CHAPTER VI

THE COLLEGES IN THE REVOLUTION

THE war of the American Revolution had special relations to the graduates of the American college. This war was, in point of time and of logic, a rational contest. Its issues were first fought out in public debate, oral and written. The conclusion of such debate prepared the way for the contest of the sword. The questions considered were constitutional; they had no relation to a stretch of territory or to a royal succession. They were national, international, human. They touched the essential and fundamental elements of civil and political existence. The cause was too great, the issues at stake were too momentous, to allow other than the use of the highest principles, or the indulgence of other than the noblest emotions. The conditions touched the relations of personal and national destiny in ways which suggested the presence of the Greek chorus or of the Hebrew prophet.

In the year 1775 were living not far from twenty-five hundred graduates of the nine colleges. About one-quarter of the number entered the service. But for more than a decade before the year of Lexington and of Concord the war was carried on by the voice and by the pen. The leaders in the rational form of the struggle were largely college men.

At the age of eighty-three, reviewing the Revolutionary contest, John Adams said: "The characters the most conspicuous, the most ardent and influential in this revival, from 1760 to 1766, were, first and foremost, before all and above all, James Otis; next to him was Oxenbridge Thacher; next to him, Samuel Adams; next to him, John Hancock; then Dr. Mayhew."1 this quintette should of course be added the name of John

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"The Life and Works of John Adams," by Charles Francis Adams, vol. x, p. 284.

Adams himself; in addition also should be included the name of Josiah Quincy. If one should pass beyond the capital of northern New England, and include in his survey the period up to and including the Declaration of Independence, he will meet with the names of Stephen Johnson, Francis Hopkinson, John Trumbull, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and the Lees of Virginia.

These men, together with the few of their less conspicuous contemporaries, were the aggressive forces that determined the Revolution. Without them, apparently, the great contest would have been deferred. In different ways, through fiery oratory or constitutional argument or poem, they made the Revolution. But what is profoundly significant is that each of these men was the graduate of a colonial college. The Lees of Virginia are to be alone excepted, who, in common with a larger proportion of the men of the southern colonies than of the northern, had received their education in England.

James Otis took his first degree at Harvard College in the year 1743 at the age of eighteen.

"He was a gentleman of general science and extensive literature. He had been an indefatigable student during the whole course of his education in college and at the bar. He was well versed in Greek and Roman history, philosophy, oratory, poetry, and mythology. His classical studies had been unusually ardent, and his acquisitions uncommonly great. . . . This classic scholar was also a great master of the laws of nature and nations. . .

Thus writes John Adams of the scholarship of Otis, and he also says of his influence in the promotion of the great contest:

"I shall only say, and I do say in the most solemn manner, that Mr. Otis's oration against writs of assistance breathed into this nation the breath of life." 1

Next to James Otis, and as conspicuous in the movement, John Adams puts Oxenbridge Thacher. An associate of Otis at the Boston bar, taking his degree at Harvard five years before

"The Life and Works of John Adams," by Charles Francis Adams, vol. x, pp. 275, 276.

Otis, abandoning the vocation of the ministry by reason of a weak voice, he, in and through the profession of the law, proved his intellectual alertness, sound sense, and zeal. His writings are a consistent, consecutive, and direct argument against the new measures of the English government. His statement lacks the fire and force of Otis's declaration; it is utterly free from the frenzy of Patrick Henry; it breathes a spirit of love and reverence for England.

Following Thacher in John Adams's category is placed Samuel Adams. Samuel Adams was also a graduate of Harvard College, midway between Thacher and Otis; and each he must have known in their undergraduate days. Adams has been known by various names: the man of the town meeting, the father of democracy, the man of the Revolution, the grand incendiary, and the Cromwell of New England. In the years 1765 and 1766 Samuel Adams was undoubtedly the most influential in urging the cause of American rights, and it has been said that in the history of the great movement his name is second only to Washington's.

The relation of John Hancock to the College was more intimate than that possessed by any one of the other men already named. By reason of family connections or of wealth he was chosen treasurer of the College, an office to the duties of which he was at least careless, and the administration of which he shamelessly abused. The fifth name in John Adams's list is that of Mayhew. Jonathan Mayhew was perhaps the most conspicuous of all the ministers who spoke and wrote in behalf of the freedom of the Colonies. A graduate of Harvard in 1744, he was three years later made pastor of the West Church in Boston, and in the pastorate he died twenty-two years after, at the age of forty-five. Mayhew seems to have been a real tribune of the people, who used his pulpit as an observatory for seeing the whole horizon of what he esteemed to be truth, and also as a rostrum for the affirmation, not only of theological, but of civil, political, and economic doctrines. Wit and humor seasoned his discourse. His genius has been called transcendent. His character was noble, and seems to have been constituted of all the virtues and all the graces except that of humility.

In this list of able men who promoted the movement for freedom the name of John Adams himself should not be omitted. Adams took his first degree at Harvard in 1755, following the year in which John Hancock graduated. Adams may be called the constitutional lawyer of the movement. His learning was more affluent, his intellect more acute and more active, his theories of society, religion, education, government, more persuasive, his courage more prompt than is found in other statesmen of the period. No one is to be compared with him in all the period excepting his great rival of Virginia.

If the college in Cambridge made such a contribution toward the promotion of the great movement, the offerings made by other colleges, if not so numerous, were also as worthy.

The First Continental Congress, in its session of September and October, 1774, caused the writing of a series of state papers, which were in January of the next year laid before the House of Lords. One of these papers bore the name of "An Address to the People of Great Britain." This paper was written by John Jay. It was of these papers that Lord Chatham said: "When your lordships look at the papers transmitted us from America, when you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause, and wish to make it your own. For myself, I must declare and avow that in all my reading and observation and it has been my favorite study; I have read Thucydides, and have studied and admired the master-states of the world-that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, under such a complication of difficult circumstances, no nation, or body of men, can stand in preference to the general Congress at Philadelphia.”1

John Jay was a graduate of King's College, in its seventh Class (a class of only two members) of 1764. A short time before the battles of Lexington and of Concord, two pamphlets appeared in New York vindicating the measures of the Congress, of moral acumen, cleverness, and fullness of learning. It was proved that these pamphlets were the work of a boy of seven

1 Cobbett's "The Parliamentary History of England," vol. xviii, p. 155.

teen, born in the West Indies, of Scotch and French parentage, whose name was Alexander Hamilton. They were written by him about the time of his leaving King's College. In these pamphlets all the qualities which distinguished Hamilton's more mature, but certainly not more wonderful, writings are found. Gouverneur Morris was also a graduate of King's College of the Class of 1768.

Of Yale, Princeton, and Pennsylvania-perhaps the most conspicuous representative of the first-named college was John Trumbull, the poet; of the second, Philip Freneau, and of the third, Francis Hopkinson. Hopkinson was the first student to enter the Philadelphia College, where he took his degree in 1757. Trumbull took his first degree at Yale in 1767, at the age of seventeen, although it is said that he was prepared for college at the age of seven; and Philip Freneau, of Huguenot stock, at the Commencement of 1771. Hopkinson, Trumbull, and Freneau are the three great satirists of the Revolution.

The author of the Declaration of Independence was a graduate of William and Mary College of the Class of 1759. But at or about this year are found the names of Benjamin Harrison, Carter Braxton, and George Wythe, all signers of the Declaration. There also are "Peyton Randolph, first president of the Continental Congress, and John Tyler, governor of Virginia; Edmund Randolph, Attorney-General and Secretary of State; Beverley Randolph, governor of Virginia; John Mercer, governor of Maryland; James Innes, Attorney-General of Virginia; James Monroe, President of the United States; John Blair, Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, and John Marshall, the great chief justice." 1

But the student of the American Revolution knows that not all of the college graduates, as not all of the people, were in favor of the Declaration of. Independence. A large and impressive minority were opposed to the whole movement. Among the three hundred and ten men of Massachusetts who were banished in 1778 from that province were found sixty graduates of Harvard College. It is probable that not far from one-third of

1 Herbert B. Adams's "College of William and Mary," pp. 18, 19.