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Charles V^Qsbet: Second Thoughts on a Revolutionary (Generation

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Charles V^Qsbet: Second Thoughts on a Revolutionary (Generation Charles V^Qsbet: Second Thoughts on a Revolutionary (generation URING the next few years in connection with the celebration of the Bicentennial of the American Revolution of 1776 we shall be asked to remember and praise the famous men whose lives, fortunes, and sacred honor were spent, or made, in a cause which some of them felt to be for the humanization of life in the eighteenth century and for posterity. Already there has been a vigorous protest in the American Historical Association News- letter that the emphasis is too much on Great White Men to the exclusion of Women, Blacks, Indians and the "dirty people with no name."1 In remembering Charles Nisbet, we recall a forgotten man. Who was Charles Nisbet? He was the first president of Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and he held that position from 1785, when he immigrated from Scotland, to 1804, the year of his death.2 Nisbet was born in 1736, son of a poor Scottish school- master. He entered the University of Edinburgh in 1752 during golden years of Scottish education, and studied there for two years. He spent six years more at Divinity Hall, completing the course at the age of twenty-four with a license to preach in 1760. He had a gargantuan appetite for books, and an elephant's memory for what he found in them. As a student he bought books and parts of 1 Jesse Lemisch, "The American Revolution Bicentennial and the Papers of Great White Men," AHA Newsletter, IX, 5 (November, 1971), 7-21. 2 There is no adequate biography of Charles Nisbet. Samuel Miller, who studied theology under him, wrote Memoir of the Rev. Charles Nisbet, D.D. (New York, 1840) and a number of letters and excerpts of letters appear in his treatment. Douglas Sloan has written about the founding of Dickinson College in The Scottish Enlightenment and the American College Ideal (New York, 1971). He places an emphasis upon the educational ideas of Benjamin Rush. Charles Coleman Sellers, former librarian of the college and noted art historian, gener- ously shared with me his material dealing with Nisbet. See Sellers, History of Dickinson College (Middletown, Conn., 1973). Several other pertinent references may be found in the brief sketch in the Dictionary of American Biography. 189 I9O JAMES H. SMYLIE April books in sheets shipped up from London as wrapping paper, and his friends claimed that they could not mention an author with whom he was not familiar. He was, Ashbel Green writes, skilled in "Hebrew, including the Chaldee, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and probably Erse."3 In 1764, he was ordained by the Presbytery of Brechin and installed as the pastor of Mont- rose, a well-to-do and highly desirable charge where he built a reputation for kindness as well as for being a "walking library," full of learning, wisdom, and wit. He has been numbered among Commonwealthmen, as defined by Caroline Robbins, who believed, among other things, that government should be entrusted to men of leisure, learning, and virtue in Parliament who would govern for the good of the people on behalf of the people.4 Nisbet called himself "Friend of Mankind." Once he opposed the power of the Crown to dissolve a small local congregation, arbi- trarily, he thought, with implications for the whole church, and he won his point as well as a name for fighting his case successfully to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. He also cham- pioned the cause of the American colonists. Being called upon to preach on a public fast day during what has been called England's Vietnam War, he took for his text Daniel 5:5-25 and used the occasion to warn the King that the handwriting was on the wall. An "empire founded in violence, and stained with blood" could never be secure. It nourished in its bosom seeds of its own dissolu- tion. Babylon's empire did not last; Britain's would fall also.5 As an elitist in politics, he was the friend of lords and ladies and was maintained by some highly-placed persons, notably the Earls of Buchan and of Leven, both of whom were sympathetic to the American cause. Nisbet had long been interested in America. He expressed concern over the way in which Glasgow merchants ex- ploited the poor seeking passage to the colonies. He had been mentioned for the presidency of the College of New Jersey, a 3 Ashbel Green to Miller, Miller, Memoirs, 308. 4 Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman (New York, 1968), 179. Robbins numbers Nisbet among the "lesser folk." 5 For accounts of these occasions see Miller, Memoirs, chapters II and III; also Richard M. Ketchum, "England's Vietnam: The American Revolution," American Heritage, XXII, 4 (June, 1971), 6-11, 81-83. Nisbet to Rush, July 10, 1784, Library Company of Philadelphia on deposit at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereinafter LCP). 1974 CHARLES NISBET I9I position his friend John Witherspoon" assumed in 1768. Nisbet was not forgotten. Endearing himself to Americans because of his position on the war, John Dickinson, former governor of Penn- sylvania, and Benjamin Rush, doctor and "Revolutionary Gadfly," turned to Nisbet. They asked him to give leadership to fledgling Dickinson College in which Dickinson, Rush, and some of their friends had invested high-yield expectations for a public-spirited citizenry, Nisbet was persuaded, and he left Montrose with his family in 1785.6 America was, he reassured his friends, a land of "Liberty & Plenty," a land where men's minds were free "from£the shackles of authority" and could be more easily molded by reason.7 With confidence Nisbet began his American adventure. Why should we remember Charles Nisbet? Dickinson College remembers him as its first president. We might well remember him, if for no other reason than that he taught some notable graduates, including Samuel Miller, his biographer, noted clergyman and seminary professor, and the author of zA 'Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century (1803), a landmark in American intellectual history, and Roger Brooke Taney, Supreme Court justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision.8 During the past few years I have collected more than 200 letters Nisbet wrote to relatives and friends from Carlisle, a hotbed, he discovered, of Jeffersonian democracy. In these letters, many of them long, written in small but legible script, most of them unpublished, he poured out his acid comments and contempt for what was going on in America and the rest of the world. He attacked all of those trends which he thought were dehumanizing Americans and America—the want of public men and public spirit, the exaggeration of the sovereign power of the people, 6 For correspondence dealing with Nisbet's call to Dickinson College see L. H. Butterfield, ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush (Princeton, 1951). 7 Nisbet to John Witherspoon, Apr. 3, 1784, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (herein- after HSP); also see Milton E. Flower, "Tomb of Dickinson College," Dickinson Alumnus (August, 1965), 3. 8 For a recent treatment of Miller's A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1803) and some of the literature dealing with it, see Jacob L. Susskind, "Samuel Miller's History of the Eighteenth Century," Journal of Presbyterian Historyr, XLIX, 1 (Spring, 1971), 15-31; Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Roger Taney , LL.D. (Baltimore, 1872), 37-54. Nisbet wrote a remarkable letter to Miller, Dec. 16, 1800, about his project—a "funeral sermon of the 18th century," Nisbet called it—showing the wide range of his interests. Miller, Memoir, 268-280. I92 JAMES H. SMYLIE April the indifference to and neglect of religion so essential to virtue and sound government. Therefore we might well remember Charles Nisbet for the anxiety which he, along with others like him, felt in those turbulent last years of the eighteenth century, the mood of pessimism which he expressed about America in which he had such high hopes at the outset, and for the ideas which he expressed about what it takes to make and keep life human.9 The first thing which must be said is that Charles Nisbet was always suspicious of cries of power to the people and for participa- tory democracy. He was, to be sure, concerned about the people. He was essentially a patrician in politics, a person who believed that political affairs should be left in the hands of public men with public spirit. His first complaint about America was that such men and spirit were missing and were not being nourished. However, things started off well enough. When Nisbet and his family arrived in Philadelphia they were cordially entertained by the best people, including his chief sponsor and supporter, Dr. Rush. He wrote Lord Buchan optimistically about his welcome. Party spirit was subsiding in America and he found that American sobriety was good for regular thinking and distinct perception."10 Nisbet arrived in Carlisle, a small frontier town on Independence Day under a full, white powdered wig, with the town bells ringing. Shortly thereafter all of the euphoria had been drained out of the occasion. Nisbet and his family were sick; the president was so physically and emotionally drained that he was almost incoherent. He added to his troubles by accusing the trustees of betraying him about what he was to expect, and resigned before he had hardly time to take off his wig. In August, 1785, he addressed a curt note to Rush: "Tomb of Dickinson College/'11 9 The staff of the Dickinson College Library, particularly Dr. Sellers, has given me much help in gathering these letters.
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