My generation : an autobiographical interpretation

Front matter

‘ ay

WILLIAM JEWETT TUCKER

The President Emeritus of Dartmouth College has been a prominent and influential leader in the great social and educational movements about which he — writes. His autobiography will be of | interest, not only to those who are familiar with his notable work as an educator, but also as an illuminating interpretation o Th a

Preface

THERE must be, of course, some reason for that backward errand of the mind which is implied in autobiography. “Confessions” may be, they frequently are, the work of the imagination; but, when genuine, they have their justification in the unburdening of a mind of its past. “Reminiscences” of lighter vein are the recreation of the mind; in more serious vein, its revaluation of men and events according to the appraisal of the memory. “‘Interpretation” represents most nearly the unfinished work of a lifetime. In its more personal use it offers to the individual worker a just relief from his frequent. sense of the incompleteness and the impermanence of his work, by allowing him to relate it to things which have in themselves fullness or stability — movements, causes, institutions. Applied in its larger relations, it may make some unfinished work of a generation, through the better understanding of it, the special task of the next, and so maintain that continuity of purpose among like-minded men which is the essential element in social progress.

It had not been my intention to write an autobiography, even in the specialized form of interpretation. The result which now appears was not a matter of design or of premeditation. Before I became interested in the preparation of this book the initiative had been taken by my wife, through her self-imposed but most gracious task of sifting and arranging the very considerable amount of memoranda and correspondence, which had accumulated during the years of my professional and semi-public service. The nat-

Vill PREFACE ural outcome of her work, were any public use to be made of the material thus prepared, would have been a volume of correspondence edited by her, with her own annotations. Such an outcome, though presumably quite in the future, I had anticipated in the event of publication. But as the sifting process went on, it became evident to both of us that the publication of correspondence, however it might be annotated, would be an insufficient and perhaps misleading treatment of the data in hand; that, in fact, the only practicable treatment must be in the way of autobiographical interpretation. In the first place, the correspondence was incomplete, as few copies of my own letters had been preserved, and many of the letters received, naturally the most interesting, were in their prevailing character confidential. Furthermore, ,my professional career had been divided not only in time and place, but still more according to the specific objects which had been pursued, requiring a personal knowledge of motives and purposes to give it the requisite unity. And further still, the spirit of my whole work had been so far related, at least to myself, to what I have termed the fortune of my generation, that it could hardly have been interpreted except by the one who had passed through experiences incident to the peculiar incentives and influences of the generation. For these reasons the book assumed its present more personal form, but the making of it was none the less a work of collaboration.

Enough only of the personal has been introduced into this “Interpretation” to serve as a background for the professional point of view. I am well aware that any interpretation of one’s generation to be of value must be genuinely and broadly human. But the next demand, as I

PREFACE | ix apprehend, is for definiteness of view, a certain recognizable if not authorized relation of the would-be interpreter to his time. Such a relation may be propezly assumed to exist between a man and his profession. As compared with the outlook of a mere observer, the professional view is from within the generation. It is more than a view; it is an experience, an experience of the inner life of the generation and of its responsible activities. Among the professions of my time, I know of none which made more vital contacts with the working forces of the generation, or shared more sensitively in the quickening or disturbing influences of its intellectual life than the ministry. There were at least three specific objects of very great interest and concern to the ministry, in so far as it was affected by the progressive spirit of the new era — the advancement of theology, the development of the social conscience into an agency adequate for social progress, and the expansion of the higher education to admit the subject-matter and discipline of the new knowledge. This last object, especially as it came within the range of the ministry through the New England traditions, involved the reconstruction of the institutional life of the colleges quite as much as the readjustment of the curriculum.

During the period of my two pastorates (1867-80) it can hardly be said that these objects had taken definite shape. I was more conscious of a general enlargement of the scope of the ministry — at Manchester, of the widening outlook toward industrialism; in New York, of a growing sensitiveness to the human needs of the city. There was, however, the increasing consciousness that the prevailing unrest was seeking definition as the first step toward satisfaction. And it was with the purpose of entering into a clearer x PREFACE understanding of the new responsibilities of the ministry, and of taking some more directive part in the training of men for its new duties that I made the change from the work of the pastorate to that of the schools.

The two periods which follow that of the pastorate, which I have designated the Andover period (1880-93) and the Dartmouth period (1893-1909) were outwardly unlike — one was theological, the other was educational; one was controversial, the other altogether constructive. But the same influences from without and the same spirit within were at work in each. In the circumstances of the time, theological advancement, including the new sociological development, and educational reconstruction were not far apart in aim or method. I have not, however, used these general terms to designate the two periods, because I have wished to emphasize in each case the institutional element. The so-called Andover Controversy was singularly out of place — it belonged anywhere rather than at Andover — but because of its variance with all the traditions of the Seminary it doubtless “‘fell out” to the furtherance of theological freedom and progress in a way impossible in an unprogressive school. The part which Dartmouth took in educational reconstruction was similar to that taken by other colleges of its grade, but there was that about the process as carried out which gave it an institutional result quite distinctive and unique. As a college administrator, my work included a specific task undertaken for an institution which had summoned its loyal alumni to meet in its behalf a belated and restive opportunity.

The closing period to which I have referred under the title, “The New Reservation of Time,” represents, in the

PREFACE x1 changed conditions of modern life, a new but most valuable perquisite of age. It has been to me, in its extent at least, an unexpected gift, reaching now to a decade, and enhanced in value beyond all estimate by the events which have crowded the later years. To have lived in such a period, to have shared in its grave anxieties and mighty hopes, to have been able to study into the causes which were producing such momentous sacrifices and struggles, and to have been allowed to witness the final consummation, all this has made the period of retirement more significant, even within the sphere of personal expression, than any preceding period of responsible activity. It has not been, I trust, inconsistent either with previous activities, or with the natural restraints consequent upon official retirement, that I have ventured from time to time, under the stimulus of passing events, into the open field of the. publicist.

I am indebted for the title of this book, as well as for many other helpful suggestions, to Mr. Homer E. Keyes, Business Director of Dartmouth. His advice and aid in regard to illustrations have been of peculiar value. The map of Dartmouth College was especially prepared by Mr. Harry G. Wells, Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds.

Professor Frank H. Dixon very kindly assumed the reading of the proof. This meant much more than the correction of errors in print (these are slight in the galleys of The Riverside Press). It meant in the present instance the verification of quotations and dates, and not infrequently the revision of paragraphs, in order to avoid those repetitions and inconsistencies which were liable in a book dictated at intervals as strength permitted.

Xi PREFACE

I desire to express my appreciation of the continued hospitality of Houghton Mifflin Company, a hospitality which, in one form or another, I have enjoyed for more than thirty years.

WILLIAM JEWETT TUCKER

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VIII.

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Contents

. THe FoRTUNE OF My GENERATION . .. . . 1 mermiroduetory Retrospect . =. 1 ww t.tCd [UHL MRSONAL GACKGROUND. <i... . . ..19 Ancestry and Early Home . ..... . 2 Ey ek ek | ey ae BO . Tas ENVIRONMENT OF THE Civir War. .-. . 41 . Tp PROFESSION OF THE MINISTRY . ... . il . Two PAstoRATES . .. . 63 The Franklin Street Te et fina) Church, Manchester, New Hampshire, 1867-1875 . . . 64 The Madison Square (Presbyterian) Church, New York City, 1875-1880 .. . . sie Lett We Conia ay 4b Tur ProcressivE MoveMENT IN THEOLOGY . . 90 Tue ANDOVER PERIOD: ANDOVER AS A STORM CENTER

AND AS A WorkING CentER, 1880-1893 . . . 100

I. The Opening Phase of the Andover Controversy 101

CHAPTER I THE FORTUNE OF MY GENERATION An Introductory Retrospect

THE generation which was beginning to take shape and character when I came of age, was to have the peculiar fortune, whether to its disadvantage or to its distinction, of finding its own way into what we now call the “‘modern world.” If I were to characterize the generation as I look back upon its course, I should say that it was by this necessity a self-educated generation. The great gift of educational value which came to it from the past, through the faithful transmission of the previous generation, was discipline, the intellectual and moral discipline of the old régime. The actual process of self-education began with its conscious entrance into the world of the new knowledge and of the new values, constantly opening before it. This process was progressive rather than cumulative. Men no longer estimated one another by the relative amount of their knowledge, but rather by their relative power of intellectual initiative, by their ability to enter the new fields of inquiry and research, and to occupy advanced positions.

I have referred to this peculiar condition or circumstance in which the lot of my generation was cast, as its fortune. It came, that is, in the order of time, and not, with a single exception, by the compulsion of some great inheritance, or by the setting apart to some specific duty. The stimulus, the incentive, the challenge was altogether in the situation itself. Men found themselves singularly stirred to think new thoughts and to attempt new methods of action. There was no manifest unity of purpose in the spirit of the age, but all movements, though often conflicting, were seen to make for progress. Gradually the desire and struggle for progress became the unifying purpose of the generation. The self-education of which I have spoken developed more and more in all departments of life into a passion for progress.

The peculiar fortune of the generation becomes evident and clear as we give due account to its place in the order of time. It explains what was by far the most significant fact in its fortune, namely, its intellectual detachment in so large degree from the past. It is not difficult to place the cause, or to fix the date of the break between the old order of thought and the new, provided we make due allowance for the intervening period between the time when the break took place, and the time when it took effect. By common consent, the break came with the publication of the “Origin of Species.”’ This was in the fall of 1859. The significance, however, of the publication of the “Notes,” as Mr. Darwin modestly called the treatise, was not readily apprehended, doubtless in part because of the unassuming way in which it was put forth. The most that Mr. Darwin then claimed is summed up in the following words, of which the last sentence only is now really prophetic: ‘‘ When the views entertained in this volume on the origin of species, or when analogous views are generally admitted, we can dimly foresee that there will be a considerable revolution in natural history. ... In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each natural power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” It was not till 1871 that Darwin published ‘‘The Descent of Man,” embodying his conclusions regarding the derivation of man’s nature from lower and still lower forms of animal life.

An interesting reminiscence, showing the rather casual manner in which the earlier volume came to the notice of persons of culture in this country, has been given by the late Rev. Dr. Charles C. Caverno, of Lombard, Illinois. Dr. Caverno was at the time of the incident a young lawyer in Milwaukee, and was acting as chairman of a committee on the Public Library of the city. “Sometime in the winter of 1859-60,” he says, “‘Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was then giving a course of lectures in Milwaukee, asked me if I could procure him a copy of a book on Species, which an Englishman had published lately, and he added, “from what I have heard it is likely to make the dry bones rattle.’ I have given,”’ Dr. Caverno adds, ‘“‘ Mr. Emerson’s description of the book he was after, for he gave no name of author or definite title of book.”

However casual may have been the introduction of “‘ The Origin of Species’”’ among general readers of non-scientific habits, it was not long before it began to change the intellectual atmosphere. It gradually changed the point of view. Men began to see things differently. The intellectual detachment from the past was brought about chiefly through this change in the point of view, — a change set forth with great clearness by Mr. Balfour in his analytic retrospect of the nineteenth century. “No century,” he says, “has seen so great a change in our intellectual apprehension of the world in which we live. It is not merely that this century has witnessed a prodigious and unexampled growth in our stock of knowledge, — for new knowledge might accumulate without end, and yet do nothing more than fill in, without materially changing the outline already traced by the old. Something much more important than this has happened. Our whole point of view has altered. The mental framework in which we arrange the separate facts in the world of men and of things is quite a new framework. The spectacle of the universe presents itself now in a wholly changed perspective. We do not see more, but we see differently.”

Doubtless the intellectual detachment from the past was effected with less violence through changing the point of view, than would have been possible through any other method. And yet the result was not gained without opposition, and in some quarters sharp antagonisms. The scientific renaissance, if such we choose to term it, was not like the revival of letters in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, making itself felt through the diffusion of light and culture, and creating a more spiritual environment. In reality, it was not so much a renaissance as a revolution. It became articulate as a challenge, calling in question the established order of thought, and summoning men to new ways of thinking. The controversial aspect of the scientific renaissance or revolution became manifest more quickly and more seriously in Great Britain than in this country. This was due, I think, in no small measure to the presence of such pugnacious advocates of the new theories as Huxley and Tyndall, who found a welcome opportunity for controversy in the conservatism and conventionalism of the English Church. So sensitive were the religious interests _ which the controversy touched, that men quite remote from ecclesiastical or theological connections were drawn into it. As early as 1864 Disraeli, in a speech before a dioscesan conference at Oxford, uttered his famous mot — “The question before us is this, Is man an ape or an angel? I, my lord, I am on the side of the angels.”’ Within the next decade, Oxford was aflame with the controversial spirit which had spread in all directions. “‘Darwinism,” says Mrs. Humphry Ward in her recent “Recollections,” “‘was penetrating everywhere; Pusey was preaching against its effects on belief; Balliol stood for an unfettered history and criticism, Christ Church for authority and creeds; Renan’s ‘Origines’ were still coming out, Strauss’s last book also; my uncle [Matthew Arnold] was publishing “God and the Bible’ in succession to ‘Literature and Dogma’; and ‘Supernatural Religion’ was making no small stir.”

That the controversy was carried on with less bitterness in this country was due in part, of course, to the preoccupation of mind with the affairs of the nation (1860-70), but still in part to the different religious or ecclesiastical conditions which obtained here. The difference in tone may also be attributed to the marked contrast in the temper of our leading scientists of the period — Agassiz, Gray, and Dana. There was a good deal of attempted sarcasm of the Disraeli order, which found expression in the pulpit, but the higher religious journals and reviews spoke with becoming restraint. Especially noticeable in this regard was a series of articles in the “‘ Bibliotheca Sacra,” the leading theological review of the time, by Professor George Frederick Wright of Oberlin, then the young pastor of the Free Church in Andover, Massachusetts. These papers were characterized by a breadth and candor, and above all by a thorough comprehension of the real questions at issue, which make them still an example of fair-minded and intelligent discussion in place of controversy.

The secondary stages of the scientific controversy in this country were more marked than the earlier stages in their effect upon religion. The various phases of Biblical Criticism, which followed as a natural sequence from the application of the new scientific standards to the Bible, awakened more concern, and stirred more bitterness, than the new hypothesis regarding the origin of man. And the after effect of the controversy upon the popular as well as upon the critical mind was for the time disturbing to religious faith. The wave of agnosticism which spread over the country necessitated various changes in the presentation of religious truth. A larger place was given in the teaching of the seminaries to the department of Apologetics; more emphasis was placed by the pulpit upon conduct and duty; and gradually there was an appropriation of the new truths disclosed by science in the interest of ethics and of faith. As a general result, I think that it may now be said that the loss to religion of certain dogmatic but divisive beliefs found in due time its compensation, in the insistence placed upon the function of conscience in the interpretation, as well as in the enforcement of religion.

I have referred at some length to the religious controversy attending the scientific revolution, because it produced at first a greater effect as a disturbing force in religion than as a constructive force in education. Of this latter effect I shall have much to say in detail hereafter. The educational effect when it came was twofold: it brought in a vast amount of new subject-matter, and it changed altogether the method of the higher education. Of these two effects, the latter was by far the more revolutionary. In fact, the scientific method may be said to have created some subjects in the curriculum of the colleges, to have recreated others, and to have changed the relative position of certain other subjects, as in the case of the ancient and modern languages. Within the range of college and university teaching, the greatest contribution of the scientific method was the graduate school. Various attempts of a partial nature had been made to anticipate this object, but the opening of Johns Hopkins in 1876 inaugurated the epoch of graduate instruction. Beyond this contribution was the establishment of the research foundation, separating investigation from teaching, in which Johns Hopkins led the way in the advanced study of medicine.

I have emphasized the fact that, with a single exception, the fortune of my generation was not predetermined by its inheritance. That exception however, though local, was of the highest consequence. Before it passed off the stage, the preceding generation in this country had reached the climax of its moral power in the struggle for the abolition of slavery. A part of its unfinished task went over to my generation. The whole spirit of the struggle went over as a moral heritage, — the bequest of the Puritan conscience at the stage of its greatest activity. The bequest took precedence of the new gifts which marked the intellectual abundance of the modern age. It was not something to be accepted or denied: it was to be taken at its full value and put to immediate use. Due consideration must be given to this relation of the generation to its moral heritage, as the explanation in part of the slow awakening of intellectual life in this country to the scientific renaissance. To go back no farther than the opening decade of the last half of the century, we find that the generation then in responsible relation to the country was charged with the moral passion of the struggle leading up to and culminating in the Civil War. Compared with the very complex issues which marked the close of the century, social, economic, and political, the issues of that time were simple, almost elemental. There were but two vital questions before the people, the preservation of the Union, and the elimination of slavery, and gradually these became one and the same question. The Seventh of March Speech by Mr. Webster (1850) was the last serious but pathetic effort, — pathetic ~ both in its sincerity and in its futility, — to save the Union without first destroying slavery. Thenceforth, throughout the decade, the struggle was essentially ‘“‘the anti-slavery struggle.”” The consequences to the nation itself were not sufficiently imminent to restrain or confuse the moral sentiment which was aroused. It was not until the war was well under way that the preservation of the Union was seen to be the paramount, because the inclusive issue, (as was predicted by Mr. Webster), carrying with it as a national necessity the destruction of slavery. The spirit of nationality, which had dominated the mind of Mr. Webster in his view of the impending conflict, then reasserted itself in the mind of Mr. Lincoln. In his reply, August 22, 1862, to the open letter of Horace Greeley in the ‘‘New York Tribune,” severely criticizing the policy of the Administration, Mr. Lincoln made this clear and decisive statement of his policy: ““My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. . . What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help

THE FORTUNE OF MY GENERATION 9g to save the Union.” And yet so inextricably was the destruction of slavery bound up in the saving of the Union that a month after the date of the above statement, Mr. Lincoln issued the preliminary proclamation of emancipation, an act to which he afterwards referred as ‘“‘the central act of my administration.”

It was because of the fact that the Civil War, as it ob vanced, became more and more on the part of the North a struggle for the national existence, that the anti-slavery feeling was stronger, certainly more demonstrative in the decade preceding the war than during the war. Throughout that decade slavery, in and of itself, was the paramount issue. It vexed, with increasing intensity, the conscience of the North. Occasions calculated to arouse and inflame public sentiment followed one another in rapid succession, — the arrest of the fugitive slave, Anthony Burns, in the streets of Boston, and like incidents connected with the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, the fraudulent and violent attempts to impose slavery upon Kansas, the assault upon Charles Sumner at his desk in the Senate Chamber, the Dred Scott Decision, the John Brown Raid, the secession of South Carolina. The anti-slavery literature of the time, often the product of genius, compelled public attention. This literature was remarkable for its variety, — “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the editorials of Garrison and Greeley, the sermons and addresses of Beecher, the platform speeches of Phillips, the prophetic utterances of Whittier and Lowell, the debates of Seward and Sumner in the Senate, and the “gail te speeches of Lincoln in reply to Douglas. .

Perhaps the most effective agency for the propagation of the anti-slavery reform was the lecture platform, then known as the Lyceum, as it gave the reformer direct access to the people. Nearly all the popular lecturers of the time were pronounced anti-slavery men. When they discussed other subjects than slavery, they made their personal influence felt for the “‘cause.”’ The reply of Wendell Phillips to a lecture committee, when asked for his terms, embodied the spirit of the whole anti-slavery brotherhood, — “Let me take my subject and I’ll come for nothing: for any other subject seventy-five dollars.”? Out of this training there came not only moral but intellectual results of a high order. The anti-slavery agitation produced its own school of thought and style. In many instances, the school gave the equivalent of a liberal education. Garrison, Greeley, and Whittier were not college graduates, but they were the intellectual peers of Phillips, Lowell, and Seward. Mr. Lincoln was the conspicuous product of the school. Without the slightest advantage from any of the conventional forms of intellectual training, except his early practice in the local courts, he became, and remains, among the men of his time the acknowledged master of argument and style. Recalling the fact that the subject-matter of Mr. Lincoln’s thought was chiefly concerned with slavery, it is interesting to note the relative proportion of his public utterances, compared with those of other men, which has been incorporated into literature, — the speech in Cooper Institute, remarkable for its simplicity, its logical power, and its moral grandeur; the second Inaugural, without a like or equal among state papers in the records of any nation, and the Gettysburg Speech, unmatched for its chastened eloquence.

A singular intellectual and moral phenomenon is the reappearance of Mr. Lincoln in connection with the issues and events of the present war, through frequent reference to his acts, and through constant quotations from his messages and speeches. It is hardly possible to read any of the English papers for a month — notably the London *““ Spectator ” — without meeting with some serious allusion to Mr. Lincoln. He appears to be more in evidence _ than any British statesman. Very much of this return to him is due to the similarity between the fundamental issues at stake in the present war, and those of the Civil War, but much more to Mr. Lincoln himself, and to his incomparable power of stating moral principles with a finality which holds good for all time.

It was impossible that such a moral campaign as that of the anti-slavery speakers and writers could be waged for any length of time without producing definite and far-reaching results. Early in the decade (1850-60), the public sentiment thus created began to crystallize in local political organizations in several of the Northern States. In 1856, the national Republican party was formed, pledged to resist the further encroachment of the slave power. After a single defeat in a national contest, the party effected the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency. When the war actually came, it was to many a war of atonement for the wrongs of slavery, a war of national repentance. And such it was to the end in the deep undercurrent of the national feeling, as interpreted by Mr. Lincoln in the memorable passage from his second Inaugural, March 4, 1865: “Fondly do we hope— fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”’

The revival of Puritanism, which was so evident throughout the anti-slavery conflict, and to a large degree throughout the war, was naturally followed by a certain relaxation of the national conscience when the war was over. The moral tension could not be maintained after the crisis was passed. There was also a distinct lowering of the intellectual tone of national politics. The period which followed the Civil War had little of the moral grandeur of the period which preceded it, and much less intellectual power. Had Mr. Lincoln lived, the result might have been different, — possibly not. Other men fell below their standards. The debates in Congress, which had been characterized by seriousness and dignity, even when most heated, were marked more and more by party animosities, and by personal bitterness. The Government remained substantially in the hands of the men who had carried the nation through the war, but their statesmanship was not so evidently equal to the new task. Divergent policies on the part of the leaders resulted in much confusion, and led to many unwise and arbitrary acts. Corruption also, which had not been altogether absent during the war, came in more openly in the process of reorganizing the States that had been in rebellion. On the whole, the political atmosphere which hung over the nation during the period of reconstruction was heavy and depressing. There were those who saw or affected to see in the death of Mr. Lincoln, coincident with the close of the war, a possible advantage to the country in the transfer of the executive authority to sterner hands,