passage. The Removal Act of April 3, 1848, still stood.
Morale on the campus had rapidly deteriorated among faculty and students early in 1849 when repeal seemed a possibility and removal prevented. Both groups were anxious that the question be settled as soon as possible so that they could make plans for next year. Professor Eaton’s exertions in Albany and elsewhere, his Removalist colleagues regarded as most reprehensible. They censured him not only in faculty meeting but also publicly, in connection with Dr. Kendrick’s funeral sermon.
During the last years of his life Dr. Kendrick had become especially fond of Eaton, no doubt because both worked strenuously to prevent removal. Before his death in September, 1848, Kendrick asked that Eaton preach his funeral sermon, but it happened that Eaton was absent from the village when he died and Kendrick’s friend, the venerable Alfred Bennett of Homer, gave the discourse. Kendrick’s request, however, was known by several students, many of them having taken turns watching at night by his bedside, and, out of respect for the departed “Father in Israel,”
the Students Association invited Professor Eaton to deliver a memorial sermon.
The Remavalist members of the faculty, apparently jealous of Eaton’s popularity with the students, feared he would make the sermon a vehicle for Anti-removalist propaganda, especially since it would be published and widely circulated. When the students 1earned that Professor Maginnis would give the sermon, “the deep waters were stirred,”
as one wrote, and “The Great Rebellion”
soon developed. Despite protest meetings and petitions Maginnis preached the sermon. The professors, viewing the students’ behavior as a revolt against authority, designated Dr. Conant to inform them of the reasons for faculty policy. At the end of his two-hour “exhaustive exposition”
the thunder of feet and prolonged hisses drowned his voice. Disciplinary measures and even expulsions failed to restore an atmosphere of study, and soon some students transferred to other colleges and universities.
When the University Trustees met in special session in Utica in April 1849, to accelerate measures for removal they gave particular attention to the disturbances and, to check Professor Eaton’s activities, though not mentioning him by name, they resolved:
that whilst this Board would not deny to the Faculty individually the free exercise and expression of their private judgment, yet the relations of the Faculty to the Board and the interests of the University