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The Religious Roots of the Dartmouth College

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Jenny Bouton

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by Jenny Bouton '02To some, religious life on the Dartmouth campus is a mere footnote or
afterthought, peripheral at best. To others, it appears a wasteful or even malignant distraction from
the business of the College. However, from its charter as a religious missionary school to the
founding of the Tucker Foundation in 1951 to “further the moral and spiritual work of the
College,”i religion has played a central and critical role in the life of Dartmouth College. While
some aspects of Dartmouth’s history, such as the landmark precedent of the Dartmouth College
case, are well known beyond its campus, few people on or off the Dartmouth campus know that
this episode began as a religious controversy. When John Wheelock, the second president of
Dartmouth and son of the College’s founder, appealed to the state government to intervene, he
inadvertently politicized an internal dispute while obscuring its nature.

Many of us are familiar with at least the basic facts of the Dartmouth College case. In 1815,
Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees deposed the second president, John Wheelock, for attacking them
in a widely read publication, which alleged that the Board was using the College as a springboard
for establishing a religious hierarchy in New England.ii In response, Wheelock appealed to the
legislature of New Hampshire to change Dartmouth's charter, effectively converting the school
from a private to a public institution. The original trustees objected and sought to have the actions
of the legislature declared unconstitutional. For this purpose, they retained Dartmouth alumnus
Daniel Webster, who argued eloquently for the sanctity of the original charter. When the Court
ruled in favor of the College and invalidated the acts of the New Hampshire legislature,
Dartmouth was allowed to continue as a private institution.

However, the role played by religion, and in particular by a Christian professor, has remained
obscure for some time, and very few treatments of the Dartmouth College case show any concern
for the origin of the dispute. Despite the religious roots of the college, Dartmouth, like much of
New England, had adopted humanist values. In the early 19th century, undergraduate religious
societies began to form in New England as Christians responded to these changes. Additionally,
many colleges and universities were swept up in a string of revivals, beginning with Yale in 1802.
Some students and professors at Dartmouth, hoping that their school would experience this
religious awakening as well, attacked the secular curricula, the political values of Enlightenment
humanism and the "carnival atmosphere" (i.e. moral decline, drinking, rowdiness, irreverence to
God), claiming that the milieu was not suited for the training of young men for responsible roles in
church and society. “Nearly every New England college experienced a religious revival [at the
beginning of the 19th Century] … The trouble with Dartmouth was that there had been no revival
since 1782.”iii

In 1804, a majority of trustees of the College appointed Dartmouth alumnus Roswell Shurtleff, a
tutor at Dartmouth and an orthodox Calvinist with traditional views on Scripture, to the long-
vacant Professorship in Divinity. This position traditionally included the pastoring of Hanover’s
Church of Christ at Dartmouth, where both students and townspeople worshipped. His nomination
came over the violent protests of John Wheelock: Wheelock’s friend and Professor of Classics at
Dartmouth, John Smith, had served as interim pastor of that church since 1797, giving Wheelock
effective control over both church and college. Smith himself wanted to be relieved of his

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ecclesial duties, but Wheelock insisted Smith remain, and forced Shurtleff’s congregation out of
the college chapel.

This exiled congregation began to meet in the Hanover town meeting house, and it is due in part to
Shurtleff’s preaching in Hanover that a religious awakening broke out in the winter of 1805,
resulting in forty new members in Shurtleff's church. In response to student petitions, the Board of
Trustees, now fully in the hands of those sympathetic to Shurtleff, passed resolutions in 1809 to
ban “treating,” the ritualized drinking parties accompanying major campus events. Outraged by
the new restrictions, anti-awakening students rioted, burning outhouses, vandalizing the rooms of
those in favor of religious awakening, firing guns on campus and slandering the religious
organizations. Wheelock, likewise irate, refused to punish the rioters and blamed the awakening
faction for disrupting campus life.

Shurtleff, however, was ordained as an "evangelist" in 1809 in the Congregational Church at

Lyme in recognition for his efforts in spreading the gospel in the region, and the next year he was
appointed as college librarian in addition to his other duties. As the College's chaplain and a man
of God, he was seen as the natural caretaker for boys from Christian homes. Concerned fathers
would often write to Shurtleff requesting him to take a special interest in their sons to ensure their
development in "Christian virtue" and "moral character" in the degrading secular college
atmosphere. Shurtleff always responded with a personal interview with the student and thus
developed close relationships with many students. Due in no small part to his spiritual care for the
students, another wave of religious revival spread over the campus in 1815.

It was this spiritual ambiance at the College, supported by a traditionally religious board, in
addition to Wheelock’s continued efforts to shut down Shurtleff’s congregation, that led to the
final break between Wheelock and the trustees. This became the catalyst for Wheelock’s appeal to
the legislature of New Hampshire, which precipitated what was essentially a state takeover of the
College. Although some have concluded that there were "no serious theological or political
differences between Wheelock and the trustees,”iv the significance of these revivals was that they
placed Shurtleff and Wheelock in opposition about such practical matters of theology as the place
of emotions and revival in evangelical religion.

In the events that followed, Shurtleff and his colleague Professor Adams played a significant, yet
not widely known role. When Wheelock called for state intervention, Shurtleff and Adams sided
with the original board of trustees, known as the “Octagon.” They withheld the names of
graduating students from the newly formed and state-controlled University board and held their
own commencement. Practically, Dartmouth University had no existence, but the College was still
functioning with a president, faculty, buildings, and student body,v whose loyalty was likely due
in no small part to Shurtleff. Whereas Wheelock was “generally unpopular”vi with the students,
Shurtleff had become universally well-liked; his integrity, humility, gifts in teaching and personal
interest in his students had earned him high regard among the students.

In the winter of 1816, the new board ordered the Octagon to appear before them to answer charges
of acting as illegitimate officers of Dartmouth. The College’s president, Francis Brown, and
Professors Adams and Shurtleff refused to appear before the new board, awaiting “the result of an
appeal to the judicial tribunals.”vii In the Octagon’s absence, the University board removed
Brown as President and Trustee, three of Trustees from their positions, and Adams and Shurtleff
as faculty members. John Wheelock was briefly reinstated as president. By this time, however, he
was too ill to perform his duties. The supporters of New Hampshire Governor Plumer forced entry
into the college buildings; when Dartmouth University opened session, only one student showed
up. The College with a loyal student body met in another building; that term both the College and
the University functioned side by side.

In the meantime, the Octagon had filed suit against William Woodward, the state-approved
secretary of the new board, who refused to hand over the records and seal. This, of course, became

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what is now called the Dartmouth College Case. “With Daniel Webster pleading and with other
distinguished lawyers participating, [the Supreme Court] held for the college in Trustees of
Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1819. The state legislative act was void because the college
was a charitable institution, not a public corporation; hence the charter was a contract and could
not be impaired under the Constitution.”viii Not only did Shurtleff and those who favored the
revival of Christian thought and values secure religious freedom for their own benefit, but they
also protected the integrity of the College, and by extension, all other American educational
institutions.

Closer to home, the religious origins of the case ensured support from pro-revival elements across
the state. “While the case was being litigated, the Congregational clergy of New Hampshire set
aside days of prayer that the college, now ‘a nursery of piety’, would not revert to being again ‘the
reverse.’ To the participants in the college and the community, then, the significance of the
Dartmouth College Case was not the political battle between Federalists and Republicans or the
contest between the state legislature and the United States Supreme Court. It was, rather, the
question who would control the religious future of Dartmouth and Hanover. The Supreme Court's
1819 decision in favor of the trustees was thus a major victory for the cause of evangelical
education.”ix

As for Roswell Shurtleff, in 1827 he was appointed to a joint position as a Professor of Moral
Philosophy and political [sic] Economy, and was granted a doctorate in divinity from the
University of Vermont in 1834. He held this joint position until his resignation in 1838 due to poor
health. In January of 1861 he fell seriously ill and died a month later. His grave, with that of his
wife and three infant children, can be found on the west side of the cemetery on the Dartmouth
campus. The inscription reads, in part, “He spent thirty eight years in the service of Dartmouth
College, connecting his name inseparably with its history, and earning the grateful remembrance
of many classes of pupils. A sound theologian, an acute philosopher, a thorough instructor, a
thoughtful Christian, he faithfully served his generation and fell asleep in sure hope of immortal
life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

i “About the William Jewett Tucker Foundation,” Dartmouth.edu, 2009, Dartmouth College, 30
March 2009,
ii John Wheelock, Sketches of the History of Dartmouth College and Moor’s Charity School, with
a particular Account of Some Late Remarkable Proceedings of the Board of Trustees, From the
Year 1779 to the Year 1815, 1815.
iii Steven J. Novak,“The College in the Dartmouth College Case: A Reinterpretation,” The New
England Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 4 (1974): 554.
iv Richard Hofstadter, Academic Freedom in the Age of the College (New York, 1955) 220.
v Francis Stites, Private Interest and Public Gain (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1972) 36.
vi Novak 552.
vii Stites 42.
viii Eldon Johnson, “The Dartmouth College Case: The Neglected Educational Meaning,” Journal
of the Early Republic, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring, 1983): 47.
ix Novak 563.
Jenny Bouton ‘02 is from Hartford, Vermont. She was a German and Linguistics double major.

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