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.
The minister, thirty-one-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.
The speech would thrust Nott into the national spotlight and bring offers for pastorates in the largest cities. But Nott had other plans to advance the nation: education. A month later, he became president of Union College, a job he would hold for the next sixty-two years (still the longest tenure of an American college president).
On Sunday, July 25, 2004, the First Presbyterian Church of Albany hosted a commemorative reading of Nott's discourse by David Cotter, professor of sociology, who portrayed Nott in period costume. Also participating from the College were Byron Nichols, professor of political science, who gave a background and introduction, and Jeremy Dibbell '04, who 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.
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, 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.