USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Historic homes and institutions and genealogical and personal memoirs of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, Vol II > Part 3
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it is we shall only burden ourselves with the maintenance of a sickly institution." The Boston Recorder in a leading article July 24, asserted that the trustees had ample ground for their contemplated removal. " We sincerely rejoice," said the editor, " in the brightening prospects of a seminary so endeared to us by ten thousand fond memories." Per- haps the most important document in the hands of the trustees was a letter to one of their number written June 28. 1815, by President Dwight, of Yale. This letter was an elaborate argument in advocacy of the re- moval. " At Williamstown," said the president, "the college was put under a bushel. There is no more absolute error than the common opinion that a college should be placed in a small town." Naturally this letter carried a good deal of weight. "No man of the age." said the Northampton managers, " was more competent to settle the question upon which he offered his opinion." Then a correspondent of The Hampshire Gasette, writing August 10, 1819, argued that the alumni would support the trustees. "They will find no pleasure," he insisted, "in years to come in replying, when asked the place of their education, 'there was once a college called Williams College at which I took my degree.' It is unkind and unjust to the graduates of Williams College to permit its honors and its name to be lost !" .
On the 28th of July a convention in the interest of the removal was held in Northampton, with President Moore in the chair. A general committee of five. and a local committee from each of the following counties-Worcester, Franklin, Hampden, Berkshire and Hampshire --- were appointed to prosecute the campaign. Citizens of Northampton also bestirred themselves and pledged the sum of fifty thousand dollars to replenish the funds of the institution in the event of its removal.
Meanwhile Williamstown was not idle. "Berkshire," from whom we have already quoted, seems to have been its leading pamphleteer. A
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good many communications from him are to be found in newspapers and elsewhere. He did not hesitate to speak disrespectfully of the trustees who wanted to pluck up the college and plant it elsewhere. " The shades of obscurity." he declared, referring to the election of some of them, have been " ransacked to find insignificance and imbecil- ity."
A committee of citizens of Berkshire, appointed at a meeting in Pittsfield, October 6, 1819, issued the following month " An Address to the Public," which controverted, and with considerable success. the manifesto of the trustees. An anonymous writer hastened to the relief of the latter with a restatement and amplification of their contention, entitled " Remarks on a Pamphlet Published by a Committee of the Citizens of Berkshire." The writer urged that there was little or no prospect of increasing the funds if the college remained at Williamstown. As for students, the outlook, he thought, could hardly be worse. At the present day the considerations by which he endeavored to establish these pessimistic conclusions have a curious look. "The State of New York," he argued, " takes in the western part of the horizon, and Vermont, with New Hampshire, another quarter on the north." In this way three- fourths of the circle is covered. The two Vermont colleges will " en- gross everything there," while there is no reason to suppose that Union and Hamilton will be less successful in New York. As a result of the rise of these four colleges, the support which Williams once derived from the North and West has been almost wholly withdrawn. "This sup- port," the writer adds. " is not likely to be regained."
The controversy reached the legislature, the court of last resort, in 1820. On the 17th of January the formal papers in the case were put into the hands of a joint committee of that body. These papers con- comprised a petition of the president and a majority of the trustees for
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authority to remove the college to Northampton, a dissenting petition signed by three trustees, and a remonstrance which the people of Will- iamstown, "in town-meeting assembled," unanimously adopted. Feb- ruary Ist the committee reported that it was "neither lawful nor expedient " to remove the college, and the legislature concurred almost unanimously in this finding. While not neglecting other features of the question, the committee dwelt at considerable length upon the legal aspects of it, and their conclusions were no doubt largely colored and determined by the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the famous Dartmouth College case. They held that "the act of 1793 creating the college " simply extended the powers and en- larged the capacity of the Free School, the original funds of which, "located and rooted " in Williamstown, could not be separated from those " ingrafted " upon it as the parent stock.
The controversy was fought out in Boston with great vigor, and attracted wide attention. Both sides were fortunate in their represent- atives before the legislative committees,-Daniel Noble, of the class of 1796, appearing for Williamstown, and Elijah Hunt Mills, of the class of 1797, for Northampton. In the senate Messrs. Saltonstall and Josiah Quincey were spokesmen in behalf of the remonstrants. The speech of the latter has been preserved, and it lacks neither vigor nor incisiveness. In the newspaper press the most notable article on the controversy-an editorial three columns and a half long-appeared in The Advertiser of February 4th. This article was written by the editor, Nathan Hale, of the class of 1804, and in opposition to the report of the legislative com- mittee. "It is with great reluctance," he said, " that we dissent, and no consideration but a sense of duty to the college would induce us to offer any reasons for an opposite opinion. We enter upon the subject with the greater freedom, because from the thorough ex-
Morgan Hall.
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perience of three or four years' residence at the college in its present position, we feel competent to form a very decided opinion." He dwelt at large upon the isolation of Williamstown, its small size, and the non-academic character of its inhabitants.
But neither Nathan Hale's editorial, nor the eloquence of Mr. Mills before the committees, nor the speeches of Messrs. Lyman and Banister in the senate, nor the resurrected letter of President Dwight, seemed to have produced much effect. The people of Williamstown won the fight, though at a heavy cost of effort and sacrifice. In order to put the funds of the college on a more satisfactory basis they raised for it $17,681.65-a very large sum under the circumstances. "It is known," said the author of " Remarks on a Pamphlet of Citizens of Berkshire," "that nothing but the extreme exigency of the case has produced the present subscription." Everybody in Williamstown, how- ever slender his means may have been, seems to have responded to the call according to if not beyond his ability. Neighboring towns in Berkshire county and Vermont were canvassed with considerable success.
The issue of the legislative contest was a great surprise to the petitioners. "There can be no doubt," said The Hampshire Gasette, of August 24th, 1819, their chief local organ, "but the General Court will sanction the removal if application be reasonably made." It could hardly be expected that the report of the joint committee would please the editor of that journal. "To us," he wrote in the issue of February 15th, 1820, which reprinted the full text of the report, "it appears partial in its statements, fallacious in its reasoning and grossly erro- neous in its results." The editor was interested in the future of the trustees. "We hear the inquiry often made," he said, "what course will the trustees take ? We think there can be no doubt about
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it. At present they lie under the censure of the legislature, either of gross ignorance of the law and constitution or a wanton attempt to violate both. Now as there is nothing more certain than that the removal contemplated was both lawful and expedient we apprehend that the trustees are under a strong and sacred obliga- tion to procure a reversal of the attainder which has been passed upon them." The trustees never made any effort to procure a reversal of the attainder. In regard to this business the time past seems to have abundantly sufficed them. None of these unsuccessful revolutionists felt called upon even to resign, and the last of them continued in office more than a quarter of a century after the adverse report of the joint committee.
The long and disastrous controversy came to an end in the winter of 1820. On the 17th of July, in the following year, President Moore. who had received in this interval " an appointment to preside over the Collegiate Charity Institution at Amherst," sent his resignation to the trustees. "I deem it not expedient," he said in this letter, "to state now the particular reasons which have induced me to resign my office in this college, and I think it the less necessary from a view of the communications I have heretofore made to this board." There was little occasion for another exposition of these "particular reasons," as everybody interested in the controversy had long been familiar with them. President Moore went to Amherst, where he died prematurely, June 29th, 1823. He threw himself into the new movement with a tireless energy. In three years he succumbed to the burdens and anxieties of it. The Reverend Dr. Snell, a trustee of Williams College from 1817 to 1825, in his funeral discourse, characterized the dead President with a felicity, in which there was little alloy of exaggeration,
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as " by nature a great man, by grace a good man, and in the providence of God a useful man."
The resignation of President Moore, which was announced at the beginning of the third term of the college year, 1820-1821, produced great excitement and depression at Williamstown. He was popular with the students, and about one-half of the eighty then in attendance proposed to abandon the institution. Fifteen of them followed the Pres- ident to Amherst, and the rest of these pessimists went elsewhere. Those who remained behind, however, though a rather meager remnant, determined to spare no effort to save the college. An advertisement appeared in one of the local papers calling a meeting at the next com- mencement of those whom the college had educated. "to consider the expediency of forming a Society of Alumni." An organization of this sort, the first of the kind in the country, was effected. President Moore presided at the commencement exercises. With him upon the stage were the trustees, ten or twelve in number, and to quote the words of an undergraduate who was present, Parsons Cooke, "the majestic form of a stranger,-a person of about fifty years of age-of most com- manding figure and presence." This impressive stranger was Edward Dorr Griffin. The trustees, having brought the college to a desperate pass by their futile efforts to transplant it, were searching for a new President who was willing to undertake the task of its rehabilitation. Having been offered this position, Dr. Griffin had come to Williamstown to look over the ground. He was one of the most distinguished clergy- men of his day. A native of Connecticut and a graduate of Yale, he had become widely known by his occasional sermons, his professorship at Andover, and his pastorate of Park Street church from 1812 to 1815. He took up the work in Boston to make head, if possible, against the Unitarian movement which under the leadership of Channing and
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others had been making alarming progress. In this three years' min- istry the harsher features of the current orthodox creed were given great prominence. The man who laid a trail of brimstone along the sidewalk from Dr. Griffin's door to the steps of his church was some- what more than a caricaturist. In his Park Street lectures were gathered up the essentials of this theological campaign, and they attracted atten- tion not only in this country but also in Europe.
The presence of Dr. Griffin -- this gigantic man six feet and three inches in height, weighing at his best two hundred and fifty pounds- at Williamstown during the commencement of 1821, changed the at- mosphere of that anniversary. What brought him thither? He him- self practically answered this question in his unpublished inaugural address, if we may trust the reports of it which have come to us. It was not so much the overtures of the trustees as his interest in Samuel J. Mills and the haystack prayer meeting. Dr. Griffin had known Mills from his childhood, and it was a sermon of the former at Philadelphia in 1805 before the General Association of the Presbyterian Church-a sermon reverberating with impassioned declamation -- which first awakened the interest of the latter in foreign missions. Mills and his associates have no absolute and exclusive proprietorship in the haystack, which not only touched the pagan world, but also, if it were really the consideration that brought Dr. Griffin to Williamstown, saved the col- lege from extinction.
President Griffin was inducted into office November 14th, 1821- a somewhat depressing occasion according to Parsons Cooke. "The day itself," he says in his " Recollections of Dr. Griffin," " was dark, chilly, rainy when a handful of students, forty-eight all told * * gathered with a few people of the town into what was then one of the largest and most dreary of country meeting houses."
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But whatever the character of the day or the size of the audience may have been, all the formalities were observed. In one Latin address the President was officially informed of his election, and in another the college congratulated upon the fact.
This new field presented some striking contrasts to the sphere in which for the most part President Griffin had heretofore moved. That sphere had been mainly in older and larger communities. Will- iamstown had not yet fairly emerged from the wilderness. Nathan Hale, writing in The Advertiser only a year and a half before his inaug- uration, dwelt upon the fact that it did not possess the facilities of reg- ular stage coaches or even of good roads, but was dependent upon a weekly mail for intercourse with distant parts of the country. Nat- urally President Griffin was fond of society and large affairs. The grand manner became him, and the maxims of formal etiquette assumed with him a large importance. Among the students of that day, it is hardly necessary to remark, these maxims were very much neglected. Dr. Grif- fin gave immediate and measurably successful attention to their deport- ment in the chapel, in the class room, and on the street.
As an instructor President Griffin had admirable points. Possibly philosophy may have been to him a world not wholly realized, but in rhetoric and criticism, in whatever pertained to style and æsthetics, to the appreciation of literary values, he was among the best. And the man himself with his reputation as "the prince of preachers " was no inconsiderable circumstance in a college class room.
The new administration, when we consider the anarchy and des- peration of the situation at the outset, soon effected a wonderful trans- formation. Students and alummi began to take heart and to prophesy a future for the college. At the commencement of 1822 thirteen men were graduated-only two less than the preceding year. In his address
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at the close of the exercises he spoke affectionately of these young men, the first to receive their diplomas from him, though in a strain not very often heard in these latter days. "I pray that after all human relations and farewells and sorrows shall have passed away," he said, " I may have the joy to meet you in a higher sphere, where your knowl- edge shall be perfect without a teacher, and where our union and com- mon blessedness shall be consummated forever!"
The great crisis in the administration of President Griffin and in the history of the college arose in 1825, when the legislature granted a charter to Amherst College. That event produced a panic, as the con- viction was general that two colleges could not live in Western Massa- chusetts, and that in the inevitable competition Williams would go to the wall. It is a significant indication of the drift of public opinion that an enactment should have been included in the charter of Amherst pro- viding for the union of " Williams and Amherst Colleges, at Amherst," if it " shall hereafter appear lawful and expedient " in the judgment of all concerned to take this step. Under the circumstances it is hardly surprising that not less than thirty students " took dismissions in the spring and summer " following, and that at commencement only seven applied for admission to the Freshman class. "During the awful syncope that succeeded in vacation," said President Griffin, "we often looked up and inquired . Is this death? "" Though the agencies which he had at command in this emergency were religious rather than scholastic or political, they proved to be effective, arrested the panic, and saved the day. In the autumn of 1825 a great revival began-a sort of service in which President Griffin was easily a past master. The hope, the spiritual fervor, the conquering energy awakened by it, enabled him to raise twenty-five thousand dollars and to build a new chapel, Griffin Hall, which was dedicated September 2d, 1828. Some of the subscribers to
Gymnasium.
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the building fund might have said with the Apostle Peter, " Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give." April 21st, 1827, a notice appeared in The American Advocate, an excellent weekly paper pub- lished in Williamstown from April 12th, 1827, to January 5th, 1831, asking those "who made subscriptions toward the chapel in timber, planks, boards, etc.," to deliver these articles " by the first week in June at fartherest."
The dedication of the new chapel marked the close of an era-an era of despondency and debate over the future of the college. Griffin Hall, beautiful in its simplicity and in the harmony of its proportions, was a sufficient answer to all the skeptics. The energy and faith that built it would be able to cope with all the emergencies which may come. President Griffin preached the dedicatory sermon, and it was worthy of the occasion. The predominant note in it, heard again and again, is, that the revival saved the college. "If ever a building ought to be inscribed all over with Holiness to the Lord," he said, "this is that building. God himself has reared it."
A description of the new building appeared in The American Ad- vocate of September 10th, 1828. In addition to the chapel, a room fifty-six feet long and thirty-six wide, " finished in a simple, elegant style, with a stage and circular gallery," it provided a suite of rooms in the basement " for the lectures and operations of the Chemical Pro- fessor," and in the upper stories " apartments for the college library, the students' library, the philosophical apparatus, a Museum, a philo- sophical lecture room, a private lecture room for the Senior Class, and a large room fitted up conveniently " for religious meetings and other purposes. The writer was much impressed with the view from the belfry. "The Hoosac," he said, " and its rich meadows, and the sur- rounding hills and mountains, with the village and public buildings, make
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a landscape of very uncommon beauty." While the revival exerted a decisive influence upon the external fortunes of the institution, the im- pression which it made upon the interior life of it for a considerable period at least, was tremendous. It pushed aside every other interest, and was the one absorbing thought of the community. Even the exer- cises of the literary societies were opened and closed with prayer. In the records of one of them, under the date of December 7th, 1825. we find the following entry, solemn, sincere, eloquent : "Owing to the high state of religious feeling in college, several were excused from ful- filling their appointments. As it is from the Almighty that we receive the mental powers by which we are enabled to pursue science and liter- ature * the Secretary does not deem it out of place to record here the humble acknowledgments that are due to God for the glorious displays of divine grace and mercy which he is now manifesting among us. When all learning shall be of no account; when all that genius and art have done shall decay, and this society be numbered among the vast assemblage that shall be collected around the judgment seat of the great Eternal, then shall we view the scenes which are now here exhibiting with unspeakable interest-then shall we render higher ascrip- tions of praise to God."
It must not be supposed that any such intensity of religious feeling was anything more than intermittent and occasional. Quite another temper was often, perhaps generally, in the ascendant. Life among the students continued to be what it had been, a somewhat narrow and uneventful round. Penalties for misbehavior ranged from "a solemn talk " with some member of the faculty, to expulsion. Major offenses. like assaulting the house of a citizen at a late hour of the night, or setting fire to a college building, were punished by expulsion. The lighter transgressions, such as absence from required exercises, or go-
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ing upon the mountains without leave, or attending a dancing school, or playing cards, or " taking spirits from Professor Kellogg's room where it had been placed by the Professor himself." generally drew down upon the offending student the penalty of a fine or of a public confession in chapel. The public confession, we hardly need to say, was never a pop- ular service with students who took the leading part in it.
If we may judge from the records of the debating societies, there was in the college a creditable amount of intellectual activity. Presi- dent Griffin took the trouble to deny emphatically that the " marked at- tention to religion," which prevailed at times, interfered seriously with the ordinary college duties. Political. biblical and philosophical ques- tions, as well as those of a more personal or local character, appear in the lists. Some rather astonishing conclusions were reached, as, for example, that Christianity has been hostile to literature; that the society of ladies is not beneficial to undergraduates; that students who " know of scrapes in college " ought to report them to the faculty, and that the colleges of New England should not graduate " people of color." The last question came before the corporation long before the debating societies considered it, and the two tribunals reached the same conclu- sion. According to Sheldon, in his " History of Deerfield." Lucy Prince, a remarkable colored woman and a verse-maker of some local distinction, appeared before the trustees-the date is not given, but it must have been in the early days of President Fitch-and made an eloquent plea for the admission of her son to the college. The trustees refused her request.
Under whatever disabilities the Williams students of the second and third decades of the nineteenth century may have labored, they found time to do certain things which no other students had ever done. They established the first Natural History Society, the first Anti-Slavery So-
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ciety, and probably the first Temperance Society ever organized in an American college. The Natural History Society began about 1825. After a time it was discontinued. but a permanent revival of it took place in 1835. The date of the organization of the Anti-Slavery So- ciety is unknown to the present writer. It must have been previous to the Fourth of July, 1827, since at that time an oration was delivered before it, followed by an original hymn-" The African's Freedom Song "-which the students of the college sung. Anniversaries of the society were also held in 1828, 1829 and 1830. According to The Amer- ican Advocate, the oration for 1828 was " chaste. pertinent and manly," and the poem " highly creditable to the talents of the author." In 1829 there was an oration and two poems-"An Ode " and " The Song of the Slave." The oration denounced slavery and applauded the Coloni- zation Society as offering a practicable escape from the evils of it. " The Song of the Slave," set, we are told, to " a pathetic air." was sung at the conclusion of the exercises. We copy three of the six quatrains from The American Advocate of July 8, 1829:
" From the plains of the South, as in beauty they lay, With their sloping sides kissed by the ocean's green wave, As he bent o'er his toil at the close of the day, Came sad and desponding the song of the slave-
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