Tag Archives: Jacob Knapp

p. 109 – The removal controversy, 1847-1850

Posted on May 2, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 109 – The removal controversy, 1847-1850

ments.” The vote of the Education Society Board on August 19th was judged illegal, apparently on the ground that the theological professors already had tenure as established by the University Board on June 9, 1847. Henceforth, the theological professors were to be considered as being on regular appointment. The brethren who had originally refused to back Maginnis were reported to have broken down completely and “repented of their folly.” The broader vision of their non­ resident associates, such as Friend Humphrey, Ira Harris, and John N. Wilder prevailed.

When the citizens of Hamilton learned that Professor Maginnis might resign because of the unpleasantness, over 120 signed a public letter urging him to continue his connection. They commented upon the luster his teaching ability gave to the institution and the loss the community would sustain. His appreciative reply, dated November 9, 1847, and published in the local paper, is especially interesting in view of the fact that some weeks earlier, he had already participated in the initial steps for removing the University to Rochester. He wrote that the occasion for the resignation no longer existed, and that he was sincerely attached to the institution and the village whose citizens, with few exceptions, had always shown him and his colleagues “those marks of respect and kindness which are always indicative of a refined and cultivated people.”

The Maginnis case was a natural outgrowth of the somewhat strained relations between the faculty and the village Baptist Church. The church itself was in an unhealthy condition as is shown by the short tenure of its pastors in the 1840’s. One, resigning in 1842, assailed the congregation for harboring “mischief makers” while both of his successors left amid bitter feelings. There was a conservative element among members whose “old puritanical notions” led them to oppose many of the liberal tendencies held by the faculty. They were the ones who had sided with Jacob Knapp and they must have rankled in 1845 when the professors and a few others withdrew to form the Seminary Church on the Hill. Perhaps they also frowned upon the cordiality which existed between the faculty, especially Professor Maginnis, and St. Thomas Church, organized by the Episcopalians in 1835. Another point of irritation was their criticism of faculty social life, about which unfriendly rumors reached even the northern part of the State. An informant in that region wrote Dr. Kendrick of difficulty in raising

Comments Off on p. 109 – The removal controversy, 1847-1850

Posted in Chapter 7, p. 109, The Removal Controversy, 1847-1850

Tagged , , ,

First Compact (p. 107)

Posted on May 2, 2012 by | Comments Off on First Compact (p. 107)

innovation contrary to the purpose of the Education Society. After the University charter had been granted in 1846, some of the Society’s trustees, fearful that secularization would go farther, even suggested the document be returned to the Legislature. Since both Boards at first were unable to adjust their relations to each other in such a way as to establish what were considered proper safeguards for ministerial education, they had tabled that troublesome question for a year.

In June and August, 1847, both Boards, the faculty, and the Education Society eventually worked out an arrangement, known as the First Compact, which became effective on the first of September. It provided that the Society should grant the University the use of its property and that the University should maintain a suitable course for “candidates for the Christian ministry” and allow beneficiaries to have rooms rent-free. The faculty was to be considered a single unit responsible to the University Trustees. As a means of retaining control of ministerial education the Society required the University Board to appoint and dismiss such theological professors as it should designate.

It was the question of faculty appointments which first produced serious friction. The professors in the collegiate department had been formally appointed under the new charter as a matter of course in June 1846. The University Board took no action on the theological professors, however, until a year later when they were then made members of the University faculty, but on a temporary basis until their duties and titles should be determined.

Meanwhile, some of the Baptists in Hamilton, among them Jacob Knapp, the evangelist, came to see in the formal appointment of the theological faculty an opportunity to remove Professor Maginnis from the chair of Biblical Theology. This aristocratic, tall, bent, and ailing man had aroused their enmity by his intellectual approach to religion and his uncompromising Calvinism. Knapp, of course, had not forgotten that Maginnis had been his chief opponent in the village church quarrel a few years before. When information on the Education Society Board’s meeting on August 19, 1847, leaked out, the strategy of Maginnis’s enemies was apparent. The Board had convened, with only 13 out of 31 members present, probably most of them resident Trustees, to nominate theological professors for final appointment by the University Board in accordance with the First Compact. Conant and Eaton were chosen unanimously but only four votes were cast for

Comments Off on First Compact (p. 107)

Posted in Chapter 7, p. 107, The Removal Controversy, 1847-1850

Tagged , , , , , ,

Jacob Knapp urges church to declare slavery a sin (p. 70)

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on Jacob Knapp urges church to declare slavery a sin (p. 70)

though at the same time lashing out at them on the platform and in the newspapers. He asserted that wherever they exerted “their influence, there languishes the cause of slaves, and there abound apologists for the oppression.” Eaton, who had a favorable impression of the more enlightened slaveholders as a result of teaching in Virginia in his youth, seems to have been chosen to represent his colleagues in disputes with Smith.

When the Peterboro reformer became incensed in 1841 at a visit to the campus of the Southern Elder Jonathan Davis, as well as at the suppression of the third antislavery society and the failure of the Seminary to support his new Liberty party, Eaton defended the faculty in a long letter to the Hamilton Palladium. He made it clear that, since they had not identified themselves with the abolitionists, it did not follow that they were pro-slavery. Elder Davis, he pointed out, had not come to reconcile the students to slavery, nor had he mentioned the subject on the Hill. Professor Maginnis, whose guest he had been, heartily opposed Negro servitude, but was convinced that the evil could be righted peaceably only with the help of Southerners whom Northerners should treat courteously and invite to discuss the subject without rancor or bitterness. Such an approach to the problem failed to make any impression on Smith whose avowed and constant purpose was “to abolitionize the public mind.”

The Hamilton Baptist Church, like the Seminary, refused to become involved in the slavery question. Jacob Knapp, the firebrand evangelist, had bitterly denounced a representative of the American Colonization Society from its pulpit in 1841 and a year later urged the church to declare slavery under all circumstances a sin. After extensive discussion, in which it was evident that the members agreed with his sentiments, they nevertheless decided against “the passing of any specific resolutions on the subject of slavery &to such a mode of church action; in general” and concurred “in the opinion, that by their public profession of Religion, &by their church covenant, they have clearly declared themselves against slavery as a sin, together with all other moral evil.”

Though the church avoided dissension on the slavery question, Knapp, with his genius for controversy, was able to plunge it into bitter turmoil on his own account. A plain, uncouth, loud, and uncompromising revival preacher, he was widely known throughout the

Comments Off on Jacob Knapp urges church to declare slavery a sin (p. 70)

Posted in Chapter 4, p. 70, The Expanded Period, 1833-1846, timeline

Tagged , , , ,

p. 55 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on p. 55 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

 

Jonathan Wade, p55, image taken from the First Half Century of Madison University

Eugenio Kincaid, p55

books in them, edited Adoniram Judson’s noted Burmese dictionary, and compiled a Karen dictionary which he hoped would equal Judson’s in scope and value. Eugenio Kincaid, Wade’s classmate and fellow worker, achieved a reputation nearly comparable to Wade’s. He became so well known for his tact and ability that the Burmese king made him his diplomatic agent at Washington in 1856. He was also a successful fund-raiser for the institution at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, which was to become Bucknell University. A third member of the Class of 1822, John Glazier Steams, deserves notice as a leader among New York Baptists and a writer on anti-Masonry and church polity.

Alumni of later classes who should be mentioned in passing include: John Newton Brown, 1823, prominent New Hampshire pastor and educational secretary of the American Baptist Publication Society; Pharcellus Church, 1824, Rochester minister, author, and editor of important denominational journals; Jacob Knapp, 1824, well-known evangelist and indirectly father of Washingtonian temperance move­ment; and Jabez Swan, 1827 who was almost as renowned as Knapp for his work as a revivalist. William Dean, Grover S. Comstock, Hosea Howard and Justis H. Vinton, all of the Class of 1833, and Samuel S. Day, Class of 1836, were celebrated missionaries in the Far East.

Professor Hascall, John G. Stearns, and a few others, at a meeting in Utica in 1825, organized the Institution’s graduates into the Society of

Comments Off on p. 55 – Teaching and learning, 1820-1833

Posted in Chapter 3, p. 55, Teaching and Learning 1820-1833

Tagged , , , , , , , ,