Eliphalet Nott is best remembered today for his efforts to revolutionize higher education and increase its relevance to American students in the first half of the nineteenth century. In this bicentennial year of the beginning of Nott's long tenure as president of Union, however, it is important to recall the contributions that Nott made to other areas of public policy during his lifetime as a strong proponent of political and social reforms.
In three areas particularly -universal public education, temperance, and the abolition of slavery-Nott played a leading role at both state and regional levels. He was also active, but to a lesser extent, in the promotion of human rights and the expansion of democratic ideals, as evidenced by his strong support for the Hungarian revolutionary Lajos (Louis) Kossuth.
The winds of political and social reform began blowing across the United States in the late 1830s, and continued to swirl for several decades. Nott quickly embraced the cries of those who called for change, while maintaining a pragmatic attitude that fundamentally shaped his approach to the changes he advocated. Nott, described as “a practical man of idealistic declarations” by scholar Edward Everett Hale, Jr., understood the political and social realities of American life more clearly than many others in the various reform movements with which he associated himself, and put that understanding to use when making his case for change.
Almost immediately upon his arrival in Schenectady as president of Union in the late summer of 1804, Nott began taking steps to support public education both in the city and beyond. He assisted in the formation of a training academy that later became a part of the Schenectady Lyceum, designed to prepare local students for higher education at Union. In 1855, when Schenectady's first free public school was established, it was not only housed in the old West College building at the present entrance to the Stockade (which Union had sold to the city), but was called the “Union School,” and was for a time run by a member of the College faculty.
Looking more broadly, Nott in late 1839 joined his former pupil William H. Seward, Class of 1820, newly-elected governor of New York, and New York City Methodist Rev. Samuel Luckey in putting forth a proposal to provide for the free public education of immigrant children, particularly Roman Catholic Irish in New York City. The plan failed to gain passage in the state legislature, and was derided by Seward's political opponents as either a ploy to win immigrant votes or a scheme to impose Catholic teachings upon the children of the state.
Nott biographer Codman Hislop concludes that while Seward, Nott, and Luckey had devised their blueprint “to meet a genuine human need on the basis of a compromise reasonable men should accept,” the doctor's political acumen must have failed him, or he and the others surely would have recognized the difficulties that their plan would face in the rough and tumble atmosphere of New York politics.
The proposal to educate immigrants, however, was just one proposal that Nott had urged upon the Seward gubernatorial administration. On Feb. 6, 1839, he had written to the new secretary of New York State, John Canfield Spencer (Union Class of 1806) and urged him to establish the post of “minister of public education,” an action which would, he added, “confer great benefits on the Republic” and also to whichever political party dared take such a step. Most of Nott's suggested reforms were not carried out until the late 1840s and into the early 1850s, but the legislature did adopt a sectarian school system for New York City in 1842, and Nott's voice must be included among those most influential in securing the benefits of public education for New York's children.
While idealistic to some degree on education, Nott was a master of pragmatism when it came to two other areas of reform-temperance and abolition. This can be best explained by Nott's fundamental attitude to reform -that education was the keystone without which other reforms would be impossible. To Edward “Cornelius” Delavan, a leader of the national temperance movement, Nott wrote in 1855 criticizing reformer and abolitionist Gerrit Smith's calls for laws against intemperance and slavery: “under a despotic government his reasoning would be conclusive,” Nott wrote. In America, however, “the governed are the governors, and to secure the enactment of good laws, the law givers must first be educated.”
Hislop says Nott's “cardinal principle” was that “it is useless to go very far beyond public opinion,” so to achieve the reforms he thought necessary, Nott set out to shape that opinion. He first delivered his “Ten Lectures on the Use of Intoxicating Liquors” before the Schenectady Temperance Society in late 1838 and early 1839, and later gave the same addresses in major cities throughout the Northeast, from Philadelphia to Albany to Boston, dozens of times. Nott took massive amounts of evidence to make a case for reasonable temperance, drawing on anecdotal evidence of drunkards spontaneously combusting, or falling into ruin, as well as on Scriptural references to the use of liquor.
Nott was no teetotaler, however. He did not criticize the use of alcohol in religious ceremonies and understood the impossibility of removing it completely from American life. Nott did not even try to obtain from his students a pledge of complete abstinence, only asking that they refrain from the use of liquor during the term and on the roads; they were not bound to their pledge during vacations or after they graduated from Union. His pragmatism brought no praise from the most ardent partisans of reform-they accused him of trying to bring down the movement for total abstinence.
Nott's efforts at persuasion on the temperance front extended to Seward as well. In late 1840, Nott wrote to encourage the then-governor that perhaps his upcoming State of the State address could include “one sentence” in support of the cause. While leaving calls for temperance from his official speeches, Seward did sign an abstinence pledge early in 1842, but soon missed his evening glass of wine and “quickly regretted his dalliance with the prohibitionists,” as Seward biographer John M. Taylor writes. He abandoned the pledge and resumed his habit. Seward understood a few years earlier than Nott that temperance was a losing proposition; it would be another decade and a half before Nott gave up the ghost on this particular reform and criticized those who continued on its behalf.
While the temperance movement was largely unsuccessful in the long run, Nott's stance on the abolition of slavery in the United States proved more mainstream. An early opponent of slavery, Nott eulogized English abolitionists Howard, Clarkson, and Sharpe in his 1811 baccalaureate address. Of Clarkson, Nott asked “Where is this man, whose fame I had rather inherit than that of Caesar?” By 1824, Nott had become convinced that slavery “cannot stand against the progress of society,” and was sure that “the diffusion of science” would result in the practice's demise.
As he was with the teetotalers, so was Nott also with the abolitionists-he despised the radical tactics espoused by men like Horace Greeley and Wendell Phillips, and went through a period of favoring various and hopeful compromises. For many years he spoke favorably of an effort to recolonize slaves to Africa; other proponents of this step included John W. Taylor, a Union alumnus who became Speaker of the House of Representatives and was the first congressman to speak against slavery on the House floor, and the budding Illinois politician Abraham Lincoln. At Union, Nott encouraged frequent discussions on the issue, and throughout Seward's career his former teacher urged him to maintain his opposition to the institution of slavery.
Nott is known to have considered Lincoln a moderate on the issue like himself, and although unwell at the time, made sure to make his way to a polling place in November, 1860, and vote for the Republican candidate. Throughout the following “Secession Winter” to the outbreak of the Civil War the following spring, Nott called for compromise, supporting compensated emancipation or even graduated freedom in order to preserve the union.
Nott spoke on the issue with the zeal of the converted. He told Professor Jonathan Pearson in 1845 that he had himself once owned a slave: “I once was so benighted on the subject of slavery as to own a slave. I bought one of one Van Eps out here on the Mohawk Flats when I preached in Albany, and didn't think there was any harm in it of course,” as Pearson recorded it in his diary. Moses Viney, an escaped slave, was long employed by Nott at Union, and it was Nott who arranged for the purchase of his freedom when his former master attempted to return him to bondage.
Eliphalet Nott was no radical reformer-not by a long shot. While believing firmly in the reforms he supported, his tactics were those of a supreme pragmatist and were based on his strong presumption that lasting reforms would only come when supported by an educated and enlightened public.
The best source for information on Eliphalet Nott remains the comprehensive biography by Codman Hislop (Wesleyan University Press, 1971). Wayne Somers's Encyclopedia of Union College History (Union College Press, 2003) is an indispensable resource, as is the diary of Jonathan Pearson. The papers of William Seward, held at Schaffer Library in microfilm form, contain numerous letters between Seward and Dr. Nott. Collections of Nott's speeches and various other materials can be found at Special Collections in Schaffer Library.