The History of Dartmouth College. Baxter Perry Smith
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college and the country gave them abundant opportunities for appreciating the inscription on the armor of the Dartmouth family: "Gaudet tentamine virtus."
Instead of burning the "midnight oil" of the modern student, they kept the midnight watch against savage foes, at least at certain periods. To us, this all looks like romance. To them, it was stern reality.
In a fitting tribute to President Wheelock,[31] Rev. Dr. Allen says:
[31] Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit.
"If it should be asked what success attended the efforts of Dr. Wheelock to communicate the gospel to the Indian nations, it may be replied that he accomplished something for their benefit, and that great and insuperable obstacles in the providence of God prevented him from accomplishing more. It was soon after he sent out missionaries into the wilderness, that the controversy with Great Britain blighted his fair and encouraging prospects. During the last four years of his life there was actual war, in which many of the Indian tribes acted with the enemy. Yet the Oneidas, to whom Mr. Kirkland was sent as a missionary, kept the hatchet buried during the whole Revolutionary struggle, and by means of this mission, probably, were a multitude of frontier settlements saved from the tomahawk and the scalping-knife. But even if nothing had been accomplished for the benefit of the Indians, yet the zeal which chiefly sought their good, reared up a venerable institution of science, in which many strong minds have been disciplined and made to grow stronger, and nerved for professional toils and public labors, and in which hundreds of ministers have been nurtured for the church of Christ.
"For enlarged views and indomitable energy, and persevering and most arduous toils, and for the great results of his labors in the cause of religion and learning, Dr. Wheelock must ever be held in high honor. He early placed one great object before him, and that object held his undivided attention for nearly half a century. It is not easy to describe the variety of his cares and the extent of his toils. When he removed to Hanover his labors were doubled. The two institutions—the school and the college—were ever kept distinct; in both he was a teacher; of both he was the chief governor. He was also the preacher of the college and village. In the government of his school and college, Dr. Wheelock combined great patience and kindness with the energy of proper and indispensable discipline. He was of a cheerful and pleasant temper and manifested much urbanity in his deportment."
This clear and forcible language has additional weight when we consider, that, during nearly the whole period of his administration, he had only the aid of tutors, with no other professor.
President Wheelock's usefulness in the great field of education was not confined to the sons of the forest, during his residence in Connecticut. He sought out John Smalley, the son of one of his parishioners, in his humble home, prepared him for college, and thereby gave him the primary impulse and aid, without which one of New England's ablest theologians, and the teacher of others of widely extended influence, might have remained in life-long retirement. He took Samuel Kirkland, the son of a worthy but indigent brother in the ministry, and, to use his own language, "carried him" in his arms, till he had completed a thorough preparation for the ministry, and finally furnished him a wife from his own kindred and his own household. His distinguished beneficiary, beside all his other labors, laid the foundation of Hamilton College, and gave to Harvard the president of its "Augustan age," his son, John Thornton Kirkland. He left the impress of his intellectual and religious character upon his pupil, Benjamin Trumbull, the records of whose life give him a conspicuous place among the earnest preachers and careful historians of his day. The valuable influence of others of his early pupils will be felt in ever extending circles, down to "the last syllable of recorded time."
There was no need that Eleazar Wheelock should found a college at that advanced period of life when men naturally seek a measure of repose, in order to secure for his name an honorable position in the long and brilliant catalogue of American educators. The crowning act of his life, in the mellowed maturity of age, was scarcely more or less than the logical, inevitable result of what preceded it.
The scope of our work does not permit any extended eulogy of President Wheelock, nor any thorough analysis of his character. With a brief reference to some leading points, we must close the record.
He was eminent as a scholar. The constantly recurring and ever pressing duties of earnest and varied professional life, left him little leisure for indulging in the luxuries of mere æsthetic culture; but his active mind ranged widely through the realms of ancient and modern thought, and freely appropriated of the richest of their treasures.
He was eminent as an orator. His eloquence was not graced with the well-rounded periods of a Burke, or a Webster; but in many a village and hamlet, the burning words which fell from his lips stirred the hearts of men to their profoundest depths.
He was eminent as a teacher. Through life he gladly embraced every opportunity of opening the treasuries of knowledge to his fellow-men; and many who sat under his instruction were thereby laid under large obligations, although, in the rude halls of the infant college, he was always more or less embarrassed by the cares of business and the infirmities of advancing years.
He was eminent in affairs. He raised funds; procured corporate franchises and safeguards; leveled forests, and reared edifices in the face of apathy, opposition, and rivalry, with a fertility of resources in planning, and an energy in executing, which won the admiration of contemporaries in both hemispheres.
He was eminent as a patriot. When his faithful friend, the last Royal Governor of New Hampshire, upon whom through years of toil and trial he had leaned as upon a strong staff, abandoned his office, and resolutely adhered to his Sovereign, and many others to whom he was strongly attached, arrayed themselves on the same side, he as resolutely espoused the cause of American Independence, and labored to the extent of his ability for its accomplishment.
But neither the scholar, nor the orator, nor the teacher, nor the man of affairs, nor the patriot, nor all combined, would have secured to any man that conspicuous position upon the page of history which the leading founder of Dartmouth College will occupy, so long as solid worth and successful achievement shall command the attention of the discriminating, thoughtful reader.
Religion was the mainspring of his entire life, the real source of all his success. Without it, he might have been honored of men; with it, he was honored of God. Encircling all the separate parts of his character, like a golden chain, it bound them in one grand, beautiful, harmonious whole.
In the hallowed seclusion of that thrice-honored valley, where Jonathan Edwards was born and Thomas Hooker died—on the western verge of that modest plain, where his long and fruitful life bore its latest, richest fruit—his precious dust will slumber "till the heavens be no more," and not till then will the Christian scholar, who lingers among the hills of central New England, cease to pay his devotions at the grave of
Eleazar Wheelock.
CHAPTER X.
PROGRESS DURING THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SECOND PRESIDENT, JOHN WHEELOCK.
The first President of the College, availing himself of a provision in the Charter, named three persons in his will, some one of whom he desired should be his successor in the office. These were his son, Mr. John Wheelock, Rev. Joseph Huntington, of Coventry, Conn., and Prof. Sylvanus Ripley. Mr. Wheelock, although a young man, in response to the somewhat earnest solicitation of the Trustees, after mature deliberation decided to accept the position. His son-in-law, Rev. Dr. Allen, gives the leading points in his earlier life in the following language:
"He was born [a son by the father's second marriage] at Lebanon, Conn., January 28, 1754, and graduated in Dartmouth's first class, in 1771. In 1772, he was appointed a tutor, and was devoted to the business of instruction until the beginning of the Revolution. In 1775, he was a member of the [N. H.] Assembly. In the spring of 1777, he was