1. Jeremiah Atwater, An Inaugural Address delivered at the Public Commencement of Dickinson College, September 27th, 1809 (Carlisle, 1809), pp. 5-6.
2. Carlisle Herald, Sept. 29, 1809.
3. E.g., among many, a discreet little note to Judge Hamilton, James Hamilton Papers, HSP, on some Grammar School boys who had performed poorly at commencement, "as they are of those families whom it is of importance to please, I would suggest the propriety of saying nothing by way of discrimination."
4. The salary was voted, Sept. 29, 1808; the resolution on the importance of finding a Principal, March 10, 1809. A copy of the latter was sent to Rush as evidence of concurrence with him on the absolute necessity of engaging "on this side of the Waters ... a learned & respectable Principal." Rush Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia, on deposit at HSP.
5. Rush to Miller, July 5, 1808. Andrew Hunter to Rush, April 10, 1809. Rush Papers.
6. George W. Corner, ed., The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush. His 'Travels Through Life" together with his Commonplace Book for 1789-1813 (Princeton, 1948), pp. 275-76.
7. W. Storrs Lee, Father Went to College. The Story of Middlebury (N.Y., 1936) pp. 43-48, 54. Atwater's letters to Jedidiah Morse, Jan. 6, 1807, and June 29, 1809, HSP, give his early and final views of Hall.
8. His letter of resignation has been frequently quoted, "To the Corporation of Middlebury College, Gentlemen, I now resign my office as President of Middlebury College, wishing that you individually and collectively may experience the Divine Blessing, Yours, Jeremiah Atwater."
10. Atwater to Green, July 20, 1811, HSP: "It is my final determination to make my situation in life subservient to the cause of Christ-to make my connection with a college useful towards bringing forward young men for the ministry."
11. Atwater to Rush, March 11, 1811. Rush Papers.
12. Atwater to How, May 13, 1831. Copy in Murray Papers, DCA.
13. Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., "The Other Man on Bingham's Porch," SL 2, p. 58.
14. Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, Princeton, 1746-1896 (Princeton, 1946), p.
15. Atwater to Green, 22 letters, 1810-15. HSP.
16. Atwater to Rush, Oct. 2, 1809. Rush Papers.
17. Atwater to Rush, March 11, 1811. Ibid.
18. Atwater to Rush, Oct. 2, 1809. Ibid.
19. Atwater, Inaugural Address, p. 23, in an appended statement over the signature of James Armstrong, President of the Board of Trustees: "A system of education and rules for the regulation and discipline of the College, on the plan of the NewEngland Colleges, will be adopted." Not only were the students largely from the South, but a vote of the trustees, Sept. 25, 1805, shows a particular effort to publicize the College in that area.
20. Trustee Minutes, Oct. 23, 1809: "That Genl. Gurney be authorized immediately to purchase a Bell for the College." This must have replaced the bell rung by Nisbet for the Battle of the Nile.
21. Trustee Minutes, Nov. 2, 1810. "The College Ground will be levelled and forest Trees planted." Townspeople were invited to lend their aid. Samuel Knox, 1796, had made his plea for the college campus as a place of recreation, a botanical garden. Frederick Rudolph, ed., Essays on Education in the Early Republic (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), p. 362.
22. Atwater to Rush, Sept. 18, 1810, on his catalogue. Rush Papers. The next letter, undated, reports the election of Green, recorded also in Trustee Minutes, Sept. 27, 1810.
23. Port Folio, vol. 5 (1811), pp. 239-45.
24. Trustee Minutes, March 29, 1814, with a resolution that "at the commencement of the next session a class shall be formed to be called the Freshman Class."
25. 12 pp., printed by Alexander and Phillips, Carlisle, but without date or title page. DCA.
26. Showing a balance of $5,850.75 as Atwater came into office.
27. Atwater to Rush, Dec. 27, 1809; Feb. 4, 18 10; April 22, 18 10. Rush Papers.
28. Rush to James Hamilton, June 27, 1810. James Hamilton Papers, HSP.
29. Trustee Minutes, July 19, 1810, with vote for immediate action in making student accommodations with the Rush gift. The matter had been discussed, May 17. Minutes of a year before, March 10, 1809, show that a few students were living in the building, under Mrs. Mitchell's eye. Atwater refers to the present Memorial Hall as "our hall for public worship," while to the trustees it is "the Hall for Exhibitions."
30. Rush to James Hamilton, Aug. 7 and Sept. 1, 1810. James Hamilton Papers.
31. Atwater to Rush, April 22, 1810. Rush Papers. Also to Green, Feb. 22, 1810, HSP: "The poor are always intemperate & immoral. & the rich luxurious and dissipated." Col. Simonds at the Barracks "is supposed to be an infidel and does not make the soldiers attend public worship." Atwater to Rush, May 21, 1810, Rush Papers, responds to Rush's approval of the plans for reform.
33. Trustee Minutes, Oct. 26, 1810.
34. See Corner, pp. 345-47, for Rush's notes, 1809, for the renewal of his attack of 1789.
35. Atwater to Rush, July 4, 1810, Rush Papers, lists $400 (the sum a tutor would receive) among "Present salaries" as that of the "Professor of French." The title of Professor of the Modern Languages was given Berard by the trustees, Sept 28, 1814
36. Aigster's condition was soon to be obvious but the first warning note is interesting: "Dr. Nisbet over again in some respects." Atwater to Rush, Oct. 16, 1810. Rush Papers.
37. Atwater to Green, undated. HSP. Atwater to Rush, March 11, 1811, Rush Papers, defends himself against charges brought by Wilson to the trustees.
38. Centennial Memorial of the Presbytery of Carlisle (Harrisburg, 1889), vol. 2, pp.96 - 99,152.
39. Atwater catalogues the trustees in his letter to Green, July 20, 1811. HSP. Others' descriptions of them appear in the History of Cumberland and Adams Counties (Chicago, Warner, Beers, 1886), pp. 150-51; Two Hundred Years in Cumberland County (Carlisle, 1951), pp. 92-95; Centennial Memorial, p. 373; Sketch of the Character of Dr. James Armstrong, James Hamilton Papers.
40. Hamilton to Rush, Feb. 2, 1812. Rush Papers. Trustee Minutes, Sept. 30, 1812. Atwater to Ashbel Green, April 26, 1813. State Historical Society of Wisconsin. No M.A's. were awarded in the remainder of Atwater's tenure.
41. Thomas Cooper, Some Information Respecting America (London, 1794), p. 93. David Wilson Thompson, Early Publications of Carlisle, Pennsylvania (Carlisle, 1932), p. 64. Harold A. Larrabee, "Truculent Thomas Cooper," SL 2, pp. 192-93.
42. Thompson, p. 65. Larrabee, pp. 198-200.
43. Atwater to Green, March 22, 1811, HSP, refers to a plan to "oblige me to quit, thro' mortification & disgust," in which Judge Brackenridge, Henry Rowan Wilson and Robert Davidson were involved. Cooper to James Hamilton, undated, James Hamilton Papers, writes with icy contempt of "principal Atwater, whom I understand the Trustees wish to get rid of, on acct. of his incapacity."
44. Dumas Malone, The Public Life of Thomas Cooper, 1783-1839 (New Haven, 1926), p. 237.
45. Larrabee, p. 206, quoting Jefferson: "It will give our young men some idea of what constitutes an educated man."
46. Atwater to Green, July 8, 1811. HSP.
47. Atwater to Rush, June 17, 1811. Rush Papers. The minutes show that an adjournment date had been set at the May 21 meeting, then erased and June 17 substituted.
48. Trustee Minutes, Aug. 10, 1811.
49. The Introductory Lecture of Thomas Cooper, Esq., Professor of Chemistry at Carlisle College, Pennsylvania. Published at the Request of the Trustees. With Notes and References (Carlisle, 1812). C. W. Peale's Museum Accession Book, HSP, was inscribed by Cooper, 1803, with the sentiment, "Knowledge is Power."
50. Atwater to Rush, Feb. 6, 1813. Rush Papers.
51. Thomas Cooper, "Copy of a Letter to a Friend on University Education," Port Folio, vol. 5 (1815), pp. 349-50. To Cooper, it would "admit of no controversy, that a young man turned out into the world with an intimate knowledge of the Latin, Greek and French languages, a readiness at Latin composition, and with a competent knowledge also of mathematics, algebra and fluxions, is better qualified both for active life and literary pursuits, and will have attained more facility in acquiring other branches of knowledge, than by any other possible mode of education in use at the present day."
52. Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., "Thomas Cooper as Professor of Chemistry at Dickinson College, 1811-1815," Journal of the History of Medicine, vol. 8 (1953), p. 78. The Episcopal minister's endorsement of Cooper as a scholarly "friend to Christianity" was appearing in the papers at just this time. The hostility of the legislature to clerical control must also have tended to restrain the orthodox party.
53. Sept. 29, 1811. Rush Papers.
55. Atwater to Green, May 11, 1812. HSP. To Rush, Feb. 6, 1813. Rush Papers.
56. Trustee Minutes, Dec. 17, 1811. Rush, receipt, Jan. 12, 1812. Rush Papers, Bell, "Thomas Cooper," p. 79. The apparatus is now in the Morris Room, Spahr Library.
57. Atwater to How, Feb. 13, 1813. Copy, DCA.
58. James Henry Morgan, Dickinson College (Carlisle, 1933), p. 186.
59. Atwater to Green, Feb. 23, 1812. HSP.
60. Paul E. Zuver, A Short History of Carlisle Barracks, 1757-1934 (n.p., 1934), p. 65.
61. Atwater to Green, Feb. 23-, 1812. HSP. Trustee Minutes, Feb. 22, 1812 record Oldham's expulsion, but with a statement on his otherwise exemplary character.
62 Feb. 23, 1812. Rush Papers.
64. "I read with satisfaction, that you will defer resigning your trusteeship while I am here. I feel grateful for this expression of your friendship." Atwater to Rush, Feb. 6, 1813. Rush Papers.
65. Ralph L. Ketcham, "Uncle James Madison and Dickinson College," SL 3, p. 174.
66. Ibid., pp. 178-79. Cooper's law courses are advertised under the heading, "DICKINSON COLLEGE" in the Georgetown Federal Republican, Nov. 19, 1813, as due to open with the spring session, May, 1814.
67. Cooper to James Madison, Feb. 18, 1813. Library of Congress.
68. Bell, "Thomas Cooper," p. 80.
69. Trustee Minutes, May 14, 1813.
71. Richard J. Storr, The Beginnings of Graduate Education in America (Chicago, 1953), p. 29, dates the rise of serious controversy on the relevance of the classical course at 1815- 1830.
72. Atwater to Green, June 24, 1815, HSP, names Shaw and Nulty as in alliance with Cooper. Cooper to David Watts, June 15, 1815, Cumberland County Historical Society, Carlisle, gives the general denunciation of Atwater.
73. Atwater to Green, June 24, 1815. HSP.
74. Trustee Minutes, June 12, 1815. So cited first by Merritt Caldwell, "Historical Sketch of Dickinson College," American Quarterly Register, vol. 9 (1836), p. 123.
75. Cooper to Watts, June 15, 1815, Cumberland County Historical Society.
76. Trustee Minutes, Sept. 28, 1814.
77. For the Federalists: David Watts Huling, Oration Delivered before the Students of the Belles Lettres Society of Dickinson College, and a Number of Ladies and Gentlemen of Carlisle, assembled at the College to Celebrate the 4th of July (Carlisle, 1815). For the Democrats: Julius Forrest, Oration Delivered before the Republican Students of the Belles Lettres and Union Philosophical Societies of Dickinson College, July 4, 1815 (Carlisle, 1815).
79. Centennial Memorial, vol. 2, p. 55. American Volunteer, Nov. 2, 1815.
80. Trustee Minutes, Dec. 18, 1815. The Terrell Carr Papers, University of Virginia, contain additional light on the affair. John T. Corbin, Class of 1816, was killed in the encounter. Dabney Carr Terrell, '16, his opponent, received a letter from Edward Govan, 15, stating that a jury had brought in a verdict of first degree murder and advising him not to return. Terrell completed his education at Geneva, "under the auspices of Albert Gallatin, Minister to France." He met Mme. De Stael and Lord Byron, wrote and published poetry. He became "a great favorite" of Byron, who, noting his enjoyment in chewing tobacco, tried it himself, but with an unhappy result. Terrell later practiced law at New Orleans, where he died Aug. 26, 1827.
81. Trustee Minutes, Sept. 27, 1816.
82. Cathcart to Hamilton, Jan. 18, 1818. James Hamilton Papers.
83. Printed petition, Jan. 17, 1817. Cumberland County Historical Society, Carlisle, Pa.
84. American Volunteer, May 25, 1820. Trustee Minutes, June 1, 1820.
85. Trustee Minutes, Dec. 13, 1820.
86. American Volunteer, Jan. 31, 1821.