regarded as moral duty and possessed of a tireless energy in speaking and writing, he easily assumed leadership of the opposition. He was, moreover, armed with the opinion of his friend, President Eliphalet Nott of Union College, who believed that relocation would violate the implied contract between the University and its donors who had assumed that Hamilton would be the permanent site and in support of the view cited the Dartmouth College case. Also, Dr. Nott favored a rural setting because of the moral, religious and economic advantages. Even if it should be that a large number of New York State Baptists supported removal, he questioned whether it would be expedient “to rupture the ties that bind so many hearts to the original Institution, and in disregard of the rights and feelings of its founders & patrons to attempt to force on them the acceptance of an interest in a new and distant location….”
These points Eaton was to enunciate repeatedly in the next two years.
Eaton’s Candid Appeal proved the chief topic of discussion at a meeting of Western New York Baptists at Wyoming on January 11, 1848. Their reply, An Address to the Baptist Churches of the State of New York…, written by Pharcellus Church, was lengthy, sharp and sarcastic. It assailed “certain false reasonings and injurious imputations” emanating from Hamilton and castigated the non-Baptists of the village, whose interests were branded as essentially foreign and hostile to those of the University. Stung to the quick, one of the Hamiltonians responded with a letter to the Democratic Reflector, reminding Dr. Church,
You have partaken of the charities of the Institution at Hamilton; you have received its highest honors; now you have raised your snaky head, and thrust out your envenomed tongue, to destroy that which warmed you into life and influence.
The columns of the Reflector, the Baptist Register, and New York Recorder carried many letters and articles on the controversy, but few were as abusive as this censure of Dr. Church. The writers, their identity often concealed by pseudonyms, did not hesitate to stoop to personalities, so heated had their feelings become. Daniel Hascall, replying in a letter to the Register to statements made by Church, wrote that this “alumnus was not taught such random shots at Hamilton. If he has any more disclosures to make, I beseech him to confine himself to veritable facts.”
Members of the faculty, particularly Eaton
