The History of Dartmouth College Part 24

"We must do all in our power to promote liberal feelings among the several communities and sections of our federal republic, so as to preserve inviolate the Union of the States. Were this Union now in danger, it would call forth a more authoritative voice than mine; yet it may be in danger before the close of another half century. I will only speak my own conviction, that the States cannot be separated without the destruction of the country. They lie together on the bosom of this vast continent, a protection and an ornament, each to the other, and all to each, like the gems on the breast-plate of the Jewish Hierarch, indicative of the union of the Tribes, mutually lending and receiving l.u.s.tre."...

"We must root out from among ourselves the inst.i.tution of domestic slavery, or, before the close of another half century, we may have to abide the consequences of a servile war. In effecting this all-important object, we must indeed proceed gradually, temperately, in the observance of all good faith and good feeling toward the people of that portion of our Union on which the curse was entailed by the colonial policy of the mother country.

"It is a work which demands the full concurrence of all the States, and, sooner or later, it must be accomplished. Common sense will not cease to upbraid us with inconsistency, humanity will not be satisfied, nor Heaven fully propitiated, while we hold up boastfully in one hand this declaration, affirming that "all men are created equal," and grasp with the other the manacles and the scourge.

"Whatever may have been inferred by reason from a difference of physical attributes, and whatever may have been forced by criticism out of the word of G.o.d, the traffic in human flesh is _contraband_ by the law of Nature written in our hearts, and _forbidden_ by the whole tenor and spirit of the religion revealed in the Gospel.

"Even in the darker and imperfect dispensation of the ancient Jews, every fiftieth year, at least, brought freedom to _all_ the inhabitants of the land. It is almost needless to say, that, if he who first procured the slave and brought him hither had no right to do so, then neither could he who bought him acquire a rightful owners.h.i.+p.

There is no _property_ to a private man in the life or the natural faculties of another; no right can accrue by purchase, or vest by possession, and no inheritance on either side descend. A t.i.tle, which by its very nature was void from the beginning, can never be made good; a dominion which Heaven never gave, must be perpetuated, if at all, by means which it will never sanction."...

Surely, the trumpet of this youth gave no "uncertain sound."

"One blast upon that bugle horn.

Were worth ten thousand men."

To the recognition of such qualities it was due, probably, that in 1829 he was called to New York city to a.s.sume the editors.h.i.+p of a journal ("Journal of Commerce") founded by an a.s.sociation of gentlemen, and which afterwards exerted great influence upon public opinion. He declined the offer, unwilling to leave his Alma Mater at a critical epoch in her history. He stayed by her to die in her service.

His widow, Mrs. Sarah L. (Gilman) Chamberlain, daughter of Dr. Joseph Gilman, of Wells, Me., and niece of Mrs. President Brown, survived him twenty years, residing at Hanover. The memory of her moral, intellectual, and social worth is warmly cherished by all who knew her.

Mr. Lancaster adds: "Professor Chamberlain was tall, erect, square built, well-proportioned, and of graceful mien and bearing,--such a man as the eye could rest upon with pleasure. His voice was clear, sonorous, yet smooth and agreeable."

Professor Folsom says:

"Professor Chamberlain, the youngest member of the Faculty, who was only twenty-three years old when, in 1820, he entered on his professors.h.i.+p of the Latin and Greek Languages and Literature, and only thirty-three when he died, was much admired and loved and reverenced by many of us. To myself, whenever I think of Dartmouth, his image invariably appears, and he stands out among the objects presenting themselves second only to that of Dr. Tyler, as the latter appeared when at his best and n.o.blest in the pulpit. It was indeed in that same pulpit, and before I came under his instruction, that I first heard him, when he delivered an oration on the Fourth of July in the year 1826. It was to a crowded audience, filling the floor and the galleries. I doubt whether there is one survivor of that number, whether student or townsman, from whose recollection can have faded away the image of the orator, his form and att.i.tude, his voice and action, and some of his thrilling words, especially when he described the nation holding in one hand the Declaration of Independence which proclaims human equality, and with the other grasping the manacles and scourge to torture millions of human beings bought and sold, and compelled to labor in slavery.

Professor Chamberlain took charge of the Cla.s.s of 1828 in Latin and Greek when they entered on their Junior year. As soon as our cla.s.s met him in the east recitation-room--he being seated at a small table on his left, and the cla.s.s in lines of a half-parallelogram extending on the right and in front of him--we felt that we had come under a n.o.ble teacher. Some of us who loved the languages that he taught, and also had become acquainted with the best of the upper cla.s.ses, carried with us none other than very high antic.i.p.ations of a most profitable and pleasant term of study. And so it proved. How he used to electrify us at times by repeating something that had just been recited, as at the close of the Agricola of Tacitus, his strongly marked face all lighted up, new significance and something like inspiration being given us, when with his deliberate, distinct, emphatic, rhythmical, rich utterance, flowed out that prophetic sentence in the world's literature, 'Quidquid ex Agricola amavimus, quidquid mirati sumus, manet mansurumque in animis hominum, in aeternitate temporum, in fama rerum!'

"I remember that while my cla.s.s were in the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles and the Medea of Euripides, I was suffering from weak eyes, and went to the recitation-room with no other preparation than that of hearing each lesson twice read to me by two different students, who did me the kindness to perform that service. But with Professor Chamberlain's luminous explanation and comment, no Greek of my whole college course more deeply interested and helped me.

"He heard the rehearsal of my Commencement oration, and some of his words on that occasion I have not ceased to remember with grat.i.tude.

Nor was I the only one who received from him words of encouragement that proved of most valuable service in our subsequent career. Still it was the _moral_ element that const.i.tuted his highest power of influencing young men, and was his distinguis.h.i.+ng personality. May I say, for one, that in this moral and spiritual personality he has again and again come to me since his departure, and been a present helper toward whatever of good I have attained in life.

"A single anecdote will serve to ill.u.s.trate the _love_ with which his pupils cherish his memory. I cannot but think that every survivor of my cla.s.s must have some recollection of the fact, and share all my feelings in regard to it. He had been occasionally late at recitation, and the cla.s.s, to give him a lesson of promptness, one morning having a.s.sembled as usual after service in chapel, and waited some four minutes past the hour, carried the vote to go to our rooms; and so, the professor just turning the corner, and hastening up the slope, and his approach being announced by some on the lookout, we dashed out, through the rear doors, or up the stairways, and not a solitary member of the cla.s.s remained in the room. The next morning he was already there when we reached the place, made no remark on the occurrence of the previous day, and none of us could discern in him the faintest trace of displeasure. When, two years after we graduated, I heard of his death, I remembered a slight, hacking cough which he had, and that slightly bent, spare, though large and tall frame, and always placid face, and realized for the first time that what we imputed to him as a fault was the hindrance of disease, and possibly of sleepless nights; and I would have given a world for an opportunity to ask his forgiveness."[44]

[44] The writer did not know until a few years ago that he was related, though somewhat distantly, to the wife of Professor Chamberlain. He was personally acquainted with her from his Soph.o.m.ore year. He then boarded and roomed at Mrs. President Brown's (Mrs. C.'s aunt). Her paternal great-grandfather, Rev. Nicholas Gilman, of Durham, N. H., and the writer's paternal great-grandfather (as well as maternal great-great-grandfather), Dr. Josiah Gilman, of Exeter, N. H., were brothers. He has felt, ever since he knew this fact, like having a clearer right of inheritance in Professor Chamberlain.

Another pupil says of Professor Chamberlain:

"He was well-proportioned, tall, active, and energetic. His expression was dignified and commanding. In his word there was power. Integrity marked all his life. His word was as good as his bond. His principles were firmly grasped and implicitly followed. His intellectual powers were of a high order. He impressed every acquaintance with his intellectual greatness. His discourse was lofty but impressive.

"His religious life was less marked in public. He united with no church, though he was a man of prayer and from his dying bed sent a religious message to the students."

From a reliable source we have the following notice of another of Dartmouth's eminent and honored teachers:

Daniel Oliver, whose name appears on the list of teachers of past years in both the Medical and Academical departments of Dartmouth College, was born on the 9th of September, 1787. He was the third son of the Rev. Thomas Fitch Oliver, at that time rector of St. Michael's, Marblehead, and belonged to a family distinguished in the history of Ma.s.sachusetts from the earliest period of the colony. He was a direct descendant of Mr. Thomas Oliver, whom Winthrop calls "an experienced and very skilful surgeon," and who acted as one of the ruling elders of the church in Boston soon after his arrival in 1632. Through his mother he was descended from William Pynchon, one of the founders of the Ma.s.sachusetts Colony, and the Rev. William Hubbard, the historian of New England; and, through his paternal grandmother he was a descendant of the Rev. John Eliot, the noted Indian missionary.

After the death of his father, which took place at Garrison Forest, near Baltimore, before he had attained his tenth year, he was placed in the care of Colonel Lloyd Rogers, of that city, and almost immediately commenced his preparatory course for college, applying himself to his studies with great diligence, and entered. Harvard College in 1802. Although fond of study, and possessed of a mind of unusual vigor and brilliancy, the ambitions of college life do not seem to have dimmed the memories of his forest home in the South, and in his letters, while at Cambridge, he more than once recalls the pleasant hours when living within its shades, in a strain at once suggestive of a refined and poetic nature.

To one of his thoughtful and contemplative mind it is not strange that, suddenly transferred from the quiet of home life to the turmoil of college scenes, he should have found much that was distasteful; and the following extract from a letter to him from the late Mr. Justice Story, at that time betrothed to his eldest sister, and with whom he was on terms of intimacy, would seem to imply no little disquietude on the part of his student friend during the earlier years of his life at Cambridge.

"You can hardly imagine with what delight I recur to the days which I spent at Cambridge. In the delightful seclusion from noisy vulgarity, in the sweet interchange of kind sentiments, and in the mutual compet.i.tion of cla.s.sic pursuits, I possessed a unity and tranquillity of purpose far beyond the merits of my later years. My first years there were not marked with this peculiar character. It was in my Junior and Senior years that, from forming a choice of friends, and partic.i.p.ating in the higher views of literature, I felt that happiness resulted in the activity of intellect and possession of friends.h.i.+p.

That period will in future be yours; and though you may start with surprise at the thought at this moment, that period will be marked out in the calendar of your years as among the _dies fortunatos_. You and I are not widely distinct in years, and you can therefore readily believe that this attachment is not the moral relation of comparison and experience; no, it was reality which charmed me when present, and reflects a l.u.s.tre in remembrance. Go on, then, my dear fellow, in the academic course with awakened hope. A high destiny awaits you. The joys of youth shall give spirit to the exertions of manhood, and the pursuits of literature yield a permanent felicity attainable only by the votaries of taste. Sweet are the attainments which accomplish the wishes of friends. Our reliance upon you is founded on a belief that ambition and literature will unite us in as close bonds as sympathy and affinity.

"On a subject so interesting to me as my collegiate course I seldom reflect without melancholy; not a harsh and dark brooding, but a soft and tender pensiveness which

"'Sheds o'er the soul a sympathetic gloom.'

"The thousand a.s.sociations of festivity, pleasantry, study, and recreation live to hallow the whole. The picture, by its distance, loses its defects, and retains only the strong colorings of primitive impression. Never do I cast my eyes on that dear seat of letters but I exclaim involuntarily with Gray:

"'Ah! happy fields, ah! pleasing shade, Ah! groves beloved in vain, Where once my careless childhood strayed, A stranger yet to pain; I feel the gales that round ye blow A momentary bliss bestow.'

"By the way, when you are at leisure and feel a little dull, I advise you to take up some of our good-natured writers, such as Dr. Moore, Goldsmith, Coleman, Cervantes, Don Quixote, Smollett's novels, or the pleasant and airy productions of the muse. These I have always found a powerful anti-splenetic; and, although I am not a professed physician, I will venture to prescribe to you in this instance with all the confidence of Hippocrates. The whole system of nostrums from that arch-quack, the old serpent, down to the far-famed Stoughton of our own day, does not present so powerful a remedy, amid all its _antis_, as cheerful reading to a heavy spirit. I will venture to say, in the spirit of Montesquieu, that an hour of such reading will place one quietly in his elbow chair in all the tranquillity of a Platonic lover."

It is probable that Mr. Story's influence was not without its effect in reconciling his young friend to college life, for he was very soon to be found among the foremost in the race for honorable distinction.

He was graduated with distinguished honor, in 1806, in a cla.s.s of remarkable ability, among whom were the late Hon. Alexander Everett, Judge William P. Preble, Professor J. G. Cogswell, and the venerable Dr. Jacob Bigelow, its last surviving member.

After leaving college he began the study of law under the direction of Mr. Story, but very soon abandoned it, and entered the office of his uncle, the late Dr. B. Lynde Oliver, of Salem, as a student of medicine. In 1809, he entered the University of Pennsylvania, at that time distinguished by the names of Rush, Wistar, and Physick, and by his talents and attainments soon attracted the notice of Dr. Rush, whose favorite pupil and warm friend he afterwards became. On receiving his medical degree, the following letter, written in terms of the highest compliment, was addressed by Dr. Rush to his uncle and former instructor.

"Philadelphia, May 1, 1810.

"Dear Sir: I sit down with great pleasure to answer your letter by your nephew, now Dr. Oliver, and to inform you at the same time that he has received the honor of a doctor's degree in our university much to his credit and the satisfaction of his teachers. From his singular talents, and from his acquirements and manners, he cannot fail of becoming eminent in his profession. Long, very long, may he live to reflect honor upon all who are related to him, or who have been instrumental in opening and directing his acute and capacious mind in the prosecution of his studies! Be a.s.sured he carries with him my highest respect and sincere affection.

"With respectful compliments to the venerable patriarch of medicine, Dr. Holyoke (if not translated to a better world),

"I am, dear sir, very sincerely yours, "Benjamin Rush.

"Dr. B. Lynde Oliver."

On his return to Salem, Dr. Oliver commenced the practice of medicine, and in July, 1811, as appears from his diary, he connected himself with Dr. R. D. Mussey, then a rising young surgeon, and with whom he was afterwards so long a.s.sociated. From the following entry in the diary referred to, under date of July 12, 1812, may be learned somewhat of his tastes at this time, and his mode of pa.s.sing the waiting hours of an early professional life:

"This day completed the first year of my connection in the medical profession with Dr. R. D. Ma.s.sey. On reviewing this period, I am sensible of a great loss of time, and of a degree of professional and literary improvement altogether inadequate to such an extent of time.

Some improvement, however, has I hope, been made. With respect to the books which I have read during the past year, the most important are Mosheim's 'Ecclesiastical History,' which I have not yet quite completed,--a learned and judicious outline of the history of the church, embracing many collateral topics of learning and philosophy ...; Homer's 'Iliad' in Greek, with the exception of the last book; the 'aeneid' except the last two; two or three books of Livy, and several of Juvenal's 'Satires.'

"The most important literary enterprise which I have undertaken and accomplished has been the delivery of a course of lectures on Chemistry in connection with Dr. Mussey. In Anatomy, also, we have executed something. Medicine will, in future, claim more of my attention, but not to the neglect of the two important collateral branches above mentioned."

In the autumn of 1815, Dr. Oliver was appointed to deliver a course of chemical lectures before the medical cla.s.s at Dartmouth College.

Although he had thus far pursued the study of chemistry as a collateral branch of medical science, he felt warranted in accepting the appointment, without, however, proposing to himself a more permanent position in this department.

In 1817, he was married to Miss Mary Robinson Pulling, the only daughter of Edward Pulling, Esq., an eminent barrister of Salem, and almost immediately went again to Philadelphia to avail himself of the advantages of that seat of medical learning, returning to Salem in the spring of 1818.

In the following year he was induced to undertake, in connection with the Hon. John Pickering, the preparation of a Greek lexicon, a work involving much labor and research, and the larger portion of which fell to his lot. Although mainly based on the Latin of Schrevelius, many of the interpretations were new, and there were added more than two thousand new articles. The magnitude of the task and its successful accomplishment at once raised him to a conspicuous rank among the scholars of his day.

In the summer of 1820 he accepted an appointment to the professors.h.i.+p of the Theory and Practice of Medicine, and of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in Dartmouth College, where he delivered his first course of lectures in the following autumn. He was also made Professor of Botany, and his lectures upon Physiology were among his most valuable contributions to medical literature. He took up his permanent residence in Hanover, in August, 1821, and from this time to the close of his connection with the college he was most faithful to all its interests. In 1825 he was appointed to the chair of Intellectual Philosophy in the Academical department of the college, a position which he filled with the ability that distinguished him elsewhere. The address delivered by him on the occasion of his induction into this professors.h.i.+p, upon the "Comparative Importance of the Study of Mental Science," was thus far, perhaps, his most successful literary effort.

Clear, comprehensive, and abounding in pa.s.sages of remarkable beauty and force, it established the reputation of its author both as a writer and a metaphysician.

In 1835 was published his "First Lines in Physiology," a treatise which received the highest commendation both at home and abroad. It pa.s.sed through three editions, and although the rapid advance in physiological science since its publication has long since led to its disuse, it will still be admired by medical scholars for the purity of its style and the learning it everywhere displays.

In the spring of 1837, Dr. Oliver closed his connection with the college, and returned to Cambridge, where he was temporarily residing at the time of his appointment, again to resume the practice of his profession. He, however, delivered a course of lectures at the Dartmouth Medical School in the autumn of this and the following year.