USA > Connecticut > Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume IV > Part 17
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Another honored son of Guilford, Abraham Baldwin, car- ried the fire from the Yale hearth to the University of Georgia, which he founded. He was one of the leading
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spirits of his time, admired and respected in whatever he did. Graduated from Yale in 1772, he became tutor there for the greater part of four years, studying theology in the mean- time, and was evidently regarded as a promising preacher. The war drew him into the army as a chaplain in Parsons' Brigade, from 1779 till 178 1, having previously served there temporarily. The war over, he declined the offer of a pro- fessorship at Yale, and decided that the law was his profes- sion. Having been admitted to the Fairfield County bar, he was induced by General Greene to go to Georgia. There his merits were as quickly recognized as they had been at home; and it was while he was in the State Legislature there, in 1784, that he proposed the plan of a university for the State. He drew up its charter, secured for it an endowment of 40,- 000 acres of land, and although not actively teaching, was President of the Board of Trustees until 1801.
He was one of the eminent members of the Constitutional Convention, and to him we are indebted for many of the essential clauses of the U. S. Constitution. At one time he did notable service, when, the Convention being on the point of disbanding for lack of agreement, he decided by his vote the question of equal representation in the Senate from the different States. He also voted for the present site of the National Capitol.
The Constitution, to which he had so much contributed, having become the law of the land, he was sent to represent Georgia in the first Congress; and in 1799 went to the Sen- ate, where he remained till his death, which occurred in Washington in 1807. The country could ill afford to lose such a man at fifty-three. Twice had he served as presiding officer of the Senate, and his last illness was the first time in which he had failed to be at his post during his many years of
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service in Congress. His private life was as admirable as his public services. He was very charitable, and had been a good brother, supporting and chiefly educating his six half-brothers and sisters, among whom were the wife of Joel Barlow; and Henry Baldwin, the celebrated jurist. His hold on his adopted State was as strong as it was quickly acquired, and his memory is perpetuated by the name of Baldwin County, while Connecticut esteems him one of her most eminent sons.
Union College owes much to the indefatigable exertions of Eliphalet Nott, a native of Ashford, and graduate of Brown University, who after years of preaching and working in the half-settled regions around Otsego Lake, and in Albany, became the president of the college, which was then young, poor, and struggling to acquire the buildings and apparatus necessary for its existence. Dr. Nott devoted himself to building it up, with such success that 4,000 students were graduated under him. Since he was identified with the great reforms of the day, it seems strange to us that he obtained from the New York Legislature, for the benefit of his college, permission for a lottery, which he managed ably for many years; but it was in accordance with custom then. He was a fine teacher, and on the fiftieth anniversary of the college, six hundred of his students assembled and testified their affection for him. Besides his literary gifts, he had a strong aptitude for practical affairs, and showed himself a true son of Con- necticut by taking out thirty patents for improvements in heating apparatus. Among them was one for the first stove for burning anthracite coal, which bore his name and was much used. He completed his effectual aid to Union College by endowing it with property valued at $500,000.
Another valued officer of Union College was a native of Danbury, Laurens Perseus Hickok, who had been the succes-
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sor of Lyman Beecher in Litchfield, and had held professor- ships in Western Reserve College and Auburn Theological Seminary before he went to Union. During his service there as professor and president, he wrote many works on psychol- ogy.
John Jason Owen, the eminent Greek scholar, was born in Colebrook, and like Hickok, was a graduate of Middlebury College. He did much for the New York Free Academy as professor and vice-president, and he continued in the latter office when it became the "Free College of the City of New York."
Amherst was another young college that was put on its feet by the devotion of Heman Humphrey, born in West Sims- bury and graduated from Yale; while the uplift given to it by the brothers Julius H. and Laurens Clarke Seelye is well- known. The life of Julius Seelye was identified with Am- herst, for there he took his first degree, there he long taught as professor of Moral Philosophy, and there he presided for fifteen years, with much resulting prosperity. He introduced the peculiar system of self-government by which matters of deportment are decided by the college senate. He was at the front in public and religious matters, and yet found time to write important philosophical works. Laurens Clarke Seelye would be well-known as a scholar in Celtic Literature, even if building up Smith College from the beginning to its present condition of high prosperity and overflowing num- bers had not been his life-work, to which he brought a happy combination of tact and executive ability, combined with dig- nity and scholarship. And from Connecticut have gone three presidents of Williams ;- the first, Ebenezer Fitch of Nor- wich, took his degree at Yale in the troubled year of 1777, and went back as a tutor after the war had ended; and as
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preceptor of Williamstown Academy brought it to such prosperity, that in 1793 it was chartered as a college, he being its president. His remarkable gifts as an instructor, and his good management made the young college flourish for fif- teen years, when, some disturbances arising in the faculty, he resigned.
The brilliant preacher and theologian, always lucid in statement and impressive in his oratory, Edward Dorr Grif- fin, was born in East Haddam, and distinguished himself at Yale in his class of 1790. His career at Andover and the Park Street Church in Boston, where his celebrated "Park Street Lectures" were delivered, gave him a great name to take to Williams as its president. From 1821 to 1836 he was very efficient in that position. The third Connecticut man to fill that place was Franklin Carter, who was born in Waterbury, and was connected by three years of undergrad- uate study and a professorship, with Yale, although his degree was taken at Williams. He has had much to do with missionary and linguistic bodies, and was the first president of the Modern Language Association. Leaving Williams in 1896, he became the head of the Clark Institution for the Deaf in Northampton, for which the charter had been secured by another Connecticut man, Lewis J. Dudley, who served as president of its board of Trustees for many years. Among many who have done similar service may be men- tioned Horace Holley of Salisbury, who was the President of Transylvania University in Kentucky; and Charles G. Finney of Warren, whose fame as a revivalist extended to England, for whom the Broadway Tabernacle was built. and for whom his friends established Oberlin College, the great work of which he conducted for years. Dr. Jared Sparks, of whom more hereafter, was a professor of history
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at Harvard, and for four years was President of that univer- sity.
Cyrus Northrop, a true son of Connecticut, having served her in ways political, editorial, and educational, and having been a professor at Yale for eleven years, has done honor to his State in expanding and strengthening the University of Minnesota, of which he was elected president in 1881.
Norwich was the home of Daniel C. Gilman, a Yale grad- uate of 1852, whose varied career has made him very prom- inent in educational affairs. Besides having been librarian at Yale and a professor in the Scientific School, and having held many other positions of importance in the State and out of it, he has been the president of the University of Cali- fornia, the first president of Johns Hopkins University, and since 1902, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, and has moreover, given his influence as trustee to such philan- thropic enterprises as the Peabody and Slater funds for edu- cation in the South. His work in California, and particularly at Johns Hopkins, where he organized graduate study in such a way as to give an impulse to colleges all over the country, has brought to him a national reputation.
One of the most perfectly rounded characters of his time was William Adams, who was identified for half a century with the best interests of New York, as the pastor of the Cen- tral, afterwards the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, the head of the Presbyterian divines in New York, and the president of Union Theological Seminary. His birthplace was Colchester, his college home Yale; and from his father, Dr. John Adams, the president of Phillips Academy, An- dover, he derived the mental habits that made him an accurate scholar in ancient and modern languages, and a leader in affairs. Nature and education were generous to
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him; he had a commanding figure and presence, a fine voice, and all the gifts of an orator; his address and manners were courtly, his heart was filled with kind and noble impulses. He was the first to read and correctly interpret the inscriptions in the Catacombs of Rome; he was a peacemaker in the hot disputes between Old-School and New-School Theology; and he did not disdain to apply all his brilliant powers to the personal instruction of students in the institution over which he was urged to preside, making trite subjects seem fresh and inspiring by his enthusiastic treatment. He died in 1880, greatly lamented.
Among the one hundred and five college presidents whom Yale has furnished to the country, eighteen have been the first presidents, most of them natives of the State; and it must not be forgotten that on her own roll of illustrious presi- dents following Daggett,-Stiles, the younger Dwight, Day, Porter, Hadley,-all have been of Connecticut birth and breeding.
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CHAPTER XIII
LITERATURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
S INCE the first scholars and writers in the State had been divines, it was not strange that the influence of theology over authorship lingered long. After the flashes of the "Hartford Wits" had died away, a period followed when almost all the note- worthy writing was done by the ministers. And they were men of might, trained in such schools of the prophets as those of Bellamy and Hopkins and Smalley; and they were accustomed by their position as religious and social leaders to ready expression of vigorous thought.
Such was Lyman Beecher, great father of great children, who, on the bleak Litchfield hills and in the seething discus- sions of Boston, brought up his children in such fashion that they became a power for good in their generation.
Possibly his life did not seem to him successful: it was at least full of struggle. Descended from one of the original settlers of New Haven, he was graduated from Yale in 1797, and after a brief settlement in Easthampton, Long Island, went to Litchfield, where he remained for sixteen years. Dr. Beecher was a preacher of powerful sermons, rather than a writer of monumental works. In those days, the habit of taking overmuch strong drink, perhaps somewhat excused then by the inadequate provision for meeting the inclemency of the climate, had gained a dangerous hold on society, count- ing even ministers of the Gospel among its victims; and when Dr. Beecher lifted up his voice against it in his six sermons on intemperance, a wonderful effect was produced. These sermons were sent all over the United States, had many edi- tions in England, were translated into several languages, and after fifty years, still attracted readers.
Removing to Boston as the pastor of the Hanover Street Church, he encountered the Unitarian movement in its
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aggressive stage; and so strong was the feeling against such rebutting influence as his that when his church burned down, the firemen refused to put out the fire. Again at Lane Sem- inary, Cincinnati, he struggled for twenty years to found a Western institution, only to be defeated at last by the trium- phant pro-slavery party. Here, all unknown, were influ- ences that were shaping the future "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Dr. Beecher's sermon on "Duelling" at the time of Hamil- ton's death at the hands of Aaron Burr, was very impressive; and his "Views on Theology" and "Political Atheism" were read with much attention. Dying in 1863, he sleeps in New Haven, the place of his birth. Dr. Abiel Holmes, a native of Woodstock, although long a prominent Congregational minister in Cambridge, was remarkable alike for charm of manner and for learning. His memoir of his father-in-law, Ezra Stiles, and his "American Annals," a "pioneer work in American history," disclosed that literary talent which descended to his illustrious son, Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Some of these divines developed a literary talent that was most useful in establishing certain periodicals; as Dr. Chaun- cey A. Goodrich, the beloved professor of pastoral theology at Yale, who established the "Christian Quarterly Spectator," besides writing much for other periodicals, publishing a Greek Grammar, and Greek and Latin Lessons, preparing a new edition of the Bible, and carrying on a vast work in Webster's Dictionary. So, too, Samuel F. Jarvis, of Mid- dletown, another graduate of Yale, after officiating as rector of churches in New York and Boston, and as the distin- guished professor of Oriental languages and literature at Trinity College, was for some years the editor of the "Gospel Advocate," and the Secretary and Treasurer of the Chris- tian Knowledge Society. He did a great work as Church his-
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toriographer. Dr. Nathaniel W. Taylor, the impressive preacher and brilliant leader of the New Haven school of theology, left no literary monument of his genius save some published lectures and essays.
A remarkable group of Oriental scholars appeared in Connecticut early in the nineteenth century. Of the profound scholarship of James W. Kingsley, mention has already been made in connection with his work for Yale College; con- temporary with him were Moses Stuart, Eli Smith, and Edward Robinson. Moses Stuart, a native of Wilton, studied law and was a tutor at Yale, after his graduation there in 1799, before he decided to study theology. For four years, 1806-10, the pastor of the Center Church in New Haven, his rising fame as a Hebrew scholar took him to the Theological Seminary at Andover, as the professor of sacred literature. There his zeal overcame many obstacles that beset the path of scholars in those days. The German savants had gone much farther than he; but the results of their researches were in a tongue unknown to him, and at that time much more difficult than the dead languages to acquire here: but he learned German that he might know Hebrew better; and in 1813 felt prepared to make a grammar in that tongue. No Hebrew type being available, it remained in manuscript, and his pupils copied it, for some time. Even after the proper type were procured, no compositor could be found who was competent to use them; so he turned printer and printed the book with his own hands. He must have felt a triumphant sense of ownership when it was done. His second Hebrew grammar won aboundant recognition all over the United States, and was republished by Dr. Pusey of Oxford. The enthusiasm of his nature inspired all who came under the sway of his personality, and has made his name a
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living one for generations after his death. His voluminous writings were mostly in the line of his special study, commen- taries on and interpretations of Old Testament books, although he also dealt with the political and religious ques- tions of the day.
Two years later at Yale was Eli Smith, who remained there for another degree, then went to Andover to study theology, and while there took up his life work of missionary scholar- ship in Oriental languages; thence he went out to Malta, to superintend the printing establishment of the American Board of Foreign Missions there. With Harrison Gray Otis Dwight, he established the missions in Syria and Armenia ; and his extensive travels in those countries, as well as in Greece and in Persia, increased his opportunities for studying the Oriental tongues. The Arabic language, then used by over 60,000,000 people, had no version of the Bible; and to such a translation Dr. Smith directed his energies. His charming wife, Sarah Lanman Huntington of Norwich, assisted him in this work as well as in the mission work, until her early death in 1836.
Like Stuart, Dr. Smith conquered material difficulties. Arabic type that satisfied his exact scholarship were not to be had; and accordingly, he prepared with his own hands, from a fine text of the Koran, models from which, under his superintendence, the mission printer, Mr. Homan Hallock, cast the type. The first font was made in Leipzig by Tauch- nitz; the others, by Hallock, in the United States. The result was that Eli Smith conferred on sacred literature an inestimable benefit in the shape of a more perfect Arabic translation of the sacred volume than had ever been seen before. It was after fifteen years of earnest mission work in Syria that he took his memorable trip in Palestine with Dr.
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Robinson, to whom his intimate knowledge of the language, and familiarity with the people made him an inestimable coadjutor. After that, eight years of intense labor on the Arabic Bible completed the New Testament, the Pentateuch, the greater part of the minor prophets of Isaiah; and then death cut short his work, which was completed by Dr. Cor- nelius Van Dyke.
In the early years of the nineteenth century, a shy, studious boy was growing up in Southington, who was destined to be closely associated with Stuart and Smith, and yet to win the most renown of the trio-Edward Robinson. He placed American scholarship on an equal rank with the highest in Europe, judged by German standards even, and has been called the most German of English-speaking scholars. Ham- ilton College can claim him as her son ; and it was at Andover that he was inspired by the enthusiasm of Stuart, who was to be so linked with him as the founder of modern exegetical theology. His work at Andover, in preparing a Greek grammar; translating a Hebrew-Latin lexicon into Eng- lish; establishing the "Biblical Repository," which, combined later with the "Bibliotheca Sacra," brought to American homes and scholars the latest German researches in Eng- lish dress; bringing out the "Dictionary of the Bible" enlarged from Calmet, and the small one, of which thousands of copies went over the country,-was of great benefit to the Christian world; but it is most indebted to him for his pio- neer work in "Biblical Researches in Palestine."
This was the result of carrying out a darling project; for when he accepted a chair in Union Seminary, in New York, it was with the provision that he should be allowed to first devote some years to careful travel in the Holy Land. Sup- ported by the able cooperation of Eli Smith, he took to the
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work the treasures of his own learning, of minute and pro- longed study of the Bible, and of habits of critical obser- vation. As Dean Stanley has said, he was the first to go to Palestine so equipped as to see with his own eyes, and not through the eyes of others. Consequently, his first book was hailed with the highest praise, on both sides of the Atlantic, and time has not dimmed the luster of his renown. A second period of research produced a second volume, on the "Physical Geography of Palestine," which he designed to be one wing, so to speak, of a harmonious whole which should be a treasure-house of systematic and exhaustive knowledge of the geography, history, and topography of the Holy Land. But his eyesight failed; he could do no more ; and to his learned German wife he owed the publication of the volume on Physical Geography. His great project was broken off, but his work had been so thorough and funda- mental that it has remained a monument of American research, scholarship, and exploration.
These men, who contributed so largely to the advance- ment and renown of American Biblical scholarship, recom- mended the cause of learning to all men by the uprightness of their daily lives. The influence of Kingsley on the char- acter of Yale College has been pointed out; Eli Smith still brings honor to the name of missionary; and what Andover would have been without Stuart and Robinson, it is hard to imagine.
In keeping with the prevalent interest in divines and divin- ity was the work of William Buel Sprague, a native of Andover, who graduated from Yale in 1815, just when the splendor of pulpit eloquence was potent in public affairs. Himself a successful preacher for forty years, receiv- ing degrees from Yale, Columbia, and Princeton, his environ-
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ment enabled him to collect the material for the nine volumes of his "Annals of the American Pulpit." This work occu- pied twelve years, and secured in permanent form precious biographical material. Dr. Sprague was a famous collector of religious pamphlets, with which he enriched the Albany State Library. To Amherst College he presented the let- ters of its patron saint, General Lord Amherst; and to Har- vard College, the papers of General Thomas Gage. His collection of nearly 100,000 autographs is said to be the largest in the world.
Another voluminous treasurer of annals and memories of the past was Jared Sparks, who was born in Willington, shortly after the first inauguration of Washington, whose life he was to write. After some years of teaching, editing, and preaching, he became the editor of the North American Review, finally purchasing and conducting it from 1824 to 1831. In 1821, being chaplain of the U. S. House of Rep- resentatives, he was fortunate in securing Washington's papers at Mount Vernon. The interest excited by them led him to Europe for investigation; and there, on a second trip, he found the map containing the "red line" which was important in settling the New England boundary dispute in 1842. His "Life and Writings of Washington" consumed nine years and filled twelve volumes. He edited the works of Franklin, and left a mass of material for future writers in his reminiscences of eminent men and recorded conversations with them. His honorable connection with Harvard Uni- versity has been described. Probably he will be best remem- bered by the "American Biographies" which he edited, com- prising, in the first set, twenty-six subjects; in the second, thirty-four. While he has been accused of too much liberal- ity in admitting material, yet it must be acknowledged that he
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did a great service in collecting many facts that would other- wise have been lost to the world.
The growing power of the Methodists received a strong impulse from the well-directed zeal of Nathan Bangs (1778- 1862) who gave up teaching and surveying to edit the Christian Advocate and Methodist Quarterly Review. He was the founder and first Secretary of the Methodist Mis- sionary Society, and for a year was the president of Wes- leyan University. His works, theological, biographical, and historical, fill many volumes; and among them is a history of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
From Connecticut, too, went out Jesse Buel, who demon- strated by actual experiment that there is hope for the waste lands of the country; for by deep tillage he brought a dry, sandy farm near Albany to a high degree of fertility. As a means of instructing and informing farmers, the Cultivator, founded by him, did great good.
Another church historian was William Henry Foote (1794-1869), born in Colchester, but spending most of his life as an educator and Presbyterian clergyman in West Vir- ginia. His sketches of the Presbyterian church in Virginia, of North Carolina, and his most important work, "The Hugue- nots," a history of the Reformed French Church cover ground not often trodden.
Living to a green old age as rector of St. Thomas's Church in New Haven, the Rev. Dr. Eben Edwards Beards- ley, who was born in Stepney, and passed his life in Connecti- cut, became in local and church history an acknowledged authority. His scholarly habits and experience, and his calm, unruffled judgment of men and things, fitted him peculiarly for such works as his admirable Lives of Samuel Johnson, the first president of King's College; of William Samuel
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