VOLUME II

INTRODUCTION

THE CLASSICAL CURRICULUM OF THE EARLY AMERICAN COLLEGE       Not every young man who completed the course of studies at a Latin grammar school or under the tutelage of a local minister attended college in early America. Those who did not pursue the full course of studies offered by an early American college formed a highly literate segment of the American population. But those who completed their studies through the collegiate level constituted the heart and soul of a truly intellectual and elitist stratification of American society - an especially important consideration in the late eighteenth century when this group of individuals, moreso than any other group, was called upon to create and administer a new government.       Not all young men who presented themselves for admission to an early American college were equal in academic ability or preparation. In fact, basic admission requisites were even waived in some instances, as happened in the case of a George Harston at Princeton who was "admitted to study with the sophomore class, without being considered as a candidate for a diploma, unless he acquire a competent knowledge of the Greek language, with which he is totally unacquainted."1       Regardless of the differences of natural ability and preparation of the entering students, the president and faculty of the early American colleges, by and large, could be reasonably sure of the following general characteristics in the first year students, newly arrived on his campus:   1. a student body accustomed to hard and disciplined study which included
    a  6 A.M. to 5 P.M. school day, lasting six days per week, for nearly ten
    months out of the year.   2. a student body accustomed to lengthy lectures some of which lasted
    three to four hours, frequently delivered in Latin.   3. a student body accustomed to extensive memory work and much oral
    recitation.   4. a student body accustomed to a strictly regulated social environment.   5. a student body which valued dearly its own books and was granted
    admission to the institution's highly prized library as a matter of
    privilege.   6. a student body which was universally familiar with the Latin language
    and grammar and occasionally acquainted with Greek grammar, less
    frequently familiar with Hebrew grammar, and trained in the principles
    and use of classical metrics and rhetoric.   7. a student body which had a homogeneous literary background -
    i.e., virtually an identical exposure to a common set of ancient writers.   8. a student body exposed to a corpus of classical literature which was
    not considered as antagonistic to, but complementary to its already
    firm grasp of biblical literature.   9. a student body weaned on a body of ancient literature which emphasized
    the personal and intrinsic values of respect for authority and elders,
    filial duty, temperance, frugality, self-discipline, agrarian simplicity, and
    religious piety, as well as being exposed to the public values of service
    to church and state, patriotism, military courage, and hatred of tyranny,
    among other values.   10. finally, the college president, although one or two generations older
    than the young freshman  in his college, could easily relate to the
    intellectual training of that student, since it was, in all likelihood,
    identical to that which he had received as a youth, and to that which,
    in all probability his own teacher had received in his youth.2  
    The early American college that the aspiring and ambitious 18th century American student entered was one that took as its model the European university system. It borrowed from those universities many practices which contributed to an intensive "classical atmosphere" on the early American collegiate campus. Among these practices was recording, in Latin, the institution's disciplinary code which, at some of the colonial colleges, entering students were required to translate into English either as part of their admission examination or shortly after enrollment as a part of a translation exercise.3 Faculty lectures at some of the early American colleges were even delivered in Latin and students were expected to speak in the Latin tongue at all times, in and out of the classroom. Any violation of this regulation resulted in a student fine. At those institutions where the practice of mandatory conversation in Latin was not faithfully maintained, the college often resorted to awarding annual cash prizes to promote the use of the Latin tongue in conversation. All students were expected to keep a "commonplace book" of the eloquent expressions and wise maxims they encountered in their reading of the traditional classical authors. These "commonplace books" were also subject to periodic examination by the faculty. Furthermore, many philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, natural science and divinity textbooks were written in Latin, and it was assumed that the student had a sufficiently facile reading knowledge of Latin to readily understand these text books. Since one of the primary goals of a college education in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both in Europe and America, was the attainment of skill in public speaking, the American college student honed his oratorical abilities by intensively studying and implementing the principles and techniques of classical rhetoric which were extensively described in the treatises of Quintilian and Cicero. By engaging in Latin debates (disputations) and by preparing speeches (declamations) in Latin and English, at least on a monthly basis and sometimes as frequently as on a weekly basis, the early American college student achieved high levels of oratorical skill.4 Finally, in his senior year the student spent several months preparing Latin disputations and declamations which comprised an extensive part of the elaborate and formal commencement exercises, which frequently lasted for a whole day and were a much anticipated and extremely well attended community event.5
      Similar to the development and structure of the Latin grammar school curriculum in the colonies, the curricular format of the early American college was also not an original creation by the colonists. It was borrowed from the European university system, especially the English university system, whose undergraduate curriculum during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries concentrated on training students in the Seven Liberal Arts. This educational tradition, which can be traced through the Middle Ages back to Antiquity itself, consisted of the trivium (grammar, logic and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (mathematics, astronomy, theology and music). The common understanding of the trivium was that grammar meant the study of the three languages (Greek, Latin and Hebrew) and that logic and rhetoric were defined almost exclusively as "Classical" logic and rhetoric.6       The deliberate American imitation of the English university system is evidenced in the Latin address (here translated) of the President of Harvard College in the seventeenth century when he presented the graduates to the Board of Overseers for acceptance:  
            Honourable Gentlemen and Reverend Ministers, I present to you
            these youths, whom I know to be sufficient in learning as in manners
            to be raised to the First Degree in Arts, according to the custom of
            the Universities in England.
    As late as 1764, the College of Rhode Island (Brown University) also deliberately asserted its imitation of the English university model when in its charter it stated:  
            And they are hereby authorized & empowered by their President &
            in his Absence by the Senior Fellow or one of the Fellows appointed
            by themselves at the Anniversary Commencements or at any other
            times and at all Times hereafter to Admit to & Confer any & all the
            Learned Degrees which can or ought to be given and conferred in
            any of the Colleges and Universities in America, Europe &
            particularly in the University of Cambridge & Edinburgh in Great
            Britain.7
    During his first year of study then at a colonial college, the newly arrived student was called upon to begin, or as was most commonly the case, to improve his skills in the Greek language, and to substantially advance his study of logic and rhetoric, to which he may have been minimally introduced in the late years of his Latin grammar school education. He was also called upon to reread in college many of the Latin authors whom he had encountered in his Latin grammar school experience. Among those Latin authors most commonly read in the first year of college were Virgil, Cicero (orations), Caesar, Horace, Livy and Sallust. During the second and third years of college, the Latin authors most frequently read were: Cicero (philosophical essays), Horace, Juvenal, Ovid, Quintilian, Terence and Tacitus. Finally, the fourth year was often considered as a review year, designed to prepare the student for the final, public examinations. Once again, many of these same classical authors were reread.       Unlike the curricular rigidity demonstrated by the early American Latin grammar schools, the colonial colleges were considerably more flexible in their course offerings and areas of academic concentration. As a result of this variety, not all of the Latin authors previously mentioned were studied in each of the early American colleges in exactly the same sequence, but it is worthy to note that after four years of study the graduate of any one of the different early American colleges had a familiarity with the vast majority of the same Latin authors as did his fellow graduates at any other early American college.       Because of the scarcity of records or the incomplete nature of existing records, the details of the classical component of the American collegiate curriculum in the seventeenth century cannot be known with the same degree of certainty as the details of the curricula of American colleges in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, the following list is a reasonably accurate description of the Harvard curriculum around 1690:   First Year                         Second Year                         Third Year                    Fourth Year   Cicero                              Logic                                     Meletemata                Geometry
Virgil                               Wollebius                               Physics                       Astronomy
Homer                             Herebrand -                           Ethicks                       Grammar
Greek Testament            Meletemata                           Geography                  Logic
Greek Catechism            Greek                                     Metaphysics               Natural
                                                                                                                              Philosophy
Forsahe                           Hebrew                                   Wollebius -                  Ames'
                                                                                                                                Medulla
Rhetorick                        Disputations                           Divinity                       Disputations
Logic                                                                               Disputations
Hebrew   By 1787, Harvard's records are much more explicit about which specific classical authors were studied in its undergraduate curriculum:   First Year                         Second Year                            Third Year                Fourth Year   Sallust                              Continue                                   Continue                  Continue
Livy                                     Classical                                 Classical                    Third Year
Virgil                                   authors of                                authors of                  Studies
Tully (orations                     first year                                  second year
    & de oratore)                 Speaking and                             Livy
Caesar (com-                    Declaiming                                Terence
    mentaries)                     Algebra                                      Greek Testament
Horace                              Chronology and                         Divinity
Homer                                 History                                     Chronology and
Xenophon (Anabasis)        Hebrew or French                     History
French                                                                                  Hebrew or French
Rhetoric
Speaking and Declaiming
Arithmetic
Chronology and History
Hebrew or French       The earliest descriptions of the curriculum at Yale, founded in 1701, are not much more detailed than those of early Harvard. In fact, as late as 1778 the Yale curriculum appears to be described in such a way that its sole objective was the desire to satisfy the traditional seven liberal arts curriculum, less music, of the European university system:   First Year                         Second Year                            Third Year                Fourth Year   Virgil                                Greek Testament                    Trigonometry           Locke
Cicero (orations)             Horace                                     Greek Testament     Wollebius
Greek Testament            Grammar                                 Cicero (de oratore)    Natural
                                                                                                                              Religion
Arithmetic                        Logic
                                                 Geography                               Philosophy                Ames
                                                                                                                                        Medulla
                                                 Algebra                                     Grammar                 Greek
                                                                                                                                    Testament                                          Geometry                                                                    Ethicks
                                         Rhetorick
                                         Catechism
                                         Mathematics   By 1824, Yale's records become much more complete, when at least for the first three years of instruction, the following classical authors were included in its course of studies:   First Year                         Second Year                            Third Year   Livy - five books             Horace - Odes                         Cicero - de oratore                                             & Satires Adam's-                                                                            Tacitus -     Roman                                                                         Histories
    Antiquities           Cicero -                                          Germania
Greek Anthology                     de officiis                              Agricola
Xenophon -                              de senectute                      Homer - Iliad     Cyropaedia &               de amicitia                      Greek Anthology
    Anabasis                   Greek Anthology                     Sophocles
Herodotus                         Demosthenes                           Euripides
Thucydides                        Xenophon -
Lysias                                 Memorabilia
Isocrates                           Plato
Aristotle       The most definitive description of an eighteenth-century collegiate curriculum, and, it should be added, the most classical of all of the curricula of early American colleges was that of King's (Columbia) College whose 1763 curriculum included:   First Year                         Second Year                            Third Year             Fourth Year   Sallust -                             Cicero -                                   Cicero -                  Cicero -
    Historia                         officia                                      orations                Tusculan
                                          et alia                                   de oratore                 Disputations
Caesar -                             Quintus Curtius
    Commentaries
Ovid -                                 Terence                                   Quintilian -              Livy
    Metamorphoses              Ovid -                                         Institutio              Tacitus -
    et alia                             Epistles                                    Oratoria               Histories
Virgil -                                Virgil -
    Eclogues                        Georgics
Esop-Fables                                                                         Pliny -                      Lucan -
                                                                                                Epistles                 Pharsalia
Lucian -                               New Testament                       Catullus
    Dialogues
New Testament                  Epictetus                                  Tibullus                    Juvenal
Grotius -                             Xenophon -                               Propertius                Persius -
    De veritate                       Institutio                                 Satires
                                              Cyri &                                    Horace                     Plant.
                                                                                                                               Com.
Latin Grammar                  Anabasis                                 Aristotle -                 Homer -                                                                                                                              Odyssey
Greek Grammar                 Farnab. Epig.                           Ethics &               Sophocles
English and Latin                Greek Grammar                      Poetics                  Euripides
    themes                              Latin Grammar                       Plato -                    Aeschylus
Cornelius Nepos                  Wallesius -                               Dialogues           Thucydides
                                                Logic                                       Xenophon -           Herodotus
                                              Sanderson -                             Memorabilia         Longinus-
                                                  Composition                                                 de sublimitate
                                                                                                Theocritus
                                              Johnson -                                   Homer             Demosthenes
                                                 Noetica                                  Compendium        Orations
                                              Rhetoric                                    Ethicae             Dionysius
                                              Latin and                                    Metaphysics Halicarnassus
                                              English themes                           Syllogistic         Isocrates
                                                and verse                                    disputations    Hebrew
                                                                                                                              Grammar
                                                                                                  Latin and          Biblical
                                                                                                                              Hebrew
                                                                                                  English themes Grotius
                                                                                                  Latin and          Pufendorf
                                                                                                    English verses Hutcheson
                                                                                                                             Moral
                                                                                                                              Philosophy                                                                                                                       Latin and                                                                                                                         EnglishVerses
                                                                                                                        Disputations
                                                                                                                         LatinThemes
    Fifty years later, in 1811, Columbia had retained, virtually intact, the same list of classical authors included in its 1763 curriculum, with only the sequence altered in which these authors were studied:


First Year                         Second Year                         Third Year                  Fourth Year

Cicero -                            Virgil -                                   Cicero -                         Classical
   Letters                             Georgics                                 de oratore                     authors at
   to Atticus                       Livy                                       Terence                           discretion
Sallust -                             Horace -                               Quintilian                         of Provost
   entire                               Odes and Epistles
Horace -                                                                          Horace-second time      Mathematics
    Satires
Greek                                Demosthenes                                                               Natural
    Anthology                                                                                                                Philosophy
                                           Homer                                   Longinus-entire             Astronomy
Xenophon -                        Herodotus                             Sophocles                       English
    Memorabilia                                                                                                        Composition
                                           Greek and Roman               Greek and Roman          Criticism
Lucian                                 Antiquities                             Antiquities                    Grammar
   Double Translations       Double Translations            Double Translations      Declamations
                                                                                                                                   History and
 Latin Verse                       Latin Composition               Latin and Greek              Chronology
 Roman Antiquities              in prose and verse               Composition in                Moral
                                                                                            prose and verse               Philosophy
 

    Similar listings for the majority of other 18th century American colleges evidence the constancy of the classical curriculum at the collegiate level. What can easily be lost sight of is that this extraordinary homogeneity of curricular content among early American colleges did not prevent each college from making a deliberate and conscious effort to establish its own personality or academic specialty. The College of New Jersey (Princeton), for example, was especially dedicated to the study of natural science, as well as to the classics, while Yale was committed to Hebraic and theological studies, in addition to its traditional classical courses. However, no matter what the special characteristic was of any of the early American colleges, there was found in each a universal and unswerving adherence to the study of the classical languages and literatures. Among the Latin authors read, the following list indicates those authors and those individual works which were most commonly studied in American colleges from 1650 to 1850:
Catullus                                                                         Juvenal                                Caesar-Commentaries                                                 Livy                    Cicero-Orations:                                                          Lucan                                           Catilinarians                                                                 Nepos
  pro Milone                                                                   Ovid-Metamorphoses
Letters: Epistles to Atticus                                          Persius  Essays                                                                            Propertius/Tibullus
  de officiis                                                                     Quintilian
  de oratore                                                                     Sallust-Historia
  de senectute                                                                 Tacitus-Histories
  de amicitia                                                                               Agricola
  Tusculan Disputations                                                            Germania
                                                                                               Terence
         Horace-Odes                                                                Virgil-Aeneid
                       Satires                                                                       Eclogues
                       Epistles                                                                     Georgics
 
    The stability of the early American collegiate curriculum, with its deep rooted classical bias, and its universal acceptance of that tradition by the public for more than two hundred years, from the founding of the colonies through the early Republic, seem to indicate that early American colleges had a very clear idea of their goals and raison d'etre. For example, in its 1701 charter Yale succinctly states its purpose: "to educate a succession of Learned and Orthodox men who would benefit the colony through Publick employment both in Church and Civil State."8 The same purpose is stated more abundantly by one of the original trustees of the College of New Jersey (Princeton) in the late 1740s:
Tho' our great Intention was to erect a Seminary for educating Ministers
of the Gospel, that we might have a sufficient Number of pious & well
qualified Men to supply the demands of our Churches, & propagate the
kingdom of the Redeemer among those who have hitherto lived in darkness
and ignorance, yet we hope it will be a means of training up men that will
be useful in the other professions - ornaments of the state as well as
the church....
    It undoubtedly must have been difficult for the early American college student to grasp how he would one day be useful to the church and to state as he labored over his Latin, Greek and Hebrew in what he must have interpreted as insurmountable assignments, as, for example, those which a student at Princeton describes in a letter in 1803:
  Dear Father:   I arrived here on Tuesday, the 10th instant, and on Wednesday I stood,
together with four others, a severe and close examination for about five
hours. We were examined on Horace, Lucian, Arithmetic and Kennet's
Antiquities and should have been in English Grammar. My being admitted
into the Sophomore class was not owing so much to my real knowledge as
to my own dissemblance and presence of mind and the benevolence of Dr.
Thompson whose favour I had acquired beforehand. But now I am advanced
to severe study for instead of fifteen lines in Lucian I have to recite fifty
or sixty in Xenophon, a book which I never saw until I came here, and
instead of forty in Virgil have about 600 in Horace, etc.9
    Whether or not the early American college student appreciated the rigor of the training which he was receiving during his undergraduate stay is a moot question, since the results of that educational process speak for themselves. Simply stated, early American collegiate education, with its pronounced classical bias, successfully met the stated goals of Yale and Princeton and of all of the other colleges, namely,
to prepare young men for service to church and state. There is no better testimony of this success in meeting its stated purpose than the record of accomplishment of the 469 graduates of Princeton during the presidency of the Rev. John Witherspoon (1769-1794). Several of Princeton's graduates from that era entered the clergy and, of the remainder, Princeton happily numbered 50 state legislators, 12 governors, 30 judges, 3 Supreme Court judges, 10 cabinet officers, 39 U.S. representatives, 21 U.S. senators, 1 vice-president, and one president (James Madison). For those Princeton graduates who did not enter public life, the value of their classical education was not wasted but increased in merit throughout the lifetime of the graduate:
  Throughout life the graduate continued grateful to the college for the
intellectual fields which it had opened to him. Perhaps he did not deserve
the reputation for erudition which he enjoyed among his neighbors, for
his scholarship was neither deep nor broad, but when tired out with the
supervision of the plantation, or weary with the problems and conflicting
interests of political life, he might turn again with a sigh of relief to his
Homer or his Horace. The chief and the most lasting benefits of his
studies at Princeton were the enriching of his character and mind, the
introduction they gave him to Greek and Latin literature and art, to
natural science, to philosophy and history.10
    As we look back from the vantage point of the twentieth-century upon the liabilitiesand merits of the classical curriculum in the early American college, we can immediately recognize the personal values of self-discipline, perseverance and industry which the collegian derived from his mode of studies. But he also was exposed to an educational process which continually reinforced norms of excellence for him in the use of language, both in written and oral expression, and in the cultivation of moral and literary taste.

    All of these qualities were consciously perceived by our forefathers and they are crisply summarized by  Professor Kingsley of Yale in the early 1820s when a heated faculty debate on the retention or modification of the classical curriculum took place at that institution:
 

Familiarity with the Greek and Roman writers is especially adapted to
form the taste, to discipline the mind, both in thought and diction, to the
relish of what is elevated, chaste and simple. The compositions which
these writers have left us, both in prose and verse, whether considered
in regard to structure, style, modes of illustration or general expression,
approach nearer than any others to what the human mind, when thoroughly
informed and disciplined, of course approves and constitute what is most
desirable to possess, a standard for determining literary merit.11


The "Reading" selections of Volume II are selected from those Latin authors who were read primarily at the collegiate level in early America. Cicero's de officiis, Horace's Odes and Epistles, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Virgil's Aeneid, Eclogues and Georgics are omitted since, although these works were frequently reread in college, they were first read in the Latin grammar school and have been included in Volume I. Also, since the sequence of study of classical authors often varied in the early American colleges, the Latin authors included in this section are presented according to the two genres which were most extensively studied: historical and rhetorical.



Endnotes
1. See Princeton University Faculty Minutes 1787-1810, entry for May 11, 1803. Princeton University Archives.

2. In 1910 President Eliot of Harvard University, in an address commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Boston Latin Grammar School, underscored the constancy and uniformity of classical curriculum of the early American Latin grammar school when he stated: "Sixty years ago, when I entered it (1844), the subjects of instruction were Latin, Greek, mathematics, English composition and declamation, and the elements of Greek and Roman history. There was no formal instruction in the English language and literature, no modern language, no science, and no physical training, or military drill. In short, the subjects of instruction were what they had been for two hundred years." See Pauline Holmes, A Tercentenary History of the Boston Public Latin School, 1635-1935 (Greenwood Press, Publishers; Westport, Connecticut 1970; reprint of 1935 publication by Harvard University Press) p. 275.

3. An example of a mid-eighteenth century Latin regulation for students at Yale College can be found in Walter C. Bronson, The History of Brown University 1764-1914 (Brown University Press; Providence, Rhode Island 1914) pp. 112-13. The regulation forbids a student to drink tea with others outside of his own chamber room, at the penalty of one shilling: Et si quis, in aliquo Coetu extra Cubiculum suum, Theam potaverit, mulctetur uno Solido. Harvard College's laws were also written in Latin, and revised from time to time; see Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, Part II (Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Massachusetts 1936) p. 477.

4.The emphasis on the study of rhetoric and oratory was universal in the early American college. Some idea of the extent to which oratorical exercises were conducted in the early American college can be gained from the following description of the curriculum at the College of New Jersey in 1764: "The Senior year is entirely employed in reviews of composition. They now revise the most improving parts of the Latin and Greek classics; part of the Hebrew bible, and all the arts and sciences. The weekly course of disputation is continued, which was also carried on through the preceding year. They discuss two or three theses in a week; some in the syllogistic, and others in the forensic manner, alternately; the forensic being always performed in the english tongue. A series of questions is also prepared, on the principal subjects of natural and revealed religion. These are delivered publicly on Sundays, before a promiscuous (i.e., indiscriminate) congregation, as well as the college, in order to habituate them early to face an assembly, as also for other important and religious ends, to which they are bound conducive. There is likewise a monthly oration day, when harangues, or orations of their own composition, are pronounced before a mixt auditory. All these compositions before mentioned, are critically examined with respect to the language, orthography, pointing, capitalizing, with the other minutiae, as well as more material properties of accurate writing. Besides these exercises in writing and speaking, most of which are proper to the Senior class, on every Monday three, and on the other evenings of the week, excepting Saturdays and Sundays, two out of each of the three inferior classes, in rotation, pronounce declamations of their own composing on the stage. These too are previously examined and corrected, and occasion taken from them early to form a taste for good writing. The same classes also, in rotation, three on Tuesday evenings, and two on the other evenings, with the exceptions just mentioned, pronounce, in like manner, such select pieces from Cicero, Demosthenes, Livy, and other ancient authors." An Account of the College of New Jersey, printed by James Parker 1764, Woodbridge, New Jersey, pp. 24-26. Princeton University Archives; the parentheses are mine.

5. For a most interesting description of the pomp and cimcumstances, and even rowdy disturbances, which accompanied the commencement exercises of an early American college, see Ashbel Green's early nineteenth century narrative of his visitation to Harvard College during commencement week, Joseph H. Jones, The Life of Ashbel Green (Robert Carter and Brothers; New York 1849) pp. 234-37.

6. For a thorough discussion of the English university system as a backdrop to the development of the American university system, see Samuel Eliot Morison, The Founding of Harvard College (Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Massachusetts, second printing 1968) pp. 1-116.

7. See Louis F. Snow, The College Curriculum in the United States (Teachers College, Columbia University, New York 1907) p. 20.

8. See Warch, School of the Prophets, pp. 186-87.

9.  Louis F. Snow, The College Curriculum in the United States, p. 177. See also Francis L. Broderick, "Pulpit, Physics, and Politics: The Curriculum of the College of New Jersey, 1746-1794," William & Mary Quarterly 6, (1949), pp. 42-68.

10. Thomas J. Wertenbaker, Princeton 1746-1896 (Princeton University Press; Princeton, New Jersey 19460, p. 214.

11.Louis F. Snow, The College Curriculum in the United States