EARLY MANHOOD -1851 -1857 67 



whereas European students are generally inclined to radi- 

 calism, American students have been, since the war of 

 the Revolution, eminently conservative. 



To this pro-slavery tendency at Yale, in hope of saving 

 the Union, there were two remarkable exceptions, one 

 being the beloved and respected president of the univer- 

 sity, Dr. Theodore Dwight Woolsey, and the other his 

 classmate and friend, the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon, pastor 

 of the great Center Church of New Haven, and frequently 

 spoken of as the "Congregational Pope of New Eng- 

 land/' They were indeed a remarkable pair; Woolsey, 

 quiet and scholarly, at times irascible, but always kind 

 and just; Bacon a rugged, leonine sort of man who, when 

 he shook his mane in the pulpit and addressed the New 

 England conscience, was heard throughout the nation. 

 These two, especially, braved public sentiment, as well 

 as the opinion of their colleagues, and were supposed, 

 at the time, to endanger the interests of Yale by standing 

 against the fugitive slave law and other concessions to 

 slavery and its extension. As a result Yale fell into dis- 

 repute in the South, which had, up to that time, sent large 

 bodies of students to it, and I remember that a classmate 

 of mine, a tall, harum-scarum, big-hearted, sandy-haired 

 Georgian known as " Jim" Hamilton, left Yale in disgust, 

 returned to his native heath, and was there welcomed with 

 great jubilation. A poem was sent me, written by some 

 ardent admirer of his, beginning with the words : 



" God bless thee, noble Hamilton/' &c. 



On the other hand I was one of the small minority of 

 students who remained uncompromisingly anti-slavery, 

 and whenever I returned from Syracuse, my classmates 

 and friends used to greet me in a jolly way by asking me 

 "How are you, Gerrit; how did you leave the Rev. An- 

 toinette Brown and brother Fred Douglas?" In conse- 

 quence I came very near being, in a small way, a martyr 

 to my principles. Having had some success in winning 



