On Sunday, July 25, Union College joined forces with First Presbyterian Church in Albany for the bicentennial celebration of the eulogy delivered by Eliphalet Nott at the funeral of Alexander Hamilton. Nott's famous eulogy was the capstone of his six-year career as the pastor of the Albany Church and the launching pad of Nott becoming President of Union College a few weeks later that summer (1804).
Approximately 150 people attended the commemorative celebration. The ceremony included a welcome by Rev. Joseph Shook of First Presbyterian and introductory background remarks by Prof. Byron Nichols of Union's Department of Political Science Department. But the main focus was the delivery of Nott's discourse by Prof. David Cotter, who dressed for the occasion as Nott appeared in 1804 (black robe, high collared white shirt and a red scarf). Cotter is Associate Professor of Sociology at Union, as well as an elder at the Union Avenue Presbyterian Church in Schenectady.
Jeremy Dibbell, a 2004 graduate of Union, organized the event and prepared much of the program material. Dibbell also is planning a number of events at Union to commemorate the Bicentennial of Nott's inauguration.
Historical Background
On July 29, 1804, with the country still reeling from the death of Alexander Hamilton at the hands of Aaron Burr, a young minister took the pulpit of Albany's North Dutch Church to condemn the nation's complacency over the practice of dueling and to charge “the polite and polished orders of society” with complicity in Hamilton's death.
Albany Institute of History and Art
The minister, 31-year-old Eliphalet Nott, was already a rising star. Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Albany, he was named chaplain of the New York State Legislature, and chosen by the Albany Common Council to deliver the official Albany eulogy for Hamilton.
Nott's discourse would be a staple of the anti-dueling movement for the next three decades. It was widely reprinted in newspapers and pamphlets up and down the East Coast, and was still being excerpted in declamation books into the 1880s.The editor of the Federalist New York Evening Post urged his readers “'APPROACH AND BEHOLD' how elegant, how deeply affecting, how sublime he is! Perhaps a passage of equal length is not to be anywhere found in our language superior to this.”
As president of Union College, Nott was a revolutionary educator who changed the methods and content of higher education introducing American history, modern languages and engineering. He was a prime example for his students of the involved life he urged them to take up: an inventor of stoves and steamship engines, he remained throughout his long life a pragmatic advocate of political and moral reforms including temperance, abolition and universal education.
Copies of the introduction to the re-enactment of Nott's sermon by Professor of Political Science Byron Nichols and the abridged sermon performed by Professor of Sociology David Cotter, are available online.