goodman, his biographer, points out. He wrote constantly and
his pamphlets on subjects that range from the praise of malt
beverages to plans for a national university indicate a breadth
of interest approaching that of Benjamin Franklin.
Over and behind all Rush's activities and efforts was his
religious faith. He worked at his religion as he did at his medi-
cine and his law, and he achieved new combinations among
the three.
Perhaps he spread himself too thin. He was often, as
one scholar has observed, "profuse rather than profound."
Sometimes he felt discouraged. He talked about this feeling
with an old minister friend of his. "Upon my complaining of
my inability to save life where I was most anxious to do it, he
said, 'Oh, Doctor, there is an awful decree against the certainty
of your profession, viz., "It is appointed for all men once to
die." ' Upon my complaining at another time of the abortive
issue of many of my plans for promoting the happiness of my
fellow citizens, he said, 'Don't be uneasy upon that account. Our
Savior will say at the day of judgment, "Well done thou faith-
ful, not thou successful servant." Let this comfort you under all
your disappointments. If you have been faithful it will be
enough.' "
Rush's own comment about himself when describing the
signers of the Declaration was: "Benjamin Rush. He aimed
well"
John Witherspoon [1723-1794]
FATHER OF AMERICAN PRESBYTERIANISM;
MAKER OF STATESMEN
BY THOMAS JEFFERSON WERTENBAKER
I
N the Scottish shire of Haddington on a little
stream known as Gifford Water lies the group
of low stone cottages which constitute the vil-
lage of Gifford. By following the single street a hundred yards
or more one comes to the ancient kirk, and the modern manse
which no doubt occupies the site of the humbler house where
for forty years lived the Reverend James Witherspoon and
where, probably on February 5, 1723, was born his son John.
John Witherspoon learned his letters at the knee of his
pious mother, Anne Walker Witherspoon, who must have been
an excellent teacher, if we may believe the statement that her
little pupil could read the Bible at four. At an age when many
children are just memorizing their A B Cs he could repeat
nearly all of the New Testament as well as many of Watts's
Psalms and Hymns. After a few years at the Haddington Gram-
mar School, where John Knox many decades before had pored
over his Latin and Greek, he left when only thirteen to enter
the University of Edinburgh. Here he went through the usual
round of the ancient languages, mathematics, logic, rhetoric,
and natural philosophy, graduating in February 1739, a few
days after his sixteenth birthday, with the Master of Arts
degree.
Since he had been destined from infancy to the ministry,
Witherspoon remained at Edinburgh for four more years to
pursue his theological studies. In 1743, when these had been
completed, he was licensed to preach by the presbytery of Had-
dington, and two years later, at twenty-two, he was called to the
living at Beith in Ayrshire. There began Witherspoon's career
in the Scottish Church, in which he was to win a place as leader
of the reform wing and a reputation as a scholar and satirical
writer.
JOHN VV I 1 H E R S P O O N
From \ r.unung B\ Charles \\ilson 1'eale
MAKER OF STATESMEN 69
But in 1746 an incident occurred which came near cutting
off his career before it had got well under way. When the Young
Pretender invaded Scotland, Witherspoon, at the head of a
hundred and fifty volunteers, hastened to Glasgow to join King
George's forces assembled there to repel him. And though
he was not destined to take part in the war, since the military
authorities advised him that his little force would not be needed,
he pushed ahead with one companion to witness the battle of
Falkirk. Here he had the misfortune to fall into the hands of
the rebels who took him to Castle Doune, near Stirling, where
he was confined with other captives in a "large, ghastly room"
in the western tower. The final defeat of the Young Pretender
brought about his release, but only after his nerves had received
so severe a shock that he suffered a nervous affliction the rest
of his life.
From the clash of arms Witherspoon now turned to a struggle
for which he was far better suited, the struggle of factions
within the Scottish Church A movement known as Moderatism,
which had won over a large part of the clergy and many influ-
ential laymen, seemed to the older and more conservative min-
isters to threaten the very foundations of religion. The Moder-
ates were lax in enforcing Church dogmas, their sermons were
characterized more by literary effort than by religious zeal,
they minimized the importance of piety, spirituality, and sound
scholarship. At the same time they gave their support to the
law which placed the disposal of church livings in the hands of
patrons with power to force a minister upon a parish against
the wishes of the congregation.
Of the opposing party, the conservative Popular party,
Witherspoon became the acknowledged leader. Insisting upon
the importance of certain fundamental dogmas, protesting
against the lowering of the standards of personal conduct and
the conversion of sermons into literary exercises, he carried the
battle to the Moderates in the Church Assembly, in sermons and
in published works. It was his Ecclesiastical Characteristics
( r 753) > a. bitter satire upon the new school of churchmen, which
proved most effective and at the same time won for him lasting
distinction not only in Scotland but in England and America.
Beginning with the statement that in describing Moderatism
he would make little use of Scripture because that was contrary
7O JOHN WITHERSPOON
to their own usage, he proceeds to lay down its fundamental
maxims.
"All ecclesiastical persons . . . that are suspected of heresy
are to be esteemed men of great genius, vast learning and
uncommon worth and are by all means to be supported and
protected."
"When any man is charged with loose practices or tendencies
to immorality, he is to be screened and protected as much as
possible."
The moderate preacher must dwell upon the beauty of the
present life without regard to a future state and he must draw
his authorities from heathen writers and not from Scripture.
"It is not only unnecessary for a moderate man to have much
learning, but he ought to be filled with a contempt of all kinds of
learning but one, which is, to understand Leibnitz's scheme
well."
The satire was made even more telling by the insertion of
what Witherspoon called the "Athenian Creed" : "I believe in
the beauty and comely proportions of Dame Nature, and in
almighty Fate. ... I believe that the universe is a huge machine,
wound up from everlasting by necessity and consisting of an
infinite number of links and chains, each in a progressive motion
towards the zenith of perfection. ... I believe that there is no
ill in the universe, nor any such thing as virtue absolutely con-
sidered."
Ecclesiastical Characteristics succeeded admirably. The Mod-
erates denounced the author as a firebrand, the Popular party
rejoiced that they had found so able a champion. The first edi-
tion was soon exhausted and others were issued in rapid succes-
sion in 1753, 1754, and 1755. In all, ten editions were published.
In 1765 Witherspoon made another venture in the realm of
satire with a bit of fiction entitled History of a Corporation of
Servants. Under the influence of Gullivers Travels, he laid
his scene in the interior of Brazil, where a group of castaways
lived as slaves in the court of a powerful prince. With the
servants representing the clergy and the corporation of serv-
ants the Church, the author takes us through the rise of the
Papacy, the Reformation, the Inquisition, and the growth of
Moderatism. But the story is heavy, the satire misses its aim
MAKER OF STATESMEN 71
and the book, despite the resentment it aroused in the Mod-
erates, seems to have made little impression.
Far more successful were the series of published sermons
and essays which came from his pen during the years from
1756 to 1768 Essay on the Connection betiveen the Doctrine
of Justification . . . and Holiness of Life ; A Serious Enquiry
into the Nature and Effects of the Stage ; and The Charge of
Sedition and Faction against Good Men ; Essays on Important
Subjects.
In 1748 Witherspoon married Elizabeth Montgomery,
daughter of Robert Montgomery of Craig House near Beith.
With a steadily increasing family, he welcomed the call which
was extended to him by the magistrates, town council, and
patrons to Laigh Kirk at Paisley, for the salary of over 100
was considered generous and the weaving trade was bringing
prosperity to the town. Although the presbytery, angered by
the Ecclesiastical Characteristics, refused to grant the call, an
appeal to the Council of Glasgow and Ayr proved effective and
in June 1757 the new pastor was installed.
Witherspoon had been at Paisley ten years when he received
word that he had been elected president of the College of New
Jersey. In order to understand this call and the opportunities
and difficulties which it presented, it is necessary for us to
examine briefly the situation existing at the time in the Presby-
terian Church in America.
In the fourth and fifth decades of the eighteenth century a
religious revival known as the Great Awakening had swept
over the colonies. It reached its zenith in 1739 and 1740 when
the great evangelist, George Whitefield, visited all the prin-
cipal cities and towns, preaching to vast crowds and arousing
them to a high pitch of excitement. Whitefield insisted upon
the religion of personal experience, or what Anne Hutchinson
a century earlier had termed the "inner light," in contrast with
the religion of faith and formalism. The New Lights, as the
reformers were called, insisted that none who missed this re-
ligious experience had been elected for salvation, however
exemplary their lives. They even denounced many ministers,
72 JOHN WITHERSPOON
men long endeared to their congregations, as unconverted and
as false prophets. As a result the Congregationalist and Pres-
byterian denominations split into hostile factions the New
Lights and Old Side with separate congregations and pres-
byteries.
Within these factions the question of educating ministers
was a matter of prime importance. In New England the Old
Side monopolized the field through their control of Harvard
and Yale. But west of the Hudson the New Lights had the
advantage since the only centers of advanced education the
so-called academies where a handful of youths gathered around
some learned minister for instruction in the classics, philos-
ophy, and theology were in their hands. The most noted of
these was the Log College, at Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, con-
ducted by the Reverend William Tennent, Senior. When Ten-
nent was forced to retire because of old age, the New Lights
founded the College of New Jersey. For two decades this in-
stitution grew in numbers and reputation, sending out minister
after minister to carry the New Lights standard, while the
Presbyterian Old Side looked on in envy and alarm.
By 1766, however, much of the old bitterness between the
two factions had died out, and both were desirous of recon-
ciliation. The death of Samuel Finley, president of the College
of New Jersey, seemed to afford an opportunity, since both
might unite under the leadership of his successor, provided the
proper man could be found, a man of distinction and broad
enough to win the confidence of all. Thus, the board of
trustees was called upon to choose not only a president for
the college, but the leader of a reunited American Presbyterian
Church.
This was the situation when news leaked out that the Old
Side had on foot a plan to force the election of Dr. Francis
Alison, in return for large financial support for the college.
Alison was known as an able scholar, but his frequent refer-
ences to the bigotry of the New Lights made him unacceptable
to the trustees of the college. So when, in November 1766, a
committee of five Old Sides appeared at Princeton, the board
kept them waiting until it had made its choice, and then an-
nounced that it had elected Dr. Witherspoon. Though the com-
mittee members were deeply chagrined at being thus outwitted,
MAKER OF STATESMEN 73
they were forced to admit that no man was better suited to
reunite the Presbyterian Church than the Scottish divine.
The trustees offered Witherspoon a salary equivalent to
206 sterling, the use of the president's house, a garden, and
land for pasturage and firewood. They then commissioned Rich-
ard Stockton, who happened to be in London, to visit Scotland
to explain to him that by accepting the position he could be of
untold service to religion and learning in America. When
Stockton reached Paisley he found that certain Old Sides had
written Witherspoon a letter "wickedly contrived" to prevent
his acceptance, and though the polished American soon per-
suaded Witherspoon that duty called him across the Atlantic,
he could not win over his wife. In fact, Mrs. Witherspoon re-
mained so bitterly opposed to giving up her home in Paisley to
go to a far-off land that in the end her husband wrote declining
the invitation.
When this disappointing news reached the trustees they were
so alarmed at the possibility of having an Old Side president
forced upon them that they hastily and ill-advisedly elected
Samuel Blair, Junior, a young man of only twenty-six years. In
the meanwhile, however, Benjamin Rush, of the class of 1760,
had visited Paisley and argued with Mrs. Witherspoon to such
good purpose that she at last gave her approval to the move to
America. When Stockton informed young Blair of this de-
cision the latter, who had had serious misgivings as to his
fitness for the presidency, grasped at the opportunity to decline
it. Thereupon, the trustees, in December 1762, once more
elected Witherspoon.
The new president arrived at Philadelphia in August 1768,
where he remained a few days and then set out for Princeton.
There a rousing welcome awaited him. Vice-President William
Tennent, the three tutors, and the entire student body met him
about a mile from the village to escort him to his temporary
quarters at "Morven," the residence of Richard Stockton, while
with the approach of evening Nassau Hall was brilliantly
illuminated.
Witherspoon understood fully that he was coming not only
as the educational but the religious leader of Presbyterian
America. At the meeting of the synod of New York and Phila-
delphia in May 1769, he was welcomed by New Lights and
74 JOHN WITHERSPOON
Old Side alike, and appointed to no less than eight com-
mittees. The fact that he had come from Great Britain, where
he had won distinction, gave him great prestige ; his familiarity
with the laws and forms of the Presbyterian Church in Scot-
land made him a useful figure in every synod.
After the Revolution it was Witherspoon who was made
chairman of a committee to draw up a plan of government for
the Presbyterian Church. Their proposals, which were embodied
in a pamphlet, included the confession of faith, the two cate-
chisms, the directory of worship, the form of government and
discipline, a general assembly, and an increased number of
synods and presbyteries. In 1788, following long debate, the
plan was adopted in its entirety, and when the General As-
sembly held its first meeting Witherspoon preached the opening
sermon and acted as temporary moderator.
In his capacity as president of Princeton Witherspoon was
surprised to find that his first task was to restore the disordered
finances of the college. So, as soon as he had settled himself in
his new home, he set out on numerous tours, in which sermons
alternated with appeals for aid. Now we find him at Williams-
burg, Virginia, addressing a great assemblage in the Capitol
Yard, now at New Haven, now at Boston. Everywhere he
met with a generous response. A committee appointed by the
synod of Philadelphia and New York to solicit subscriptions
in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the South also raised a con-
siderable sum. As a result not only was the debt paid off, but
a fair amount was left over for endowment.
In the college curriculum, which was not essentially different
from that of the Scottish universities, Witherspoon made no
radical change, but he did inaugurate new methods of teaching.
Previous to his arrival it had been customary for the professor
or tutor to devote the entire class period to quizzing the stu-
dents on assigned readings. Witherspoon introduced the lec-
ture system. In time, however, when the students all came into
possession of manuscript copies of his lectures, he no longer
read them, but devoted the hour to questions, explanations, and
illustrations. Since his listeners were often very young, he took
pains to use simple, nontechnical language. Ashbel Green, who
was one of his pupils, testified to the effectiveness of this
method. "Some of the points discussed are still fresh in my
MAKER OF STATESMEN 75
memory more than fifty years after," he stated. The lectures
embraced moral philosophy, chronology and history, English
composition, and divinity, while he held classes also in He-
brew, Greek, and Latin. In the Latin course it was his custom
to read aloud sentences in English which he would require the
students to translate extemporaneously into Latin.
Witherspoon was well aware that an adequate library and
scientific equipment, as the tools of scholarship, are of first
importance for a college. Before leaving Great Britain he
purchased "a very valuable addition" of books, which he
brought with him, and left orders for many more. As an aid
in the teaching of astronomy he purchased the celebrated Rit-
tenhouse orrery and had it installed in Nassau Hall. One of the
three faces of this machine represented the planetary system
with little brass and ivory balls moving in elliptical orbits
around a gilded brass sun ; another showed Jupiter and its
satellites; and still another, the moon.
When Witherspoon took up his duties at Princeton he dis-
covered that the maintaining of discipline was to be one of his
most perplexing problems. There was a spirit of independence
and self-reliance in the American colleges which rebelled at
strict discipline and often resulted in riots and acts of van-
dalism. Witherspoon handled the situation with firmness and
tact. "Govern always, but beware of governing too much," was
his motto. On one occasion when a number of students broke
the regulations by deserting Nassau Hall for private boarding
houses in Princeton village, he ordered them to return im-
mediately. A few hours later, when Ashbel Green, then a
tutor, informed him that they had refused, he remarked:
"Then we have only to ... dismiss the whole of them." Green,
in considerable perturbation, informed the boys what was in
store for them, whereupon they lost no time in moving back
to their old quarters.
Witherspoon came to America in the midst of the contro-
versy with the mother country over the attempts of the reac-
tionary British government to curtail the traditional liberties
of the colonies. The Princeton campus he found a center of
76 JOHN WITHERSPOON
patriotism, where the students denounced the Stamp Act, the
Townshend Acts, and the Quebec Act, wore clothes of Amer-
ican manufacture and cooled the ardor of the occasional Tory
in their ranks by ducking him at the college pump. In January
1774 they staged a tea-party, when the steward's store of tea
went up in flames together with an effigy of Governor Hutch-
inson, to the accompaniment of cheers and the ringing of the
bell. With the news of Lexington and Concord, the students
organized a company of fifty men in preparation for the call
to arms.
With all this Witherspoon was in hearty accord, for not
only was he an ardent friend of liberty, but he had learned
to admire America His travels on behalf of the college had
taken him to all parts of the colonies, so that in one year he
had become better acquainted with the country and the people
than some who had lived there for years. He remarked upon
the thriving little villages, upon the succession of prosperous
farms, upon the absence of beggars and highwaymen, upon
the self-respect and independence of the people, upon the high
standard of living for servants, laborers, and mechanics. Above
all he admired the capacity of the people for self-government
and rejoiced in the freedom which they had won through their
control of taxation.
It was natural then that Witherspoon should have taken a
leading part in organizing the revolutionary government of
New Jersey and in overthrowing the authority of Governor
William Franklin. The Revolution in this colony, as in most
of the others, assumed a double character resistance to Brit-
ish aggression and a revolt against the local ruling class. In
New Jersey the social and political structure was far from
democratic, for the poor man could not hold office or even
vote. But he was now determined to sweep away the old As-
sembly, which had never really represented his interests, and
substitute for it a government based upon a widened franchise.
The first challenge to the old order came in the summer of
1774 with the organizing of Committees of Correspondence.
The Somerset County committee, of which Witherspoon was
a member, met at Millstone, about ten miles from Princeton,
on July 4. This was followed seventeen days later by a conven-
tion at New Brunswick, with Witherspoon heading the Som-
MAKER OF STATESMEN 77
erset delegation. The series of resolutions which this body
adopted are so nearly identical with a list of recommendations
in his essay Thoughts on American Liberty as to make it
probable that he himself introduced them. The essay declared
in favor of remaining loyal to the King, resolving never to
submit to the claims of Great Britain, insisting that American
liberty be settled on a solid basis, entering into a non-importa-
tion agreement, encouraging colonial manufactures, putting
the militia upon a war-time footing, and drawing up a plan
of union for all the colonies.
It must have been a source of satisfaction for Witherspoon
when he attended the New Jersey Provincial Congress at Tren-
ton, in October 1775, that this body, the successor of the
provincial Convention, acted upon several of these recom-
mendations. But the Congress went even further, ignoring
the authority of Governor William Franklin and the old As-
sembly, and assuming such powers as issuing money and
appointing an executive. It was only at its next meeting, how-
ever, that it actually swept the old government out of existence.
It began by ordering Governor Franklin's arrest. Colonel
Nathaniel Heard, of the Middlesex militia, was sent to Perth
Amboy to offer him a parole on condition that he remain at
a fixed residence and agree not to assist the enemy. When
Franklin refused, Heard brought him before the Congress. It
was a dramatic scene when the defiant governor faced Wither-
spoon and the other revolutionary leaders, as the plainly
dressed, rough farmers who made up a majority of the dele-
gates looked on. Several questions were put to the governor,
but he refused to answer, declaring that his inquisitors were
without authority to try him and complaining that they had
deprived him of his salary. To this Witherspoon replied in
an address full of reproach and of biting sarcasm. Franklin
had already predicted his fate when he wrote to friends that he
expected to be "led like a bear through the country to some
place of confinement in New England."
tions from the Continental Congress,
Hartford.
In the meanwhile a strong sentime
been crystallizing rapidly in New Jer
throughout the colony the matter wa
78 JOHN WITHERSPOON
arguing for delay, others, like Witherspoon, contending that
reconciliation was no longer possible. Windsor, Maidenhead,
and other townships passed resolutions demanding a complete
separation from Great Britain and even outlining certain
liberal provisions for a state government. At last, when it be-
came known that Richard Henry Lee had presented a resolu-
tion of independence to the Continental Congress on behalf of
Virginia, New Jersey sent in a new delegation, of which
Witherspoon was a member, with instructions to vote for it.
Witherspoon and his colleagues arrived at Philadelphia on
June 28, at the moment when Congress, in a committee of
the whole, was considering a resolution of independence. The
main points had already been debated, and some of the dele-
gates who opposed immediate action pleaded that the New
Jersey delegation had not heard the debate. But Witherspoon,
rising, declared that they were quite ready to vote. Even
though they had just come in, it by no means followed that they
had not weighed all the arguments. This he himself had cer-
tainly done. As to the country, it had been for some time past
loud in its demand for a declaration of independence and in his
judgment it was not only ripe for the measure but in danger
of becoming rotten for the want of it.
Witherspoon later gave, in one revealing sentence, the main
reason for the separation from the mother country. The col-
onies had "resolved to be free and independent/' he said,
because they could not "be one without the other." Late in
July 1776 he published as an appendix to his sermon on the
Dominion of Providence an "Address to the Natives of Scot-
land residing in America," in which he went into the matter
more fully. The progress of the colonies he, ascribed to the
degree of British liberty which they brought with them and
which pervaded their constitutions. That they should sur-
render this liberty was unthinkable. When reconciliation, save
on terms of unconditional surrender, had been refused, inde-
pendence ;was the only recourse left. Now that the two coun-
tries had separated, America had "the opportunity of forming
plans of government upon the most rational, just and equal
principles."
* In the meanwhile the Revolution was bringing serious mis-
fortunes upon the College of New Jersey. The news of the
MAKER OF STATESMEN 79
Battle of Long Island, the evacuation of New York, and the
capture of Fort Washington and Fort Lee caused forebodings
which were realized with the advance of the British army
through New Jersey. On November 29, when Witherspoon
announced to the student body that the enemy was at hand,
the boys packed their chests in haste and set out for places of
safety. The president himself, after loading some possessions
in a wagon and placing his wife in a "chair," set out for Penn-
sylvania on horseback.
A week later the British entered Princeton. The soldiers
made themselves at home in Nassau Hall, using the prayer
hall, the library, the lecture rooms, and the students' chambers
for barracks, and the basement as a prison and stable. But their
stay was brief. On January 3, 1777 they were disastrously de-
feated by Washington's army in the Battle of Princeton and
sent reeling back into the village. Some of the men took refuge
in Nassau Hall, but were forced to surrender when the Amer-
icans brought up their artillery and began firing on the building.
The remainder hastened on to Rocky Hill and thence to New
Brunswick.
If the college authorities thought that this would bring an
end to their troubles, they were greatly disappointed. Continental
troops took over Nassau Hall, where their conduct was worse
than that of the British. They ruined the orrery, ripped up floors
and tore doors from their frames to burn as firewood, knocked
plastering from the walls and wrecked the organ in the prayer
hall. Later the building, though in a most dilapidated condition,
was converted into a hospital.
In the summer of 1777, when it was announced that classes
would be resumed and a few students put in their appearance,
they had to find rooms in the village. Since Witherspoon was
occupied in Congress, the college was placed in charge of Wil-
liam C. Houston, professor of mathematics. In June 1779 when
Houston, too, was elected to Congress, the trustees turned to
Samuel Stanhope Smith, who had married Witherspoon's
daughter Ann, to take over his duties.
In the meanwhile Witherspoon himself was serving the coun-
try of his adoption in the committee rooms and on the floor of
Congress. Taking his seat in July 1776, he was reelected three
times, and remained until December 1779, when at his urgent
8O JOHN WITHERSPOON
request he was released for one year. In 1781 he was returned
once more, continuing until November 5, 1782. During these
periods he took a major part in some of the most important
matters which came before Congress the drawing up of the
Articles of Confederation, foreign alliances, the financing of
the war, the organization of executive departments, western
lands, the treatment of prisoners, the selecting of the peace com-
missioners and drafting instructions for them.
Witherspoon was deeply interested in the drawing up of the
articles which it was hoped would perpetuate the union of the
states. In the debates it is obvious that his views were dictated
by two widely divergent motives a farsighted regard for the
country as a whole and for mankind in general, and a somewhat
narrow conception of the rights of New Jersey. None save a
man of remarkable vision could have uttered the following:
"It is not impossible that in future times all the states in one
quarter of the globe may see it proper by some plan of union to
perpetuate security and peace; and sure I am a well planned
confederacy among the states of America may hand down the
blessings of peace and public order to many generations."
It seems strange that the man with such breadth of view could
have argued against having Congress represent the people rather
than the states, but he shared with his constituents the fear that
New Jersey, with its small population, might be outvoted and
oppressed by her larger neighbors. He reflected the wishes of the
state, also, when he voted to give Congress power to make
treaties of commerce which might restrain the states from
levying import duties. Since New Jersey possessed no important
port, by far the larger part of her foreign imports passed
through New York and Philadelphia, and the tariffs collected
on them there constituted a tax on the New Jersey . farmer.
Witherspoon was but foreshadowing the policy of the state in
the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when her delegates in-
sisted that Congress have complete control over foreign com-
merce.
Witherspoon as a member of the Committee of Secret Cor-
respondence, later known as the Committee for Foreign Affairs,
was not hampered by local considerations and so was able to
serve the country to excellent advantage. In the dark days of
the autumn and early winter of 1776, many of the leaders of
MAKER OF STATESMEN 8l
the Revolution, coming to the conclusion that victory was im-
probable without foreign aid, turned their eyes hopefully to
France. Silas Deane had succeeded in getting vitally needed
loans and supplies from Vergennes, the French foreign minister,
but greater and more active help was imperative. This, King
Louis XVI, even after the colonies had declared their inde-
pendence, hesitated to give, since he feared that the Americans'
cause might collapse, leaving him to face the might of Great
Britain alone.
So it became the task of Witherspoon and his fellow commit-
teemen to convince the French government that with adequate
aid victory was certain. In October 1776 they wrote to M.
Dumas, their faithful agent in Europe: "Our worthy friend
Dr. Franklin being indefatigable in the service of his country
. . . you will not be surprised that the unanimous voice of the
Congress . . . has called upon him to visit the court of France
in the character of one of their commissioners for negotiating
a treaty of alliance, etc., with that nation/ 1
Franklin's task was not easy, but the news of the brilliant
Trenton-Princeton campaign smoothed his way, while the cap-
ture of Burgoyne's army at Saratoga brought final success.
Witherspoon's part in securing the treaties of 1778 with France,
without which the cause of the Revolutionists might have been
lost, is one of his greatest contributions to the nation.
To the perplexing problem of finances, Witherspoon gave his
earnest attention. He early expressed the opinion that it was
futile to pass laws to fix commodity prices. 'Trice-fixing by
authority is not only impolitic but it is in itself unreasonable
and absurd," he contended. "So many of one kind of provision
and the scarcity of another, the distance of one place and the
nearness of another, changes of conditions in the course of a
few days or weeks, good or bad roads, good or bad weather
these and a hundred other things which cannot be foreseen ac-
tually govern and ought to govern prices at markets."
It was a tribute to the versatility of Witherspoon that Con-
gress should entrust to him a large share of the responsibility
for financing the Revolution. In May 1777 he was placed upon
a committee of three to devise means for defraying expenses for
the year ; in 1778 we find him on another committee to reorgan-
ize the Board of Treasury; in October 1779 he was asked to
82 JOHN WITHERSPOON
address the states on finances and on means of raising funds ;
throughout the year 1781 he busied himself with commercial
regulations, exchange, depreciation of bonds, etc. He protested
earnestly against the excessive issues of paper money and
against discontinuing payments of interest on loan certificates
in hard cash. "Payment of interest had given these early in-
vestments value ; had lenders suspected that they would be cut
off they could have disposed of their holdings for something,
but as it stands the country's best friends are being reduced to
beggary."
The culmination of Witherspoon's career in Congress was his
preparation of the instructions to the American peace commis-
sioners. These instructions directed the commissioners to do
nothing without the knowledge and concurrence of the King of
France. How unwise this policy was became evident when it
was discovered that France was secretly arranging with Spain
terms to be offered Great Britain terms detrimental to the
interests of the United States. Thereupon the commissioners,
disregarding the instructions, entered into direct negotiations
with the British and thus secured vital concessions of territory
which France and Spain would have withheld.
Witherspoon and Congress had made the common mistake of
thinking that France and the United States, united for the pur-
pose of waging war, would stay united after the war was over.
But they acted under the almost universal belief that the future
of the United States was closely bound up with that of France,
and that it would be the course of wisdom to vest that country
with the trusteeship of American interests.
With peace in sight, Witherspoon resigned. "I have now left
Congress," he wrote, "not being able to support the expense of
attending it with the frequent journeys to Princeton and being
determined to give particular attention to the revival of the
college." He did not take up his residence in the president's
house, which he had resigned to Samuel Stanhope Smith, but
lived at Tusculum, his country residence north of the village.
Yet he kept a firm hand on the college, guiding its policies, di-
recting Smith in administrative matters, giving courses to the
MAKER OF STATESMEN 83
senior class, preaching on Sundays. He found time, however,
to indulge himself in "scientific farming/' of which he was
very fond, but in which he was not very successful.
Witherspoon once more had to give his attention to the task
of restoring the college finances. Nassau Hall was dilapidated ;
the endowment had been all but wiped out by the depreciation
of government bonds ; income from tuition was small because of
the diminished attendance. Appeals to the friends of the college
brought in some funds, but the country had been so impover-
ished by the war that few could afford to give generously.
In this extremity the trustees decided to send Witherspoon
to Great Britain to appeal to Presbyterian and other dissenting
churches for assistance. This proved to be a mistake. The presi-
dent was received with kindness by many old friends, but the
public could not forgive him for his part in severing the colonies
from the Empire. Consequently he met only with rebuffs, those
who formerly had given generously seeming "to be restrained
from showing their usual kindness by prejudice or fear." So he
returned empty-handed.
In October 1/89 sorrow came to the aging president with the
loss of his devoted wife. We know little of the life of Elizabeth
Witherspoon, but Ashbel Green states that she was pious, de-
voted to her husband, a fond mother, social in her habits, and
universally beloved. With her passing there seemed left for her
husband only a sad and lonely old age. But Witherspoon would
not have it so. In June 1791 he married the widow of Dr.
Armstrong Dill, of York County, Pennsylvania, a young woman
of twenty-four.
It was well for Witherspoon that he was not deprived of
feminine care, for soon after he became blind. The sight of one
eye was lost by an accident on board ship when he was return-
ing from his visit to Great Britain, and the other some years
later by a fall from a horse. But he continued active and ap-
parently happy, employing an amanuensis to read to him his
manuscript sermons and the gazettes and to take dictation.
Witherspoon died November 15, 1794, while sitting in his
accustomed chair at Tusculum. Three days later, after funeral
services in the Presbyterian church, a procession of clergymen,
faculty, trustees, undergraduates, and townspeople accompanied
the body to its resting place.
84 JOHN WITHERSPOON
Ashbel Green describes Witherspoon as a man of middle size,
inclined to be stout, with intelligent eyes looking out from be-
neath bushy brows. Manassah Cutler, who saw him in 1787,
spoke of him as "an intolerably homely old Scotchman." He
wore a full-bottomed wig prior to the Revolution, but after in-
dependence was declared he laid it aside. In dress he was simple,
"avoiding the extremes of slovenliness and foppishness." The
Scottish accent remained with him throughout life.
In the pulpit he was convincing rather than eloquent, and his
only gesture was a graceful movement of his right hand. He
began always in a low tone, but as he proceeded his voice became
louder and louder until it filled the largest church "Notwith-
standing the dryness of the subject, the badness of the delivery,
which required the closest attention to understand him," re-
ported one listener, "yet the correctness of his style, the arrange-
ment of his matter and the many new ideas that he suggested
rendered his sermon very entertaining."
John Witherspoon won distinction in four separate fields
as leader of the Popular party of the Scottish Church, as col-
lege president and teacher, as leader of the American Presby-
terian Church, and as Revolutionary statesman.
His influence upon the College of New Jersey was profound.
When he assumed charge it was devoting itself chiefly to pre-
paring young men for the ministry. Witherspoon, perhaps
unwittingly, changed the emphasis to preparation for civil
leadership. Of the young men who studied under him James
Madison became President of the United States, one became
Vice-President, ten became cabinet members, six were elected
to the Continental Congress, twenty-one entered the United
States Senate and thirty-nine the House of Representatives,
twelve became governors of states, three were appointed to
the United States Supreme Court, six attended the Federal Con-
stitutional Convention. Witherspoon found the college the
educational and religious capital of Scotch-Irish America;
under his guidance its influence was expanded to make it also
the most popular college for the wealthy planter class of the
South.
But before this development had been consummated scores of
theological students had studied under Witherspoon, many of
whom later became leaders in the Presbyterian Church. During
MAKER OF STATESMEN 85
a meeting of the General Assembly, Witherspoon turned to
Ashbel Green with the remark: "You can scarcely imagine the
pleasure it has given me in taking a survey of this Assembly
to observe that a decided majority of all the ministerial mem-
bers have not only been sons of our college, but my own pupils."
It must have given him equal satisfaction to reflect that it was
he, a stranger in America, who had reconciled long hostile
factions and brought unity to the Presbyterian Church.
Witherspoon's services to the nation in the struggle for
liberty and independence have never received full recognition.
To labor year after year on one committee of Congress after
another is far less spectacular than to lead the military forces
in the field or to represent the country in foreign courts, but
it is nonetheless vital. The deference shown the Scotch minister
by his colleagues and the heavy responsibilities placed upon his
shoulders testify to the importance of his contributions.
Samuel Stanhope Smith [1751-isi
FRIEND OF RATIONAL LIBERTY
BY SAMUEL HOLT MONK
It is the life of a. philosopher, not varied with accidents to divert the reader}
more pleasant for himself to live, than for an historian to describe. JOHN
DRYDEN, Ltfe of Plutarch
I
N the mid-eighteenth century, the Presbyterian
communities in the colonies were small, scat-
tered, and m varying degrees on the defensive.
In Virginia they experienced from time to time what we should
call today the denial of certain civil liberties; in the Middle
Colonies they were a minority group, in no sense persecuted,
but certainly without adequate means of supplying their insti-
tutional needs. In the main Scots or Scotch-Irish, they were
characterized by hardihood, energy, piety, and intellectual vigor ;
and they inherited the great Scots tradition of humanistic
learning. Their desire for a full intellectual life impelled them
to establish schools and colleges, of which the College of New
Jersey, though not the first, was the greatest. Their position
as a conscious minority forced them, wherever they settled, to
form tightly homogeneous groups. Samuel Stanhope Smith,
the first alumnus to become president of the College of New
Jersey, was the inheritor of the intellectual and spiritual tra-
dition of Presbyterianism at its best. The homogeniety of the
Presbyterian community into which he was born accounts for
the apparent inbreeding which connected him by blood or by
association with the men who founded the college or who
guided it throughout its first half -century.
Smith's father, Dr. Robert Smith of Pequea, Lancaster
County, Pennsylvania, was a trustee of the college, as were his
two maternal uncles, Samuel and John Blair of Fagg's Manor.
John Blair was also the first professor of theology and for a
while vice-president of the college. Robert Smith was a friend
of Samuel Davies, fourth president of the college, and Samuel
Stanhope Smith was baptized by Samuel Finley, the prede-
cessor of President Witherspoon. Samuel Blair, Jr., Smith's
FRIEND OF RATIONAL LIBERTY 87
cousin, was elected president at the age of about twenty-six,
but declined the appointment. Smith married Ann, the daugh-
ter of Witherspoon. He was born, then, into the deepest blue
of colonial Presbyterianism and seems to have been predestined
and elected to the service of his Alma Mater.
Although he is probably today one of the least known, he is
certainly one of the greatest of Princeton's presidents. He was
a preacher of remarkable eloquence and power, revered in this
country and known abroad. During the early years of the
Revolution, he founded and built a college in Virginia. He
twice rebuilt Nassau Hall and was tireless and extraordinarily
successful in raising funds He was intensely interested in the
natural sciences and was responsible for the introduction of
chemistry as a separate subject in the American college cur-
riculum. He was a philosopher in his own right, admired at
home and discussed in Britain. He edited Witherspoon's post-
humous papers. He was a poet of less than average talent, but
was well known for his exact and correct taste in belles-lettres.
He was important in the councils of his church, serving as
moderator of the General Assembly and on the committee
which drew up the first Presbyterian system of church govern-
ment. He was once a member of the Electoral College, before
that institution became a mere form, and cast his vote for John
Adams. He was a great teacher, and a man of unusual beauty,
elegance, and charm. He was all of this despite a lifelong dis-
ease which we can recognize today as tuberculosis and which
in his early thirties nearly ended his life.
According to the family Bible, Smith's parents were mar-
ried on May 22, 1750, and he was born, the eldest of seven
children, on March 15, 1751, a few days before his father was
installed as pastor of the Pequea and Leacock congregations.
Since there can be no doubt of the correctness of this date, it
is odd that his tombstone in Princeton gives 1750 as the year
of his birth, a mistake that has been repeated in all accounts
of his career.
Smith's father was himself a man of very great ability.
Born in Londonderry, Ireland, in 1723, Robert Smith came
88 SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH
to America with his parents about 1730 and settled in Penn-
sylvania near the headwaters of the Brandywine. Converted
by the great evangelical preacher Whitefield in 1739, he later
enrolled as a theological student in Samuel Blair's school at
Fagg's Manor. In 1749 he was licensed to preach, and followed
Samuel Davies to Virginia, where he joined in the struggle
of the Presbyterians against the restraints imposed on Dis-
senters by the Established Church. In 1751 he began his life-
long work as pastor at Pequea, taking with him his wife,
Elizabeth Blair, the sister of his former teacher. During the
Revolution he carried provisions to Washington's army on
Long Island and at Valley Forge. He served as trustee of the
College of New Jersey from 1772 until his death in 1793.
As if this life were not crowded enough, Robert Smith
founded and conducted a school at Pequea from 1752 to 1792.
Pequea Academy was a curious combination of preparatory
school and graduate school for, although its primary purpose
was to prepare boys for Nassau Hall, graduates of the college
returned to Pequea to read theology with the headmaster.
Many famous Princeton men were educated at the academy,
among them, of course, Samuel Smith, who spent the first
sixteen years of his life in this environment of zealous piety
and intellectual activity.
As a child Smith was quiet, quick of mind, indifferent to
sports, and sensitive to religious influence. Entering the academy
at six years of age, he soon distinguished himself as a scholar.
Latin and Greek were the principal, if not the only, subjects
taught. Discipline was rigorous and there was no nonsense about
making learning attractive. Latin was spoken in the school,
and once a boy had completed such elementary works as the
Colloquies of Corderius and the Fables of Aesop, mistakes in
Latin conversation were severely punished. The principal di-
version was itself a form of intellectual discipline : on alternate
Saturdays the better scholars were allowed to select passages
from their texts, and each one, in the presence of a master,
examined his fellows on grammatical constructions, the deriva-
tions of words, the versification, and "the beauty and perti-
nence of the figures and allusions, together with the taste and
delicacy of sentiment displayed by the poet." Rewards were
FRIEND OF RATIONAL LIBERTY 89
given in these pedagogical contests, which were entered into
"with more than ordinary emulation."
Smith's training at Pequea enabled him to enter the junior
class at the College of New Jersey when he was sixteen years
old. At that date Nassau Hall was on the eve of its first great
period: although at the moment it had no president, Wither-
spoon was soon to arrive from Scotland to assume the leader-
ship not only of the college, but of colonial Presbyterianism.
From the beginning Smith was a distinguished scholar. He
excelled in mathematics, the principal study of the junior class,
and at the end of his first year he was publicly presented with
the works of the professor of mathematics at Oxford. His tutor
was Joseph Periam, son of one of Whitefield's companions dur-
ing that great evangelist's first voyage to America in 1739.
Periam was one of the zealous adherents that Bishop Berkeley's
idealism had found in America, and under his influence Smith
adopted Berkeley's philosophy. Robert Smith was perturbed lest
his son lose his religious principles, but fortunately rescue was at
hand. Witherspoon arrived and by 1769, when Smith was
graduated, the new president had not only converted him to the
common-sense principles of the Scotch philosophers, but had
argued and ridiculed idealism out of Princeton. During the
rest of the century, thanks to Witherspoon's influence, com-
mon sense remained the official philosophy not only of the col-
lege but also of Presbyterianism. This skeptical interlude was
not, as we shall see, the last of Smith's excursions into strange
and unorthodox fields of thought. He had an eager and a
speculative mind, and though he bowed to authority in the
matter of Berkeley and was careful in his lectures to express
his opposition to idealism, he was to wander in his private
thoughts far beyond the beaten path of common sense.
For the historian, Smith's graduation on September 27,
1769, was a memorable occasion. It was the first commence-
ment at which President Witherspoon officiated. Philip Fre-
neau and Aaron Burr were undoubtedly spectators. And young
James Madison reported in a letter to his father that "the head
oration, which is always given to the greatest scholar by the
President and Tutors, was pronounced in Latin by Mr. Samuel
Smith, son of a Presbyterian minister in Pennsylvania." He
also observed that for the first time in America the honorary
9<5 SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH
degree of Doctor of Laws was granted, and that a great many
people came down from New York for the ceremonies, but that
"those at Philadelphia were most of them detained by Races
which were to follow the next day."
Upon taking his degree, Smith returned to Pequea to teach
in the academy and presumably to study theology with his
father, but it is characteristic that he found time to read Pope,
Swift, Addison, Locke, Warburton, Edwards, and Burke
surely not the speeches of Burke, but the famous essay on the
Sublime and Beautiful. He also wrote poetry. The elegance of
Augustan England strongly appealed to his taste and influenced
the style of his sermons, lectures, and other writings, which
were admired for their "delicacy and correctness " Pequea must
have seemed something of a Boeotia to the eighteen-year-old
youth, fresh from his academic triumphs and the more polished
life of a college town. Already he had achieved the elegance of
mind and manner and the fastidiousness of dress and decorum
that were to impress his contemporaries One wonders how his
hard-working father farmer, schoolmaster, and preacher re-
garded this fine gentleman and his sonnets, eclogues, and odes.
Doubtless his genuine piety and his seriousness of purpose were
sufficiently reassuring.
In 1771 Smith made the first of his two returns to Princeton.
He became a tutor in the college and continued his theological
studies under Witherspoon. His duties were to teach Latin and
Greek and, somewhat nebulously, to "assist in cultivating among
the students a taste for the belles-lettres. " His training at Pequea
had fitted him for this work, but there is no record of the
methods by which he carried out his task. The life of a tutor was
no easy one : the salary was small, the duties were arduous, com-
bining as they did both teaching and discipline, and the under-
graduates were frequently unruly and disrespectful.
At least one undergraduate regarded Smith with hostility.
William Paterson, later a distinguished jurist and a trustee dur-
ing Smith's administration, has left us an animated and ill-
natured satire in his poem "The Belle of Princeton/ 1 written
in 1772. Paterson, who regarded Smith as a rival for the
favors of Betsey Stockton, niece of the Signer, was the first
to describe the grand air that was to distinguish Smith as presi-
FRIEND OF RATIONAL LIBERTY 9!
dent, but that was understandably irritating to undergrad-
uates in a tutor only a few years their senior.
Smith, tutor Smith, puts in his claim
And proudly hopes you'll fan his flame . . .
Tutor Smith, so wond'rous civil,
Compound odd of Saint and Devil. . . .
Proud of his learning and his parts
The case exact of all upstarts
Proud of his beauty too, I swear
He is all lovely and all fair ;
Proud of his manners, 'tis most true
(We must e'en give the devil his due)
In manners he excels , he came
From Pequea, land of wond'rous fame,
Where learning wit and genius shine
Ecce Signum, I am divine!
Maturity and achievement were to give substance to Smith's
dignity and elegance; but no doubt at twenty-one he seemed
insufferably vain and pretentious to his pupils.
Shortly after Smith was licensed to preach in 1773, he ex-
perienced the first symptoms of tuberculosis. Judging that a
return to academic life would be unwise, he followed his
father's example and went as a missionary to Virginia. His
success as a preacher was instantaneous and great. The elo-
quence and ardor of his pulpit style, his learning, polish, and
social charm, made him at once popular among the Virginians,
both Dissenters and Anglicans. Within a year of his arrival, a
plan was on foot in the presbytery of Hanover to establish a
college, and Smith had agreed to supervise it if funds could be
raised. By February 1775, the surprising sum of 1,300 had
been subscribed, land had been donated, and a building begun.
Prince Edward Academy or, as it soon was called, Hampden-
Sydney College, was the first of many colleges founded by
Princetonians. Smith attempted to set up in Southside Virginia
a replica of the College of New Jersey. The purposes of the
two institutions were identical : to provide Presbyterians with
92 SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH
means to educate their children, and to promote piety and sound
learning. As was the case with its northern parent, these ends
were in no way doctrinaire or denominational. The majority of
the original trustees were members of the Established Church,
and students of all denominations were received and guaranteed
freedom from proselyting. The curriculum as described by
Smith in November 1774 and September 1775 is almost identi-
cal with that at Nassau Hall, although Smith's own sense of
values may be observed in the emphasis given to science and the
English language.
With his future apparently settled, Smith returned to Prince-
ton and married Ann Witherspoon on June 28, 1775. She
remains a rather shadowy person, indistinctly seen in his cor-
respondence and, of course, silent herself. Nine children were
born of the marriage and it is through the seventh, Mary Clay
Breckinridge, that Smith became the grandfather of John
C. Breckinridge, Vice-President of the' United States under
Buchanan.
Four years as rector of Hampden-Sydney gave Smith valu-
able experience as an educator and an administrator, and tested
his courage and perseverance. The founding of the academy
was almost coincidental with the outbreak of hostilities between
Great Britain and the colonies. Although the war created many
difficulties, it did not prevent the development of the college.
Despite the incomplete state of the buildings, over a hundred
students enrolled for the second session, and it was necessary
for Smith to call David Witherspoon, his brother-in-law, from
Princeton to assist the original tutors, his brother John Blair
Smith and Samuel Doak, a Princetonian who was later to load
his books on a pack horse, cross the mountains, and found two
colleges in Tennessee. In 1775 he was elected to the committee
of safety and his sermons strengthened and sustained the spirit
of resistance in Virginia.
The noble memorial presented by the trustees to the House of
Delegates in November 1776 (certainly written by Smith) ex-
pressed, in its devotion to freedom and learning and in its in-
sistence on the importance to the state of maintaining education
despite the war, a spirit worthy of the age of John Hampden
and Algernon Sydney.
FRIEND OF RATIONAL LIBERTY 93
After four years as rector of Hampden-Sydney, Smith was
recalled at Witherspoon's suggestion to Princeton. Turning over
Hampden-Sydney to his able brother, John Blair Smith, he took
up his duties as Professor of Moral Philosophy in December
1779. The college was in a deplorable condition. New Jersey
had been a bloody battle ground, and one of the decisive battles
of the war had been fought at Princeton. Nassau Hall, used
as a fortress by the British, had been bombarded by Washing-
ton's artillery and had subsequently been occupied as a barracks
by both armies. The library was gone. (Books were later re-
covered as far south as North Carolina, where the soldiers of
Cornwallis had taken them.) Of the philosophical apparatus
only the famous Rittenhouse orrery, no longer in repair, a small
telescope, and an electrical machine remained. Nothing was left
in the chapel except an empty organ case and the coat of arms
of Governor Belcher. The college funds, never very substantial,
had deteriorated to about one-third their original value. Al-
though no commencements had been held since 1775, partial
instruction had been carried on by Witherspoon and William
Churchill Houston, the first professor of mathematics, despite
their necessary attendance on the Congress. Smith had left a
struggling college in Virginia; it must have seemed a cheerful
and hopeful place in contrast to the ruin and desolation that he
found at Princeton.
With public affairs still occupying most of the president's
time, the rebuilding of the college, as well as its supervision
and much of the teaching, devolved upon Smith. Nothing in
the history of Princeton is more moving than the courage and
confidence with which the early directors of the college faced
and overcame the difficulties and disasters of its first half-cen-
tury of existence. Although Witherspoon's wisdom and pres-
tige were of the greatest value, Smith deserves to be counted
among the strongest and best of the early administrators. Ad-
vancing money out of his own pocket, he set energetically to
work to make Nassau Hall at least partially habitable. Books
were somehow accumulated, students began to return, and in-
struction was carried on. Though Nassau Hall was not com-
pletely repaired when the Continental Congress met there in
94 SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH
1783, a full-dress commencement in the old tradition was held,
with Washington, the French and Dutch ministers, and the
Congress in attendance.
During the eighties Smith's duties became more and more
complex. In addition to teaching, he served as clerk of the
board of trustees and as treasurer of the college. In 1783 he
added the professorship of theology to his other duties and
was rewarded by the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Yale.
It is no wonder that in 1782 he suffered from a series of daily
and prostrating hemorrhages that nearly ended his life. By
the middle of the decade he was recognized as the executive
head of the college and, when Witherspoon's eyesight and
health began to fail, his election to the vice-presidency in 1786
merely made official a position that he had in fact occupied for
seven trying years.
The nine years during which Smith was vice-president were
the most fruitful of his life. In 1786 he was elected to the
American Philosophical Society, and on February 27 he read
before it his Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion
and Figure in the Human Species Published in 1787 in Amer-
ica, reprinted in Edinburgh and in London in 1788, it estab-
lished Smith's reputation as a philosopher. It was reviewed in
the British periodicals and was discussed by the Literary and
Philosophical Society of Manchester. A second edition, re-
vised and enlarged, appeared in 1810.
The book is still known to historians of American thought,
for it is one of the early efforts made in this country to apply
evolutionary ideas to man. Smith was attempting to disprove
the thesis of Lord Kames that the races of mankind had been
separately created by demonstrating that the physical diversity
of the human race \\ as attributable to the influence of climate,
social customs, and the different ways of life induced by those
forces. In so doing, he attempted to show that great physical
changes are effected by the inheritance of minute character-
istics (borrowing from Buffon, Haller, and Lamarck), and
that consequently racial characteristics are accidental and in
no way bring into question the essential unity of the human
species. Holding that true science and revealed truth can never
be in conflict, he found in his arguments support for the
Biblical account of the creation of man.
FRIEND OF RATIONAL LIBERTY 95
The Essay shows Smith's wide reading in physiology and
geography, and in what we should call today anthropology. It
is the product of a well-informed, vigorous, and original mind.
Lacking the time perspective that is a part of our thinking
about the history of man, Smith could not believe that the
human race had come up from barbarism ; rather, it seemed to
him, the Creator must have endowed mankind with both reason
and a knowledge of those arts which have made his survival
possible. Though holding to the theory of innate ideas, he
nonetheless came extremely near to a materialistic psychology
in his contention that the characteristics of the human body
and the expressions of the human face are due to the interplay
of climate and social customs on men's minds. He added to his
reading and his reflection on that reading his own keen ob-
servations on the American Indian and the Negro, examples
of how the enlightened human race had sunk into barbarism
and mental vacuity through wandering away from centers of
civilization and giving themselves up to a nomadic life. It is
in his remarks on the American savage and the slave that Smith
is most interesting. If we find absurd his contention that the
Anglo-American was growing and would continue to grow
darker in the new world and "that the Negro was losing his pig-
mentation and characteristic hair and nose as a result of moving
into more temperate latitudes, we must admire the boldness with
which he advocated his rudimentary evolutionism and took his
stand against a racialism whose evil consequences we have lived
to see. Equally interesting in the light of eighteenth-century sen-
timentalism about the noble savage is his anthropological inter-
est in the Negro and the Indian. The realistic bent of his mind
made it impossible for him to see in the savages of the American
continent the state of nature that the eighteenth-century philos-
ophe had praised at a distance.
Coming from a scholar who was at the same time one of the
most prominent Presbyterians in America, the book was impor-
tant in bringing science and religion into the same nexus of
thought. The revealed story of man's creation and the doctrine
of evolution by means of acquired characteristics exist in the
book side by side and do each other no harm. A Darwinian
reading the Essay fifty years after Smith's death would have felt
that he had entered into a sort of scientific age of innocence in
96 SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH
which the lion and the lamb lay down together. It would be
erroneous, however, to regard the book as naive and unimpor-
tant, for it was an event of some consequence to both the ad-
vanced science of his day and to the religion he professed that
the vice-president of Nassau Hall could demonstrate that the
two modes of thought complemented and mutually sustained
each other. It is a work typical of Smith's mind and expressive
of what he was to attempt and, through no fault of his own, fail
to do at Princeton to unite and harmonize contemporary secu-
lar thought and religion.
In the year in which the Essay was published a visitor from
Connecticut remarked of Smith : "He is a young gentleman,
lives in an elegant style, and is the first literary character of the
state." That the vice-president's reputation did not depend en-
tirely on his sermons, lectures, and the Essay is evident from a
letter-book now owned by Princeton University, which contains
transcribed copies of his correspondence, 1786-1791, with his
cousins Samuel and Susan Shippen Blair, then living in German-
town. These letters reveal Smith more intimately than any other
documents we have. Since they have been described (not alto-
gether accurately) in the Princeton University Library Chron-
icle for June 1943 it will not be necessary to discuss the entire
correspondence here, but since they show us Smith from an
unofficial point of view it is interesting to consider them.
The letters are an example of the sentimental, "enthusiastic/'
literary correspondence that was fashionable during the last
half of the eighteenth century in England, but was rarer in this
country. The actual personal situation was simple and normal :
Smith and his cousin Samuel Blair were congenial and devoted
friends; both were ministers, both had scholarly interests and
philosophical and literary tastes far more sophisticated than was
usual in Presbyterian clerical circles. Mrs. Blair was the daugh-
ter of a founder of Princeton and the sister of William Shippen,
the distinguished physician. She was a lady of intellect, sensi-
bility, and charm. On the periphery of this family circle was
Annis Boudinot Stockton, the widow of the Signer, the mistress
of the famous estate, Morven, and a minor poet of definite
FRIEND OF RATIONAL LIBERTY 97
ability. Mrs. Stockton was fifteen years older than Smith, and
Dr. and Mrs. Blair were ten and eighteen years his seniors. These
four amused each other with poems, which are liberally sprinkled
through the letters that passed between Smith in Princeton and
Mrs. Blair in Germantown. After the fashion of the day, the
four friends addressed each other by fanciful names derived
from the tradition of pastoral poetry. Mrs. Stockton was
Emilia, Mrs. Blair was Fidelia, and both men, confusingly
enough, were referred to as Cleander in recognition of their
similarity in appearance and the identity of their given names.
By assuming these pastoral masks, they could play an elaborate
game of gallantry and sentiment quite innocently and entirely
within the bounds of a strict personal morality. It was really a
device of style, a style that extended beyond letter writing into
the actual relationships. Within the framework of the Fidelia-
Cleander-Emilia fiction, wit, feeling, exalted sentiment, and
gallantry could be given full rein without danger to decorum.
Mrs. Smith is mentioned frequently, but never under a senti-
mental pseudonym an indication that her Scottish common
sense did not allow her to indulge in the exuberant fancy that
dominated the others. This correspondence helps to fill out the
impression of Smith as a man of fashion, moving easily among
the best society of Princeton and enjoying a reputation for
charm, wit, humor, and poetry.
The emotional, sentimental nature that the letters reveal is
as unexpected as it is delightful. He has no poetic gift, he
writes to Mrs. Blair, "no spark of Heliconian inspiration,"
except for "a quick sensibility to the highest female charms."
"God Apollo what would become of me if Fidelia were as
near as is Emilia, and their inspirations were poured in on
each side? I should be like a thunder cloud overcharged with
the electric fire, and ready to burst on every object it ap-
proaches. As it is, I can hardly find paper enough in P to
conduct my present charge/'
The official accounts of Smith are panegyrics on a saintly,
hard-working scholar. He was that, but he was something
more.
Unfortunately the correspondence became the source of
gossip extremely annoying to Smith and to Mrs. Blair. As a
result of the misrepresentations made by malice, he preached a
98 SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH
sermon on slander and even considered writing no more letters.
But the pleasure of the correspondence was too great to forego,
and after a short interval the two were writing again, though
in a less perfervid tone.
It was perhaps well for the college that Ann Witherspoon
Smith and seven children were on hand to keep the volatile
vice-president firmly anchored to reality. That they did so,
despite his enthusiasm, is evident in a letter in which the loyal
husband breaks in to spoil the syntax of one of Oleander's
finest flights: "You wish me an enthusiast I am one and
so is Emilia one of the predominant characters of this class
of people is always a very warm admiration of the other sex
and I am besides my own wife, the most fervent devotee of two
of the finest women in the world " In one of the letters he
quotes from Tristram Shandy. In the passage above one sus-
pects that the Presbyterian parson in America was deliberately
affecting the manner and style of Yorick.
It would be pleasant to gather more flowers from this senti-
mental garden, but we must turn to one or two of the letters that
tell us something of Smith's more serious opinions. Blair was
suspect with the church because he dared to hold the doctrine
that all men would eventually be saved a thoroughly un-
Calvinistic tenet. In 1788 he had caused some scandal and had
met some unspecified opposition at Neshaminy, the seat of the
famous Log College. The episode aroused all Smith's scorn for
a type of clergyman for whom, as an enlightened philosopher,
he had no sympathy.
"The good Elders of that polished & enlightened people
were afraid it seems, to hear a man preach, whom they chari-
tably judged to be a heretic, because they supposed that he
believed the divine goodness to be universal ; such folly cannot
affect your peace of mind which is established on other prin-
ciples than the opinions of such people It cannot affect your
character & reputation, because wisdom cannot be measured
by ignorance yet, it must give a truly good man some concern
to see such examples of the meanness and weakness of the
human mind, in a country & age in which one would think
there were sufficient lights to deliver it from such illiberal
darkness . . . such mistaken zealots hate more heartily for God's
sake. . . . One lesson we may learn from it as you justly remark
FRIEND OF RATIONAL LIBERTY 99
is not to obtrude information as light on those who cannot re-
ceive it. If you bring moles and bats into the sun you only offend
them and encrease their darkness/'
He defends Socrates for not disturbing the opinions and re-
ligion of the people, and continues in a passage that shows how
completely the philosophe and how little the orthodox Presby-
terian he could be : "A man may hold opinions either as certain
or dubious: And if they differ from the opinions of too great
a majority of the people, prudence & duty require him to hold
them in silence. It is a great fault in this case to have too much
candour, or too good an opinion of the world. Candour may be
dangerous, when discovered even to the most liberal and wise.
... Be patient, as I know you are & let the world have its own
course. Truth held in secret has its pleasures/*
We shall never know all the truths that Smith held in secret.
He wrote to Mrs. Blair a long defense of the doctrine of trans-
migration, not as a truth that he held but as an opinion worthy
of examination. And he invited his cousin to send him an ac-
count of his reasons for opposing damnation, promising to
examine them dispassionately and as a philosopher. There can
be little doubt that he entertained other thoughts of a heterodox
nature and examined them with a philosophical skepticism that
would not have commended him to many of his fellow clergy-
men. Indeed, as we shall see, the bats and moles succeeded in
bringing much of his work to nothing.
In 1788 he wrote to Blair to thank him for a religious allegory
that his cousin had sent him during a recent severe illness. No
more characteristic utterance has come down to us. "Religion is
more charming & consolatory for being associated with the pic-
tures of taste and in death I would chuse to think elegantly of
God and divine things. Heaven and piety are degraded by the
coarse & dark representations of vulgar minds. But the glow of
imagination & the charm of taste does some faint honor to the
most beautiful object in the universe & makes the path of duty
more delightful here." In this passage the eighteenth-century
man of taste and the Presbyterian divine are blended in a manner
that, however usual it may have been among the clergy of the
Church of England, must have been rare among the clergy in
America.
Smith's sermons also sustained his reputation as a literary
IOO SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH
personage. Many of them were preached as baccalaureate ser-
mons at the college; others were delivered as far afield as
Boston. Some were published separately, and collections were
brought out in America in 1799, in England in 1801, and again
in America in 1821. Sermons were widely read in that period,
and Smith's certainly spread his reputation throughout the coun-
try. In general they deal with matters of practical morality and
duty, avoid the intricacies of theology, and recommend, in the
language of the age, a rational piety. In the preface to the
London edition, Smith states that he had imitated the " fervour
and sacred eloquence' ' of the French preachers of the seven-
teenth century and that he had ''studied to unite the simplicity
that becomes the pulpit, with a portion of that elegance which is
now so loudly demanded in every kind of writing." There are
many enthusiastic descriptions of his eloquence in the pulpit
and of the beauty of his voice and declamation, qualities that
led to his choice as the orator to pronounce in the State House
in Trenton the panegyric on Washington when that great man
died. Smith was flattered to learn from Mrs. Blair that a lady
in Bordentown had described one of his sermons as "a colon-
nade of marble so finely polished that the eye or touch could not
discover the least flaw." His correctness of style, however, was
not necessarily a recommendation to all the devout. Maclean
reports and denies the story that ascribed to John Blair Smith
the rebuke: "Brother Sam, you don't preach Jesus Christ and
Him crucified, but Sam Smith and him dignified."
Archibald Alexander has left us a vivid picture of this
versatile vice-president at the height of his power. Alexander
was present at the General Assembly which was held in Phila-
delphia in 1791. The moderator was old Robert Smith of
Pequea, dressed in old-fashioned ministerial clothes and a long
wig, and so toothless as to be almost incomprehensible when
he preached the principal sermon, the very image of uncouth
and rural piety. "Dr. Witherspoon remained only two or three
days, after which Dr. Samuel Stanhope Smith took his place.
When he entered the house, I did not observe him, but hap-
pening to turn my head I saw a person whom I must still con-
sider the most elegant I ever saw. The beauty of his counte-
nance, the clear and vivid complexion, the symmetry of his
form the exquisite finish of his dress, were such as to strike
SAM ILL STANHOPE SMITH
From \ Painting By Charles B Lawrence
FRIEND OF RATIONAL LIBERTY IOI
the beholder at first sight. The thought never occurred to me
that he was a clergyman, and I supposed him to be some gen-
tleman of Philadelphia, who had dropped in to hear the debate.
I ought to have mentioned that Dr. Witherspoon was as plain
an old man as I ever saw, and as free from any assumption of
dignity."
Young Alexander did not know that he was looking at the
first of a long line of Princeton gentlemen.
When Witherspoon died in 1794, his son-in-law was the
obvious candidate and became the unanimous choice for the
presidency. He took the helm with energy and address. The
financial condition of the college was still extremely unsatisfac-
tory ; Nassau Hall was not yet completely restored ; the faculty
was small. In terms of the resources of the country, especially
of the Presbyterians, Smith must be reckoned a remarkably
successful raiser of money. His first step was to persuade the
state legislature to give a grant to the college. The petition
which he wrote shows his broad views on education and his
foresight into Princeton's destiny as an educational force. Re-
minding the legislators of the past greatness of the institution,
the document goes on to point out Princeton's strategic situa-
tion, which could make the college "the principal resort of
youth from the Hudson to Georgia/'
"It would be to the interest, and would certainly be no in-
considerable glory to New Jersey, to be the fountain of edu-
cation to so large a portion of America, and to furnish those
states with their Legislators and their Judges, and be able to
infuse her spirit into the politics and councils of our country.
Circumscribed as she is in territory, and deprived in a great
degree of commerce, she might notwithstanding, by a wise
and well-directed system of education, be respected as the
enlightened head of the greatest confederation in the world.
. . . We have a claim upon the wisdom and policy of the State,
which requires it to provide the most effectual means for en-
lightening its own citizens, and to embrace the opportunity of
acquiring an influence and an ascendency in the councils of the
Union, which it can not otherwise obtain than by attracting their
IO2 SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH
fc
youth and educating their statesmen. . . . The poor ought to have
access to the fountains of knowledge as well as the wealthy;
they have equal talents from nature, and are equally capable
of becoming enlightened patriots, legislators, and instructors.
. . . Enlightened citizens are most obedient to the laws, as well
as most capable of promoting the public interest; and a general
diffusion of knowledge among our citizens will be the glory and
felicity of the State."
Six hundred pounds a year for three years much less than
was hoped for was granted, with the specification that the
money be spent on the library, the buildings, and the purchase
of philosophical apparatus. In return the college agreed to elect
some non-Presbyterians to the board of trustees. Smith was
disappointed at the smallness of the grant but he was unable
to secure further aid from the state. The action was so unpopular
that, it is said, no legislators who voted for the bill were re-
turned at the next election.
Smith was eager to improve the teaching of science at the
college for, despite his interest in literature, he was well aware
of progress in the natural sciences and was determined that
Princeton should lead the country in that field. The board set
aside $1,200 of the state's money for the purchase of scientific
equipment, and the president at once set about securing as much
as he could from abroad. His great contribution to the curric-
ulum was the establishing of a professorship of chemistry, a
subject not then taught in America except in medical schools.
Smith brought John Maclean from Glasgow to take the pro-
fessorship and in 1799 he succeeded in persuading the trustees
to make a revolutionary innovation. Students were admitted to
read in science alone; in short, in 1799 the College of New
Jersey took its first step toward the granting of a Bachelor of
Science degree. Actually, men who read in science were given
certificates, not diplomas, unless they could show proficiency in
the learned languages. The course, however, was by no means
narrow : it included geography, logic, mathematics, natural and
moral philosophy, astronomy, chemistry, and belles-lettres. De-
spite the fact that this arrangement was abandoned in 1809,
Smith should be remembered as the founder of the study of the
physical sciences at Princeton no small distinction in view
FRIEND OF RATIONAL LIBERTY IO3
of the eminence of its science faculties during the last half-
century.
Under Smith's energetic and wise leadership, the college was
expanding and becoming more stable. But in March 1802 dis-
aster overwhelmed it once more. A fire that began about noon
swept through Nassau Hall, and within a short time only
the walls remained. Three thousand books, a part of the scien-
tific equipment obtained with so much difficulty, and all of the
student living quarters were destroyed. Everything that had
been done since 1779 was undone in a few terrible hours. The
president and trustees accepted the theory that the fire had been
deliberately set. The account that Smith wrote to his friend,
Dr. Jedidiah Morse of Boston, gives a most sensational version
of the tragic event : "It is one effect of those irreligious &
demoralizing principles which are tearing the bonds of society
assunder, & threatening in the end to overturn our country.
This institution has been singularly obnoxious to men of these
sentiments in the states to the South of New England. You
have heard me speak of a young man who, about two years ago,
attempted to excite an insurrection on Jacobinical & anti-reli-
gious principles. Since his expulsion, a small sect has still been
left in the College, which has lately obtained some augmenta-
tion of numbers, from the progress of passions very natural
to the human heart, & from the encouragement given to such
opinions by the state of public morals. I am told that hostility
to religion & moral order has been among their chief char-
acteristics."
Smith was always deeply hostile to the more extreme aspects
of the French Revolution. His letters and his lectures fre-
quently express his horror of the anti-religious element in
French radical thought. Tom Paine and Jefferson were equally
obnoxious to him. There may have been a secret Jacobinical
society at Princeton, and it may conceivably have burned
down the college, but a defective flue seems at this date a
reasonable explanation of the catastrophe, and it is not neces-
sary to accept the president's theory of a great "Red" plot.
The courage and promptness with which the trustees met the
crisis are altogether admirable. An appeal to the public for
funds was printed over Smith's signature. The students were
housed somehow, and instruction was carried on in private
IO4 SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH
houses. The president made his famous tour of the Southern
states soliciting funds. Friends at Harvard contributed about
$5,000 in books and money, and Smith was able to raise in all
about $100,000, considerably more money than the college had
ever had. Books were contributed from as far away as Great
Britain. Not only was Nassau Hall rapidly rebuilt, but Stan-
hope Hall (named for Smith) and its companion building at
the opposite end of Nassau Hall were erected. Philip Freneau
celebrated the rebuilding of the college in a poem addressed
to Smith :
Nassau revived, from thence in time proceed
Chiefs, who shall empire sway, or legions lead,
Who, warm'd with all that philosophic glow
Which Greece, or Rome, or reasoning powers bestow,
Shall to mankind the friends and guardians be,
Shall make them virtuous, and preserve them free.
By 1806 the college had recovered from the blow and was in a
more flourishing state than it had ever been. Four professors,
besides the president, and two tutors and a French teacher made
up the staff, and about two hundred students were in attendance.
In many ways this was a personal triumph for Smith. There
can be no doubt that his great prestige with the public and
among the alumni aided his energetic and prompt efforts to
collect funds. Since 1796 he had been in the habit of asking
alumni not to give but to raise funds in their communities to
meet various needs of the college, and thus he had instilled
practical loyalty. Philip Lindsley, a graduate of Pequea Acad-
emy, who came to Princeton about this time, sent to Sprague's
Annals of the American Pulpit his recollections of the impact
, of Smith's personality on the students. "From childhood, we
had never heard the Doctor's name pronounced but with praise.
We came to the College, therefore, prepared to look up to him
as the great man of the age. His superior talents and accom-
plishments, as preacher, scholar, philosopher, and writer were
everywhere spoken of and acknowledged. And we never doubted
that he possessed all the attributes and graces which could
dignify and adorn the high station which he filled."
He goes on to say that acquaintance brought no reaction
from this high expectation. Smith was always perfect, well bred,
FRIEND OF RATIONAL LIBERTY IO5
courteous, and dignified. It seemed natural to him "to put proper
words in proper places. " And his manner in teaching was
simple, unostentatious, and forgetful of self. An anonymous
manuscript owned by the University Library and written, ap-
parently about 1868 by a member of the class of 1806, bears
much the same testimony. Smith was a legendary figure, antici-
pated eagerly by those who were to come, and remembered
with respect by those who had been under him.
In the days of Washington, Smith's reputation had extended
to the White House. Writing to George Washington Parke
Custis on July 23, 1797, President Washington had spoken
in the following high terms of Princeton as opposed to Yale:
". . . With regard to Mr. Z. Lewis, I only meant that no sug-
gestions of his, if he had proceeded to give them, were to be
interposed to the course pointed out by Dr. Smith, or suffered
to weaken your confidence therein. Mr. Lewis was educated in
Yale College, and, as is natural, may be prejudiced in favor
of the mode pursued at that seminary ; but no college has turned
out better scholars or more estimable characters than Nassau.
Nor is there anyone whose president is thought more capable
to direct a proper system of education than Dr. Smith. . . ."
The rebuilding of the college was to be Smith's last great
achievement. An unfortunate result of the fire was an ill-judged
increase in the severity of discipline. From this time on, until
Smith resigned, the trustees took the lead in the actual admin-
istration of the college and the disciplining of the students.
Petty restrictions were imposed and Sunday was turned into an
especially dreary day by virtue of the increased emphasis placed
on religious instruction. The result might have been foreseen :
in 1807 riots and disorders broke out when the faculty attempted
to discipline a few popular men. The matter was taken very
seriously by the trustees, who suspended about 125 students.
Although many of them were eventually reinstated, the memory
of that stern action lingered, and more disorders occurred in
1809 with, it was thought, an attempt to burn Nassau Hall
again. It is difficult to believe that Smith was in sympathy with
all that the trustees directed him to do, but he was powerless.
Students became fewer and various faculty members resigned.
The College of New Jersey entered upon a long period of
decline.
IO6 SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH
Moreover, Smith himself began to come under fire from
outside. As early as 1804 complaints were being sent from the
South to Ashbel Green (then a trustee and later Smith's suc-
cessor) averring that in his lectures the president was teaching
that polygamy is not a sin in itself, but merely a custom ex-
plainable in terms of social history. The most dire consequences
for the country were predicted as a result of this attitude, and a
thoroughly unpleasant scheme was entered upon. Green, a
trustee and a prominent clergyman, wrote to a tutor at the col-
lege, directing him to secure secretly a copy of Smith's lectures
and to send it to him in Philadelphia. Green admitted that he
and Smith were no longer on good terms, and gave this estrange-
ment as an excuse for not moving openly in the matter. Green's
correspondent, though admitting himself obligated to Smith,
wrote of humbling the president's pride and vanity by forcing
him to retract. It is not known that Smith was ever aware of this
move, for nothing came of it, but it is indicative of the spirit of
hostility to the liberal president which was growing up within
the church itself. In 1808 Archibald Alexander expressed before
the General Assembly his doubts as to the fitness of "our col-
leges and universities" (meaning, of course, the College of New
Jersey) to prepare men for the ministry. His objection rested
on the "great extension of the physical sciences, and the taste
and fashion of the age/' a palpable thrust at Smith's scientific
program, and probably one reason for the fact that the certificate
in natural sciences was abolished in 1809. The final blow came
when, in 1812, Dr. John Maclean was forced by ecclesiastical
pressure to resign as professor of chemistry. The correspond-
ence carried on between the Reverend Dr. Samuel Miller, a
trustee, and Ashbel Green in regard to establishing a theological
seminary at Princeton or elsewhere, fragmentary though it is,
bespeaks the distrust of Smith and the disapproval of the college
that seem to have been current among the conservative forces
in the Presbyterian Church. Thus, hampered by a meddlesome
and petty board of trustees and beset by enemies within the
church, Smith was forced to see much of his life's work crumble
during his last years in office.
His health had been gradually failing since about 1809. His
normal administrative and ministerial duties were heavy enough,
but one wonders how a man who was never free from tubercu-
FRIEND OF RATIONAL LIBERTY 107
losis carried on at all in view of the heavy teaching duties im-
posed on him. No modern college president would undertake or
could hope to survive the schedule that fell to the president in
those days. He met the senior class four times and the junior
class three times a week, teaching them belles-lettres, criticism,
composition, moral philosophy, and the principles of revealed
religion. He met the sophomore class daily, and the theological
students on three evenings of each week.
The trustees had felt for some time that a change was de-
sirable, and in 1810, the year in which Smith received his LL.D.
from Harvard, they began to raise a fund of $10,000 for the
support of a vice-president. In 1812 the crisis came. A com-
mittee of the trustees waited on the president and had a f i ank
talk with him. As a result Smith immediately submitted his
resignation. He also informed the trustees that he owed $2,000
and wished to sell his library in order to liquidate the debt, and he
requested that he be granted a house and an annuity of $1,250
for the rest of his life. The trustees accepted his resignation
and acceded to his requests, paying $1,500 for the books, many
of which had belonged to Witherspoon.
An account of the commencement of September 30, 1812,
in the Charleston (S.C.) Times has been preserved. Smith was
too ill to do anything but present the diplomas. "The dignified
and impressive manner in which this his last official act was
done, and the sympathy which his situation excited in the
hearts of the polite and learned audience rendered the whole
scene greatly interesting and solemn/' And the article included
the inevitable remark : "Few men have done more to increase
the literary reputation of our country." No doubt such expres-
sions of esteem consoled the aging president, and confirmed in
him the opinion that he expressed in 1817, when he presented
the college with his published works: "I have served, since
the year 1779, with a zeal, diligence, and fidelity which now in
the closing moments of life, I can look back upon with entire
self-approbation."
As a teacher, Smith exerted an influence on the minds of the
generations who came to Nassau Hall during his thirty-three
IO8 SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH
years as professor of moral philosophy. His published lectures
survive and merit brief comment here. Moral philosophy, as
opposed to science or natural philosophy, included the study of
what we call today psychology, ethics, metaphysics, economics,
aesthetics, law, international law, and politics in short, the
whole nature and duty of man. Though of necessity not detailed
or thorough, these lectures did tend to round out and enlarge
the rather narrow education given in the ancient languages,
mathematics, and science. They sought to inculcate a view of
man and of society which would send students out prepared to
assume their moral and political responsibilities in society.
Smith's lectures, though conventional in many respects, are
interesting. He was not a man to refrain from using the lecture
platform to teach his own ideas, and as we have seen he was an
original and courageous thinker. Politically they express the
president's conservatism : he recommended the reading of the
Federalist, opposed universal suffrage and equalitarianism, and
what he regarded as JefTersonian demagoguery. But he was a
sound agrarian, fearing the accumulation of great wealth and
power in the hands of a few; was an advocate of universal and
democratic education ; and warned against what has become an
American vice the belief that customs can be altered by law.
The lecture on marriage that caused scandal in the South,
shows Smith to have been something of a relativist in ethics.
His studies in anthropology had acquainted him with the variety
of mores existing among different peoples and had inclined him
away from a rigid application of Biblical ethics to every moral
question. Indeed, his historical sense enabled him to see some
of the laws of Moses as the products of social conditions among
the Jewish race rather than as divine edicts. He professed to
discover no law of nature against polygamy and (while stating
that monogamy is most favorable to the interests of society and is
a wise and integral part of Christian ethics) he found economic
reasons to justify polygamy among the ancient Jews and the
Arabs, and maintained that it was neither harmful to the intel-
lectual and physical health of a people nor indicative of vice
and depravity in the human heart. This is mild enough doctrine,
but it was regarded as the prelude to debauchery in the republic.
More interesting is Smith's lecture on slavery and the Negro,
especially when it is recalled that many of his students were from
FRIEND OF RATIONAL LIBERTY JO9
slave-holding families. He hated slavery with all his being, and
recognized that the institution was an anomaly in our republic.
Living in a period when men's minds had not yet been inflamed
by the virulence of abolitionist propaganda, he could discuss the
issue philosophically and dispassionately. Having lived and
traveled widely in the South, he had been able to observe the
institution at first hand. Though convinced that the state of
slavery was a degradation to all human beings, he admitted that
the form of slavery practiced in the South was mild and humane.
Moreover, he maintained that a sudden and violent emancipa-
tion might be accompanied by a worse evil than servitude and
that just laws could not compel masters to give up their property
and impoverish themselves for the convenience of any one class
of men.
His solution was wise, humane, and just. Each slave should
be given a portion of ground to cultivate as his own and to earn
thereby money to purchase his freedom. This would promote
energy and thrift and would put some measure of responsibility
on each man to earn freedom if he wished it. A part of the public
domain was to be set aside for f reedmen, who would emigrate to
their homesteads when their freedom had been purchased. A
date was to be set after which all children of slaves would be
born free. And, "to obliterate those wide distinctions which are
now created by diversity of complexion, and which might be
improved by prejudice, or intrigue, to nourish sentiments
of mutual hostility, every white man who should marry a black
woman, and every white woman who should marry a black man,
and reside within the territory, might be entitled to a double
portion of land."
Slavery in a republic, Smith foresaw, would produce many
moral and political difficulties. His scheme would not give gen-
eral satisfaction today, but in 1790 it conceivably could have
commended itself by its moderation and fairness to both slave-
owner and slave. It grew out of his conviction, expressed in the
Essay, that the human race is essentially one, and that the
denial of that unity strikes at the very foundations of society
and morality. But it was characterized by his innate conserva-
tism, his eighteenth-century respect for property, and his habit-
ual tendency toward moderation.
The last seven years of the doctor's life were apparently
IIO SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH
serene. He busied himself with revising for publication his
sermons and his lectures, and in cultivating the friendship of
younger men who came to the college and to the seminary.
Ashbel Green long remembered the stately figure of the dignified
old man in his velvet cap coming slowly down the church aisle
on Sundays. Frederick Beasley, of the class of 1797, provost
of the University of Pennsylvania, has left us an impression
of the old age of the man who had loomed so large in the
imagination of his students: "His face, though covered with
the marks of decay, still revealed something of what it had
been, and sometimes, under an exciting influence, there would
seem to come forth, as if from a slumber, that beautiful and
living radiance which had illuminated his features, and made
him irresistably attractive in his better days "
On August 21, 1819, he died of a stroke. Circumstances
and men had conspired against him in the fulfillment of many
of his aims as president of Princeton, but his wise and well-
directed system of education had brought no inconsiderable
glory to him, to the college, and to the nation.
Henry Lee [1756-1819]
"LIGHT-HORSE HARRY"
BY PHILIP A. CROWL
A!
s every school boy knows, Virginia gave more
than a proportionate share of her sons to the
..cause of the American Revolution and to the
even more difficult task of nurturing the young Republic; so
if the name of Henry Lee has been somewhat obscured by time,
this is partly at least because he was overshadowed by his more
illustrious compatriots. He was not so great a soldier as Wash-
ington, nor nearly so great a statesman as Jefferson, Madison,
Marshall, or a score of other Virginians. Yet the romantic
and tragic story of his life is not without interest to the student
of American history. He was one of the most spectacular and
successful military figures of the American Revolution and his
later career is significant because of his peripheral connection
with the great events of his lifetime.
In a sense the real significance of Lee's life lies not in his
personal successes but in his failures. It is the familiar story of
the ex-soldier who cannot or will not adjust himself to the
more complex responsibilities of civilian life. In his youth
he rode to war, did brave and shining deeds, and brought
home many laurels. At the age of twenty-three he was "Light-
Horse Harry Lee," the dashing cavalryman, hero to his country-
men, scourge of the redcoats and the loyalists. At the war's end,
he came back to Virginia, to a young, beautiful, and well-
dowered wife, a considerable fortune of his own, and the high
esteem of his neighbors. For a short time he dabbled success-
fully in local politics, helped to win ratification of the Federal
Constitution, became governor of his state and later its repre-
sentative in Congress, but nowhere in civilian life could he
find the personal satisfaction or the public recognition which
his military exploits had given him. Politically unsophisticated
and vacillating, he showed no great talent for, or interest in,
statesmanship. Financially innocent and irresponsible, his many
optimistic schemes for amassing a private fortune ended in
112 HENRY LEE
total failure. At heart he remained a soldier, but there was no
war to fight in, nor even a large peacetime army to occupy his
energies.
This sense of frustration, coupled with poor health, financial
disaster and other personal misfortune, finally brought him to
bankruptcy, disgrace, and despair. In one last pathetic effort
to regain some of his military glory he took command of a little
band of intransigent Baltimore Federalists whose opposition
to the War of 1812 had evoked the wrath of a lynch-minded
mob of local democrats. Once again he failed. Overwhelmed by
the rioters, beaten and mutilated, his health beyond repair, Lee
spent the remainder of his life in voluntary exile in the West
Indies and returned to America only to die, dramatically enough,
at the home of Nathanael Greene, companion-in-arms of his
happier days. He left three legacies: the famous phrase "first
in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen,"
which he spoke in Washington's funeral oration ; a volume of
Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United
States, which is a valuable source of information for students
of the American Revolution; and a son, his youngest, Robert
E. Lee, who would win the high military honors his father had
so hopelessly coveted.
Henry Lee was born January 29, 1756, at "Leesylvania," the
manor-house which his father (also Henry) had built about five
years before in Prince William County, Virginia. His mother
was Lucy Grymes Lee, who, according to a rather dubious tra-
dition, was the childhood sweetheart of George Washington.
His grandfather was the first Henry Lee, of Lee Hall, West-
moreland County; the wealthy and eminent Lees of "Stratford"
were his cousins, and he was connected by family ties to most
of the reigning aristocracy of Northern Virginia the Corbins,
the Ludwells, the Grymes, the Tayloes, the Elands and the
Fairfaxes.
Almost nothing is known about his childhood life and educa-
tion, but at the age of fourteen his father enrolled him in the
College of New Jersey which young Lee entered in the fall of
1770. The college, then but twenty- four years old, was under
the vigorous superintendence of Doctor Witherspoon, recently
come from Scotland. The curriculum consisted mainly of the
"LIGHT-HORSE HARRY" 113
classics, mathematics, and natural philosophy, with much of the
students' time devoted to syllogistic disputations in Latin and
English. Lee proved to be an apt pupil and by his sophomore
year was awarded first prize for translating English into Latin
and third prize for general excellence in Greek and Latin.
Among his contemporaries were Aaron Burr, James Madison,
Philip Freneau and Hugh Henry Brackenridge, with all of
whom he was to have important, if not always friendly, con-
nections during the remainder of his life. He was a member,
at different times, of both the American Whig and the Clio-
sophic societies.
Princeton in the early 1770*5 was deeply agitated by the
exciting disputes then current between Parliament and the
colonists, and the undergraduates joined in the fracas with
enthusiasm. In 1766 the much-hated Stamp Act had been
repealed, but was immediately followed by the Declaratory
Act insisting that Parliament had the right to make laws of
any nature binding on the colonies with or without their con-
sent. In 1 767 came the Townshend Acts imposing taxes on tea,
glass, wine, paper and other articles, coupled with stringent
police measures to compel the colonists to obedience. Retalia-
tion took the form of non-importation agreements, but these
were difficult to enforce in the face of the dwindling profits
of the merchants who had signed them.
The students of Princeton were unconcerned by any such
materialistic considerations. In the summer of Lee's first year
at college, word came that the shopkeepers of New York had
written to their fellows in Philadelphia suggesting joint action
to end the boycott of British goods. Fired with patriotic in-
dignation, the whole student body turned out in a mass demon-
stration against this apostasy. The offending letter was burned
before Nassau Hall by the village hangman while the students
marched in academic gowns and the college bell tolled funereally.
The following autumn, commencement ceremonies were de-
voted chiefly to a consideration of the current crisis. Frederick
Frelinghuysen delivered an oration on "The Utility of Amer-
ican Manufactures" before an audience of undergraduates
righteously clothed only in American cloth. The next year
when James Madison's class graduated, a metrical dialogue
entitled "The Rising Glory of America" was declaimed by
114 HENRY LEE
Hugh Henry Brackenridge who had co-authored the piece with
Philip Freneau.
After 1770, however, when the home government had re-
pealed all the Townshend duties except that on tea, agitation
in the colonies dwindled, the solid front against the mother
country was badly cracked, and the non-importation agreement
collapsed. But in 1773, Parliament rekindled the fire by passing
the famous Tea Act which brought in its train the Boston
Tea Party and the subsequent retaliatory measures against the
insurgent colonists. In the same year Henry Lee was graduated
from Princeton. He had earlier planned to sail for London after
graduation and read law at the Middle Temple. In view of the
renewed altercations between the colonies and Great Britain he
returned instead to Virginia.
There he watched the interesting course of events which led
his countrymen into secession from the British Empire. In 1776,
at the age of twenty, he received a commission as captain from
Governor Patrick Henry and joined a cavalry corps organized
by his cousin, Theodorick Bland. This was known as the Vir-
ginia Light Dragoons and as captain of the Fifth Troop of the
First Regiment, Henry Lee rode away to war and fame.
When Lee and his troop of horse arrived in New Jersey
in the spring of 1777 the most critical stage in the fortunes
of the rebellious Americans had been passed. The preceding
year, General Washington had evacuated New York, but in
spite of military reverses and wholesale desertions he had con-
ducted an orderly retreat across New Jersey and had avoided
decisive defeat at the hands of Lord Howe's vastly superior
forces. Recrossing the Delaware on the famous Christmas
Eve of 1776, he surprised the Hessians in Trenton, took a
thousand prisoners with almost no loss to his own forces, and
four days later completed the occupation of that strategic
city. Following this success with another surprise blow against
the British at Princeton on January 3, 1777, he forced Corn-
wallis to withdraw completely from western New Jersey, set
up headquarters on the heights of Morristown and waited for
Howe, now confined in New York, to take the initiative. The
"LIGHT-HORSE HARRY" 115
British general hesitated. His primary objective was the seizure
of Philadelphia, the rebel capital. The shortest route was over-
land through New Jersey but the way was blocked by Washing-
ton's forces, whose numbers Howe greatly overestimated. The
other possible approach was by sea, by way either of Delaware
Bay or Chesapeake Bay. Howe chose the latter. On July 23, the
British Fleet carrying fourteen thousand troops cleared Sandy
Hook, and in a little more than a month the army disembarked
near Elkton, Maryland.
As soon as Washington received word of Howe's appearance
in the Chesapeake he gathered all his available forces (now
numbering about eight thousand) and quickly set about putting
himself between Philadelphia and the enemy. This was the
campaign in which young Captain Lee had his first taste of
battle.
As the British advanced northward through Delaware, Wash-
ington waited to dispute their passage at Chadds Ford on Brandy-
wine Creek a few miles north of Wilmington. The British, how-
ever, successfully flanked the American right, routed one whole
division of the American army, and proceeded towards Phila-
delphia. Lee was in this battle, though he served without distinc-
tion. Five days later, at Warren's Tavern on Lancaster Pike,
where Washington was essaying another delaying action, the
young cavalry captain was sent on an expedition which almost
cost him his life. In company with Lieutenant Colonel Alexander
Hamilton and a small troop of horse he was ordered to destroy
several flour mills which lay directly on the enemy's line of ap-
proach. The mills were on the bank of the Schuylkill. Before the
mission could be completed the small American force was sur-
prised by a superior body of British cavalry. Hamilton, with
some difficulty, managed to escape across the river by boat.
His success was due partly to the skill with which Lee tempo-
rarily diverted the redcoats' attention and attracted most of
their fire to himself and the other horsemen in his party. He
finally managed to make his way to safety across a nearby
bridge, although not before the van of the enemy's troops had
emptied their carbines and pistols in his direction at a distance
of no more than twelve paces. In his Memoirs, he attributed his
seemingly miraculous escape to the inevitable inaccuracy of
gunfire from horseback.
Il6 HENRY LEE
During the remainder of the fall and winter of 1777-1778,
Lee and his troop were occupied in minor foraging expeditions,
reconnaissance work, and harassing the enemy's outposts around
Philadelphia. After the ill-advised attack on Germantown, on
October 4, Washington retired ten miles north to White Marsh
and later set up winter headquarters at Valley Forge. On Oc-
tober 23, Lee was sent by Joseph Reed, president of the Conti-
nental Congress, to reconnoitre Fort Mercer on the Jersey side
of the Delaware. In December he was carrying on foraging ex-
peditions around Haddonfield, New Jersey. In January he was
back again in Pennsylvania where he set up headquarters at
Scott's Farm near Mount Joy. There he operated with such
success that Howe dispatched a body of 200 horse from Phila-
delphia to abate this nuisance by capturing the leader. With
only eight men to assist him, Lee barricaded himself within
the house and put up such a stout resistance that the British
withdrew with nothing to show for their pains but three of their
own men killed and several wounded.
The resourcefulness displayed by Lee in these various minor
expeditions gained him considerable renown, and in March of
1778 Washington invited him to become one of his aides-de-
camp. This would have meant immediate promotion to a
lieutenant colonelcy, but the offer was rejected for reasons that
are clearly indicative of the young soldier's character and tem-
perament.
"Permit me to premise," he wrote, "that I am wedded to
my sword, and that my secondary object in the present war,
is military reputation. To have possessed a post about your
Excellency's person is certainly the first recommendation I can
bear to posterity, affords a field for military instruction, would
lead me into an intimate acquaintance with the politics of the
states, and might present more immediate opportunities of
manifesting my high respect and warm attachment for your
Excellency's character and person. . . . On the contrary I
possess a most affectionate friendship for my soldiers, a fra-
ternal love for the two officers who have served with me, a
zeal for the honor of the Cavalry, and an opinion that I should
render no real service to your Excellency's arms. . . ."
It is interesting to speculate on what change might have been
wrought in Lee's future career had he accepted Washington's
HENRY LEE
From A Painting By James Henmg, After Stuart
"LIGHT-HORSE HARRY" 117
offer. He would probably not have had the same opportunities
for the spectacular military glory that he later won but he might
have gained valuable experience in the more complex problems
of grand strategy, in organization and administration, and in
army politics. At least, in the company of such men as Alexander
Hamilton, Henry Laurens, James McHenry, and the rest of
Washington's official family he might have acquired some of the
political and financial sophistication which in subsequent years
he so noticeably lacked. For the talents which Lee developed
in the field as commander of a small troop of horse had little
bearing on the problems which faced him and his generation
after the war was ended.
June of 1778 saw the end of British occupation of Phila-
delphia. Sir Henry Clinton had replaced Lord Howe as com-
manding general and soon ordered an evacuation of the capital
city. As the British moved across New Jersey, Washington
pushed on in pursuit and at Monmouth engaged the enemy in
an indecisive action. Henry Lee, now a Major and already
famous as "Light-Horse Harry/' was still in Philadelphia when
the Battle of Monmouth was fought, but by September he was
once again with the main body of the Army which had encamped
at various positions along the west bank of the Hudson, keeping
watch on Clinton who had retired to New York. The following
June he was reconnoitering Stony Point and sending General
Washington precise information concerning the strength of the
fortifications there, on the basis of which plans were drawn
up for an attack. The fortress was taken in July by a body of
troops under General Anthony Wayne. Major Lee's cavalry
troop were present but played no signal part in the operation.
In August fifty infantrymen under Captain Allen McLane
were added to the corps and shortly afterwards Lee made an
opportunity for himself to win a spectacular victory and the of-
ficial recognition which he had long coveted. He persuaded
Washington to authorize his corps to attack the British fort at
Paulus Hook, the peninsula between the Hackensack and
Hudson rivers, now the site of Jersey City. The plan of attack
originated entirely with Lee. According to the testimony of
Lord Sterling, he "had gaind [sic] a perfect knowledge of the
country, of all the paths leading to the works, of the Situation
& shape of all the different forts, redoubts, and Blockhouses.
Il8 HENRY LEE
. . ." It was for these reasons that Washington felt justified
in assigning command of the mission to an officer so junior in
rank.
The peninsula on which the British fort was located was sur-
rounded on all sides by water, the only practical access being
across the small creek to the north of the enclosure. The only
bridge was well guarded by the British, and to have attempted
crossing there would have destroyed the element of surprise
necessary to the success of the undertaking. Lee met the diffi-
culty by laying down a temporary bridge farther up the creek.
Early in the morning of August 19, his corps, increased for the
occasion by three hundred infantrymen detached from the
Virginia Line, crossed over to the Hook and took the British
garrison completely by surprise. He had received instructions
from Washington not to try to hold the fort, so with a hundred
and fifty British and Hessian prisoners, he beat a successful
retreat into safe quarters before any sizeable body of enemy
troops could be mustered out to cut him off.
The enterprise was daring; it had been wisely planned, and
skillfully executed. Washington and Lafayette were both ful-
some in their praise. The reaction in other quarters was not
so enthusiastic. Officers of the Virginia Line objected to Lord
Sterling that "their feelings as Officers and Gentlemen have
been greatly hurt" because command of the expedition had been
given to a cavalryman who was junior in date of rank to the
Line's own Major Clark. They also alleged that Lee had mis-
represented to Major Clark the date of his own commission
in order to retain command. The fact that Major Lee was an
officer in the Dragoons, said the petitioners, "renders the injury
more pointed, & Strikes deep at the reputations of every officer
of Infantry. . . ."
Neither Lord Sterling nor Washington was impressed by this
petulant display of interservice jealousy, but civilian authorities
proved more responsive. Lee's first reward for his enterprise was
arrest by order of Congress on charges that the retreat had been
disorderly and precipitate and that he had exceeded his authority
on the field.
Washington intervened in his behalf, and the military court
of inquiry acquitted him on all counts. Subsequently Congress
made amends by voting a subsidy of $15,000 to be divided
"LIGHT-HORSE HARRY" 119
among the enlisted men and a medal of gold to be struck in his
honor. Yet the court martial left a bitter taste. It was the first of
several occurrences which were to convince Light-Horse Harry
that he was the victim of his country's ingratitude.
For the remainder of the year 1779 the operations in the
North of both the British and American armies remained at a
stalemate. Clinton stayed bottled up in New York and was even
compelled to withdraw the British garrison at Newport to
strengthen his defenses. Washington maintained a tight cordon
around the city extending from Danbury, Connecticut, to Eliza-
bethtown, New Jersey, and although there were a few minor
skirmishes, neither side felt strong enough to undertake a
decisive engagement. Thereafter, the chief scene of operations
shifted to the South.
Late in December of 1779 Cornwallis and Clinton set sail
with over seven thousand men to capture the city of Charleston,
South Carolina. Congress against Washington's protests dis-
patched Gates, "the hero of Saratoga/' to repair the damage, but
in August of 1780 his army was overwhelmed by the British
near Camden and for the remainder of the year, British control
of South Carolina and Georgia was practically uncontested.
Washington's views finally prevailed over Congress and
Nathanael Greene was sent to Charlottesville late in 1780 to
take over command of the patriot army from the ineffective
Gates. With him went Light-Horse Harry Lee, now a Lieuten-
ant Colonel and in command of his own independent unit Lee's
"partisan corps," a body of about 280 mixed cavalrymen and
infantrymen, later known as Lee's Legion.
Early in January of 1781, Lee was sent out to meet with
Francis Marion, then in hiding in the swamps of South Caro-
lina. These two hit upon a scheme for seizing the British garri-
son at Georgetown, below the mouth of the Pedee. The plan
contemplated a surprise amphibious operation against the town
followed by a combined cavalry-infantry attack from the rear.
Boats carrying two divisions of infantry were floated down the
Pedee to initiate the assault. Somehow the expedition miscar-
ried. The amphibious troops landed without opposition, and Lee
I2O HENRY LEE
and Marion with their cavalry and militia moved in promptly
to support them ; but the British soldiers, at the first word of the
attack, beat a strategic retreat out of the town proper into
the fort and there their position was unassailable. Lee and
Marion with inferior forces had to withdraw leaving the forti-
fications undamaged.
After this unsuccessful engagement, Lee was ordered to re-
port to General Greene's headquarters at Guilford Court House
in North Carolina. Cornwallis's army was approaching from (he
south and Greene had determined to retreat across the Dan
River. Lee's Legion was temporarily incorporated into a light
corps under command of Colonel Otho Holland Williams and
was charged with the duty of covering Greene's retreat, fighting
a delaying action if necessary to retard Cornwall is's advance
until the main body of the American troops had escaped by ferry
across the Dan. As it happened, the Legion encountered no
serious opposition On the morning of February TO, they over-
took, killed or captured a small detachment of British cavalry.
No other action was engaged in. By February 13, Greene had
crossed the river and late the same day Lee joined him.
Five days later Greene, reinforced by new additions of
militia, recrossed the Dan, determined to challenge Cornwallis
to a pitched battle or drive him out of North Carolina. For three
weeks Lee and his Legion were on constant duty, scouting the
enemy's positions and foraging for supplies. Early in March
they came across a body of four hundred Loyalist militia on
their way to join forces with the British Colonel Tarleton.
Posing as a Loyalist, Lee approached the unsuspecting militia-
men with gestures of friendship. As soon as he had his cavalry-
men deployed into a favorable position, the deception was
dropped, swords were unsheathed and a general massacre begun.
About ninety Loyalists were killed, many more wounded and
the remainder routed
Meanwhile General Greene had set up headquarters again at
Guifford Court House, hoping to draw the British into a
decisive battle. Lee joined him there on March 14 and on the
next day was assigned to support the left flank of Greene's army
against which the British were approaching in full force. The
spirited attack made by the Legion against the enemy was not
sufficient to keep the main body of untrained militia from re-
"LIGHT-HORSE HARRY" 121
treating under fire, but Lee pressed on in spite of the militia's
defection and inflicted severe casualties on the Hessian regiment
opposite him in the line. The Hessians lost about seventy-five
men as against three killed in Lee's corps. Nevertheless Lee soon
found himself isolated from the main body of the American
army which was by now beating a hasty retreat north of Guil-
ford Court House. Although he had gained a local victory, his
position was untenable so he, too, ordered withdrawal and
rejoined General Greene. In spite of their yielding the field, the
Battle of Guilford Court House was not a strategic defeat for
the Americans; Greene had lost some four hundred men, but
Cornwallis's forces had been so riddled that he was forced to
withdraw to the coast to get the support of the British fleet at
Wilmington.
At this juncture Greene was faced with two alternatives. He
could retire to Virginia, where Cormvallis was himself undoubt-
edly bound, and attempt to defend that critical area from the
ravages of the British army. Or he could abandon Cornwallis
to his own devices and proceed with his army into South Caro-
lina in an attempt to smash the enemy garrisons there and free
the whole lower South from British domination. Greene chose
the latter plan of strategy. Probably the persuasions of Henry
Lee were as responsible as any other single factor for the de-
cision. At least Lee in writing his memoirs took credit for
originating the plan and his chief biographer, Thomas Boyd, as
well as most of the other historians of the Revolution, support
his claim. Lee suggested, in his own words : "that, leaving Corn-
wallis to act as he might choose, the army should be led back
into South Carolina; that the main body should move upon
Camden, while the light corps, taking a lower direction, and
joining Brigadier Marion, should break down all intermediate
posts, completely demolishing communication between Camden
and Ninety-Six with Charleston ; and thus placing the British
force in South Carolina in a triangle, Camden and Ninety-Six
forming the base, insulated as to co-operation, and
supplies, even of provision, for any length of
If Cornwallis then should follow Greene i
Lee went on to argue, he would be far in the
Greene would have the support of Sumter,
which would rectify his present numerical i
122 HENRY LEE
other hand Cornwallis should retire to Virginia, as Lee sus-
pected he would, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia
would fall by default into the hands of the Southern Army
which could then join forces with Washington and bottle up
Cornwallis in Virginia.
Greene yielded to these arguments and, early in April, decided
to march against Camden. Colonel Lee was meanwhile ordered
to join Marion who was still in hiding in the South Carolina
swamps, and conduct a campaign against the series of forts near
the junction of the Wateree and Santee rivers which formed the
apex of the triangle of British fortifications of which Camden
and Ninety-Six comprised the base.
Joining forces with Marion, the Legion first marched against
Fort Watson on the west bank of the Wateree just above the
point where it flows into the Santee. They were before the fort
by April 15. One of Lee's subordinates, Captain Mayham of
South Carolina, conceived the plan of building a high log tower
above the enemy stockade from which musket fire could be
rained down on their heads. Lee then cut off the fort's water
supply, and against these odds her commanding officer quickly
surrendered.
The next object of attack was Fort Motte, a few miles from
Watson, on the south bank of the Congaree. This post was the
principal depot of the convoys between Charleston and Camden
and consisted of a large mansion house surrounded by a ditch
and a barricade. On May 7, meanwhile, Greene had attacked
Lord Rawdon at Camden and been defeated, although the Brit-
ish shortly thereafter evacuated the fort. Lee and Marion were
therefore forced to work at double time to complete the opera-
tion before Rawdon could march to the garrison's relief. On the
loth, Lee ordered the house to be fired by means of flaming
arrows directed against its roof. Unable to control the flames
because of heavy artillery fire, the British commander quickly
surrendered and with his garrison of some hundred and fifty
soldiers was paroled to Charleston.
The Legion then set out for Fort Granby several miles up the
Congaree, while Marion and his troops were ordered southeast
down the Santee to take Georgetown. Granby surrendered with
little opposition and the three hundred and sixty troops of the
garrison were taken prisoner. "Thus" [as Lee wrote in his
"LIGHT-HORSE HARRY" 123
Memoirs] "in less than one month since General Greene ap-
peared before Camden, he had compelled the British general to
evacuate that important post, forced the submission of all inter-
mediate posts, and was now upon the banks of the Congaree, in
the heart of South Carolina, ready to advance upon Ninety Six
(the only remaining fortress in the state, besides Charleston, in
the enemy's possession) and to detach against Augusta, in
Georgia; comprehending in this decisive effort, the completion
of the deliverance of the two lost states, except the fortified
towns of Charleston and Savannah safe, because the enemy
ruled at sea."
Lee's part in this campaign was to attack the two forts which
controlled Augusta Fort Grierson and Fort Cornwallis. By
mid-May he was in Georgia, but decided to delay the expedition
against Augusta long enough to enable him first to take Fort
Galphin, twelve miles down the Savannah River, where the
annual royal present to the neighboring Cherokee tribes was
then stored. Lee and his men arrived before the fort on the
morning of May 21 He detached a small body of dismounted
dragoons to lure the British out of the stockade. The ruse
worked. The enemy mistook the dragoons for a band of Georgia
militia and undertook pursuit As soon as they were well clear of
the fortifications, Lee's cavalry fell on them and gained an easy
victory.
From Galphin Lee moved immediately up the river to Au-
gusta. Fort Grierson, the outer fortification manned by loyalist
militia, was easily taken and most of the defenders massacred
by the Georgia militia who had joined the attack. Fort Corn-
wallis was a more difficult problem. It was manned by British
regulars and its defenses were sturdy Once again a log parapet
was constructed, overlooking the walls of the stockade, from
which heavy artillery fire could be directed against the defenders,
but not until June 5 did Colonel Browne, the British commander,
agree to surrender to the overwhelming superiority of the
American Forces.
Meanwhile, Greene had marched on to Ninety-Six, the last of
the great inland fortresses in the Southern Department, which
lay due north of Augusta a few miles below the Saluda River. It
was a well fortified position surrounded by a high wall, a ditch,
and an obstruction- fence of stakes and timber. In front of the
124 HENRY LEE
stockade stood a star-shaped fortress also encircled by a wall
and outer ditch. The fort was defended by five hundred and
fifty men under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Cruger, a
loyalist from New York. Greene had commenced operations on
May 22 and Lee and his Legion arrived on the scene June 8 Not
until June 18 was a frontal attack made on the fortifications.
The Legion, placed in the right column of Greene's army, led the
advance on the outer star-shaped fortress. Under severe artillery
fire they made their way over the outer ditch and across the
parapet into the fort itself, forcing the British to \\ithdraw into
the main stockade. Lee was ready to press the attack into the
stockade but, before he could do so, received orders from Gen-
eral Greene to retire. Greene had discovered that Lord Rawdon
was fast approaching with a superior force and decided to
withdraw from the area and abandon the seige. The Legion
accompanied Greene's army to Charlotte, North Carolina. Raw-
don pursued them for a short while, then turned back to Ninety-
Six which he decided to evacuate in favor of Charlestown.
For the 'next two months Greene's army rested in the High
Hills of Santee while the Legion roved the area in search of
supplies and British scouting parties Late in August, Colonel
Stuart, who had replaced Lord Rawdon in command of the
British forces at Charlestown, moved to Eutaw Springs where
Greene decided to attack him There, on September 8, was fought
the last important battle in the Southern Department. Lee's
infantry were stationed on the right flank of the first line. At the
first charge of the British regulars, the state militia, who were
on either side, fell back as usual in a disorderly rout, leaving
Lee's troops without support. Greene then ordered his second
line forward to support Lee, and this time the British gave
ground under their opponents 1 devastating fire. The Americans
pursued them into the village, but there the attack was delayed
as the troops broke up to loot Colonel Stuart's encampment, and
Greene unfortunately ordered a diversion against a fortified
brick house. This gave the enemy time to reform their ranks.
Lee's infantry were involved in the fruitless attack against the
house which soon had to be abandoned as too costly in lives.
Meanwhile, the main body of his cavalry had been detached to
join Lt. Col. William Washington and with only one small
section of cavalry left under his command Lee could not par-
"LIGHT-HORSE HARRY" 125
ticipate in the ensuing battle which took place when the British
returned in strength to drive Greene's forces out of 'the town
and regain their encampment.
Again, however, the Americans were able to claim a strategic
if not a tactical victory. British losses were almost 700 against
a total of some 400 casualties for the rebels. Stuart was forced
to retreat to Charleston, where the British remained cooped up
for the duration of the war.
General Greene retired to the High Hills of Santee where
he learned that Washington was besieging Lord Cornwallis at
Yorktown. He prepared a long report for the Commander in
Chief on the military situation in the South and selected Lee to
deliver it to Washington. Thus it occurred that Lee was at
Yorktown in time to witness Cornwallis's surrender. He re-
joined Greene in November and, after leading a fruitless ex-
pedition against St. John's Island, decided to quit the army.
His motives were mixed. Prominent among them was an ob-
vious dissatisfaction with the rewards he had gained after
seven years of fighting. He had felt slighted at Yorktown as
others, with less real fighting to their credit, were awarded the
most honorable laurels. He grew bitter and fell into a curious
lassitude. He apologized to General Greene for his "imbecility
of mind." Finally, disgusted with himself and with the army,
he resigned in January of 1782, taking with him General
Greene's acknowledgment that he was "more indebted to this
officer than to any other for the advantages gained over the
enemy, in the operations of the last campaign."
Thus at the age of twenty-six Henry Lee terminated one of the
most brilliant military careers in the annals of the American
Revolution. The decision was a mistake, and in later years as
personal misfortunes piled higher on him, he was frequently
overwhelmed with acute nostalgia for the exciting adventures
and satisfying companionships of his youth. He tried repeatedly
but without success to rejoin the military, the only field of en-
deavor in which he felt at home. In 1 792 he was anxious to be
appointed to the place of General St. Clair, then engaged in
Indian warfare in the Northwest Territory. "War suits me as
126 HENRY LEE
well as peace," he wrote to his cousin Senator Richard Henry
Lee. Washington chose Anthony Wayne for the position, and
when it was hinted to Lee that Knox had blocked his appoint-
ment because of his modest rank, he complained to Washington
that the President had been "deceived and abused by those in
whom you place the highest confidence. . . . You cannot be a
stranger to the extreme disgust which the late appointment to
the command of the army excited among all orders in this
state."
The following year he wrote again to Washington, "Bred to
arms, I have always since my domestic calamity wished for a
return to my profession as the best resort for my mind in its
affliction." There was a revolution in France and Lee had writ-
ten to Lafayette and to Francesco de Miranda inquiring what
rank he might acquire if he accepted a commission in the
Republican army. Miranda hinted that he might expect a
major general's commission Lee was tempted to sail for France,
but Washington advised against it and he refrained, though
not without regret.
In 1798 when the exposure of the X.Y.Z. affair brought the
United States to the brink of war with France, President Adams
appointed Lee a Brigadier General in the new army that was to
defend the nation against the forces of the Directory, but the
war scare collapsed in spite of the Federalist Party's agitation
for "millions for defence but not one cent for tribute/' Again
in 1794 when the farmers of Western Pennsylvania openly
rebelled against Alexander Hamilton's whiskey excise, Lee was
called back to the service, as commanding general of the Federal
forces, but the rebels dispersed and there was no shooting.
Finally, in 1807, when the British sloop Leopard fired on the
American frigate Chesapeake a few miles off Hampton Roads,
Lee gratefully received from his enemy Thomas Jefferson
a commission as Major General in the army summoned to
frighten His Majesty's government into reparations and re-
traction. But Jefferson decided that an Embargo Act would
bring England to her knees sooner than a declaration of war
and Lee was once again thwarted in his desire to return to the
profession of his youth. Not until the unfortunate Baltimore
riot of 1812 did he take up arms again.
In 1782 when he resigned from Greene's army, Henry Lee's
"LIGHT-HORSE HARRY" 127
prospects in civilian life were not dim. He could return to his
father's estate in Virginia with more than a fair chance of
carving a successful career for himself as a planter or in local
and national politics. A more important factor affecting his
decision was his recent engagement to Matilda Lee of Stratford
on the Potomac. She was his second cousin, the daughter of the
late Philip Ludwell Lee, and niece to the three most prominent
Lees of their day, Richard Henry, Francis Lightfoot, and
Arthur. On the division of her father's estate, Matilda acquired
extensive plantations in Loudon county near the Great Falls,
islands on the upper Potomac, and large tracts in Westmoreland,
including the manor-house of Stratford with numerous slaves
and other property rights. Less than a month after his return
from South Carolina, Henry and Matilda Lee were married
and he became master of Stratford Matilda died in 1790 after
several years of serious illness Of their four children, only two
survived, Lucy Gryines and Henry Lee, the fourth of that
name who because of alleged scandalous conduct, won the op-
probrious title of "Black-Horse Harry." Three years after his
first wife's death, Lee was married again, to Ann Hill Carter
of Shirley on the James Of this union, six children were born,
the next to the last being Robert Edward, later to become com-
manding general of the Confederate Army.
As was customary for a man of his possessions and family
connections, Lee, soon after his return from the army, entered
politics. He was never remarkably successful as a public serv-
ant and at no time did he show great talent for even the
cruder forms of political maneuvering. Although he occasionally
displayed some insight into the controversial issues facing his
generation, he seemed incapable of hewing to a single line of
policy. His habitual inconsistency indicates either an instability
of temperament, or what is more likely, ignorance of the true
nature of current economic and political problems and of the
party conflict which they evoked. Generally he was a Federalist,
yet he registered opposition to Hamilton's financial system
which was an essential ingredient, if not the sine qua non of the
Federalists' program.
In 1789, Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury proposed
that the Federal Government assume liability for all the debts
incurred by the states before the adoption of the Constitution,
128 HENRY LEE
with the condition that these obligations be paid off at par. The
scheme was designed to enhance the credit standing of the
country and also to woo the support of the great and powerful
class of speculators who had, since the Revolution, bought up
most of the outstanding state securities at greatly depreciated
prices. Lee was bitter in his opposition to the plan. He wrote
to James Madison :
"It is no doubt political to establish this system where the
govt. is in the hands of one or a few, because it draws to the
support of the govt. a numerous class of the people from the
strongest motives of human action, viz. self interest . . . where
the people arc really free & mean to be so, where the govt. is
absolutely their own property, political tricks of this kind are
abominable & dangerous in their effects if they succeed com-
pletely national debts will be encouraged by \N anton expeditions,
wars & useless expenses. This encrease of the people's burthen,
will in exact proportion increase the operation & influence of the
principle & the one will continue to cherish the other, until the
weight of oppression shall force people to recur to first prin-
ciples, or the government shall have changed hands."
These lines might have been written by Jefferson or John
Taylor of Caroline or any other of the republican-minded
Anti-Federalists who were so outspoken in their opposition
to Hamilton's financial schemes In the same vein Lee later
wrote to Hamilton himself concerning the Bank of the United
States, another bulwark of the Federalist program:
"I could say much to you with respect to the Bank & many
other congressional measures springing from the funding sys-
tem, but I prefer silence to discussion when no good can result
therefrom. Would to God you had never been the father of the
measure in its present shape for I augur ill of its effect on you
personally as well as on the public prosperity."
Lee's attitude toward the French Revolution is also difficult
to comprehend. In 1793 he was eager to fight in behalf of the
new Republic, yet in the same year, in a conversation with
Citizen Genet, he stoutly defended Washington's neutrality
proclamation which the French government regarded as inim-
ical to her interests, if not a flat violation of the Treaty of 1778.
In 1791 he had shown his heterodoxy by joining with Madi-
son in a scheme to set up a newspaper in opposition to Fenno's
"LIGHT-HORSE HARRY" 129
Gazette of the United States, a rabid pro-Hamilton sheet. He
and Madison persuaded their former Princeton contemporary,
Philip Freneau, to found a paper called The National Gazette
which in a short time became the leading mouthpiece for an-
tagonists of Washington's administration. Yet, not many years
later, Lee was championing the Alien and Sedition Acts and
even urging that Congress perpetuate these laws which were
chiefly framed to suppress Freneau's Gazette and other papers
of the same stripe.
Inconsistency was not the only quality which militated against
Lee's success as a politician. Equally important was his inability
or unwillingness to gauge the trends of public opinion and
adapt himself accordingly. During Washington's administra-
tions, when the Federalist Party was riding high, Lee was
never admitted into their inner councils. His opposition to the
funding plan and to the bank made him suspect in spite of Wash-
ington's personal esteem. The Anti-Federalists, too, were re-
luctant to welcome this political chameleon and after a personal
quarrel with Jefferson he became definitely persona non grata.
During Adams' administration, Lee, with his typical propensity
for backing the wrong horse, attached himself firmly to the
Federalist party as it degenerated into an impotent faction of
obstructionists.
His first experience in public life had set the tone for Lee's
later career. In the fall of 1785 he was elected to represent Vir-
ginia in Congress. The main issue before that body was the
question of a proposed treaty with Spain to permit Americans
free navigation of the Mississippi. The year before, John Jay
had been commissioned by Congress to conclude an agreement
with the Spanish minister, Don Diego de Gardoqui, and was
instructed "particularly to stipulate the right of the United
States to their territorial bounds, and the free Navigation of the
Mississippi, from the source to the Ocean. " These instructions
were written at the insistence of the Southern and Western
representatives and were opposed by Northern commercial in-
terests. Jay sided with these interests, and it soon became ob-
vious that he was not pressing the project with much enthusiasm.
When Lee departed for Philadelphia he took with him explicit
130 HENRY LEE
instructions from the Virginia Assembly to demand free naviga-
tion as the sine qua non of any commercial treaty which should
be drawn up with Spain. Privately he sided with Washington in
his belief that opening the Mississippi might weaken the na-
tion's unity and prove disadvantageous, in any case, to tidewater
Virginia. Although he at no time violated his instructions, his
attitude was well known and in the next session of the Assembly
his candidacy for congress was rejected. Madison was elected
in his place a humiliation for Lee which almost brought about
a complete estrangement between these two Princetonians.
Meanwhile developments in the country at large grew more
and more disturbing to the friends of property and "sound gov-
ernment/' Without any effective taxing power Congress was
unable to establish a stable currency or credit system. American
merchants and traders suffered greatly in the absence of a
national tariff and commercial policy. Creditors groaned as state
after state passed paper money laws, legal tender acts, laws
delaying execution on debts. In Massachusetts in the fall of
1786 an army of debt-ridden farmers banded together under
Captain Daniel Shays to force the legislature to stay judgments
on debts and taxes. They attacked the federal arsenal at Spring-
field and although easily driven back and dispersed, their revolt
sent a thrill of horror among the conservative property-holding
classes.
Henry Lee was in full accord with the sentiment entertained
by the majority of the large property holders that the only
answer to this threatened anarchy was a strong central govern-
ment. In September, he wrote to Washington :
"The period seems to be fast approaching when the people
of these U. States must determine to establish a permanent
capable government or submit to the horrors of anarchy and
licentiousness. . . . Weak and feeble governments are not ade-
quate to resist such high handed offences. It is not then strange
that the sober part of mankind will continue to prefer this in-
certitude & precariousness, because their jealousys are alarmed
and their envy encited when they see the officers of the Nation
possessing that power which is indispensably necessary to chas-
tise vice and reward virtue. But thus it is and thus it has been,
and from hence it follows that almost every nation we read of
"LIGHT-HORSE HARRY" 131
have drank deep of the misery which flows from despotism or
licentiousness The happy medium is difficult to practice."
A "happy medium" between despotism and licentiousness
was hit upon by the members of the Federal Convention which
met the following year in Philadelphia to frame the new Consti-
tution. Lee was considered in the nomination of the Virginia
delegation, but not chosen, probably because of his unortho-
doxy on the Mississippi question. But he was selected to repre-
sent Prince William County in the convention which met in
Richmond in June of 1788 to consider ratification of the new
document. By the time the Virginia delegates assembled, eight
states of the required nine had already ratified unconditionally.
New Hampshire's convention, which was sitting at the same
time as Virginia's, agreed to unconditional ratification a few
days before the Richmond convention finally reached a decision.
Yet Virginia was, in a sense, the keystone to the whole federal
structure and without her assent the Constitution would have
had small chance of success. Opposition in the state was led by
Patrick Henry and George Mason, who proposed that the Con-
stitution be returned to a second convention for further amend-
ments before being ratified. Henry even openly advocated the
forming of a separate confederation of the Southern states
to counterbalance the growing strength of the commercial
North.
Lee took an active part in the debates and argued with con-
siderable skill in behalf of the proposed federal government. He
challenged Henry to "go to our seaports; let him see our com-
merce languishing not an American bottom to be seen ; let him
ask the price of land, and of produce, in different parts of the
country: to what cause shall we ascribe the very low price of
these? To what cause are we to attribute the decrease of popula-
tion and industry and the impossibility of employing our trades-
men and mechanics ? . . . These, sir, are owing to the imbecility
of the Confederation; to that defective system which can never
make us happy at home or respected abroad. . . ."
He replied also to Henry's attack on the proposed federal
standing army. As an ex-soldier who had suffered more than
once from the disorganization and poor discipline of the Revo-
lutionary militia he denounced that system of defense with au-
thority and conviction :
132 HENRY LEE
"I have seen incontrovertible evidence that militia cannot
always be relied upon. I could enumerate many instances, but
one will suffice. Let the gentleman recollect the action at Guil-
ford. The American regular troops behaved there with the most
gallant intrepidity. What did the militia do ? The greatest num-
ber of them fled."
Virginia ratified by a small majority on June 24, and in the
following year the new federal government was established
with Washington at its head. Lee, unlike most of the prominent
Virginia Federalists, was offered no position of importance
within the official family. He was elected to Congress for only a
single term in 1799. In 1798 he was chosen Governor of the
state and served m that office for three years. It was during his
last year as Governor that he was appointed by Washington to
command the Federal Army in an expedition against the
"whiskey boys" of Western Pennsylvania.
In 1793 Hamilton had proposed and Congress had accepted
a law imposing an excise tax on distilled spirits in order more
easily to pay off state and federal security holders under the
Funding Act. The burden of the tax fell most heavily on the
farmers of the trans- Allegheny region who depended on
whiskey not only as a cheap medicine for the drudgery of their
lives but also as almost their sole source of cash and as a con-
venient means of exchange in a barter economy. When the
excisemen appeared beyond the mountains, they were handled
roughly, and in short order a full-scale rebellion against federal
authority was in the making. President Washington with Ham-
ilton's encouragement determined at once to nip the buckskin
sedition in the bud and make a dramatic showing of federal
supremacy. He ordered out the state militias of New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia and gathered together
an army of about 13,000 troops to march against the centers of
the rebellion in western Pennsylvania. Of these militia men,
3,300 were from Virginia, and Governor Lee, with a commis-
sion of Major General, was put in command. By mid-October,
the Virginia troops were at Bedford, Pennsylvania, where Lee
met Washington and Hamilton. The President then returned
to the national capital, leaving General Lee in command of the
whole expedition. The "watermelon army" proceeded to Union-
town and to Pittsburgh, but by the time they arrived the re-
133
bellion had collapsed, the insurgents had vanished, and the in-
vasion forces were made to feel somewhat ridiculous. General
Lee comported himself with sense and moderation, but it was
with considerable relief that he returned to Virginia in Decem-
ber and washed his hands of the whole enterprise. His final
military adventure had turned into a fiasco.
If state and national politics offered few rewards to Henry
Lee, his numerous financial enterprises were even more disap-
pointing. Shortly after the Revolution he bought up five hundred
acres of land at the Great Falls of the Potomac, hoping to estab-
lish a town there. The site was considered highly desirable
because of the Potomac Company's projected canal which would
eventually connect the tidewater with the trans-appalachian
west. But Lee's projected town and the Potomac Company's
canal were doomed to the same failure. The Company hired one
David Rumsey of Maryland to superintend the project, and
his decision to deepen the channel of the river rather than dig
a canal beside it proved disastrous and the Company failed.
Meanwhile, Lee was encountering unexpected legal difficulties.
The lands he had purchased at the Great Falls had originally
belonged to the Fairfax estate. The quitrents accruing to the
estate had been sequestered by the Virginia Assembly during the
Revolution, but with the establishment of federal courts by the
Constitution, the Fairfax heirs reappeared to enforce their
claims to all back payments. The litigation dragged on for years.
Lee, not having good title to his land and not being able to
satisfy the claims of the Fairfax heirs for back quitrents, was
also unable to profit from his investment as he had hoped by
selling town sites. Finally he determined to mortgage all of his
interest in his wife's property at Stratford in order to get full
possession of the Great Falls property. Matilda, knowing his
speculative tendencies, dissuaded him and furthermore induced
him to sign a deed putting Stratford in trust for his eldest son
and therefore beyond his own disposal.
Still he continued to speculate in land and always without
profit. In company with the Marshalls, James and John (later
Chief Justice) he bought up 160,000 acres of the Fairfax estate
134 HENRY LEE
in the Northern Neck. Robert Morris agreed to advance pay-
ment for the purchase, but when it became due in 1796, the
financier of the Revolution had himself become so involved in
debt that he was unable to make the advance, and furthermore
persuaded Lee to lend him $40,000 which was later defaulted.
Meanwhile Lee had borrowed considerable sums from several
of his friends foolish enough to make the loans. A debt of some
six thousand dollars to General Washington fell due in Decem-
ber 1795 but could not be paid. Two months later, Lee offered
in part payment seven hundred dollars in cash and seventy
shares of Bank Stock which he estimated to be worth $2,800.
He overestimated their value and when Washington discovered
his loss he was righteously indignant.
By 1800, Robert Morris had gone to debtor's prison and the
$40,000 which Lee had lent him was irretrievably lost. He com-
menced selling off parcels of his land, but not enough was left
to satisfy his creditors. Court actions threatened him on all
sides. Charles Carter, fully aware of his son-in-law's financial
irresponsibility, excluded him from any future control over
his wife's inheritance by putting Ann Hill's share in trust.
Finally the sheriffs became so insistent that the doors of Strat-
ford were barred with iron chains to prevent the law from
entering and serving process.
At last in 1809, no longer able to evade the sheriffs, Lee was
summoned to court to answer suit for $5,400. Being completely
without funds or sufficient attachable property, he was confined
to jail at the county seat of Westmoreland. Later in the same
year he was imprisoned in Spotsylvania for the same reason.
There, he began his Memoirs of the War in the Southern De-
partment of the United States. He hoped the book would enjoy
a sale large enough to relieve him of some of his financial diffi-
culties, but the public was indifferent.
In the spring of 1810 he was released. By his own previous
deed, title to Stratford was to pass that year to his son Henry.
With the few funds his wife still had on hand, Lee and his
younger children moved to a small house in Alexandria. There
he completed the Memoirs and quietly raged against the machi-
nations of the Republican Party then in power.
He was opposed to Madison's declaration of war against
England in 1812. So too was young Alexander Contee Hanson,
"LIGHT-HORSE HARRY" 135
ardent Baltimore Federalist and editor of the Baltimore Federal
Republican. Hanson had attacked the war violently in his edito-
rials and for his pains had been driven out of Baltimore by a mob
of rowdy patriots. He set up presses in Georgetown, continued
his tirades against the government, and, in late July, returned to
his native city to take up business. Lee determined to visit him
there and express his sympathy. Shortly after he arrived at
Hanson's office, the house was besieged by a mob of local demo-
crats. Light-Horse Harry, hero of so many Revolutionary cam-
paigns, agreed to command the defense of the establishment.
He sent out for additional arms, barricaded the windows and
doors, and disposed his little band of twenty-seven in much the
same manner that he had disposed his men at Scott's Farm in
Pennsylvania thirty-four years before. The mob grew. Firing
broke out on both sides. One man in the crowd was killed.
Finally, on the morning of July 28, the militia appeared in force
and the beleaguered party agreed to surrender to the law on the
promise of safe conduct. They were lodged in the local gaol in
the hope that passions would cool, but the troops were with-
drawn and by night the crowd had gathered in sufficient strength
to force the doors. Lee and his friends were overwhelmed,
beaten, and mutilated. Lee himself was covered with knife
wounds. One of the rioters tried to cut off his nose, and another
poured hot candle grease in his eyes. His companions in arms
were dealt with in like fashion and one of them, General Lingan,
was killed. The town physicians were eventually able to recover
the unconscious bodies and remove them to safety across the
Pennsylvania line.
When at last he returned to Alexandria, Lee was almost a
total invalid, crippled and disfigured. The following winter his
former fellow-collegian at Princeton, President Madison, of-
fered him a commission as Major General in the Federal Army,
but he was too feeble to accept. Finally he begged Monroe to
arrange passage for him on a British ship bound for the Bar-
bados where he hoped he might recover his health. Monroe and
Madison complied and in the spring of 1813, Lee sailed from
Alexandria.
He remained in the West Indies until February 1819 when,
considering himself sufficiently recovered, he boarded a packet
bound from Nassau to Virginia. After the ship set sail he fell
136 HENRY LEE
sick again and asked the captain to put him off at Dungeness in
South Carolina, the estate of the late Nathanael Greene. There
he was hospitably received by General Greene's daughter, Mrs.
Shaw, who ministered to him until he died on March 25. He
was buried in the vault at Dungeness beside the body of his
former general. No member of his family was present nor did
any visit the grave until more than forty years later. In 1862,
General Robert E. Lee, inspecting coast defenses in the area,
paid a visit of filial homage to the father he had scarcely known.
After the war, the retired Confederate general acknowledged
his father's military greatness in the short biography which he
wrote for the third (1870) edition of the Memoirs. There
Henry Lee is depicted only as the spirited and gallant cavalry
leader who commanded the respect of Washington, Lafayette,
and Greene. Concerning his father's faults, Robert E. Lee main-
tained a respectful silence.
The mecurial character which made Henry Lee so fine a
Revolutionary soldier was too complex to permit him a place
in the hearts of his countrymen. He stood among the first in
war, but could not hold that rank in peace.
James Madison [1751-1836]
BY DOUGLASS ADAIR
E
i VERY college tends to bask in the reflected glory
of its famous alumni ; alma mater naturally
likes to hint that she is in large part responsi-
ble for the successful careers of her most illustrious sons. Yet
any college which parades its distinguished graduates as proof
that it is a nursery of genius lays itself open to a jibe made long
ago by Adam Smith. That learned Scot complained in 1776 that
educational institutions were always taking undeserved credit
for the development of the talents of their students; a young
man who starts his higher education "at seventeen or eighteen,
and returns home at one and twenty, returns three or four years
older . . . and at that age it is very difficult not to improve a good
deal in three or four years."
It is safe to say, though, that for eighteen-year-old James
Madison, junior, who entered Princeton six years before Smith
made his cynical remark, the undergraduate years laid the
foundation he was to build on all his days. And since James
Madison became one of the chief architects of our political de-
mocracy, the "Father of the American Constitution," and Pres-
ident of our nation during its formative stage, his sojourn at
Nassau Hall under the tutelage of the learned Dr. John With-
erspoon was of incalculable importance to the destiny of the
United States.
James Madison, junior, born March 5 (O.S.), 1751, was the
oldest child of the leading family of Orange County, Virginia.
His ancestors, planters in both the paternal and maternal lines,
ranked, by his own description, "among the respectable though
not the most opulent Class" of Virginia society. Orange County
lies in the Piedmont between the fall-line and the Blue Ridge.
The chief families of this region, the Madisons and the Jeffer-
sons, while a little less wealthy and aristocratic than the great
Tidewater families, demanded, and were accorded, the deference
due to members of an established ruling class. The Madisons'
wealth and political power were solidly based. James Madison,
senior, was a justice of the peace and a vestryman in the
138 JAMES MADISON
Anglican church offices held only by men of ranking social
position ; he owned more than a hundred slaves, and the culti-
vated portion of the Montpelier plantation alone amounted to
nearly two thousand acres. At birth, James junior entered a
station of life that provided him with the values and opportuni-
ties esteemed most desirable by current Virginia standards.
Besides inherited wealth and position he had an advantage far
more important a first-rate brain. Although neither his father,
nor his brothers, nor any other members of his immediate fam-
ily or their descendants ever exhibited any particular intellectual
distinction, James junior, through the mysterious alchemy of the
genes, was endowed with a capacity for extraordinary intellec-
tual accomplishment. Writing his autobiography at the age of
eighty, he recorded as the first important incident of his life his
intellectual delight in the discovery of The Spectator He was
then eleven years old. The memory of the profound impact of
that literary classic led him to argue, seventy years later, that
from "his own experience" it was a book "peculiarly adapted to
inculcate just sentiments, an appetite for knowledge, and a taste
for the improvement of the mind and manners " Madison, of
course, put the cart before the horse. His natural "appetite for
knowledge" was the cause of his excitement over The Spectator,
not an effect of it.
Madison's failure to become conscious until he was nearly
twelve of his own "taste" for mental improvement reveals the
somewhat restricted intellectual opportunities available even to
a member of the Virginia aristocracy in the eighteenth century.
Though born for "the intellectual pleasures of the closet," Mad-
ison grew up in an open-air society where guns and horses, dogs
and stirrup-cups were treated as far more important adjuncts of
life than books. It was a gracious way of living but it was also
profoundly frustrating for the development of the mind and
spirit. A description of colonial Virginia by George Tucker,
which was read and approved by Madison himself, speaks of the
gentry as generally "open handed and open hearted; fond of
society, indulging in all its pleasures, and practicing all its cour-
tesies. But these social virtues also occasionally ran into the
kindred vices of love of show, haughtiness, sensuality and
many of the wealthier class were to be seen seeking relief from
the vacuity of idleness not merely in the allowable pleasures of
JAMES MADISON 139
the chase and the turf, but in the debasing ones of cock-fighting,
gaming, and drinking. Literature was neglected, or cultivated, by
the small number . . . rather as an accomplishment and mark of
distinction than for the substantial benefits it confers." When
existence is as easy and pleasant as it was for the first gentlemen
in the Old Dominion there can be little of the discipline necessary
for sustained creative thought ; the mind of upper-class Virginia,
like that of most aristocracies, was marked by dilettantism and
philistinism. The pleasant tyranny of social life with its endless
rounds of dinners, barbecues, fish-frys, and riding parties could
only be resisted by a major effort of the will ; and even among
the best minds of Virginia there were few who succeeded in
emancipating themselves. Add to these distractions the provin-
cial nature of life on the scattered country-seats, the lack of
scholarly companionship to provide what Madison termed
"mutual emulation and mutual inspection/' and it is under-
standable why Virginia's colonial culture was relatively so
barren of intellectual accomplishment. An individual like young
James Madison could only begin to realize his own potentialities
after he was exposed to ideas and scholarly habits alien to the
complacency of his native state.
Madison's initiation into the larger world of ideas occurred
in 1762 when he entered the school established in King and
Queen County by Donald Robertson, who had emigrated to
Virginia from Scotland some ten years earlier. Madison de-
scribes Robertson as "a man of extensive learning and a distin-
guished Teacher." Under his direction for five years the young
Virginian "studied the Latin and Greek languages, was taught
to read but not speak French, and besides Arithmetic & Geog-
raphy, made some progress in Algebra & Geometry. Miscella-
neous literature was also embraced by the plan of the School."
Within this comprehensive curriculum, Robertson's standards
of performance were strict; but Madison's affectionate refer-
ences to his teacher in later life show that this introduction to
learning was viewed as an adventure rather than a task. Here, in
the Scotch classicist's library, the first of any scope to which
young Madison had access, he began to discover for himself the
resources hidden in books.
In 1767 the boy left Robertson's school to study under a new
teacher, the Reverend Thomas Martin of New Jersey, who had
I4O JAMES MADISON
become rector of the Brick Church in Orange County. Since
there were now four Madison children of school age, Mr. Martin
agreed to live at Montpelier and supervise their lessons. Under
this arrangement the young minister tutored James for two
years. Martin had been graduated from Princeton in the class
of 1764. His praise of Nassau Hall influenced the Madisons to
select it as the place to which James should go for his higher
education. Their choice was also determined by the reputation
Princeton was rapidly acquiring under its new president, the
famous Dr. Witherspoon, as the most progressive college in
America.
2
When James Madison rode north to Princeton in the summer
of 1769, a vastly important chapter of his life began. He set out,
an eager intelligent boy, with no clear idea of what calling he
would follow or where his talents would lead him. He returned
home some three years later with his A.B. degree, a mature
young man who had fully developed the rigorous habits of
thought that were to mark him always, and to make him the
most scholarly of American statesmen At Princeton, the direc-
tion of his thinking was finally set; his mind henceforward
would be continually preoccupied with the analysis and under-
standing of society and of principles of government. The Prince-
ton years helped also to determine the goals of his thought, and
to crystallize the standards and values that were to govern his
political theorizing. At Nassau Hall he was immersed in the
liberalism of the Enlightenment, and converted to eighteenth-
century political radicalism. From then on James Madison's
theories would advance the rights and happiness of man, and his
most active efforts would serve devotedly the cause of civil and
political liberty.
The twenty-three-year-old college at Princeton which Madi-
son entered in 1769 was dominated by its new president, Dr.
Witherspoon. This learned cleric, who lived in a perpetual storm
center of ecclesiastical and political controversy, was a vigorous
rather than a profound thinker, markedly dogmatic in questions
of politics, religion, and philosophy, but always dramatic and
provocative in his dogmatism. His reputation as a great teacher
rests on the testimony of a whole generation of undergraduates
JAMES MADISON 141
whose mental life was aroused and guided by contact with him.
In the case of eighteen-year-old James Madison, Witherspoon
fully satisfied the need that most young men have in their forma-
tive years for a friend and confidant in whom they feel both
wisdom and authority. Stimulated by Witherspoon's aggressive
intellect, Madison's own mind bloomed. His joyous kindling to
the new ideas and the scholarly discipline offered him at Prince-
ton led the Virginian to carry double the normal load of classes,
finishing the required four-year course in a little over two years.
This necessitated, as Madison reports in his autobiography, "an
indiscreet experiment of the minimum of sleep and the maxi-
mum of application which the constitution would bear. The
former was reduced for some weeks to less than five hours in
the twenty-four."
Madison was awarded his A.B. degree in the autumn of 1771.
Then, as if to demonstrate that his accelerated program was the
result of a voluntary and happy absorption in learning rather
than a desire to finish his schooling quickly and return home, he
insisted on staying on at Princeton for postgraduate work.
During the winter of 1771-1772 he continued under Wither-
spoon's guidance, devoting his time to "miscellaneous studies"
including some law, and "to acquiring a slight knowledge of the
Hebrew, which was not among the regular College Studies."
It was, however, in the regular senior course labeled "Moral
Philosophy" that Madison encountered the ideas which were to
affect his life most significantly. The syllabus of Witherspoon's
lectures in this course, which has been preserved with the list
of recommended readings, explains the conversion of the young
Virginian to the philosophy of the Enlightenment.
Because the French Revolution was a great drama, many
people still think of the Enlightenment as a peculiarly French
development connected primarily with the theories and ideas of
such philosophes as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, and their
circle. Actually the Enlightenment was international in scope.
Every European nation produced its crop of philosophers More-
over, while the Parisian salons were probably the chief center of
advanced social thinking, the Scotch universities after 1750
were almost equally important in systematizing and disseminat-
ing the revolutionary ideas of the age. The great names in this
sudden flowering of the Scotch intellect are David Hume,
142 JAMES MADISON
Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, Lord Kames,
and Adam Ferguson. Their books formed the core of the moral
philosophy course at Princeton, and it was in these works treat-
ing of history, ethics, politics, economics, psychology, and
jurisprudence, always from the modern and enlightened point
of view, that Madison received his "very early and strong im-
pressions in favor of Liberty both Civil & Religious."
A description of Madison's character as a statesman written
in 1789 by Fisher Ames, when the Virginian was at the peak of
his fame, shows how thoroughly he had assimilated at Princeton
the ideals of the Scotch thinkers, and how profoundly they con-
ditioned his lifelong approach to politics. Ames, a political
opponent, noted that Madison was "well-versed in public life,
was bred to it, and has no other profession." Yet, Ames com-
plained, politics "is rather a science than a business, with him."
In this statement he paid unconscious tribute to the great Scotch
philosophers Madison studied at college.
Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, and others among the eighteenth
century philosophers had conceived the bold and noble dream of
reducing politics, economics, law, and sociology to a science.
Their great model was Newton, who had demonstrated a cen-
tury earlier that reason could discover the natural laws of the
physical universe. Now in their turn the Scots aspired to use
reason to discover the immutable laws of human nature. If the
science of man and society was once established, it would allow
reformers to reshape political, social, and economic institutions
progressively so as to bring them into harmony with nature's
divine plan, and thus create a new social order which would
guarantee liberty, equality, and happiness to all men. It was this
vision that fascinated young Madison while he studied at Nassau
Hall. It was to this dream that he dedicated his life. The schol-
arly treatises of Ferguson, Hume, and Kames, which Madison
read in Witherspoon's course, did not appear to him as dusty
academic exercises, but rather as thrilling manifestoes in a pro-
gram of political and social regeneration. To him the arguments
of the philosophers became the slogans of a fighting faith. If the
social scientist could gain, by the study of history, sure knowl-
edge of the anatomy of political society, he would be able to
diagnose and cure its ills. This high concept of the function of
the scholar-statesman was Princeton's greatest gift to James
JAMES MADISON 143
Madison. His complete acceptance of it throughout his life
made him, with Franklin and Jefferson, one of the great Amer-
ican representatives of the Enlightenment.
Princeton also gave James Madison his first opportunity for
intimacy with a congenial circle of friends. Nor was this a minor
benefit. Like many diffident individuals the Virginian, through-
out his life, showed a deep emotional need for affection. His
manner tended toward stiffness and reserve, and he did not
make friends easily. Even after he had become a famous states-
man his self-confidence was not proof against the least sus-
picion of indifference or hostility in others. The comments of
that famous Washington hostess Mrs. Margaret Bayard Smith
are revealing in this connection. Writing of a visit made to
Montpelier in 1828, she describes the brilliance of Madison's
talk, "which was a stream of history ... so rich in sentiments
and facts, so enlivened by anecdotes and epigrammatic remarks,
so frank and confidential as to opinions on men and measures,
that it had an interest and charm, which the conversation of few
men now living could have." Nevertheless, she adds: "This
entertaining, interesting, and communicative personage, had a
single stranger or indifferent person been present, would have
been mute, cold and repulsive." Only a sympathetic environment
could release Madison's deep capacity for friendship. Orange
County had not provided such an environment in his youth.
There is no record of any warm feeling toward his fellows at
Robertson's school, nor any evidence that his relations with his
brothers and numerous cousins were particularly close. When he
arrived at Princeton, however, he entered as an equal member
a brilliant group of young men whose tastes and talents were
similar to his own. In William Bradford, Philip Freneau, and
Hugh Henry Brackenridge all of whom were to distinguish
themselves in the arts and professions after leaving college
Madison discovered a trio of friends he would cherish all his life.
It was with this group, the leaders of the recently organized
American Whig Society, that Madison found what he termed
"recreation and release from business and books" while at Nas-
sau Hall. With them he took part in those "Diversions" and
"Foibles" of student life so charmingly described in the diary
of Philip Fithian who entered college during Madison's last
term. As Fithian speaks of the undergraduate practices of
144 JAMES MADISON
"giving each other names & characters ; Meeting & Shoving in
the dark entries ; Knocking at Doors & going off without enter-
ing; Strowing the entries in the night with greasy Feathers;
freezing the Bell ; Ringing it at late Hours of the Night," one
smiles at the conventionality through the centuries of student
mischief, in which young Madison presumably shared. We do
know certainly that he participated in another contemporary
custom mentioned by Fithian . the "writing witty pointed anony-
mous Papers, in Songs, Confessions, W^ls, Soliliques, Procla-
mations, Advertisements &C." 1 Preserved among the Bradford
manuscripts in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania is a series
of Whig satires in verse on the members of the rival Cliosophic
Society. Among them are several of Madison's which indicate
that, although he was a limping poet, he had already developed
the taste for ribald jokes which v\as to scandalize a British
ambassador when the Virginian was Secretary of State.
When Madison left Princeton and returned home in 1772 he
entered the unhappiest period of his life. After the exciting
years at Nassau Hall, Montpelier seemed an "obscure corner" of
the world and inexpressibly lonely Madison's letters to William
Bradford written at this time are almost pitiful in their nos-
talgia to breathe "again . . . your free air." To add to his spirit-
ual desolation his health had finally cracked from the strain of
overstudy; for a time he believed he had epilepsy and was
oppressed with a morbid expectation of an early death. Then, as
his strength slowly came back under a regimen that balanced
1 The remainder of Fithian's catalogue of undergraduate "Foibles" is worth
printing if only to round out the picture of student mores at Princeton in
Madison's day. Fithian continues: "Picking from the neighborhood now &
then a plump fat Hen or Turkey for the private entertainment of the Club.
. . . Parading bad Women, Burning Curse-John, Darting Sun-Beams upon
the Town- People, Reconnoitering Houses in the Town, & ogling Women
with the Telescope Making Squibs, & other frightful compositions with
Gun-Powder, & lighting them in the Rooms of timorous Boys, & new comers
the various methods used in naturalizing Strangers, of incivility in the
Dining Room to make them bold ; writing them sharp & threatening Letters
to make them smart ; leading them at first with long Lessons to make them
industrious And trying them by Jeers and Repartee in order to make them
choose their Companions &c &c."
JAMES MADISON 145
reading with exercise, the problem of his future career filled him
with doubts and hesitations. Madison was strongly inclined to
a profession that would provide a "decent and independent"
income as an alternative to plantation ownership for, from prin-
ciple, he wished "to depend as little as possible on the labour of
slaves/' Yet the practice of law, toward which his intellectual
interests pointed, required physical strength and ability in public
speaking which he did not possess. His voice, like Jefferson's,
was abnormally weak, and his self-assurance completely failed
him in large public gatherings. So although Madison, during
1772-1773, started "a course of reading which mingled miscel-
laneous subjects with the studies intended to qualify him for the
Bar ... he never formed any . . . determination" to become a
professional pleader. From the books he was buying for his
library and from the comments in his letters to Bradford we
rather see that his chief preoccupation at this time continued to
be public law, or, as he described it to his friend, "the principles
and modes of government [which] are too important to be dis-
regarded by an inquisitive mind."
It was at this time, too, that James Madison first translated
his enlightened principles into political practice. A group of
Baptist preachers in Orange and Culpeper counties, whose grow-
ing congregations had attracted the unfriendly notice of the
Anglicans, were prosecuted under the religious laws of Virginia
and jailed for nonconformity. Although admitting that the
"enthusiasm" of these dissenters "rendered them obnoxious to
sober opinion," Madison could not stomach this denial of re-
ligious liberty. To quote his own words, he "squabbled and
scolded, abused and ridiculed," first "to save them from im-
prisonment," and when that failed "to promote their release
from it." This action on his part was to have an unexpected
effect on his political fortunes for, as he reports in his autobiog-
raphy, "this interposition tho' a mere duty prescribed by his con-
science obtained for him a lasting place in the favours of that
particular sect." Consequently when the Anglican church was
disestablished in Virginia and the dissenters were allowed to
vote, Madison discovered that he could count on a solid bloc of
Baptist supporters in his home district, no matter who ran
against him, a decided advantage for a political philosopher
who never became a colorful campaigner on the hustings.
14-6 JAMES MADISON
The outbreak of the Revolution ended Madison's worries
both over his future career and his poor health as "he entered
with the prevailing zeal into the American Cause." Prevented
from joining the army by "the discouraging feebleness of his
constitution," he served during 1775 on the revolutionary Com-
mittee that ruled Orange County. Then in the spring of 1776,
mainly through his family connections, he was chosen as a
delegate to the Convention whose task it was to establish a new
government for Virginia. When he journeyed to Williamsburg
in May 1776 and took his seat in this Convention he found at
last the profession for which talent and his training at Prince-
ton had prepared him. Henceforth his life was devoted to the
public service and, as one of the master builders of a new nation,
he played a major part in framing the political institutions of
the United States in accordance with the generous and human-
istic creed of the Enlightenment.
Madison's role in the famous Virginia Convention of 1776
provides a striking example of the part political theory plays in
revolutions. Every successful political revolution is to a large
extent theoretical, since revolutionists faced with the hateful
conditions that breed rebellion are forced to appeal from what is
to what ought to be. They must attack current corrupt practices
from the standpoint of an ideal system which they are struggling
to establish. Theory, which etymologically means "vision," pro-
vides the new points of reference that replace the old norms;
without theory to chart a visionary road into the uncertain
future, revolt becomes no more than an incandescent blaze of
unreasoning and destructive violence. The radical principles
which directed the Virginia convention's work of state building
were set forth in the famous Declaration of Rights drawn up by
George Mason. But it was James Madison who revised Mason's
clause respecting religious freedom, and in so doing made his
first major contribution to American democracy.
Mason's theory of religious liberty originally written into the
Declaration of Rights was revolutionary by eighteenth-century
standards : "that religion . . . can be governed only by reason and
conviction, not by force or violence; and, therefore, that all men
should enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of religion,
according to the dictates of conscience." Madison, viewing the
problem on the basis of his reading at Princeton and his studies
JAMES MADISON 147
since leaving college, objected on principle to the inclusion of
the word "toleration" in the Declaration of Rights, for it im-
plied that freedom of conscience was a privilege that the state
could grant or withhold as it saw fit. He viewed freedom of
conscience as a "natural and absolute right," and hence com-
pletely outside the jurisdiction of government. So, while the
delegate from Orange, "being young and in the midst of dis-
tinguished and experienced members," did not open his mouth
during the debates in the Convention, he did play an important
part in its proceedings, for he prevailed on Mason to amend the
clause on religious liberty in accordance with his own more
advanced theory.
Thus, through James Madison's intervention, it was pro-
claimed for the first time in any body of law drawn up in a
Christian commonwealth that freedom of conscience is a
substantive right, a right which could only be secured by a com-
plete separation of church and state. In 1776 this separation was
still only an ideal ; even in Virginia church and state were not
divorced. Nevertheless the public and official acceptance of
Madison's theory clearly defined the issue thenceforth for all
revolutionary America, and designated the field of battle where
the struggle for religious freedom would be fought. In 1786
Madison at last had the satisfaction of seeing his ideal sub-
scribed to in its entirety by the Virginia legislature. In 1789 he
himself was to embody the principle in the federal Bill of Rights.
By the time he died in 1836 the complete separation of church
and state had become the established norm throughout the
United States.
Unfortunately for Madison his constituents did not appreciate
his silent services in the Virginia Convention. When he sought
election to the legislature in 1777 he was defeated. The austerity
of the campaign principles which he conceived necessary to
maintain the "purity" of republican government also contributed
to this setback; for he refused to recommend himself to the
voters in the traditional fashion by providing them with "spirit-
uous liquors, and other treats." This defiance of custom was too
shocking for the Orange voters; Madison's constituents, well
plied with drinks by his opponents, attributed his "abstinence" to
"pride or parsimony." While thus excluded for a time from
elective office, the young Virginian still continued active in
148 JAMES MADISON
public life. In November 1777 he was appointed by the Assem-
bly to the Virginia Council of State, whose eight members
served as the governor's cabinet. He remained a member of this
body until 1779 when, Thomas Jefferson being governor, he was
appointed by the legislature one of the Virginia delegates to the
Continental Congress, in which he served until November 1783.
Madison's six years of appointive office in the Virginia
Council of State and in the Confederation Congress supple-
mented his theories of government with that subtle form of
political wisdom that can come only from experience. As a coun-
cilor of state he came to know all the foremost Virginia leaders,
and entered upon a deep and lasting friendship with that other
enlightened philosopher, Thomas Jefferson As a Congressman
he met and cooperated with distinguished men from other states,
and grew steadily in awareness of the common interests shared
by all thirteen.
Gradually Madison came to take a leading part in the congres-
sional business relating to finances, national defense, trade,
western lands, and international relations. Theory and experi-
ence now went hand in hand. Though his auditors still agreed
that "he speaks low, his person is little and ordinary," neverthe-
less as they marked him in action they found that his "sense,
reading, address, and integrity" made him remarkably persua-
sive. "His language is very pure, perspicuous, and to the point.
. . . He states a principle and deduces consequences, with clear-
ness and simplicity." Above all, his fellow statesmen were struck
by his scholarly industry and marvelous grasp of fact ; "he is a
studious man, devoted to public business, and a thorough master
of every public question that can arise, or he will spare no pains
to become so, if he happens to be in want of information." It
is no wonder then that on the termination of his service in
Congress James Madison returned to Virginia with a national
reputation as "one of the ablest Members that ever sat in that
Council."
During these years in Congress he became more than a Vir-
ginia statesman, representing as he did a national point of view
that transcended class and sectional interests. Madison had
entered politics with a less provincial attitude than most of his
contemporaries. Now, taught by his years in congressional
service, he became with Washington the most continental-
JAMES MADISON
Fioni \ Painting B) Ashcr H Duiaiul
JAMES MADISON 149
minded of all the Virginia leaders. By the nature of his associa-
tions and work at Philadelphia he had been under tremendous
pressure to think in national terms concerning the general wel-
fare. When he returned home in 1783 the young statesman had
gained a mature perspective which identified the cause of the
American Union with the cause of liberty throughout the world.
Madison's return to private life was brief. In 1784 he was
elected to the Virginia House of Delegates and at once became
the leader of the radical party in the place of Jefferson, who had
been appointed American minister to France. During the next
three years he was instrumental in finally disestablishing the
Anglican church, enacting a large portion of Jefferson's revised
code of laws, and strengthening the basis of state finances.
Moreover, while strenuously working to make his own state
a model of enlightened administration, he was increasingly
aware of the larger problems confronting the nation. During
these years in the Virginia legislature he steadily urged that
the powers of the Confederation be strengthened. It was largely
on his initiative that Virginia participated in the series of inter-
state conferences that led ultimately to the Philadelphia Con-
vention of 1787.
The Convention of 1787 provided the Princeton-trained
political philosopher with the opportunity of rendering his
greatest service to his country. In recognition of Madison's
role in the Philadelphia meeting historians have named him
"the Father of the Constitution." By 1787 the Confederation
had declined into impotence ; government credit was desperate ;
Congress, unable to maintain order or even to protect itself,
was powerless in the face of treaty violation and foreign com-
mercial discrimination As the powers of Congress declined,
the center of political gravity shifted to the states which soon
were engaged in a series of bitter local rivalries. Inside each of
these petty sovereignties, postwar depression and deflation
touched off virulent class struggles between debtors and credi-
tors as each group strove to control the state machinery in order
to protect its own economic interests. In one quarter ominous
I5O JAMES MADISON
voices were heard to declare that America was geographically
too large and too heterogeneous to continue under a single gov-
ernment ; while in another it was openly stated, for the first time
since 1776, that the only cure for the ills of the new nation was
to liquidate the republican experiment and establish an Amer-
ican monarchy. It seemed to thoughtful Americans in every
section that the Union, which had been the instrument of victory
in winning political liberty from England, was doomed to dis-
solve under the tensions of postwar disagreement. Against this
background of economic distress, sectional quarrels, class con-
flict, and ideological confusion the Convention called to reform
the Confederation met at Philadelphia in May 1787.
Long before he journeyed to Philadelphia Madison had be-
come convinced that the fate of republican government in
America and hence throughout the world hung m the balance.
As early as 1785 he had begun to warn his fellow citizens that
unless the Union was strengthened there would be a competitive
system of jealous sovereign states, involving "an appeal to the
sword in every petty squabble, standing armies, and perpetual
taxes." Internal weakness would make the disunited states "the
sport of foreign politics/' threaten the very existence of liberty,
and "blast the glory of the Revolution " In view of the decay of
the Confederation, Madison had already taken steps to approach
the problem scientifically. Since Jefferson in Paris had access to
the book stalls of all Europe, Madison recruited his aid in build-
ing up an extensive collection of "treatises on the ancient or
modern Federal Republics." In preparation for the Philadelphia
meeting he was therefore able to study in his own library the
structure and principles of all the confederations described in
history. The result embodied in two memoranda, entitled re-
spectively "Notes of Ancient and Modern Confederacies" and
"Vices of the Political System of the United States," is prob-
ably the most fruitful piece of scholarly research ever carried
out by an American.
Madison's reading of the accounts of historic confederations,
such as the Lycian League, Amphictyonic Council, the United
Netherlands, was discouraging; as precedents they furnished
"no other light than that of beacons, which give warnings of the
course to be shunned, without pointing out that which ought to
be pursued." His studies confirmed his belief, steadily growing
JAMES MADISON
as he watched the American Confederation totter toward
"imbecility," that it would be impossible to establish a stable
federal system based on any principles tried in the past. Madi-
son's reading underlined a further point. Never in all the history
of the world had it been possible to organize a republican state
in a territory as vast as America ; never in the past had it been
possible to frame a popular government for a population of
such heterogeneous elements as those inhabiting the United
States. As he discovered in his books, and as Alexander Ham-
ilton was later to argue in the Convention, all political theorists
agreed that a stable republic promoting the general welfare of
a varied population could be established only in a small country.
Stable empires of vast extent had been organized in the past,
but they had all been held together from above by the power
of a king.
It is James Madison's greatest glory as a philosopher-states-
man that he accepted the challenge of the impossible. He tran-
scended the impossible by inventing a completely new type of
federal state, which while solidly resting on majority rule at the
same time provided adequate safeguards /or the rights of
minority groups. From his reading and experience he evolved
an original theory of republican federalism differing completely
from the principles of any of the historic confederations. A full
month before the Convention met he had elaborated his novel
scheme in his memoranda and in letters to Jefferson, Randolph,
and Washington. He had also commenced work on the blueprint
of a governmental structure that would institutionalize this
theory. It was a brilliant intellectual achievement which won for
the thirty-five-year-old Madison the right to be called the philos-
opher of the American Constitution. His theory, embodied in
the structure of the American Union, was to prove also the
greatest triumph in practical application of the Enlightenment's
ideal of scientific political research.
The story of Madison's labors to get his theory elaborated
into the document known as the United States Constitution is
too familiar to be detailed here. The Virginian played a decisive
part in every phase of constitutional creation. On the basis of
his theory, which he submitted to Washington's careful inspec-
tion, he was able to persuade the General that the Convention was
not doomed to impotence before it opened, and that he should
152 JAMES MADISON
attend as a delegate. Washington's prestige, both at Philadelphia
and during the struggle for ratification, proved of major sig-
nificance in the outcome. It was Madison's theory too that pro-
vided the basis of the Virginia Plan which, after it was worked
over by the assembled delegates for nearly four months, emerged
as the new constitution. During the long summer days in the
Convention, Madison, in the words of a fellow delegate, "took
the lead in the management of every great question" ; one of
three debaters who were heard most frequently, he spoke from
the floor 161 times. Whether in committee or in open session
it was reported that "he always comes forward the best in-
formed man on any point in debate. The affairs of the United
States, he perhaps, has the most correct knowledge of, of any
Man in the Union." Finally, marvelous to relate, it was James
Madison, "the profound politician" blended "with the scholar,"
who somehow managed to find the extra energy necessary to
write out daily a meticulous report of all the debates in the
Convention. Although this exacting task almost killed him, as
he later admitted, still he was determined that future political
philosophers shoultf have the "Debates" as scientific data requi-
site to carry forward the study of republican government.
Madison's labors for the Constitution did not end with the
adjournment of the Convention. Almost at once the long bitter
struggle to secure ratification began. During the winter of 1787-
1788 the Virginian collaborated with Alexander Hamilton and
John Jay in writing The Federalist, the classic exposition of the
Constitution and the most important American contribution to
the world's political literature. In the spring of 1788, elected a
member of the Virginia ratifying convention, he acted as leader
of the pro-constitution party, and matched himself against the
great Patrick Henry who was chief of the opposition. Until the
final vote was taken the issue hung in doubt, and with it the ques-
tion of whether the Constitution would be given a trial. Virginia
being both the largest and the most populous of the thirteen
states, her rejection would have proved fatal to the plan. In the
most dramatic episode of his career, Madison faced the fiery, pas-
sionate oratory of Henry and smothered it with his quiet, lucid
reasoning. When the final vote was taken the logic of Madison
and the constitutional party had caused eight members of the
opposition to disregard the express wishes of their constituents,
JAMES MADISON 153
and two more to vote contrary to specific instructions. As a result
the Constitution was approved by the narrow margin of 10 out
of 1 68 votes.
5
Although the new Constitution was finally ratified in 1788, it
was still merely a blueprint; the task remained of transforming
its paper provisions into the institutions of a functioning
government. To this delicate operation the first Congress ad-
dressed itself. Madison almost missed sharing in this labor:
Patrick Henry's hatred first blocked his election to the new
Senate, and then attempted to prevent his choice as a member
of the House. Luckily for Madison his loyal Baptist supporters
remembered their ancient debt and backed him solidly ; and so
in 1789 he began the first of his four terms as a Virginia repre-
sentative in Congress. From the day he took his scat he was the
leading member of the lower house. There was no act of legis-
lative business during the first session in which he did not par-
ticipate with his customary erudition He sponsored the first
ten amendments to the Constitution which make up the federal
Bill of Rights, introduced the first revenue bill, helped organize
the executive department, and acted as President Washington's
congressional adviser and ghost writer. It was a strenuous
period full of "delays and perplexities" arising in large part
from the complete "want of precedents/' Many times Madison
felt that "we are in a wilderness, without a single footstep to
guide us." Yet the task was accomplished. By the end of the first
session of the first Congress, "the more perfect union" had
successfully made the transition from paper to practice.
Before the new government had been in operation a year,
Madison became deeply disturbed over the trend of events in
the national capital. In his view, the trouble lay in the activities
and policies of Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury.
To the New Yorker, no federal scheme could provide a suffi-
ciently centralized authority to subsist in so large a country ; and
even worse was "the disease" of democracy which afflicted
America. Hamilton, therefore, seized the opportunity during
the formative stage of the new government to "administer" it
the term is Madison's so that it would more closely approach
his ideal of a consolidated oligarchy. With devious brilliance,
154 JAMES MADISON
Hamilton set out, by a program of class legislation, to unite the
propertied interests of the eastern seaboard into a cohesive
administration party, while at the same time he attempted to
make the executive dominant over the Congress by a lavish use
of the spoils system. In carrying out his scheme, though he
personally was above corruption, Hamilton transformed every
financial transaction of the Treasury Department into an orgy
of speculation and graft in which selected senators, congress-
men, and certain of their richer constituents throughout the
nation participated. As Madison watched Hamilton's program
develop, he became disillusioned and bitter. In the Convention
he had fought to create a Constitution under which "the interests
and rights of every class of citizens should be duly represented
and understood." Now he saw the machinery of his new govern-
ment being used to exploit the mass of the people in the interest
of a small minority.
Before the end of the first Congress, Madison, therefore,
began to attack the Hamiltonian program as "unconstitutional"
no less than antirepublican. In so doing, he probably saved the
Constitution from being abrogated by the rising mass of in-
jured citizens, and guaranteed that the American experiment in
democratic government should continue on a national basis.
Hamilton's system of class government, while brilliantly
successful in enlisting the loyalty of "the rich, the wise, and the
well born" for the Constitution, in truth contained a major
threat to American nationalism. During the struggle for ratifi-
cation, a majority of the people had opposed the Constitution
as containing a potential threat to their liberties. Living in an
almost self-sufficient agrarian economy, they were content with
the security provided by the system of independent states and
saw little need for a stronger union. This majority was still
deeply suspicious of the national government at its birth in 1789.
Every device that Hamilton used to win the loyalty of the
propertied elite tended to confirm the suspicions of the yeoman
farmers and middle class groups and to erode their faith in the
new government.
Not the least of James Madison's services to American na-
tionalism was to put himself at the head of this potentially
dangerous opposition and thus guarantee that it would remain
loyal to the Union. Thomas Jefferson was to prove the great
JAMES MADISON
organizer and symbol of the anti-Hamiltonians ; but Madison
had already formulated the principles of the opposition before
Jefferson assumed the role of party chief. In speeches, letters,
and a series of essays contributed to the newspaper edited by his
fellow Princetonian, Philip Freneau, "the father of the Consti-
tution stressed again and yet again that it was not the federal
Union that was at fault but the individuals at its head. The
Constitution itself was sound; the evil lay in Hamilton's per-
verted "interpretation" of the document.
Thus, an aroused party which might well have developed
revolutionary tendencies was marshaled by Madison under the
banner of a higher loyalty and a stricter veneration of the Con-
stitution. Once again the Virginia theorist and political philos-
opher had played a decisive part in fixing the pattern of future
political behavior in America. Following Madison's lead, dis-
contented groups in the United States, even though out of
power, have traditionally looked to the Constitution for the
protection of their rights, and thus has been maintained that
amazing balance between stability and change which has charac-
terized our national existence. Certainly, this developed pattern
of loyal opposition made the election of Thomas Jefferson and
the reversal of national policies in 1800 a coup which, although
"revolutionary," was still strictly constitutional.
During Jefferson's two terms as president, Madison served
officially as his Secretary of State, and unofficially as his dearest
friend and most trusted adviser. Since the President was a
widower, it also came about that Madison's wife, the famous
and attractive Dolly, whom he had married in his forty-fifth
year, became the official hostess for the administration. As Sec-
retary of State, James Madison shared fully in the two great
triumphs of Jefferson's first term: the program of domestic
reform that finally identified the Union as a people's govern-
ment, and the Louisiana Purchase which extended the bounds
of the republican experiment clear to the Pacific. In like manner,
Madison was a leader in the unsuccessful attempt during Jeffer-
son's second administration to develop through the Embargo a
system of economic sanctions to replace the use of force in our
foreign relations. In 1808, through Jefferson's influence, Madi-
son was chosen to succeed him as president.
156 JAMES MADISON
6
As chief executive, James Madison added few laurels to his
reputation. lie inherited from his predecessor the insoluble
problem of preserving American neutrality in the midst of the
titanic struggle between England and Napoleon. Before the
beginning of his second administration the Virginian had be-
come convinced that there was no alternative to war against
England, if the United States was to maintain its maritime
rights and its economic independence. Unfortunately, the talents
of the philosopher statesman were designed for peace rather
than war; after the opening of hostilities Madison's inade-
quacies as a military chieftain soon became apparent. Through-
out the conflict, he was hampered in exerting executive leader-
ship by his theory that Congress should take the initiative in
determining policy.
As it turned out the United States was fortunate to emerge
from the struggle territorially intact Not a single American war
aim was achieved; Washington was captured and the President
was forced to flee to the Virginia woods for safety; and only
the unexpected victories of the final months of the conflict at
Baltimore, Plattsburg, New Orleans allowed his contempo-
raries to set down "Mr. Madison's War" as an American
triumph. Yet the sentiment of national unity, which Madison
had labored so long to inculcate by rational appeal, flowered
under the irrational emotions released by the war; and the last
remnants of antirepui licamsm were swept a\vay in the flood
of patriotic pride. Soon after the treaty of peace, James Madi-
son's presidential term ended and put a period to his forty years
of public service.
After his retirement to Montpelier, Madison "devoted him-
self to his farm and his books, with much avocation, however,
from both by an extensive and often laborious correspondence
which seems to be entailed on Ex-Presidents." A large part of
his time was spent in arranging his letters, and editing for the
enlightenment of posterity the carefully preserved "Notes" on
the debates in the Constitutional Convention. He was closely
associated with Jefferson in the founding of the University of
Virginia, and became its rector after Jefferson's death in 1826.
When he had almost reached his eightieth birthday he reluctantly
JAMES MADISON 157
served as a member, but took no important part, in the Virginia
Constitutional Convention of 1829. It was about this time that
he dictated his short autobiography, nearly a fifth of which
deals with his happy years at Princeton.
As Madison grew older, he withdrew as far as possible from
politics. When pressed in 1830 for his opinion on a current
controversial topic he wrote: "A man whose years have but
reached the canonical three-score-and-ten . . . should distrust
himself, whether distrusted by his friends or not, and should
never forget that his arguments, whatever they may be, will be
answered by allusions to the date of his birth." Yet, on the two
issues of slavery and state rights which were eventually to
threaten the existence of his beloved union, his principles forced
him to break his silence Until his death, he lent his active sup-
port to the African Colonization Society from an awareness
that the "dreadful calamity" of Negro bondage was incom-
patible with the republican principles of liberty and equality. On
one other subject also he would not hold his peace. When the
South Carolinians, during the tariff controversy, tried to use
his name and Jefferson's to support their doctrines of nullifica-
tion and seccession, he repeatedly and publicly denounced their
position as constitutional heresy.
James Madison lived on peacefully to the age of eighty-six,
deeply happy in his marriage, still full of ''inexhaustible faith"
in the future of the great democratic commonwealth he had done
so much to establish. On the morning of June 28, 1836, he died
quietly in his easy-chair. It is reported that even his slaves wept
when he was buried in the Montpelier graveyard.
Philip Lindsley [1786-1855]
PIONEER EDUCATOR OF THE OLD
SOUTHWEST
BY JOHN EDWIN POMFRET
.HILIP LINDSLEY was the last of the long line
'of educational pioneers who carried the influ-
ence of Princeton to the South. For nearly a
hundred years before he founded a great university in Ten-
nessee graduates of Nassau Hall had gone forth to sustain
those who subscribed to the Westminster Confession of Faith.
The Scotch, and after them, the Scotch-Irish, insisted upon a
trained ministry. To fill this need the early Presbyterians
founded "log colleges/' first in Pennsylvania, later all along
the advancing frontier. Out of one of the first of them Prince-
ton, itself, developed.
One can trace in the South, beyond the Tidewater especially,
where the Presbyterian influence was strong, the formation of
presbyteries and academies that followed quickly upon the wake
of settlement. Samuel Davies and Samuel Finley, who suc-
ceeded Princeton's earliest presidents, the Yale graduates, Dick-
inson, Burr, and Edwards, were themselves products of the
"log college. 1 ' These men and their followers were noted for
their qualities of scholarship, perseverance, and common sense.
John Witherspoon, president from 1768-1794, though a Scots-
man, furnished a cohesive and logical synthesis that was to set
the Princeton pattern for long generations. His "Lectures on
Moral Philosophy," accenting heavily religious faith, devotion
to work, and strict discipline, embodied the fortress principles
that sustained the attacks of materialism, philosophical idealism,
deism, and extreme rationalism. John Blair Smith carried to
Hampden-Sydney, David Caldwell to his famous school in
Guilford County, Samuel McCorkle to Zion-Parnassus Acad-
emy, David Rice to Transylvania Seminary the same hard-
headed emphasis upon orthodoxy and mental discipline and the
same antagonism to deism and all its foibles. Lindsley was a
later torchbearer of the Witherspoon tradition. For him, the
EDUCATOR OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST
university, "ever has been, is now, and ever will be, the grand
conservative principle of civilization, of truth, virtue, learning,
liberty, religion, and good government among mankind."
Davidson Academy, the foundation on which the University
of Nashville was laid, was chartered in 1785 by the legislature
of North Carolina, and the following year the Rev. Thomas B.
Craighead, a Princeton graduate of 1775, was elected president.
In 1806 the institution was renamed Cumberland College. In
1810 Craighead was succeeded by James Priestley, who served
until 1816 when the institution suspended. It was a young
Princetonian, Philip Lindsley, who discerned in the dying college
a rare opportunity : he revived it as the University of Nashville
and built it up into a strong institution. In so doing he became
one of America's great educational leaders. He carried the torch
of learning to that considerable area known in frontier history
as the Old Southwest. His great work flourished after him in
many of the new commonwealths established south of the Ohio
during the early nineteenth century. Happily for him he did not
live to see the crippling of his institution by the Civil War for,
although the Medical School revived for a few years, the Uni-
versity closed again in 1870. Finally, in 1875, the college de-
partment was merged with the newly established Peabody
Normal School.
Philip Lindsley was born on December 21, 1786, in the home
of his maternal grandmother, a few miles outside Morristown,
New Jersey. His parents, Isaac Lindsley and Phebe Condict,
were both descended from seventeenth century East New Jersey
settlers. The family during Philip's infancy moved to Basking
Ridge ; until his thirteenth year, except for occasional attendance
at boarding school, he lived at home and attended school in
nearby New Vernon. He regretted his brief childhood boarding-
school experiences, for he was devoted to his mother, "incom-
parably my ablest teacher." Philip as a child was an omnivorous
reader though he enjoyed fishing, hunting, and the other rural
sports. Long before he attended Mr. Finley's school he had
read the Bible through as well as the whole of Rollings Ancient
History, which he borrowed volume by volume from an uncle.
He stood always at the head of his group in school
In 1799 Philip entered the first class of the newly established
academy of Robert Finley. Starting with a half dozen boys this
l6O PHILIP LINDSLEY
school was to achieve in a few years an enviable reputation, so
great indeed that in 1817 its headmaster was elected president
of the University of Georgia. Philip studied there, with the
exception of a short period during the winter of 1801-1802, for
three years, preparing to enter Princeton, where Finley himself
had made a brilliant record. So excellent was his preparation at
Finley's Academy at Basking Ridge and at Mr. Stevenson's
School at Morristown, where he had spent part of one winter
reading Homer, that he was admitted, with three of his class-
mates, to the junior class at Princeton in November 1802. Al-
though later in life Lindsley was to inveigh against the admis-
sion of students of fifteen to college, he was only sixteen when
he came to Princeton.
Graduated in 1804, Lindsley accepted Mr. Stevenson's invita-
tion to teach English at Morristown. As compensation for the
session's work of six months he received board and lodging and
free instruction in French, and, as a bonus, a ten dollar bank-
bill! In the spring of 1805 he became an assistant to Finley at a
salary of $300, without board. He served for two years. Robert
Finley and James Stevenson "were, and are, my model edu-
cators," wrote Lindsley toward the close of his career. "Their
superiors I have not known. Their equals I could not name."
While associated with them the young Lindsley continued his
studies in Greek, Latin, French, and English literature, pro-
gressing so far that he was granted the degree of Master of Arts
at the Princeton commencement of September 1807.
President Samuel Stanhope Smith prevailed upon Lindsley
to remain at Princeton as junior tutor in Latin and Greek. As a
member of Dr. Finley's church he had already become a candi-
date for the ministry under care of presbytery, and continued
residence at Princeton afforded him opportunity to study the-
ology under Smith. In 1810, he was licensed to preach by the
Presbytery of New Brunswick. Although during the next two
years he continued with his theological studies and did some
casual preaching, he refused the tender of a ministerial appoint-
ment at Newtown, Long Island. At the beginning of the term
of November 1812 he returned to Princeton for the twelve
years that might be called the second phase of his career.
Philip Lindsley's rise at Princeton was rapid. Beginning as
senior tutor in 1812, he was promoted the next year to professor
EDUCATOR OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST l6l
of languages, and was chosen secretary of the board of trustees.
During this signal year he married Margaret Elizabeth Law-
rence, a daughter of the attorney-general of New York. Later
he assumed the duties of librarian of the college, for the library
had become "his home, his sanctuary, his society/' He was
familiar with every volume and, above all, he took pride in ac-
quiring the best editions of the classical authors. He served,
also, as "inspector," the equivalent of the present-day position
of dean of the college. In 1817 he became vice-president and
during the same year was ordained by the Presbytery of New
Brunswick. In 1822, following Dr. Ashbel Green's resignation,
he served as acting-president for one year. The following year
he was elected president of Princeton, but saw fit to decline
this high honor. In 1824 he became president of the University
of Nashville.
When Philip Lindsley in 1812 became senior tutor at Prince-
ton, he was twenty-six years of age ; when he accepted the presi-
dency of the University of Nashville, he was thirty-eight. The
most informative account of the younger Lindsley, paying trib-
ute to him as a scholar and a teacher, was written by President
John Maclean of Princeton shortly before Lindsley's death in
1855. Lindsley had been instrumental in having Maclean ap-
pointed senior tutor, and later professor, at Princeton. Lindsley's
enthusiasm for his subject contributed heavily to his popularity
as a teacher. The thoroughness of his teaching rested, Maclean
thought, upon his insistence on accuracy in the meaning and use
of words as the surest guide to the appreciation of the classical
authors. His favorite authors were Homer, Aristotle, and Longi-
nus, all of whom had a profound influence upon his literary style.
For many years Lindsley was engaged in writing for publication
a "Course of Lectures on Greek Literature," a work in two
volumes, but his removal to Nashville led him to abandon the
project even after the arrangements for publication had been
made. He left also, at his death, a mass of unpublished material
on the civilization and archeology of the ancient Near East and
the culture of primitive peoples, subjects on which he read with
interest all through his life. Some gleanings from these "Lec-
tures on Archaeology," as he called them, were published in
1840 and attracted considerable notice. It was his view, then
quite novel, that the ancient Oriental peoples had attained a
l62 PHILIP LINDSLEY
high degree of civilization and that all primitive peoples pos-
sessed some degree of culture. Such independent thinking,
coupling knowledge with understanding and perception, leads
one, almost, to regret that Lindsley did not devote his whole
life to scholarship.
Lindsley's published works run to more than 2,500 pages but
these, his biographer, Le Roy J. Halsey, tells us, made less im-
pression on the people of Tennessee than his skill in oratory.
He was an excellent speaker and was in great demand. He spent
much time in preparing his annual baccalaureate addresses, and
these speeches, later published, were widely read. Although he
spoke usually upon religious and educational matters, he de-
livered a number of addresses upon government and economics.
At Princeton Lindsley had already exhibited those traits that
were to make him a powerful and influential public speaker. He
was the favorite preacher among the students; first because of
his earnest and unaffected delivery, and second, because he spoke
upon subjects of interest to them. His two chapel sermons on the
"Improvement of Time," delivered in 1822, were published. He
was inclined to be pragmatic in his utterances, and possessed in
a high degree the traditional Princeton virtues of directness and
simplicity in his presentation. His point of view was that of a
layman rather than that of a minister ; he was reverent and high-
minded, but more mundane and broad-minded than most of his
contemporaries in the pulpit. Indeed, in later life he tended to
avoid the pulpit because of its exacting theological demands.
As an administrative officer Lindsley was also highly re-
garded. He was easy of access, and ever a source of encourage-
ment to students who were eager to learn. Maclean observes,
however, that he was "not altogether free from defects common
to men of ardent mind and nervous temperament." His experi-
ence with student outbreaks at Princeton and later at Nashville
would have led him to question some of our present-day "pro-
gressive" practices in student self-government.
It was, perhaps, Lindsley's ardent mind which led him, at
Princeton and throughout his career, to commit his sermons and
addresses to writing rather than to risk speaking extempora-
neously. One of these addresses, "Plea for the Theological
Seminary," delivered before the Presbytery of New Brunswick
in 1821, "wrought," said Maclean, "differently upon different
EDUCATOR OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST 163
minds." Though it resulted in one donation of a thousand dollars
in support of the seminary, certain of its allusions gave offense
to other hearers. "It was thought," writes Maclean, "that this
indirectly influenced him in declining the Presidency of the
College, which was subsequently tendered to him."
Lindsley's reputation as an educator spread rapidly through
the orbit that might be called "the Princeton connection." In
1822, just after he became acting-president of Princeton, Dick-
inson College conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of
Divinity. Even earlier, calls were made upon him to accept the
headship of various institutions. In 1817 Transylvania Uni-
versity made a determined effort to gain him as its president. In
1823 and in 1824 he was pressed with offers from Cumberland
College, Ohio University, and Dickinson College. Speaking of
the invitation from Ohio University he said, "It was then my
fixed purpose never to accept of a college presidency anywhere.
I infinitely preferred my peaceful classical chair at Princeton."
He thought that his refusal to accept the presidency of Prince-
ton in 1822 had settled the matter, but in April 1823 after Dr.
John H. Rice of Virginia, whom he nominated, had declined,
Lindsley was again unanimously elected notwithstanding his
"well-known disinclination to the office." His journal records
his honest and sincere protestation. "I did not think myself
qualified for so arduous and responsible a trust," he wrote. He
was anxious to relinquish the acting-presidency as soon as a
permanent appointment could be made, and did so when Dr.
John Carnahan was chosen.
In August 1823 Philip Lindsley's term as acting-president
came to an end. Perhaps this occurrence gave new hope to the
persistent group in Nashville who had been pleading with him to
aid them in reviving Cumberland College. In January 1824
Lindsley wrote the Committee of Selection, "I begin to think
contrary to all my former views and predilections, that Provi-
dence has destined me for the West. . . . Could I, however, upon
good grounds, indulge the hope of becoming the happy instru-
ment of reviving and establishing your college, upon a broad
and permanent basis, without any serious injury to my family,
I should be ready to embark heart and hand in the undertaking."
Finally, in May, he was prevailed upon to visit Nashville, and
forthwith accepted the position. "Throughout the immense
164 PHILIP LINDSLEY
valley of the Lower Mississippi, containing at least a million
of inhabitants," he wrote, "there exists not a single college.
. . . Hitherto a few wealthy individuals have sent their sons to
Northern and Eastern institutions, while the great body of the
people have been unable to afford the expense ... of so long a
journey and of so distant a residence from the parental roof.
The time has arrived when they must have the means of educa-
tion at their own doors, or be deprived of its benefits altogether."
Nashville in 1824 was the nucleus of the rich, agricultural area
of Middle Tennessee, just emerging from the frontier stage.
Beyond beckoned a hinterland, west and south, that knew no
bounds. Here might be built a great regional university. Once
having accepted this challenge nothing could prevail upon Linds-
ley later to transfer elsewhere. Though he was called to Wash-
ington College in Virginia, to the University of Alabama, to the
University of Pennsylvania, and to a number of other institu-
tions, he was to devote the next twenty-six years to the building
of a great university in the Old Southwest.
Lindsley and his family Mrs. Lindsley and their four chil-
dren reached Nashville on the day before Christmas, 1824. The
town had then fewer than three thousand inhabitants and hardly
more than five hundred houses. It was to become three times as
large before Lindsley left it, but when he arrived it must have
seemed, with its log houses and unkempt streets, its restless,
shifting populace, a crude place in contrast to Princeton. Though
Lindsley held his tongue during his early years, he was later to
comment frankly upon what he saw. At times the town seemed
to swarm with vagrant fiddlers, fire-eaters, jugglers, lecturers,
as well as beggars of all sorts and descriptions. "Everything
degenerates in Tennessee," he once wrote. "Doctors are made
by guess . . . lawyers by magic . . . parsons by inspiration . . .
legislators by grog . . . merchants by Mammon . . . farmers by
necessity . . . editors and schoolmasters by St. Nicholas." The
constant chewing and spitting of tobacco appalled him, especially
when he encountered it in church. He once declared that nothing
in Tennessee ever reached perfection. Like a true Jerseyman he
missed the variety of fruits and vegetables, the fish, cheeses,
IMI I I I I> I I NDSI L>
Fioni \ 1'itiiiiinK R\ Gcoigc Duty
EDUCATOR OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST 165
butter, and pies. Here was "nothing but cotton, tobacco, corn,
whiskey, Negroes and swine, and these not worth the growing."
Yet, in this frontier community of land speculators and pro-
moters one found traveling artists, a theater of sorts, a museum
of natural history, and a reading room maintained by popular
subscription. There were as yet no public schools indeed their
origins in Tennessee were to owe much to Lindsley but there
were several academies, including one for females that had been
in existence for eight years.
Cumberland College had had a precarious existence since
1806, when its name was changed from Davidson Academy. It
suspended for lack of funds in 1816, and again in 1821. Lindsley
was well aware of the financial difficulties since, before leaving
for Nashville, he had, at the prompting of the Cumberland board
of trustees, endeavored to obtain donations of money, books and
apparatus.
In January 1825 Lindsley made his inaugural address at the
institution whose name had just been changed to the University
of Nashville and whose students numbered thirty. There is
definitely the ring of youth and pioneering in his words, as weil
as the voice of authority. "The grand experiment is about to be
made whether this college shall be organized on a permanent
and respectable basis, or whether it shall again be destined to a
temporary existence, and to ultimate failure, from the want of
due encouragement and patronage from the wealthy citizens of
West [now Middle] Tennessee and the adjacent states." In his
baccalaureate address of 1829, he said further: "Scarcely any
portion of the civilized Christian world is so poorly provided
with the means of a liberal education as are the five millions of
Americans within the great valley of the Mississippi. In casting
my eyes over the map of Tennessee, it struck me from the first
that this was precisely the place destined by Providence for a
great university if such an institution were to exist in the State.
And in this opinion I am confirmed by several years observation
and experience. I am entirely satisfied that it is physically im-
possible to maintain a university (I am not now speaking of an
ordinary college) in any other town in the State." He added
that a medical school, which he regarded as an essential and in-
tegral part of a real university, could flourish only in a large
community such as Nashville. Provision must be made for in-
l66 PHILIP LINDSLEY
struction in all the sciences, and in every department of philos-
ophy and literature.
"We hope to see the day, or that our successors may see it,"
he said in 1825, "when in the University of Nashville shall be
found such an array of able professors, such libraries and ap-
paratus, such cabinets of curiosities and of natural history, such
botanical gardens, astronomical observatories, and chemical
laboratories, as shall insure to the student every advantage which
the oldest and noblest European institutions can boast; so that
no branch of experimental or physical, of moral or political
science, of ancient or modern languages and literature, shall be
neglected." Twelve years later, in 1837, in a great public utter-
ance, Lindsley stated more comprehensively that his university
should strive to afford instruction in twenty large fields : ancient
languages and literature, Oriental languages and literature,
modern European languages and literature, mathematics and
astronomy, chemistry and geology, archeology, philosophy, con-
stitutional and international law, political economy and statistics,
fine arts and architecture, physiology and anatomy, engineering
and mechanics, physical education, "natural history in every
department/' "the liberal professions, " Biblical literature and
religion. One is impressed today with the modernity and scope
of the educational service his contemplated university would
afford.
Lindsley was indefatigable in his pleading and in his efforts,
but he was not impatient, even under heavy discouragements.
In his address of 1837 he wisely observed, "If we cannot achieve
this object in five or twenty years, it may be done perhaps in
fifty or five hundred. If we cannot hope in our day to rival
Berlin, Munich, Gottingen, Leipzig, Copenhagen, Vienna,
Halle, Leyden, Paris, Moscow, or even St. Petersburg, we may
commence the enterprise, and leave posterity to carry it onward
toward completion. For complete, in the nature of things, it can
never be. It must be growing, advancing, enlarging, accumulat-
ing, till the end of time. No university in Europe is complete
not even. in any one department." He stressed the fact that
Nashville must continue to elevate the one department that it
had established, that of the faculty of arts, sciences, and litera-
ture. "Now," he observed, "the University of Nashville, com-
pared with my own beau ideal of such an establishment, is but
EDUCATOR OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST 167
an element a mere atom a foundation a nucleus a corner-
stone a first essay toward the glorious consummation and per-
fection of my own cherished hopes and anticipations. And I
could say little more of any other university in our country. I
regard them as all being still in their infancy, or at most in their
early youth; and that their right to the title of university is yet
to be proved and confirmed by their future growth to vigorous
manhood and generous maturity."
"The Laws of Cumberland College," which the trustees
adopted a year after Lindsley took office, set up high admission
requirements : a knowledge of Greek and Latin grammar, ability
to handle Caesar's Commentaries, Cicero's Orations, Virgil's
Aeneid, and the Greek Testament. Other prerequisites were
English grammar, arithmetic, and geography. The college regu-
lations were inflexible and strict. Study hours were from sunrise
until breakfast, from nine until noon, and from two to five.
During the winter, study hours were fixed from eight in the
evening until bed time. Sunday was a day of prayer and religious
devotion, with no absence from the campus permitted. Dueling
was forbidden upon pain of expulsion.
In 1826, in announcing that the university had acquired 125
acres for a new campus, Lindsley sketched a plan for a physical
plant resembling that of Oxford and Cambridge. He proposed
to build eventually six colleges, each of which would enroll one
hundred students. Each college would have its own residential
and instructional facilities, together with ten acres of land for
gardening and for exercise. "Garden and mechanics' shops will
be interspersed among the various edifices, in such manner as
to be easily accessible to all the youth for improvement and
recreation. Whenever the present ground shall be thus occupied,
it will be necessary to procure fifty or a hundred acres more,
for a model or experimental farm, that agriculture, the noblest
of sciences and the most important of the useful arts, may be
thoroughly studied and practised." The colleges would be set
apart from one another, "to prevent the usual evils resulting
from the congregation of large numbers of youth at the same
place." In addition, each college would have three resident
faculty members, and the professors' houses would be erected
between the separate colleges. "We shall thus have six distinct
and separate families, so far as regards domestic economy,
l68 PHILIP LINDSLEY
internal police, and social order ; while one senatus academicus
will superintend and control the whole." His far-sighted plan
never materialized.
Lindsley was, of course, bedeviled from the start with the
problem of financial support. He took pains early during his
term of office to explain that no college could flourish from
student fees alone. Time after time he cited the gifts, endow-
ment, or legislative assistance that had come to Yale, William
and Mary, Virginia, Amherst, and other institutions. At first
he was hopeful that the legislature of Tennessee might really
bestir itself in support of the institution. In 1806 the federal
government had set aside 100,000 acres of land for the sup-
port of two institutions, one in East, the other in West, Ten-
nessee. If that land were sold at the legal price, each institution
would have an endowment of $100,000 ; but when the legislature
endeavored to execute the federal grant it was discovered that
the large tract south of the Holston and the French Broad was
occupied by settlers who had been promised this land at $1.00
an acre. Furthermore, a powerful minority in the legislature
opposed the collection of any revenue from those who were
regarded as pioneer heroes. Partly because of this circumstance
Lindsley encountered among the rural population of the state
generally a bitter feeling toward all institutions of learning.
This attitude he fought with might and main. "Were it in my
power," he said, "I would visit every farmer in Tennessee . . .
and endeavor to arouse him from his fatal lethargy . . . and
urge him to reclaim his abandoned rights and his lost dignity
by giving to his sons that measure [of education] which will
qualify them to assert and to maintain their just superiority
in the councils of the state and of the nation. . . . Educate your
son," he pleaded, "in the best possible manner, because you ex-
pect him to be a man, and not a horse or an ox"
Lindsley left no stone unturned in his pleas for support. He
tried to convince the legislators, at a time when a system of in-
ternal improvements was dear to the hearts of all, that a uni-
versity was the best and most rewarding of all internal improve-
ments. He appealed to the citizens of the state and especially to
those of Nashville for assistance. He proposed that the first of
his colleges should be erected through subscription, and bear the
name of Andrew Jackson, "the hero of New Orleans." His
EDUCATOR OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST 169
appeals were couched in the highest terms, and formed a dig-
nified aside in many of his distinguished commencement ad-
dresses. But there were few large gifts or any certain, steady
support. The good doctor was regarded as a visionary and an
enthusiast by many of his fellow citizens.
Dr. Lindsley reached the conclusion before many years had
elapsed that ultimately the support of the university must come
from the increasing body of alumni. In 1834 he proclaimed,
"We count not on the State's treasury, nor upon legislative
indemnification. We rely not upon ecclesiastical patronage, or
sectarian zeal, or individual munificence ; nor, indeed, upon any
of the usual sources of pecuniary revenue which have reared
and sustained so many flourishing institutions in other sections
of our happy Republic/' Rather the principal hope rested in a
loyal, enlightened, and patriotic alumni. "The claims of Alma
Mater upon their affections, their zeal, their labours, their in-
fluence, their talents, and their wealth, will ever be acknowledged
as of paramount and everlasting obligation." But this hope, too,
was far from realization. Lindsley continued to refer to himself
as "King Beggar/'
Lindsley had troubles which no head of an eastern college
experienced. He once wrote that Tennesseans were more inter-
ested in the dinner bell, a horse race, or a cock fight than in the
activities of a literary institution. A large portion of the in-
habitants, it was once said in a public discussion, had come to
Tennessee to get away from civilization, and if it followed them,
they would leave the country.
Frontier egotism also tended to thwart Lindsley's efforts. Of
what use was education to a people who had wrested an empire
out of a wilderness? "While we cherish/' Lindsley protested,
"this arrogant, superstitious, overweening, self-sufficient spirit,
we shall never seek nor desire improvement, because we fancy
that the very acme of human excellence has been attained/' He
had also to combat the rural dislike of towns as centers of ex-
travagance and vice. The countrymen thought their sons would
be corrupted at the University of Nashville. Then there was
sectional jealousy, the rivalries among East, West, and Middle
Tennessee; and, later, rivalry between the small colleges and
the university.
The rise of denominationalism in the colleges of the West
I7O PHILIP LINDSLEY
also hurt the University of Nashville. Although he was a Pres-
byterian minister Dr. Lindsley did not wish to mold a denomina-
tional university. He wanted it to be a sincerely Christian insti-
tution worthy of the patronage of all denominations, and open
freely to all whether in or out of the church. He hoped that
through this spirit of Christian liberalism he might rally all
groups to the support of his institution. He had in mind his
alma mater, Princeton, Christian yet nonsectarian. Yet here,
too, Lindsley suffered disappointment.
Emboldened perhaps by the university's early success, colleges
sprang up like mushrooms in Middle Tennessee. In 1848,
Lindsley stated that at the time of his arrival there were no
colleges in Middle or West Tennessee, or in Alabama, Missis-
sippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, or Texas. Now there were thirty
within a radius of two hundred miles of Nashville; nine within
a radius of fifty miles. "These all claim," he said, "to be our
superiors, and to be equal at least to old Harvard and Yale." But
the tide could not be turned by one man. These were the rampant
'forties; every village must have its college. No doubt the move-
ment gave the impression that higher education was being
rapidly diffused but, as Lindsley pointed out, no single institu-
tion could become really strong. "Several of these," he said,
"belong exclusively to individuals, and are bought and sold in
open market like any other species of private property. They
are invested with the usual corporate powers, and may confer
all university degrees with pleasure."
At the beginning of his administration neither slavery nor
sectionalism were issues pronounced enough to embarrass
Lindsley in his work; toward its close, there were expres-
sions of dissatisfaction. One critic writing in the Daily Union
in 1849 expressed the view that if the university were to
flourish a president from the South or West should be selected,
preferably a general with a dash of chivalry, and "one who
understands well the subject of our domestic institution of
slavery!" This writer believed that it was not necessary for a
college president to be "learned in books." Yet there is little
real evidence to support the view that sectionalism was the basis
of Lindsley's resignation in October 1850. His wife, Margaret
Elizabeth Lawrence, had died in December 1844, just a year
after the death of their youngest child, Philip. In April 1849 ne
EDUCATOR OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST
married Mrs. Mary Ann Ayers, the widow of his kinsman,
Elias Ayers, who had founded the New Albany Theological
Seminary in Indiana. In the spring of 1850 Lindsley was in-
vited to accept a newly established professorship at New Albany.
The university had suffered severely in 1848 and 1849 ke-
cause of the epidemic of cholera in Nashville. Professor James
Hamilton fell victim to the disease, and in 1850 Dr. Girard
Troost, the distinguished science professor, also died. Lindsley
had been working upon a reorganization, rendered necessary
because of the decision to move the university to another part
of the city, a location which would make possible the introduc-
tion of the curricula in medicine and law of which he had
dreamed for many years. The board decided to close the uni-
versity in the fall of 1850 until the new plant was ready for use.
These were the real factors in Lindsley's decision to resign. The
end of an era had come and his work was finished ; an endow-
ment of $140,000 above indebtedness had been built up, and the
membership of the classes from 1843-1849 had been larger than
that of any six previous classes.
Dr. Lindsley's services at New Albany were slight The insti-
tution was poorly supported and poorly attended He tried to
resign several times but his resignation was not finally accepted
until April 1854 He died quite suddenly while attending, as a
member, the meeting of the General Assembly of the Presby-
terian Church in Nashville on May 23, 1855
Though he failed to realize his ideal of a great regional uni-
versity at the time of his resignation the institution was de-
scribed in the press as having "a worm eaten appearance"
Lindsley bequeathed to Tennessee a great tradition and a
galaxy of ideas concerning popular and university education
that still commands attention and respect. At one time there
were twenty-eight members of the United States House of Rep-
resentatives who had been graduated from his struggling in-
stitution. Lindsley's spirit lived on in his son, John Berrien
Lindsley, head of the Medical School, later chancellor of the
University of Nashville; and his battle for popular education
172 PHILIP LINDSLEY
was won, finally, by his disciple Alfred Hume, who established
the public school system in Nashville.
But it is as a pioneer in educational philosophy that Philip
Lindsley has grown in stature through the years. His cardinal
thesis was that education is the rightful heritage of every human
being. It should be sought not merely as the means of making
a livelihood but as a great good in itself. He denied that liberal
education should be confined either to those preparing for the
professions or to gentlemen of wealth and leisure. Men should
be educated to the extent of their capacities, because all in some
measure are capable of being improved and made happy through
knowledge. Thus education is the great equalizer of society.
Every individual who wishes to rise, or who wishes his child
to rise, above the level of a mere laborer at task- work, should
endeavor to obtain a liberal education. "None but the enemies of
the people/' he said, "will ever gravely maintain that a common-
school education, in the ordinary meaning of the phrase, is all
they need. This would be virtually telling them to be hewers of
wood and drawers of water under political taskmasters, for-
ever."
Lindsley was the avowed enemy of "the gospel of ignorance,"
which had its share of advocates in his day. "Ignorance," he
declared bluntly, "never did any good, and never will or can
do any good. Ignorant men are good for nothing, except so far
as they are governed and directed by intelligent superiors. Hence
it is the order of Providence, that in every well-regulated
community, children, and all grossly ignorant persons, are held
in subjection to age, and wisdom, and experience. No species or
portion, even of the humblest manual or mechanical labour, can
be performed until the party be taught how to do it." Again, he
argued, "If it be said that the Deity has no need of human learn-
ing to propagate his religion, it may be replied that neither has he
any need of human ignorance. He could, if he chose, dispense
with human agency altogether. But we have yet to learn that
Infinite.Wisdom has ever selected an insufficient and inadequate
.agency for any purpose whatever." In taking this stand Lindsley
was the rightful heir of Samuel Davies, John Witherspoon,
Samuel Stanhope Smith, and the others of the Princeton tradi-
tion who insisted upon an educated ministry and an educated
laity in their communities, no matter how small or how remote.
EDUCATOR OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST 173
Although he believed in self -discipline, Lindsley rebelled
against the current school philosophy of "spare the rod and spoil
the child/' He was in open revolt against the brutalities of the
common school of the day as exhibited "from Maine to Ten-
nessee." He believed that a program of instruction and super-
vised recreation could be worked out that was suited to the
needs, capacity, and disposition of the child. "Children ought
never be closely confined at an age when they cannot study. Do
young children study,' 1 he challenged, "while constrained to sit,
book in hand, through fear of the birch, during six long hours,
upon a bench (and such a bench !) at school? They have not yet
learned how to study; and, of course, must either go to sleep
or passively submit to daily irksome and stupefying penance
of doing nothing." He proposed, harking back to the fruitful
experience of his own early childhood, "a domestic system of
education," during the earliest period. "A mother who can
teach," he said, "and who possesses the genuine spirit of mater-
nity, is always the best possible instructress of her children, until
they reach the age of ten or twelve. She can teach them all that
is expected from a common school infinitely better than any
schoolmaster."
Lindsley's views upon the common school system were far
in advance of those of his time. Little was done before 1830 to
erect a system of common schools in Tennessee; and another
generation elapsed before the state had an adequate public school
system. In 1826, in commenting upon the need for common
schools, Lindsley developed fully his ideas. "How shall they be
established? Let the people decide. What character and what
form shall they assume? Let every county be divided into
such a number of school districts or departments as will con-
veniently accommodate all the inhabitants. Erect comfortable
and commodious school-houses. Attach to each school-house
a lot of ten acres of land, for the purpose of healthful exercise,
gardening, farming and the mechanical arts. For the body re-
quires training as well as the mind. Besides, as
live by manual labour, they ought betimes to
industry, economy, temperance, hardihood,
skill and dexterity."
Formal education Lindsley regarded as
not as an end in itself. Life itself was thei
174 PHILIP LINDSLEY
which it was never too late to learn something. In school and
college we learn only how to learn; thereafter we should ever
learn to live. Since life itself was given for continuous useful-
ness and improvement, young people should not be hurried too
rapidly over their studies. "Let us not seek to make children
youth, youth men, and men lawyers, physicians, clergymen or
politicians, too fast. Let us keep our pupils at their proper work,
and carry them as far as they can safely and surely go, and no
further. Better teach them one thing well than twenty things
imperfectly. Their education will then be as valuable as far as it
extends." In 1848, in one of his last baccalaureate addresses, he
voiced the opinion that students tended to enter college too
young and with inadequate preparation. They should never enter
before sixteen, nor graduate before twenty.
Lindsley had an exalted view of the teacher's vocation. The
teacher, he said, must not be degraded to the level of a drudge,
nor should communities employ as teachers any who are content
to be drudges or are fit for no higher rank in society. "If there
be one vocation more important to the community than any
other, or than all others, it is that of the instructor of youth.
Every such man deserves well of his country, and is more justly
entitled to her lasting gratitude than multitudes of those whom
she most delights to honour."
At this early period Lindsley proposed that there should be
"seminaries" established to train teachers and qualify them for
their profession, just as there were schools of law, medicine, and
theology. Graduates of such professional schools received a
certain recognition and status which would be accorded to teach-
ers if seminaries for them were established. He pointed out that
the Seminarium Philologicum, which was affiliated with the
University of Gottingen, furnished the continent of Europe
through a half century with many of its most eminent and
successful classical professors and teachers. "At present," he
said, "the great mass of our teachers are mere adventurers
either young men who are looking forward to some less labori-
ous and more respectable vocation, and who, of course, have no
ambition to excel in the business of teaching, and no motive to
exertion but immediate and temporary relief from pecuniary
embarrassment; or men who despair of doing better, or who
have failed in other pursuits, or who are wandering from place
EDUCATOR OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST 175
to place, teaching a year here and a year there, and gathering up
what they can from the ignorance and credulity of their em-
ployers."
Lindsley was forthright on the necessity of obtaining good
teachers at any cost. "Employ teachers qualified to govern and
instruct children in the best possible manner/' he told a large
commencement audience. "Pay them according to their merits.
Pay any sum necessary to command the services of the best and
most accomplished teachers. Parsimony in this particular is not
only impolitic; it is mean, it is absurd, it is ruinous. Better have
no teachers, than to have incompetent, immoral, lazy, passionate
or indiscreet ones ; however cheaply they may be procured. Their
influence will not be merely negative : it will be positive and most
powerful. I have often looked with horror upon the kind of
common schools and teachers to which thousands of children,
during several of their best years, are cruelly and wantonly sub-
jected in the older States. But it is or was the fashion, in many
places, to hire a blockhead or a vagabond because he would
teach a child for a dollar and twenty-five cents per quarter ! Now,
if there be anything on earth for which a parent ought to feel
disposed to pay liberally, it is for the faithful instruction of his
children. Compared with this, every other interest vanishes like
chaff before the wind it is less than nothing. And yet, unless
the world has suddenly grown much wiser, there is no service
so grudgingly and so pitifully rewarded. The consequence is
what might have been expected. Every man of cleverness and
ambition will turn his back with scorn upon the country school.
He will become a lawyer, a physician, a merchant, a mechanic,
a farmer, or a farmer's overseer, in preference. Until school-
keeping be made an honorable and lucrative profession, suitable
teachers will never be forthcoming in this free country."
Lindsley once observed that "education is indeed a topic about
which everybody feels competent to speculate and to dogmatize
while few comprehend the nature or philosophy of the proc-
ess." He would make education a science deserving the profound
study of all who aspire to become educators. The university has
a duty to develop such men and unless the university accepts the
challenge of leadership there can be no good system of common
schools. "The truth is, the cause of colleges and of schools of
all sorts is one and indivisible. And he who should attempt to
176 PHILIP LINDSLEY
establish good common schools without colleges, would be
compelled to import a monthly cargo of foreign teachers, or
stand before the public a convicted Utopian visionary/ 1
Lindsley felt strongly that education, while it should be dis-
tinctly religious and Christian, need not be sectarian or even de-
nominational. "A public college," he said, "that is, a literary and
scientific college, designed for the use of the public generally,
ought to be independent of all religious sectarian bias, or tend-
ency, or influence. Science and philosophy ought to know no
party in Church or State. They are degraded by every such con-
nection. Christianity, indeed, if rightly interpreted, breathes a
pure, angelic charity, and it is as much a stranger to the strife,
and intrigue, and rancour, and intolerance, and pharisaism of
party as science and philosophy can be." This was broad thinking,
for Lindsley was no latitudinarian. He held to the distinctive doc-
trines of the Presbyterian church with a settled and unwavering
faith, but, as one of his admirers said of him, "His religious
character, moulded throughout on the Westminster Confession
of Faith, was a perfect refutation of the slander that a man must
needs be a bigot because he is a Calvinist."
In his own teaching, Lindsley was broad and thorough. A
classicist, he maintained that there could be no finished scholar-
ship and no real education without a knowledge of mathematics,
languages, and sciences. "Classical learning is so interwoven with
the very texture of modern science, literature and language, that
it is vain to expect scholarship without it, and equally vain for
ignorance and prejudice any longer to denounce it." Mastery in
any field was impossible without accuracy, and mastery was at-
tained only when the students knew that they knew the work.
He had no patience with the smatterer, or the man who under-
took to do what he had never learned. He applied the same
standards to his faculty. "No man can teach more than he knows
himself. The more he knows, the more useful he will be." A great
teacher, therefore, is one who understands perfectly all that he
assumes to teach. He must be able to do the work, and at the
same time he must love the work. Finally, in addition to possess-
ing the requisite intellectual traits, the great teacher must possess
moral integrity, without which he cannot be trustworthy. The
great teacher "will borrow light and information from every
quarter . . . and yet will teach in a manner peculiar to himself. He
EDUCATOR OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST 177
will constrain his pupils to love their studies. He will make it
their delight to advance in wisdom and knowledge." As for head-
masters and college presidents, they should possess "a large
measure of the wisdom of Solomon, the learning of Selden, and
the patience of Job."
George Mifflin Dallas [1792-1864]
THE OTHER VICE-PRESIDENT FROM
PRINCETON
BY STRUTHERS HURT
F
is anything but fair-minded when it comes
to posthumous fame. Clearly it is amoral or,
one might more truthfully say, immoral. Drama
seems to be the requisite, and it is immaterial whether this drama
is virtuous or disgraceful. Jonathan Edwards, although his
name is respected, and perpetuated, within certain small circles,
is by no means as secure through the ages as Billy the Kid. When
it comes to that curiously inconspicuous position, the vice-
presidency of the United States, pregnant with potentialities for
abrupt transition into importance, the irony is emphasized. Un-
less his chief dies in office, apparently the only way a Vice-
President can achieve immortality is to shoot a former Secre-
tary of the Treasury.
Princeton's most famous Vice-President was a murderer, a
philanderer, and a traitor. He is as secure in the minds of Prince-
tonians and other Americans, if not in their hearts, as George
Washington. No one forgets Aaron Burr, of the class of 1772,
but hardly anyone remembers another Princeton Vice-President
who was one of the most distinguished and useful men of his
time and who, as much as any man, had to do with the shaping
of a critical period in this country's history. That Vice-Presi-
dent, moreover, had the distinction of having the largest city
of northern Texas named after him.
The name of this Vice-President is George Mifflin Dallas, and
he graduated in 1810, thirty-eight years after his more glamor-
ous but less respectable predecessor. Burdened with honors, he
died in 1864 in his native city of Philadelphia and speedily
achieved that oblivion which is the reward of excellent citizen-
ship.
Dallas was a charming man, like Burr, although he does not
seem to have used his charm to destroy the opposite sex. He is
described as "at once stately and genial, robust and refined, and
THE OTHER VICE-PRESIDENT 179
equipped not only with the learning which befits a scholar, but
also with all the graces which add such charm to learning and
power/' and there is a portrait of him late in life which shows
a singularly handsome person, with a magnificent brow, an
aquiline nose, splendid direct eyes, and a shock of white hair.
The observer quoted above goes on to say that Dallas was
brought up "in that atmosphere which now appears so fascinat-
ing to us all the atmosphere which surrounded the old school
of American gentlemen at the period immediately succeeding
the Revolution. "
So far as lasting fame is concerned, Dallas started with three
distinct handicaps. He was born a Philadelphian and Phila-
delphia has always considered fame an aberration to be sup-
pressed in the interests of good taste He went to Princeton and
Princeton (totally lacking in the shrewd New England salesman-
ship of Harvard and Yale) has quietly maintained throughout
the two hundred years of its distinguished history that fame, at
least where Princeton men are concerned, is a gift, not won, but
bestowed by well-to-do ancestors, a gift crowned by the final act
of graduation ; after which, time stops, and whatever else hap-
pens is merely ornament, a baroque insult to the fine simplicity of
the original structure As a third handicap George Mifflin Dallas
had ancestors who were distinguished and extremely well-to-do.
Then to the injury of life-long prominence, a constant irritation
in the minds of the mediocre, he added the insult of unorthodox
political views. He was that rare person, a liberal aristocrat,
surrounded as liberal aristocrats invariably are by countless
friends and relatives, then known as Federalists, engaged in
the age-old upper-class occupation of "gnashing one's teeth."
He was distinctly "a traitor to his class/' He was one of the
earliest of Democrats and a fervent admirer of Andrew Jackson,
with whose election to the Presidency he had much to do.
George MifHin Dallas was born in Philadelphia July 10, 1792,
only five years after the ratification in the same city of the Con-
stitution which turned this country from a congeries of hostile
states into a united nation. Philadelphia was still the Federal
Capital, and the future Vice-President, senator from Pennsyl-
vania, and minister to Russia and England, was the second son
of one of Philadelphia's most distinguished citizens, the Hon-
orable Alexander James Dallas. On his mother's side he was
l8O GEORGE MIFFLIN DALLAS
descended from Sir Nicholas Trevanion, a wealthy landowner
in Cornwall, England. Mrs. Dallas had been Arabella Maria
Smith, daughter of Major George Smith of the British army.
Her husband's family traced its descent from the Scotch Barons
of Dallas. Alexander Dallas, like so many other distinguished
Americans toward the end of the eighteenth century, was a
West Indian, born, in 1759, on the island of Jamaica, the son
of a wealthy physician and planter. No one has as yet properly
estimated the contribution made to this country by the slave
insurrections and the decline in sugar which occurred about
this time in the Greater and Lesser Antilles.
Alexander James Dallas read law as a youth in the Temple
in London and for a while resided in England, where he met
his wife. Then he was recalled to Jamaica to take charge of the
declining family estates, a task that proved to be hopeless. Partly
because of this and partly because of his wife's health, in 1783, a
mere boy of twenty- four, with 700 in capital, he immigrated to
America and settled in Philadelphia, at the time by far the most
important of the new-world cities.
The Revolutionary War was hardly over. Only the year before
had the preliminary articles of peace between the United States
and England been signed in Paris, and since Alexander Dallas
and his wife arrived in June it was not until three months later,
September 3, that the definitive treaty was completed. The British
army was still in New York (it did not evacuate that city until
November 25) and five months were to pass after the Dallas's
arrival before, on December 4, 1783, General Washington made
his farewell address at Fraunces Tavern, resigning his commis-
sion, and retiring to his beloved Mount Vernon. Six years were
to elapse before this country had its first president.
The more one studies the eighteenth century the more one
comes to admire its placid fortitude, its cool adventuresomeness,
and its willingness to forget and forgive the bitterness of war.
The young English subject, Alexander James Dallas, had not
the slightest difficulty in finding his way in his new home, in
transforming himself into an American, and a prominent one.
Within a short time he was one of Philadelphia's leading law-
yers, displaying the imaginative diversity of his mind by writing
plays for Mr. Lewis Hallam, Philadelphia's English-born actor-
manager, and contributing to the Columbian Magazine and other
t, K R (. L M I F P L
From \ I'aiMUn^ Ii\
\ ]) A I I A S
'1 hoinas Sullv
THE OTHER VICE-PRESIDENT l8l
literary periodicals. In 1794 he was appointed aide-de-camp to
Governor Mifflin of Pennsylvania, and helped to suppress the
Whiskey Rebellion in the western part of the state; the year
before he had helped organize the Democratic Society, thus set-
ting a tradition for his family and exhibiting his own turn of
mind. From then on opportunity and distinction waited upon
him increasingly.
In 1814 we find Alexander Dallas as Madison's Secretary of
the Treasury, proposing to Congress the establishment of a gov-
ernment bank. The bill of 1815 passed by Congress for this
purpose was vetoed by President Madison, but a year later,
April 3, 1816, a second bill was approved by the president and
the Bank of the United States was incorporated with an initial
capital of thirty-five millions.
By this time Dallas had five children, two daughters and three
sons, each of whom was to be, in his own way, as distinguished
as his father.
The eldest, Commodore Alexander James Dallas, as a young
lieutenant in command of a gun-division of the United States
frigate President, one of the tall sisters of the early American
navy (Old Ironsides was another), fired the first shot in the
War of 1812 on the American side, that is; the British man-
of-war, Little Belt, fired first. For this the Commodore was
brought before a Court of Special Inquiry, by his superiors,
openly deprecating but secretly delighted, for we were not yet
at war with England and he had acted without immediate orders.
He was acquitted under a general order which, very sensibly, had
been designed to take care of just such incidents. Years later,
many times decorated, he died on board his ship in Callao Bay,
Peru. His first wife was the sister of Philadelphia's great Civil
War general, George G. Meade. The third son, Trevanion, be-
came an outstanding judge. Of the sisters, one, Sophia, married
Richard Bache, grandson of Benjamin Franklin, and the other,
Matilda, married William Wilkins who was to be a colleague
of her brother in the United States Senate.
George Mifflin Dallas, the second son and the most distin-
guished of them all, received his early education at the hands
l82 GEORGE MIFFLIN DALLAS
of Mr. Dorfenille of Germantown and Provost Andrews of the
University of Pennsylvania. He was ready for college at four-
teen and entered the College of New Jersey, with the class of
1810, graduating with the highest of honors. In that class there
were 26 graduates the usual class today is about 600. The
average age of graduation then was 18; the present average of
graduation is 22. (There are moments when one wonders what
the young men do with the extra four years.) Twenty-one years
later, George Dallas, already a most distinguished man, delivered
the annual commencement address to the class of 1831, on the
evening of September 27, in "The Church at Princeton," an
address published at the request of the American Whig and
Cliosophic Societies. He began with this sentence: "There are
some present tho' the eyes, the smiles, and the complexions of
youth remind me that there can be but few who may remember
that he, who has now the honor to address them, quitted this
very platform, bidding farewell to collected friends and to col-
legiate life, exactly one and twenty years ago." At the moment
Mr. Dallas was only thirty-nine
This ancient had already been Mayor of Philadelphia and
United States District Attorney for the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania ; he had been instrumental in procuring the presi-
dency for Andrew Jackson, and was on the eve of being elected
United States Senator from Pennsylvania to fill the unexpired
term of Senator Barnard, who had resigned. Almost at the mo-
ment of graduation his life of public service began. Quietly
enough he had gone from Princeton to his father's office to study
law, but within less than two years, June 18, 1812, we were at
war again with Great Britain, and he at once volunteered. Until
recently, at least, we have regarded ourselves as a peaceful na-
tion. But whatever our hopes and intentions, there is not, since
Princeton's founding two hundred years ago, a single genera-
tion of Princeton men, if generations be counted four to a cen-
tury, that has not known a major war. Young Dallas was not
permitted to be a soldier for long. He had exhibited too marked
talents in other directions and in 1813 he was appointed private
secretary to Albert Gallatin, the great Swiss who had become
an American citizen and had been Jefferson's Secretary of the
Treasury. Gallatin was being sent by President Madison on a
THE OTHER VICE-PRESIDENT 183
mission to Russia to secure the good offices of the Czar in peace
negotiations with England.
Dallas returned to Philadelphia, passed his examinations for
the bar, and in April 1813 departed with the commissioners for
a country he was to know well and admire exceedingly. When
the official party reached Russia, it was found that England
had already declined the offer of the Czar to mediate, so Dallas
and the other commissioners, among them John Quincy Adams,
were sent with dispatches to Count Lieven, the Russian Ambas-
sador to the Court of St. James. The purpose of the mission was
to ascertain the wishes of the British government as to further
negotiations, and the result was the designation of Ghent as the
place of meeting for the drawing up of the treaty of peace.
Dallas, only twenty-two, was entrusted with the official dis-
patches to the government of the United States and, leaving
Ghent, arrived in this country in October 1814 and delivered
the letters to that other Princetonian, James Madison. President
Madison, as a reward for this excellent performance, appointed
Dallas Remitter of the Treasury, of which his father was at that
time Secretary. Two years later George Dallas resigned his office
to become solicitor of the United States Bank, which had just
been established, largely through his father's efforts. In April
of 1816 he tried his first case in Philadelphia, and the following
month, on May 23, married Sophia Nicklin of that city. Mean-
while, the Treaty of Ghent had been signed, the Battle of New
Orleans had been fought, making Andrew Jackson a famous
man, and Napoleon had been defeated at Waterloo.
Every day is crucial in the life of a nation, and all periods are
dramatic no matter how peaceful and ordinary they may seem
to those living in them. But certain periods are more obviously
colorful and formative than others, and the graduates of the
College of New Jersey around the turn of the nineteenth century
found themselves embarked upon some of the most critical
decades this country has ever known, more critical, perhaps, than
any others save those of the 'fifties and 'sixties and those of
today.
History's most sardonic footnote is the way succeeding gen-
erations honor above all others the very ancestors who if they
were contemporaries would be regarded as the most dangerous
and radical of men. Dallas was by no means a radical, although
184 GEORGE MIFFLIN DALLAS
the more reactionary of his period thought him so. Indeed, he
inclined to be conservative and, as a Pennsylvanian, especially
so in financial matters ; but he was at times a liberal, and as a
constructive liberal often found himself aligned with what were
then considered radical ideas. Sometimes conservatism got in his
way, or what he considered to be political obligations, as hap-
pened when, while senator, he worked, contrary to his own
beliefs, for the rechartering of the United States Bank and for
a protective tariff. This he did, as he said, in obedience to the
instructions of the Legislature of Pennsylvania which had
elected him. On the whole, however, throughout his entire
career he showed himself to be a man of singular intellectual
integrity and courage, and very much of one piece.
The young men of the class of 1810 at the College of
New Jersey were born, as we have said, at the very moment,
almost, when this country actually became a country; and a
nation, like a man, is no sooner born than troubles begin to fly
upward like sparks in a chimney. Two great questions began to
emerge, two tendencies to split the country into halves. Alex-
ander Hamilton and the Federalists had done a magnificent job
in uniting the jealous states, but they were unaware of or were
bitterly hostile to the underlying sentiments of the average
American, to the "American Urge," it might be called. They
did not understand or like democracy as we now understand it.
This, then, became the first great domestic question. The second
was slavery, with its then concomitant, states' rights. Washing-
ton, Jefferson, other great Americans, had foreseen this latter
danger, and had trembled. "Like a fire bell in the night," Jeffer-
son had written in 1819. One could change the simile to that of
the "cloud no bigger than a man's hand" shaping itself into a
tornado.
Dallas, like most Northern Democrats, found himself in the
unhappy predicament of having to work with a party divided
by an irreconcilable argument. Strongly antislavery, like most
Northern Democrats, he took out his discomfort on the open
Abolitionists whom he considered to be trouble-makers. He
hated the Secessionists equally. Here were indeed the seeds of
weakness and disorder, and the giant nation to be was still a
stripling, muscles and sinews young and still unhardened.
The foreign picture was as disturbing as the domestic. Europe,
THE OTHER VICE-PRESIDENT 185
especially England, was slow to accept the United States as an
equal or even as an accomplished fact. All through Dallas's life,
American foreign policy was difficult to maintain and the posi-
tion of America in the world parlous. It took the Civil War to
convince Europe that America was something that had happened.
Interestingly enough in the light of present-day events, Russia,
as it has been with few exceptions through our entire history,
was a cordial friend. Looking back on those decades between
1790 and 1860, one agrees with the commentator who remarked
that the American Revolution "was impossible but then, it
wasn't." Nor should the historian fail to give full credit to
Napoleon for what, without the slightest good will or intention,
he did for this country. He kept Europe busy, and he was a party
to the Louisiana Purchase.
The last, by and large, is probably the most important event
in the history of this country, and it was accomplished, as you
remember, by Thomas Jefferson in the most high-handed fashion
and without the consent of Congress. At the time he was accused
of being "an extravagant fool." He had purchased half of the
present territory of the United States at the rate of about three
and one-half cents an acre.
With the acquisition of the great tract beyond the Mississippi,
centripetal energies emerged far stronger than the centrifugal
ones. This country became an empire, its democratic tendencies
were assured, and yet, at the same time, the strength of its central
government was reinforced. Moreover, the Civil War, far in the
future, was won in advance, although no one realized any of
these portents at the moment. The best the most f arsighted could
do was to hope that here, possibly, were unifying and strengthen-
ing and healing tendencies and events more powerful than the
forces of disunion and destruction.
Upon the expiration of his term in the Senate, March 3, 1833,
Dallas declined reelection and accepted the position of attorney-
general of Pennsylvania offered him by Governor Wolf. Upon
the relinquishment of this office he practiced law for a while in
Philadelphia with great success. Like so many public men, despite
proverbial comments on the subject, he needed to mend his
private fortune. In 1837, aged forty-five, he was appointed by
President Van Buren minister to Russia and remained there two
years, being recalled at his own request in 1839 to resume once
l86 GEORGE MIFFLIN DALLAS
more the practice of the law. President Van Buren offered him
the attorney-generalship in his cabinet, but he declined.
It was in diplomacy that Dallas's qualities shone : his charm,
his tact, his breeding, his patience, his imposing presence, and
his sturdy Americanism the real aristocrat is always a patriot
but his two years in Russia were more interesting and amusing
than important. With Mrs. Dallas and his daughters, he enjoyed
them, and a record, as well worth reading today as ever, is pre-
served in his diary edited by his daughter Susan and published
in 1892. Little of importance was taking place between this
country and Russia, merely more or less routine matters of
trade, but the Court at St. Petersburg was one of the gayest and
most indefatigable in Europe and one gets a clear and detailed
picture of its pursuit of pleasure from the Dallas diary. The
Czar, Nicholas I, went out of his way to be attentive to the
handsome, youthful American minister, and Dallas, in turn,
received a pleasant impression of an enlightened autocrat. He
records one informal conversation with Nicholas that may have
some bearing upon Russo-American relations today.
"When he adverted/' writes Dallas, "to the accusations com-
monly made against him, I interrupted him, as apologizing for
them in some degree, with the remark, 'But, then, you are so
powerful, that you naturally inspire jealousy/ 'Yes/ he said,
'we are powerful; only, however, for defence, not for attack/ "
Dallas adds, "And he seemed anxious that he should express this
last idea distinctly/'
During Dallas's term as United States minister, President
Van Buren offered him the secretaryship of the navy, but he de-
clined. This was followed, on his return to America, by the offer
of the attorney-generalship, which, as has already been men-
tioned, he also declined. This in itself is something of a record
the declining of two cabinet posts within two years.
For a while Dallas was busy with his practice of the law in
Philadelphia and his interest in Pennsylvania politics. The
practice of the law prospered; but politically Dallas failed to
hold his own with his fellow Democrat, James Buchanan. Be-
tween these two men there had always been rivalry and reciprocal
THE OTHER VICE-PRESIDENT 187
dislike, which makes Buchanan's generous behavior to Dallas,
when Buchanan was elected president in 1857, all the more com-
mendable ; especially commendable as coming from a not alto-
g^her commendable man. In the convention of 1844 the scales
tipped in Dallas's favor. Buchanan, Cass, and Van Buren were
discarded in favor of the North Carolinian, James Polk, and,
when Silas Wright refused the honor, Dallas suddenly found
himself Vice-President.
The period during which Dallas presided over the Senate
could not have been more stormy. Conflict with Mexico was
looming on the horizon and, on May 13, 1846, war was declared.
Slavery and secession were rising like a tidal wave to overwhelm
the country, and Dallas as a Democrat had to steer his course
between two utterly opposing points of view. The Wilmot
Proviso, which sought to prohibit slavery in any territory ac-
quired from Mexico, was very much to the fore, and in tariff
matters as well Dallas found himself in the inevitable quandary
of a free-trader from Pennsylvania. Dallas's party, naturally,
was pledged to revision downward, but in 1846 he worked for a
compromise which would provide more protection than was
afforded by the Walker Bill, then before Congress. Failing in
this, he cast the deciding vote in favor of the bill.
It was during Dallas's vice-presidency that the tiny village
of Peter's Corner in Texas changed its name to Dallas and began
to grow into a great city.
At the end of Folk's administration Dallas was glad to retire
from active politics. His name does not appear conspicuously
in public life again until, in 1856, Franklin Pierce appointed
him minister to England, succeeding his life-long rival, James
Buchanan. Dallas made a most excellent United States minister
to Great Britain, and at an extremely critical time. With the
desperate folly which has pursued Anglo-American relations all
through their history, England and America were close to war.
With the persistence of an overlong, sinister farce, a certain
pattern reappears. English fools and American fools, tempo-
rarily in power, make all the trouble they can. At the last mo-
ment, the situation is saved by sensible Americans and English-
men and by the inescapable sympathy between the two nations
"that noble race whose motto is Freedom," as Winston Church-
ill, the American novelist, wrote in 1899. "I pray God," he went
l88 GEORGE MIFFLIN DALLAS
on to say, "that the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack may
one day float together to cleanse this world of tyranny/ 1 A wish,
and a vision, fulfilled twice in the last twenty-eight years.
Three bitter questions were in dispute between Great Britain
and the United States in 1856, all of them nonsense. And as
always, ready to add to the smoldering trash-heap were certain
sections of the American and English press and the inevitable
village idiot with a match, this time in the person of Sir Edward
Cust, Master of Ceremonies at the Court of St. James. Sir
Edward chose this particular moment to object to the dress of
three American gentlemen taken by Mr. Dallas to a Royal levee
at Buckingham Palace; most absurdly of all to the dress of Pro-
fessor Mahan of West Point who, since he had the assimilated
rank of major, appeared in the full-dress uniform of an Ameri-
can officer. Sir Edward said these gentlemen could not pass
the Queen, so the three and Mr. Dallas withdrew, since, as
Dallas wrote in a letter to the State Department, "It was im-
possible to do less, and we did no more."
First and, at the moment, foremost, was the question of the
recall of Crampton, British minister at Washington. England
was still involved in the Crimean War, and Crampton had taken
to invading our neutrality by enlisting men on American soil for
the British army. His recall was demanded, and England re-
fused. In May of 1856 he was dismissed by President Pierce.
This was only three months after Dallas arrived in England,
and for a while it looked as if he, in return, would be dis-
missed by the British government. Fortunately with great good
sense the British ministry refrained. But two vexing problems
remained : the status, under the Monroe Doctrine and the Clay-
ton-Bulwer Treaty, of Great Britain in Central America; and
the questioned right of British men-of-war to search American
vessels under the joint agreement between the two nations to
suppress the slave trade.
England, at the time, maintained a protectorate over the
Mosquito Indians in Nicaragua, occupied the Bay Islands off the
coast of Honduras, and was actively interfering in a quarrel
between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, all of which, the United
States protested, was in direct violation of the Clayton-Bulwer
Treaty. In addition to this, there was a dispute over San Juan
Island and the northwest boundary of this country. Negotiations
THE OTHER VICE-PRESIDENT 189
had reached such an angry impasse that within six months of his
arrival (June 6, 1856) Dallas wrote: "It will not surprise me
if I should turn out to be the last minister from the United
States to the British Court, and that will certainly be fame if it
be not honour." Fortunately the British government was in the
control of liberal and intelligent men, and, by working hard all
that summer, Dallas and Lord Clarendon were able by October
to prepare and sign what was called the Dallas-Clarendon Con-
vention. This provided that the dispute between Costa Rica and
Nicaragua over their border should be arbitrated by the United
States and Great Britain, that the Mosquito Indians should be
given their independence, and that the Bay Islands should be
turned over to Honduras under a treaty just made between that
country and England.
The Senate agreed to all of this except the treaty. That clause
was stricken out, and the Dallas-Clarendon Convention passed
by a narrow vote. England, however, refused to abide by the
amended agreement, and once more difficulties arose. Mean-
while, Buchanan had succeeded Pierce as President and, with
great wisdom and generosity, he retained his old rival as min-
ister to Great Britain. Dallas remained in England all during
Buchanan's term, until 1860 and the very eve of the Civil War.
He was followed by the more famous but no more intrepid
Charles Francis Adams. President Buchanan took Central
American affairs out of Dallas's hands and conducted them
directly from Washington.
Dallas, however, was directly responsible for the cessation of
England's provocative searching of American vessels in con-
nection with the suppression of the slave trade. From Lord
Malmesbury, the British Foreign Secretary, he obtained a com-
plete disavowal of this dangerous precedent. Dallas regarded this
as the greatest triumph of his diplomatic career. The maneuver
by which he forced a full public acknowledgment of the dis-
avowal is significant of his astuteness as a diplomat. As he noted,
in a letter to Cass, "The slight doubt hinted in some news-
papers, as to the extent of the renunciation on the boarding
question, and the reticence of ministerial M.P.'s when interpel-
lated, seemed to make it important that the exact character of
what had been done should be fixed before Parliament ad-
I9O GEORGE MIFFLIN DALLAS
journed, and before the possible contingency of a change from
Derby to Palmerston could take place."
To compel the government to speak out Dallas made use of
the Fourth of July banquet given in London. In responding to
the toast he commented wittily (and pointedly) on the lack
of an American diplomacy. Insofar as it did exist, it was to be
compared to the American militia. "To be sure," Dallas con-
tinued, "in the United States, from the outset, we have always
had a partiality for the militia. (Hear, hear.) Our first military
achievements were gained by men among whom were some of
the rawest possible militia. (Hear, and a laugh.) And it has so
happened, probably by accident, that our militia has over and
over again proved equal to the best regulars of Europe.
(Cheers.)"
In the same urbane and apparently guileless manner, Dallas
went on to say that our militia diplomacy had just won a modest
victory over England in the matter of "some little difficulties
on the coasts of the United States and in the West Indian Sea."
Carefully avoiding any disclosure of the terms of the agree-
ment which had been reached, his praise of British candor and
fair dealing so whetted the appetite of the public to know
exactly what had been agreed upon that all the details were soon
made known. "And now England," Dallas wrote to Cass,
"through her omnipotent Wittenagemote, through all her lead-
ing journals, specially the Thunderer and Lord Palmerston's
organ, as well as by table oratory, is made to know the identical
pretension her government has finally withdrawn from as
illegal."
When Dallas returned to America, the world was falling
about his ears as it fell about the ears of all Northern Democrats
in that fateful period. He had begun life as a liberal, a progres-
sive, although one of conservative temper, an Andrew Jackson
man ; circumstances over which he no longer had control were
forcing him into the ambiguous position of an unwilling ally
of a party which, forgetting its early history, was dedicating
itself to tyranny and the dismemberment of his beloved country,
a party headed for political suicide or, if not actual death, at
least national impotency for a quarter of a century. Dallas was
sixty-eight, too old to change, too fixed in his ways to envisage
the new portent of Abraham Lincoln.
THE OTHER VICE-PRESIDENT
He returned to Philadelphia and lived quietly until his death
in 1864, continuing to vote the Democratic ticket. The guns were
still firing; he did not know who had won, his country or his
friends to the south.
He has been spoken of as an excellent example of "the
gentleman in politics." The phrase, pleasant as it is, is not
enough. There have been numerous "gentlemen in politics" who
have behaved very badly, and still more who, if not actively
dishonest, have been at least actively timorous. Dallas was cour-
ageous, intelligent, and upstanding. Princeton has good cause
to be proud of him.
Charles Hodge [1797-1878]
NESTOR OF ORTHODOXY
BY JOHN OLIVER NELSON
Ti
\HREE thousand divinity students sat at his
feet to learn their theology more parsons,
Presbyterian and otherwise, than were trained
by any other American in the nineteenth century. Thousands
more drank deep of his heavy Systematic Theology, in three
volumes. Like a mighty army, preachers, teachers, and college
presidents bore forth from Princeton town the somber banner
of Charles Hodge, to an incalculably great part of the nation.
No other alumnus of Princeton College, possibly excepting
Woodrow Wilson, shaped so deeply the thought-molds of his
day.
Our own philistine generation, less alert to preachers than to
news broadcasters, would knit its brow in astonishment over this
pulpit-borne outreach of one dogmatist. Trained by advertisers
to equate what is best with what is newest, we would find scandal
in his serene stubbornness among fresh ideas. Partly in ignorance
and partly in distaste we resent his seminary title of Professor
of Exegetical, Didactic, and Polemical Theology. Thus even
among churchmen today, appraisal of Charles Hodge runs the
scale from uncritical veneration to condescension, dismay, or
downright incredulity.
Yet he undeniably stands as the Nestor of nineteenth-century
religious life in America. His "system" more than any other
has been the doctrinal hothouse in which both the solid
fruit of piety and the exotic blooms of theological fancy have
sprung into being.
That "system," to a remarkable degree, was the shadow of
Hodge's own active life shaped firmly by tradition, inspired
by deep loyalties and friendships, disciplined by polemic, and
grounded in a few great central assumptions about life and God
and the universe. The story of his years, especially as they
brought him to Princeton, is the story of his theological outlook.
More truly probably than he knew, Charles Hodge modestly
claimed that there was nothing unusual about his religiousness
NESTOR OF ORTHODOXY 193
"except that it began very early." It did indeed. With his very
swaddling-clothes he seems to have been wrapped as he ap-
peared on December 27, 1797 in a mantle of piety. This picture
we may accept, even with the gloss of retrospect, as describing
his attitudes as a tiny lad : "As far back as I can remember, I had
the habit of thanking God for everything I received, and asking
him for everything I wanted. If I lost a book, or any of my
playthings, I prayed that I might find it. I prayed walking along
the streets, in school and out of school, whether playing or
studying."
For such intimations of immortality his mother was doubtless
largely responsible. A quiet Bostonian of steadfast Huguenot
stock, Mary Blanchard Hodge was diligent in prayer and devout
in every Christian exercise. Her husband, Hugh Hodge, who
died shortly after Charles was born, was a similarly sober
churchman. But even earlier prenatal inheritance pointed the
lad to Presbyterian orthodoxy: his merchant grandfather, a
hearty Ulsterman, was so truculent a Calvinist that on Biblical
grounds he refused till his dying hour to grant that the earth
really moves ! Such sturdy ghosts Charles found in the quaint
Hodge dwelling, near Christ Church graveyard in Philadelphia.
All around him was a dependable Presbyterian world which
had begun even to move only during his own generation.
To be sure, the earth was moving all too fast for some
Americans even in the decade of Hodge's birth. Unorthodox,
unsettling ideas were abroad. Thousands were still breathless
over Tom Paine's daring Common Sense. And although few
reputable church-goers stooped to read that tract, it was clear
to many that religion itself was falling on evil days. The
Episcopal bishop of New York gave up his post, believing
with Chief Justice Marshall and the bishop of Virginia that "the
Church was too far gone ever to be revived." Even at Harvard
College, "the infuriated steeds of infidelity" were being bridled
only with difficulty.
The boy's early pastor, shovel-hatted Ashbel Green, was
ruffled by no such strange winds of doctrine. He earnestly put
Charles and his older brother Hugh through the catechism on
his pastoral calls as he was to do years later when he was pres-
ident at Princeton College, and they both undergraduates.
As Widow Hodge sent Charles off to school, sound piety fol-
194 CHARLES HODGE
lowed him close behind. First there was a roomful of little boys
and girls taught by "an old lady in Arch Street." But then he
went to a Presbyterian elder's classes facing Independence Hall,
and thence to a sunny Swedenborgian schoolmaster. In those
early years, he records one devastating comment, having to do
less with his religion than with his artistic success. His drawing-
school teacher, peering over the lad's shoulder, lamented
"Charles, I think I could spit paint better than that !"
When he was twelve, both brothers were packed away to
boarding school, to a Presbyterian parson at Somerville, New
Jersey. This was on the exciting route of the Swift & Sure Mail
Coach Line between Philadelphia and New York. But this
shift away from home aroused in the quiet, well-behaved boy no
wish to be emancipated from his mother's faith : "I cannot recol-
lect that I ever uttered a profane word, except once. It was when
I was thirteen or fourteen years old. I was walking with my
brother, and struck my foot against a stone, and said: *D n
it.' My brother was shocked and exclaimed, 'Why Charles ! !'
I cannot tell why I said it. ... I am thankful that no similar
experience ever occurred to me."
The very next year after going to Somerville, Charles was
footing his unprofane way through the ruts of Princeton town
itself, to the new Hodge home on Witherspoon Street. His re-
sourceful mother had taken a frame dwelling on that muddy
thoroughfare, which then went by the name of Guinea Lane.
There she boarded seven Hodge relatives who were students at
the college. Hugh began his premedical work in Nassau Hall and
Charles was off to the little town academy. A member now of
the class of 1815, the fourteen-year-old boy settled in Princeton,
which for sixty-six years he was to call home.
Within a few months during the War of 1812 Charles
could have been seen, a gangling, wide-eyed youth, lying at
length on the gallery rail watching a solemn occasion. The place
was the First Presbyterian Church, a stone's throw from the col-
lege, which served for every sizable town gathering. The event
was the inaugural of the new Theological Seminary in town. The
sole professor who was invested that night was Archibald
NESTOR OF ORTHODOXY 195
Alexander, the man who was to influence Hodge more than any-
one else. It was several days later that the slight, genial professor
stepped into the schoolroom just as the boy was stammering
over his Greek lesson: their eyes met, and the friendship was
sure. Soon, as the reverend professor drove his gig over to
Flemington and other preaching points, young Hodge was his
constant companion, listening and questioning as the muddy
miles went by. At fourteen the boy was already an apprentice
to theological orthodoxy.
In spite of stammered Greek (the language was always hard
for him), Charles was ready for college that very year. Septem-
ber 1812 found him knocking at the door of the college ex-
aminer. That tall, spare Presbyterian cleric after due academic
scrutiny admitted him to the sophomore class. The boy was
thus a Princeton sophomore at fourteen, with custom rather
than precocity apparently justifying the accelerated course. The
Hodge boys had classes, of course, in The College, where stu-
dents lived upstairs.
Princeton College that year, as the boys' Philadelphia pastor
Dr. Ashbel Green arrived as president, was in a cool religious
climate. But the new executive's strategy soon became plain :
even before school opened he earnestly proposed to his three
faculty members that they all observe with him a day of prayer,
asking God's blessing upon the college. This exercise, ap-
parently carried out with due thoughtfulness, was no innova-
tion in a school which had actually been begun in the study of
a Presbyterian minister in Elizabeth, to train candidates for
ordination.
However fervent in spirit, Princeton was undeniably dense
in doctrine. Long before Dr. Green's day, urbane British
critics held "the principles inculcated in the College of New
Jersey" to be "antiquated and unfashionable." All the presi-
dents, and usually faculty members, were Presbyterian min-
isters. And ten years before Hodge arrived, rumblings of stu-
dent unbelief had led the college to prescribe as Sabbath reading
a sobering list of books : Paley's Evidences for a Just and Holy
Life for all seniors, Campbell on miracles for juniors, and
catechisms with the Bible itself for underclassmen. In Hodge's
day, all four classes additionally were required to recite to the
president from Scripture each Sunday afternoon. These pre-
196 CHARLES HODGE
scriptions were the stanch ancestors of that pale, vanishing
twentieth-century stepchild, "compulsory chapel" on Sunday!
But a new note was being sounded as Dr. Alexander himself
began Sunday evening preaching in the stuffy basement of the
Old Library. Here was excitement about the Christian faith. A
town sermon-taster declared that "while most other ministers
preached about religion, he preached religion/' It was plain
that the spirited theologian was not far from his own carefree,
card-playing student days : its was a common claim that "Dr.
Alexander must have been very wicked in his youth, or he could
not know so well how wicked men felt !" Hodge never missed
these Sunday night sessions.
As the curriculum opened up to him, however, he found going
on among his colleagues a casual subterfuge obviously unaffected
by Alexander's preachments. He records with glee an incident
in the requirement that each student memorize in Latin his own
church catechism. It seems that Presbyterians were at a sore
disadvantage in that their Westminster Shorter Catechism belied
its name in being far longer than the Episcopal catechism. Thus
many a canny Presbyterian was moved to pass himself off as an
Episcopalian! Dr. Green soon put two and two together, and
quietly announced that Episcopalians thenceforth should memo-
rize also the Thirty-Nine Articles of their faith for recitation.
Denominational parity was restored.
Actual courses given in the College of New Jersey were in
Hodge's day quite as safe as the catechisms themselves. Studies
in belles-lettres, for example, were by no means so effete as that
name might imply: "Blair's Lectures" was the text. In Philos-
ophy the staple was "Witherspoon's Lectures," solidly dogmatic
reasons for the existence of God with short side-strips into
metaphysics in other areas. The logic text was by Andrew "a
little book about as large as an Almanac, which we got through
in four recitations" the only logic Hodge ever studied. He says
little of courses offered by the vice-president : natural philosophy,
mathematics, and chemistry. But these also were doubtless
theological, even if only by professorial digression.
The one faculty man who kindled sparks in Charles Hodge
was the Reverend Philip Lindsley, Class of 1804, master in
Greek and destined to become one of the great educational
pioneers in the South. The refrain of this dapper scholar was
CHARLES HODGE
NESTOR OF ORTHODOXY 197
that "one of the best preparations for death is a thorough
knowledge of Greek grammar/ ' Like his successors among
Princeton "preceptor guys" of another century, Lindsley in-
variably took the "wrong" side in argument, maintaining popery
against Protestantism, heresy against orthodoxy, Arminius
against Calvin. Culture, he claimed, reached its climax several
thousand years ago. Before such versatile contrariness Hodge,
a rather cautious Whig Hall debater, was all admiration be-
cause he liked the forthright Mr. Lindsley.
One glimpse of his classroom life is typically human. Sitting
beside his lifelong friend, John Johns of Delaware, Hodge had
to recite to Dr. Green on St. Paul's violent shipwreck on Malta.
"Was Paul ever at Malta?" the good doctor asked. "Y-yes sir,"
Charles ventured, "He touched there on his voyage to Rome "
At his side, straight-faced Johns murmured, "Hm-m-m. Pretty
hard touch !" As Hodge suddenly recalled the shipwreck, he
exploded with laughter, to be "justly reprimanded" by the non-
plused President.
Campus romance, as well as classroom levity, was already a
part of Princeton college atmosphere as Hodge found it even
as its background was the then more glamorous Withcrspoon
Street. At the Hodge house new boarders had appeared, includ-
ing a vivacious Philadelphia!! just his age, Sarah Bache. She
was with her family, proud to be a niece of Dr. Caspar Wistar
of the University of Pennsylvania, and a granddaughter of
Benjamin Franklin. Soon the "stately junior," Hodge, was
ardently helping her home through the puddles of Princeton
springtime. Nine years after they met a decent Victorian af-
fiancement they were to be married Hodge and Wistar have
both been Princeton names in each generation since.
But college was not all catechism, classroom recitations, and
"meeting the right girl." For Charles, the climax of under-
graduate days and a turning point of life came with a famous
campus revival of religion.
It was one of those reawakenings which have perennially
kindled leadership in "the Princeton tradition." The school had
of course begun as the direct result of a religious revival. After
a spiritual lull, the renewal in Hodge's day affected the little
college for several student generations. Thenceforth during the
whole century, a slow rhythm of spiritual movements sent many
198 CHARLES HODGE
hundreds of Princetonians into idealistic fields of service. The
national student Y.M.C.A. was organized at Princeton. The
Student Volunteer Movement for foreign missions began
there at the turn of the century. Even in recent decades, a secu-
larized Princeton provided more leaders than any other campus
for the religious movement known as the Oxford Group.
"Princeton in the nation's service" has been motivated through
most of her history by such revivals as gave Charles Hodge
his vocation in 1815.
This particular renewal was a surprise even to Drs. Green
and Alexander, who had unremittingly prayed for it. We read
in the President's report to the trustees : "The divine influence
seemed to descend like the silent dew of heaven, and in about
four weeks there were very few individuals in the College
edifice who were not deeply impressed with a sense of the im-
portance of spiritual and eternal things. There was scarcely a
room; perhaps not one; which was not a place of earnest,
secret devotion."
But Widow Hodge, with level eye, sized up the whole event as
she wrote Hugh in Philadelphia about the experience which had
come to his brother in the revival :
"Though it is said two or three students ridiculed those that
had joined the Church, this is very doubtful. But on Monday a
great change took place in College. A general seriousness was
observed in the Refectory. The rooms of Biggs, Baker and
others were filled with students soliciting information on the
subject of religion, and getting books. In the evening, while
the Whig Society held their meeting, twenty Clios met in Allen's
room to pray. On Tuesday ... the Senior lecture-room was full,
and there have been prayer-meetings every evening. No doubt
there is much sympathy in the business, and as they instinctively
followed each other last winter in mischief, they are led in the
same manner this season to be good. But it is very probable that
after the effervescence subsides, there will be a good number
who will experience a radical change.
"The important step Charles has taken occasions much solici-
tude. He was so young, I could have wished it had been de-
ferred at least to the end of his College course. But you know
his importunity, and when duty and feeling urged him forward,
I could not throw a straw in the way."
NESTOR OF ORTHODOXY 199
Public discovery of this new commitment of Charles's was
made one Saturday when there happened to be a recruiting
sergeant and drummer in town seeking men for the current war
with Britain. On Nassau Street one student startled another
with the shout, "Guess what! Hodge has enlisted!" "Is it pos-
sible?" gasped the other. "Yes," the fatuous informant con-
tinued: "Enlisted under the banner of King Jesus!"
Such exchanges on the front campus began to draw crowds to
the prayer meetings. Few enough students had been professing
Christians: only 12 out of 105 undergraduates. Within a short
period 30 more accepted Christ. And before they graduated,
almost all the student body had recorded such a decision is-
suing forth to become a notable roster of preachers, teachers,
and evangelists.
No one was more concerned than Hodge to share this new-
found certainty, and one conversion was a dramatic one. Several
juniors gambled at Folet's tavern one night until three, when
they were denied further lights and reported by the cautious
innkeeper to the college. Grimly awaited by the faculty, the mis-
creants were expelled as soon as they lifted the Nassau Hall
latch. In utter dejection, one met with Hodge as he packed for
home and was roundly converted before he left! Gratefully
reporting his new beliefs to Mrs. Hodge, he declared, "To your
dear Charles I am indebted for these impressions."
In his new zeal, Charles seemed to demonstrate a new buoy-
ancy and warmth. He yearned to have his brother Hugh ex-
perience the same great conviction, and his letter is revealing:
"The step which your brother has taken, accompanied by dear
Kinsey, you are already acquainted with. And why not my
dearest brother too? Oh ! that you, that Atkinson, that all, were
here to see what has been done ! for I cannot but think that all
who see the present state of the College must also feel that this
is indeed the harvest, the accepted time, the day of salvation!
Oh! my brother! though it is only your little Toby who is
writing to you, yet he loves you ; he knows how many inestimable
qualities you possess, and shudders at the thought of your want-
ing the one thing needful. You must not, you do not, at least I
hope you will not, want it. ...
"If you were to see me kiss Richards, you must think that a
great change had taken place. . . . There are a thousand things
2OO CHARLES HODGE
I would tell you. ... It being half -past twelve at night is suf-
ficient reason for my bidding you
"good-night.
"Your Brother"
Here is a new Hodge, deeply excited about his Christian
faith, eager to tell others about it, finding in it a personal al-
legiance which brought his whole life into focus. "A great
change had taken place/' indeed, during his senior year at
Princeton.
Within a few months, in September 1815, he was graduated
from the college. His closest friend, John Johns, shared first
honor with another, while Hodge shared second honor with a
fourth. To achieve that standing, he had studied long and
hard. He was pale and worn as he gave the valedictory address
in First Church, where it really constituted his first "preach-
ing" in the town which became his sounding-board for sixty
years.
What had the College of New Jersey given him? He seems to
have left it like thousands of other alumni richer in friend-
ships than in anything else he found there. The cramped, creak-
ing curriculum certainly shaped his thinking. His conversion in
a student religious revival pointed his whole sense of calling.
But as we read his letters and examine his later life, it seems
plain that a warm, personal approach to ideas and people began
during his college years.
Possibly at Princeton, the shared infelicities of March slush
and August smother, the ineffable May, and the symbolic town-
gown confrontation along Nassau Street, do subtly weld young
men's friendship. Whatever the cause, Charles Hodge found
at Princeton personal loyalties lifelong, most of them which
were already becoming the pattern for his unabashed favoritism
among ideas also.
After commencement, it was found that his academic exer-
tions had actually taxed his health to the extent of inducing "a
weak chest." For a whole year he rested and read in his mother's
house in Philadelphia except for a tour of Virginia accom-
NESTOR OF ORTHODOXY 2OI
panying Dr. Alexander on a reminiscent retracing of old preach-
ing circuits.
The sabbatical seems to have been successful, for autumn of
1816 found the nineteen-year-old lad back in Princeton at Semi-
nary, again sharing classes with his friend Johns. There were 26
students, all classes being in the homes of the professors. When
the stately new Seminary building was completed the next year,
Hodge was the very first to preach in its "Oratory," where gen-
erations have trembled through maiden homiletic efforts ever
since.
Now at length the influence of Dr. Alexander became all-
enveloping. Charles, like nearly all his classmates, was unen-
thusiastic about the other professor, Dr. Samuel Miller, who was
the precise defender of Presbyterian history and government
against all comers. Indeed, he records that "the good Doctor
wore out his lead-pencil in thumping the desk to make us be-
have." For Archibald Alexander on the other hand he had
nothing but earnest praise.
The seminary curriculum set up by this spirited revival theo-
logian was at least as archaic as that of the college nearby. We
pass over other subjects to consider Hodge's own field of theol-
ogy : here the text and method were most ponderous of all. For
the basis of study was a prolix three-tome Latin work written
in 1629, the Institutes of Francis Turretine. It was in this
omnibus of dogma that every Princeton seminarian jolted along
until Hodge's own system was available. It is a marvel of scho-
lastic complexity: under each of twenty loci, it presents a num-
ber of quacstiones, which argue the status quaestionis at length
until the fontes solutionum bubble up in oracular answer to each
posed problem. There are crushing replies all along the way
directed to Anabaptists, Jesuits, Lutherans, antinomians, Jews,
Synergists, and a host of others hostile to the Reformed system.
Three seminary years of unresisted training in such disci-
plines showed Hodge to be a careful, prayerful student and
preacher. Thus at the end of his course, Dr. Alexander's young
friend of gig-riding days was asked to stay on, even as an as-
sistant in Hebrew. The flattered Charles, who had planned to
become a parson, was awed and overjoyed. For another year in
Philadelphia he retired from school life, studying. Then he
returned to Princeton, armed with a new appointment to his
2O2 CHARLES HODGE
position by the Presbyterian General Assembly, and moved into
the home of Dr. Alexander. His teaching began in the fall of
1820.
During that same season he visited Yale College and Boston,
and met many an affable but heretical New England divine. This
casual excursion was effected "in Mr. Hodge's old-fashioned
two-wheeled gig, on springs shaped like the letter C; a form
of conveyance now utterly extinct" but then surely a luxury
for a twenty-three-year-old instructor in Hebrew on a salary of
$400 a year! This sporty conveyance was unfortunately all the
more necessary because of a new "obscure and painful affection
of the nerves of his right thigh" a handicap which was to
cripple Hodge as he grew older.
The young man was a good teacher. In two years he was
elected professor of Oriental and Biblical literature. Soon, mar-
ried to comely Sarah Bache, he set up housekeeping in a dwelling
directly across from Nassau Hall, on the corner where Lower
Pyne Hall now stands. After two years there, the Hodges moved
to the house they had built at the west end of Alexander Hall
at the seminary. In this comfortable dwelling Charles Hodge
raised his family, wrote, studied, and prayed, for the fifty-eight
years until his death.
As his academic responsibilities increased, it soon appeared
that Princeton's all did not constitute enough education for the
young professor. He began to "feel constantly the most painful
sense of unfitness" for teaching and with surprising abandon
came to the conclusion that European study was the one
remedy. The minimum useful period for such a visit seemed
to be no less than two years. So, abruptly leaving his wife, and
the children baptized by Dr. Alexander, together with the Pres-
byterianism which for twenty-eight years had sheltered his
thinking, he embarked for the Continent.
The two years in Halle, Paris, and Berlin show Hodge in
a curious light, if we judge by his letters. Here for the first
time he was confronted everywhere with ideas hostile to his
own, with the result that all his Alexandrine orthodoxy came to
the fore in defense of the faith. The sober Princetonian was
horrified at what passed on the Continent as "Christian" theol-
ogy ti 1086 very currents of religious thought which are studied
today as the development of theology. The preaching of the
NESTOR OF ORTHODOXY 2O3
renowned German theologian, Schleiermacher, for example,
filled him with wonder and dismay. The quarantine instructions
of Dr. Alexander were ever with him: "Remember that you
breathe a poisoned atmosphere. ... I wish you to come home
enriched with Biblical learning, but abhorring German philos-
ophy and theology. I have been paying some attention to Kant's
philosophy, but it confounds and astonishes me."
Thus when Charles returned from Europe in 1828, he was
completely unscathed in doctrine, and entrenched in every be-
lief in which he had been brought up More firmly than ever, he
"knew his friends" in the realm of ideas. In his first lecture at
Princeton upon his return, he roundly declared: "Wherever you
find vital piety that is, penitence and a devotional spirit
there you will find the doctrines of the fall, of depravity, of re-
generation, of atonement, and of the deity of Jesus Christ. I
never saw or heard of a single individual who exhibited a spirit
of piety who rejected any one of these doctrines."
Bedecked with his laurels of continental study, Charles
Hodge within the next dozen years became firmly cemented
into the theological niche he occupied for the rest of his life.
His field was obviously no longer that of mere textual interpre-
tation. Nor was he a mere bandier-about of established Prince-
ton shibboleths. Rather, he was the full-panoplied defender of
the whole tradition of Calvinist orthodoxy in America in the
nineteenth century.
Like his ideas, his literary flair was at first derivative, then
gradually creative and affirmative. The periodical he founded,
known generally as The Princeton Review, appeared in 1825
as a mere publication of reprints and translations, later to be-
come what an eminent New Englander called "the most power-
ful organ in the land." Through various changes of name and
sponsorship, this famous magazine claimed Hodge as its un-
changing muse and censor until 1871. By that time a British
secular quarterly was ready to say this of it: "It is beyond all
question the greatest purely theological Review that has ever
been published in the English tongue, and has waged war in
defense of the Westminster standards for a period of forty
204 CHARLES HODGE
years, with a polemic vigor and unity of design without any
parallel in the history of religious journalism."
Assuredly the minatory, monitory pages of The Princeton
Review bear out such a judgment. Hodge's very first contro-
versial article was a "tocsin of alarm" over the illiberal, auto-
cratic policy of the American Education Society as it distributed
funds to needy students. The next year, he pronounced anathema
over the views of a certain Dr. Cox on Christian regeneration,
recording as well his suspicion of New England tampering with
the imputation of Adam's guilt to all men. By 1839 his succes-
sion of del en da cst's had led him to Emerson and German
transcendentalism. As opposed to German philosophic thinking,
he says: "A sanity of intellect, and incapacity to see wonders in
nonsense, is the leading trait of the English mind. The Germans
can believe any thing. Animal magnetism is for them as one
of the exact sciences. What suits the Germans, therefore, does
not suit us. Hence almost all those, who in England or in this
country, have professed transcendentalism, like puss in boots,
have made them [selves] ridiculous. If it was not for its pro-
faneness, what could be more ludicrous than Mr. Emerson's
address?"
In the same vein, he found his foil in 1847 to t> e the Con-
gregational saint Horace Bushnell, whom he laments as "a poet,
and neither a philosopher nor theologian ; a bright star, which
has wandered from its orbit, and which must continue to wan-
der, unless it return and obey the attraction of the great central
orb God's everlasting word."
Yet despite such witch-hunting forays, the attitude of Editor
Hodge and his host of contributors was by no means negative:
if anything, it is overpositive. Often a heavy treatise or a small
tract is liquidated by a mere deprecatory preface, following
which the "Princeton position" is expounded in I-H-III, a-b-c
fullness. The conservative position appears in reviews of books
on philosophy, letters, music, and even Anglo-Saxon; articles
historical and political and literary take their turn. Profound
subjects receive solemn treatment, trivial ones the light touch.
For instance, Hodge starts off on the absurd claims of a par-
ticularly pompous bishop with observations on the effects of
conceit: "A little vanity provokes you; a little more incenses
you ; a good deal enrages you ; but after that, every addition is
NESTOR OF ORTHODOXY 2O5
positively agreeable. . . . Neither critical bitterness nor Presby-
terian sourness has enabled us to withstand [the bishop's] ir-
resistible bonhommie" This, typically, is no bigoted raillery : it
is amused tolerance from a position so sure of itself that it can
concede much.
Such balance and urbanity were characteristic of Charles
Hodge. They account for much of the might of The Princeton
Review among churchmen, and especially among Presbyterians.
Thousands of Presbyterian clergymen, alumni of Hodge's own
classroom, bore witness that whatever he might say, it was
"sound." Once when the General Assembly itself voted over-
whelmingly that Roman Catholic baptism is no baptism, Hodge
in a sage article reversed that gaffe singlehanded, supplying the
position the Church still holds. As he defined what ministers
mean when they "accept" Presbyterian standards a generous,
liberal view his interpretation became the last word, as it has
continued to be until today.
So we see the man most typically in The Review. In his hands
it became the cudgel, the clarion, and the sedative of orthodoxy.
It made "the Princeton position" in matters of faith known
around the world, and respected in many parts of it. Within
the seminary itself, it kept doctrinal thinking, however static,
from drying up into small-town orthodoxy. Yet, peculiarly
enough, Hodge's proudest boast as he relinquished the editor-
ship at last was this : "An original idea in theology is not to be
found in the pages of the Biblical Repertory and Princeton
Review from the beginning until now." Even granting the
truth of this characteristic claim, we may grant that the
now yellowed pages of his periodical do "reshuffle prejudices"
with candor, conviction, and, often, brilliance.
Turning from The Review, we may note that the complacent
changelessness of its position gives a fruitful clue to Hodge's
power in many fields. This phenomenal resistance to any sort
of change was a trait which his son found "very remarkable, and
without any parallel in this age." It appeared in daily habits,
in friendships, in church leadership, and in doctrine.
To students, this professorial distaste for change was a
distinct blessing: the mellow Hodge lectures, in tattered note-
books, were tenderly handed on from time beyond memory, their
repetition predictable almost to the hour. Students marveled to
2O6 CHARLES HODGE
see him each morning, for decades, limping to the doorway of
his home at a set hour, to record temperature, wind direction,
and the state of the sky. One hollow-backed chair he used ex-
clusively in his study for thirty-eight years ; sitting, resting his
lame leg, reading, praying, writing, talking. The little tailor shop
he first happened to patronize in Princeton he clung to for sixty
years, despite the succession of good and bad proprietors, and
the complaints of the younger Hodges. Invariably he voted the
Whig ticket until that party changed ; then Republican for the
rest of his days. His precise views on temperance, slavery, and
government were absolutely unaffected by time, war, or any
ravage of circumstance.
This almost pathological attitude was, in church affairs, a
repeated astonishment to his brethren. In earlier years, when a
denominational split threatened over an issue dear to him, he
refused to advance it because it would be so radical a change.
But long after the schism did occur, when it gave happy promise
of healing, the ancient professor was against that change also :
he hitched up his buggy one day and drove the nine miles to
Cranbury, with a great painful boil on his neck, to cast his vote
for letting well enough alone f
Such conservatism applied most notably, of course, in the
field of doctrine, where Hodge's influence was greatest. Ortho-
doxy he identified with his boyhood catechism, with the long
gig rides at Dr. Alexander's side, with the heart-warming re-
vival in Nassau Hall and such orthodoxy needed, for him, no
further examination. His repeated complaint was that "the
spirit of free inquiry is gone forth ; . . . sentiments are no longer
revered for having been held sacred by the best of men, from
time immemorial. . . ." Thus Hodge felt that the past spoke
with comforting and obvious unanimity in support of his own
opinions, and he was ready to defend that interpretation with
his very life.
This partiality had to do particularly with what Hodge ac-
cepted as "Calvinism" or "Old Calvinism." He continually re-
ferred to "the theology of the Reformers" as though this were
a recognized, systematic whole as it most assuredly was not.
Championing "the faith which was once delivered unto the
saints," Hodge was embarrassingly arbitrary in choosing both
NESTOR OF ORTHODOXY 2OJ
what faith and which saints. A friendly Lutheran chided him
gently for his regular practice of merely overlooking those
estimable "Old Calvinists" with whom he disagreed: "If Dr.
Hodge long ago encountered these divines, he quietly turned
away into his own brighter path, with other visions of the
divine glory."
Even Hodge's greatest successor at Princeton, Benjamin
Breckenridge Warfield, remarked that in textual study Hodge
"was content to accept another man's [opinion] without having
really made it his own, . . . guided sometimes it seemed by theo-
logical predilection." When a reply to one of his Review articles
showed animosity, Hodge merely closed the page, refusing so
much as to hear what was said : in this way, his son remarked,
"he certainly missed much improving discipline which his an-
tagonists have laboriously prepared for his good." Hodge pre-
ferred friendly points of view.
With this instinct of finding double truth in what he liked,
he conversely discovered far less than half-truth in what he
happened to dislike. Just as he unconsciously exaggerated the
unanimity of "all Christians," "all Presbyterians," or "all pious
men," he looked askance at opposite ideas as "delusive," "im-
moral," or "tending to atheism." Thus despite his efforts to be
objective and balanced, Hodge consigns many a valid argument
or noble Christian insight, abruptly, to the Pit, on evidence
decidedly circumstantial. He chooses no view, actually, on the
balance of evidence : either there is all evidence, or none ! Either
Deity has spoken, or has not.
Such dogmatism is rather clearer in his books than in his
periodical articles. These volumes bore his influence afar. A
Commentary on Romans published in 1834 was soon translated
in France and widely used in both languages. A Constitutional
History of the Presbyterian Church, stoutly supporting "Old
School" views, met its needs in 1840. A large tract, The Way
of Life, was in that same year reprinted in London and trans-
lated into Hindustani, as well as sold in America to the total
of 35,000 copies respectable circulation for a sermon even
today. Commentaries, on Ephesians in 1856 and Corinthians
in 1857 and 1859, fall under Warfield's appraisal of Hodge
exegesis : they have "an air of second-handedness" about them.
2O8 CHARLES HODGE
Finally in 1867, when he was sixty-nine, he began work on
his magnum opus, the Systematic Theology. In 1871 its third
and final volume came off the press. This was the climax of his
work, and has been his chief monument.
In three somberly bound tomes, the Systematic Theology has
lent dignity to parsonage libraries for many decades. Like most
treatises designed for immediate, practical use, they have pro-
gressively been "dated" as time has passed since 1871. First
they were study-table needs; then respectable twelve-dollar ref-
erence for the shelf; finally apparatus for pressing flowers or
butterflies. Yet even in this process, the immense prestige of the
work has outlived its actual usefulness. Though libraries honor
it and seminarians may glean from it an occasional pat three-
point "proof ," its Victorian Calvinism has become among most
churchmen an honored anachronism It commands a peculiar
deference from a generation which today can surpass its erudi-
tion but not equal its conviction.
How, we may well ask, docs a man set about writing such an
encyclopedic edifice of doctrine ? For Hodge, that initial prob-
lem was hardly serious, for he followed very closely indeed
an older pattern. The Systematic Theology bears a marked fam-
ily resemblance to Turretine's Institutes, the text also in three
volumes which Hodge studied under Alexander and placed
before his own classes for thirty years. This model supplied the
form. Content was provided by the venerable professor's lecture
notes, recast with refutations of current heterodoxies. As these
2,000 pages, three \olumes, in English, now supplanted Turre-
tine's 2,OOO pages, three volumes, in Latin, Hodge's system had
taken classic form, and a central strain of Calvinist orthodoxy
had been naturalized in America.
To glance at some of the distinctive assertions Hodge makes
in this monumental work may indicate how different is the
climate of religious discussion in our day. Nailed highest to the
mast of his theological craft is the paramount claim held by
Yale in that period to be the one distinctive Princeton tenet
regarding inspiration of the Bible. It is this : the original texts
of Scripture, now lost, were letter-perfect as dictated by Deity,
and any possible error has somehow crept in since. New England
NESTOR OF ORTHODOXY 2O9
theologians cuttingly pointed out that "the hypothesis has no
small advantage in this, that if it is not susceptible of proof, it
is equally secure from refutation"! Yet this principle of the
original verbal inerrancy of the Bible became the warrant for
proof-texts and the basis of all proof for doctrine in Princeton.
Even with this assurance of verbal inspiration, however,
which "Old Calvinists" had used to prove many a harsh teach-
ing, Hodge simply omits Scriptural proof which sustains that in
which he chooses not to believe. When he comes to the Calvinist
doctrine of rigid predestination, for example, he benignly pro-
poses "simply to state what the Spirit has revealed on that sub-
ject," quietly ignoring what Romans 9-22 plainly "reveals"
regarding dread "vessels of wrath fitted for destruction." Yet,
other doctrines are conclusively established by proof -texts from
the same chapter of Romans.
In dealing with the central and ultimate Christian teaching
of redemption of the believer by Christ which Hodge pro-
foundly, daily experienced himself the warmth of his con-
viction contrasts strangely with the legalism by which he sup-
ports it. For, as did such scholastics as Turretine, he shows
redemption as a contractual status in seventeenth-century legal
terms the very impersonality against which Bushnell and
many another modern theologian was protesting. Such legalism
is more appropriate to Hodge's convinced teaching of the
sacredness of the Sabbath ; to this concern, as a sound Victorian
moralist, he gives more weight than any Reformation theo-
logian.
With these mere glances at the Systematic Theology, let us
indulge a summary sentence as inclusive as one of Hodge's own.
We may say that the work presents Hodge's glowing, unmis-
takable personal piety; painstakingly upheld by legal, scholastic
reasons ; and based squarely upon chosen proof-texts from an
originally inerrant Bible. In these three aspects of his presenta-
tion of Christian truth, he became the prophet and exemplar of
Princeton Seminary.
The publication of his epochal opus was followed within the
year, in 1872, by the delightful and revealing occasion of his
2IO CHARLES HODGE
semicentennial as a professor in the school. In crowded First
Church where as a lad he had watched the seminary's existence
begin the old man reclined on a sofa secluded at the back of
an enlarged stage. From there he heard the eulogies, with charac-
teristic grace and modesty. Once, as the ex-president of Yale
spoke of Dr. Hodge with emotion, he quietly emerged from his
concealment and kissed his ancient friend. It was announced
that seminary alumni and friends had raised $45.000 for a Chair
in his honor, giving him personally $15,000 besides as a gift.
Scores of colleges and divinity schools in America and abroad
sent emissaries or greetings. Hodge's second wife, who had been
Mrs. Mary Hunter Stockton, was there, as were his eight chil-
dren, his now blind brother Hugh, and the great company of
Hodge grandchildren. His keen, whimsical son Archie, profes-
sor at the seminary in Pittsburgh, was busy noting details
which he later set down in an able biography of his father.
By this time, both the sainted Archibald Alexander and the
respected Samuel Miller his two original faculty colleagues
had long been gone. Hodge had for many years been the Pro-
fessor of Exegetical, Didactic, and Polemic Theology. He had
been since 1850 a trustee of Princeton College, and long a mem-
ber of each of the administrative boards of his denomination.
Yet, as his letters show again and again, even his duties had
been less important than his friends. At his semicentennial his
cup was full, except that his classmate, "Dear John [Johns],
my twin-brother friend" was detained by his duties as bishop
of Virginia.
Certainly he looked the part of the patriarch and radiant
Christian even in these later days. Light complexioned, with
curling hair, erect bearing, and benign, calm gaze, he seemed
younger than his seventy-four years. As he lectured, his cane
resting by his chair, his eyes closed, and his fragile gold-rimmed
glasses thrust up above his forehead, he was a unique tradition
on the campus.
After the semicentennial at Princeton, his crowning honor
came when the Presbyterian General Assembly met in Baltimore
the following year, in 1873. Because he was too feeble to accept
the assembly's invitation that he meet with them, the assembly
itself adjourned in a body "to wait upon Dr. Hodge" in Wash-
ington ! The old man was dissolved in tears as the group, having
NESTOR OF ORTHODOXY 211
sung the Long Metre Doxology in the Capitol rotunda, pre-
sented themselves to do him honor at Willard's Hotel. It was
perhaps upon such an occasion that one editor prepared an
obituary which later noted that in Hodge, Princeton had "its
greatest ornament, the Presbyterian Church its most precious
gem, the American Church her greatest earth-born luminary."
After that there were quiet clays at Princeton. At the memora-
ble "Sabbath Afternoon Conferences'* in the Oratory in Alex-
ander Hall, Hodge's mildly spoken contribution capped the
presentations by other professors, and provided what many a
seminarian regarded as a patriarchal blessing. The year before
his death, he had the quiet satisfaction of attending in First
Church another inaugural, that of his son Archibald Alex-
ander Hodge as his successor in the chair of didactic theology.
During the days of his eightieth year, just before his death on
June 19, 1878, he sat daily in his beloved chair in the study.
His questions were about the grandchildren, whose tiniest con-
cerns he cherished, about the General Assembly, the Berlin
Conference, and affairs at Princeton College. But when his
hushed family crowded his bedroom, they knew that his favorite
hymn, "Dearest Saviour," was on his lips when he died.
Parke Godwin [1816-1904]
PATHFINDER IN POLITICS AND JOURNALISM
BY CARLOS BAKER
O
NE November night over a hundred years ago
Parke Godwin and his fellow students at the
College of New Jersey tumbled out of their
quarters into the frosty air to see some fireworks All around
them, Godwin remembered, the night burned like a sea of
streaming flame. What (hey witnessed is well known among
astronomers as the Leonid meteor-shower of November 13,
1833, when (as another observer said) the domed sky re-
sembled a fiery umbrella, and awed watchers felt as if they
ought to duck. For Godwin, the literary man, the occasion
recalled that most high and palmy state of Rome, "a little ere
the mightiest Julius fell." This epidemic of meteors and another
of Asiatic cholera, which \irtually closed the college in the
summer of 1832, were probably the most exciting events of
Godwin's career at Princeton By 1866, when the next most
famous meteor-shower of the century came along, Godwin
had grown famous, too as author, journalist, editor, trans-
lator, son-in-law and editorial associate of William Cullen
Bryant; and, in the words of a recent historian, one of the two
most radical spirits in the city of New York.
Though Godwin's ancestry \\ould hardly have presaged his
radicalism, it might ha\e predicted his adventurous spirit. His
great-grandfather Abraham, who died in 1777, was one of the
first settlers in the Dutch colonial community of Totowa, now
Paterson, New Jersey lie kept a low-built, stone inn on the
banks of the Passaic \\hich stood as a kind of landmark until
it was pulled do\\n in 1886. The two sons of the innkeeper,
Abraham and David, ran off in their early teens to join the army
and emerged as veteran campaigners at the end of the Revolu-
tionary War Parke Godwin knew his soldiering grandfather
Abraham as the "Old General/' a prominent figure in the
Jersey militia during the early national period. Parke's father,
third Abraham in the line, was known around Paterson as the
PARK I- GODWIN
PATHFINDER 213
"Young General," both to distinguish him from Abraham II
and to signalize his participation in the War of 1812 as an
officer under Pike and Montgomery. The "Young General"
married Martha Parke of Paterson, probably in the Old Dutch
Church of Totowa, and on February 25, 1816, Parke Godwin
was born.
The Godwins of Paterson were a numerous and substantial
clan, serving the community first as merchants and later, with
the development of Alexander Hamilton's Society for Estab-
lishing Useful Manufactures, as owner-operators of machine
and textile factories. Like many of their affluent neighbors, they
kept slaves, though as a young man Parke was to become an
ardent abolitionist. During Parke's boyhood his father was
postmaster of the swiftly growing industrial town, and the
condition of the family finances enabled the boy to attend the
excellent academy at Kinderhook, a pleasant old Dutch settle-
ment a few miles below Albany on the Hudson, a situation
which later became well known as the country seat of Martin
Van Buren after his retirement from the presidency of the
United States.
So good was young Godwin's preparation that he was ad-
mitted to sophomore standing at the College of New Jersey
November 10, 1831. He presently made up his sole deficiency
(in geometry), and while never a brilliant student he remained
always in the first third of his class, was a commencement
speaker for the Cliosophic Society in 1833, an d was one of the
honorary orators at his own commencement in the fall of 1834.
Like his fellow-students, Godwin "lodged in the college edifice
and dieted in the Refectory." Unlike many of them he was
never caught in the act of playing the violin on the Sabbath,
mixing Christmas eggnogs, importing gunpowder from New
York in order to make cartridges for the old cannon on the
back campus, playing cards during study hours, sneaking out
of a winter's night to go sleigh riding, or getting drunk at Jo-
line's Tavern across the road. Under the strict scholastic regimen
of the period there was ample reason for students to blow off
steam, but if Parke Godwin ever did, the faculty failed to learn
of it, and when he applied, as he did in 1837, for the M.A.
degree (no further residential study being required in those
days) it was readily granted to him.
214 PARKE GODWIN
During the two years immediately following his graduation
Parke Godwin considered both the law and the ministry as
possible careers. Back home in Paterson he read law for a time,
then moved west to St. Louis where he was admitted to the
bar. He thought temporarily of establishing a law practice in
Louisville. But he afterward told friends that the institution of
slavery, as he found it in Kentucky during the middle 'thirties,
was more than he could stomach, and he returned to the North.
For a little over four months (November 21, i835-April 12,
1836) Godwin was enrolled as a divinity student at Princeton
Theological Seminary, boarding at Mrs. Gaston's house during
the long winter. But with the arrival of a Princeton spring he
concluded that theology was not for him, and by the summer of
1836 was living ("a briefless barrister in the great city") in a
modest boardinghouse at 316 Fourth Street, New York.
Here Godwin met the man with whom his subsequent for-
tunes were to be intimately associated One summer evening the
young lawyer walked into the dining-room to find the proprietor
talking with a spare, stern-faced, middle-aged man who was
introduced as the new boarder Godwin was somewhat puzzled
by the stranger's saturnine expression and a little embarrassed
by his habit of looking fixedly into the eyes of the person he
was addressing. But there was also a gentleness and sweetness
in the manner of the older man which the youngster immediately
liked. When the new boarder had left the room, the proprietor
told Godwin that he was William Cullen Bryant, the poet, that
his wife and daughters would be back from Europe in the fall,
and that he had taken a room here in the meantime in order
to be close to his editorial offices at the Evening Post on Pine
Street.
Godwin found Bryant hard to know. Not only was there a
discrepancy in their ages, but Bryant was also naturally austere,
preoccupied with Post affairs, given to early rising, long solitary
walks in the afternoons, and early retirement. Sometimes on a
Sunday Godwin got in a word with him, and there were a
couple of memorable occasions when the two men strolled
among the open fields of upper Manhattan. Although the return
of Mrs. Bryant and her daughters, Fanny and Julia, resulted
in a slight access of gaiety to Bryant's manner, the friendship
with Godwin remained at best very desultory for some months.
PATHFINDER 215
Then, suddenly, Bryant's chief assistant fell ill and Godwin
accepted, with a combination of surprise, self-doubt, and de-
light, the offer of his job. With Bryant to do the editorials,
and one other general reporter to handle incidental intelligence,
Godwin began making himself into a journalist. Morning after
morning they took up their pens or began their legwork at seven ;
night after night they saw the paper to bed. Small as the staff
was and heavy as was the burden which they assumed, the Post
had already a reputation for political leadership, and Bryant
was anxious to maintain initiative even in these lean years.
Young Godwin, aged twenty-one, became Bryant's right-hand
man.
"It is among the cheering signs of the times/' wrote Godwin
early in 1842, "that young men of education and talent, who
have been accustomed to crowd the professions of law, medicine,
and theology, are many of them now directing their energies to
the business of editorship and popular instruction." A few years
before, the newspaper game had been looked upon in some
quarters as a cheap political racket. Now, like Bryant, Godwin
had been ready to abandon the profession of law in favor of an
editorial career, and in the next three decades, partly in com-
pany with Bryant, partly on his own, Godwin was to direct con-
siderable energy to the edification of the people. His early ex-
perience on the Evening Post (1836-1844) constituted Parke
Godwin's graduate school. It awakened him to the actualities
of politics, equipped him to be a professional writer, and added
cubits to his mental stature. Moreover, his initial association
with the Post gave him a start toward financial independence.
From 1840 to 1844, he owned an interest in the paper, at a time
when the average annual gross receipts were close to $40,000.
Although he complained, on buying back into the Post in 1860,
that his connection with the paper had not hitherto been very
remunerative, the Post was valued in 1865 at somewhere near a
million dollars, so that during the Reconstruction period the
early labors of Bryant and Godwin were amply repaid.
The growing friendship between Godwin and Bryant was
shortly strengthened by a domestic tie. At the Bryant household
2l6 PARKE GODWIN
on Ninth Street Godwin paid court to, and on May 12, 1842,
married Frances, the older of the Bryant girls. The marriage
was long and happy, and the golden wedding anniversary was
celebrated in 1892, a year before Mrs. Godwin's death. Their
winter residence was in New York, but they spent many of their
summers, when they were not traveling on the continent, in a
house which Bryant built for them on his extensive acreage at
Roslyn, Long Island. In later years they sojourned also at a
cottage erected for them by the poet on a hill near the Bryant
homestead at Cummington, Massachusetts partly, one sus-
pects, because the old man liked to have his grandchildren about
him. In all there were eight of them, four girls and four boys :
Minna, Anna, Frances, Nora, Harold, Bryant, Alfred, and
Walter. The last two died, as little boys of three and six, in
1860 and 1867 respectively.
On his wedding day in 1842 Godwin, then aged twenty-six,
stood only on the threshold of his long literary career. From the
first the Post had given him opportunity to do dramatic criticism
and book reviewing, and the opportunity widened when the
paper began in this same year to publish a weekly supplement.
He had also begun by 1839 to contribute reviews and articles
to J. L. O'Sullivan's Democratic Review, one of the liveliest
and most liberal periodicals of the day. Moreover he was meet-
ing, chiefly through Bryant, a number of prominent literary
men: William Gilmore Simms of South Carolina, a voluble and
warm-voiced talker who wished to set the Post right on the
emergent southern question; Edgar Allan Poe, who said little
but looked much with his "wonderful lustrous eyes" ; and most
memorable, the "burly, brusque, and boisterous" Fenimore
Cooper, who strode into Pine Street like a bluff sailor, full of
acidulous anecdotes about conti 
