Nathan Lord

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Nathan Lord
6th President of Dartmouth College
In office
1828–1863
Preceded byBennet Tyler
Succeeded byAsa Dodge Smith
Personal details
Born(1793-11-28)November 28, 1793
Berwick, Maine
DiedSeptember 9, 1870(1870-09-09) (aged 77)
Hanover, New Hampshire
Portrait of Nathan Lord by Joseph Greenleaf Cole, 1830

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]

  1. ^ OBITUARY.; Nathan Lord, D. D., The New York Times, September 10, 1870
  2. ^ Lord, Nathan (1828). An address delivered at Hanover, October 29, 1828, at the inauguration of the author as president of Dartmouth College. Windsor, Vermont.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ a b c Lawhon, Samuel W. (October 10, 2016). "A History of Opposition". Dartmouth Review. Retrieved July 19, 2020.
  5. ^ Joe Rago Festschrift. A History of Opposition, The Dartmouth Review, October 10, 2016
  6. ^ 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.
  7. ^ John Scales, "Biographical Sketches of the Class of 1863, Dartmouth College" p 39
  8. ^ Lord Family papers, 1710-1967
  9. ^ 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]

External links[edit]