Nathan Lord (November 28, 1793 – September 9, 1870) was an American Congregational clergyman and educator who served as president of Dartmouth College for more than three decades.
Nathan Lord | |
|---|---|
 | |
| 6th President of Dartmouth College | |
| In office 1828–1863 | |
| Preceded by | Bennet Tyler |
| Succeeded by | Asa Dodge Smith |
| Personal details | |
| Born | November 28, 1793 Berwick, Maine |
| Died | September 9, 1870 (aged 77) Hanover, New Hampshire |
Biography
editNathan Lord was born in Berwick, Maine.[1] He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1809, and attended Andover Theological Seminary, serving afterwards as a pastor at the Congregationalist Church in Amherst, Massachusetts for twelve years.
In 1828 he became the sixth president of Dartmouth College serving in this capacity from 1828 to 1863.[2] Lord brought the college out of debt and made controversial changes to the curriculum. His "non-ambitious system" banned all academic honors and distinctions and enjoyed the support of the Trustees of Dartmouth, but faced significant criticism.[3]
He was a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society,[4]: 264 and in 1833 served as the Vice President of the New Hampshire delegation to the National Anti-Slavery Convention.[5] He admitted black students to Dartmouth College and was a friend of William Lloyd Garrison. However, after Garrison challenged the Bible on its alleged endorsement of slavery, deeply religious Lord began to question his support of the abolitionist movement and its cause.[6]
His views on slavery changed dramatically by the time he gave a eulogy for John Quincy Adams in 1848.[7] In this address, and in later pamphlets published throughout the 1850s (e.g. A Letter of Inquiry, A True Picture of Abolition), he came to see slavery as "not a moral evil", but as a blessing, "an ordinance of...God",[8]: 30 which "providentially found a settlement in this country".[8]: 26 These views, and his opposition to the Civil War,[9] which he blamed on abolitionists,[5] brought a storm of controversy, earning him the enmity of several members of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees, including Amos Tuck (1835), a founding member of the Republican Party and close friend of Abraham Lincoln.
Matters came to a head in 1863 when the Trustees were deadlocked on awarding an honorary degree to President Lincoln, and Lord broke the tie by voting against it. The Trustees issued a statement: "Neither the trustees nor the Faculty coincide with the president of the College in the views which he has published, touching slavery and the war; and it has been our hope that the College would not be judged a partisan institution by reason of such publications."[5] Lord, 70, tendered his resignation.
He continued to publish anti-abolitionist materials from his home in Hanover, New Hampshire, until his death in 1870.
Family
editHe married Elizabeth King Leland (1792-1870) and they had ten children;[10] his youngest son, Nathan Lord Jr., (1831-1885), was a colonel of the 6th Regiment of Vermont Volunteers in the Civil War.[11]
References
edit- ^ OBITUARY.; Nathan Lord, D. D., The New York Times, September 10, 1870
- ^ Lord, Nathan (1828). An address delivered at Hanover, October 29, 1828, at the inauguration of the author as president of Dartmouth College. Windsor, Vermont.
- ^ Richardson, Leon Burr (1932). History of Dartmouth College. Dartmouth College Press.
- ^ Irvine, Russell W.; Dunkerton, Donna Zani (Winter 1998). "The Noyes Academy, 1834-35: The Road to the Oberlin Collegiate Institute and the Higher Education of African-Americans in the Nineteenth Century". Western Journal of Black Studies. 22 (4): 260–273.260-273&rft.date=1998&rft.aulast=Irvine&rft.aufirst=Russell W.&rft.au=Dunkerton, Donna Zani&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Nathan Lord" class="Z3988">
- ^ a b c Lawhon, Samuel W. (October 10, 2016). "A History of Opposition". Dartmouth Review. Retrieved July 19, 2020.
- ^ Joe Rago Festschrift. A History of Opposition, The Dartmouth Review, October 10, 2016
- ^ Lord, Nathan (March 24, 1848). "A eulogy on the Honorable John Quincy Adams, delivered March 24, 1848, at the request of the students of Dartmouth college".
- ^ a b Lord, Nathan (1854). A letter of inquiry to ministers of the gospel of all denominations, on slavery. By a Northern Presbyter. Boston: Fetridge and Company.
- ^ John Scales, "Biographical Sketches of the Class of 1863, Dartmouth College" p 39
- ^ Lord Family papers, 1710-1967
- ^ Vermont in the Civil War: A history of the part taken by the Vermont soldiers and sailors in the war for the Union, 1861-5, by G. G. Benedict. Burlington, Vt.: Free Press Association, 1886-1888
Further reading
edit- Waters, Lawrence Leslie (1950). Steel Trails to Santa Fe. University of Kansas Press, Lawrence, Kansas.
- The Wheelock Succession of Dartmouth Presidents