Nathan Lord
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 |
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.
Biography
[edit]Nathan 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 was able to bring the college out of debt, improve the overall curriculum, and raise admission levels.
He was a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society,[3]: 264 and in 1833 became its vice president.[4] 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 ceased his support of the abolitionist movement and its cause.[5]
His views on slavery changed dramatically; he came to see it as "not a moral evil", but as a blessing, "an ordinance of...God",[6]: 30 which "providentially found a settlement in this country".[6]: 26 These views, and his opposition to the Civil War,[7] which he blamed on abolitionists,[4] 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."[4] Lord, 70, tendered his resignation.
He continued as an active member of the Dartmouth College community in Hanover, New Hampshire, until his death in 1870.
Family
[edit]He married Elizabeth King Leland (1792-1870) and they had ten children;[8] his youngest son, Nathan Lord Jr., (1831-1885), was a colonel of the 6th Regiment of Vermont Volunteers in the Civil War.[9]
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.
- ^ 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.
- ^ 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
- ^ 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
External links
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