Fan Mail

Slipped into our copy of Frederick Douglass' My Bondage and My Freedom (New York and Auburn, 1855) is a memento of the author's fame. It's a letter, dated May 1, 1856, addressed to Passmore Williamson. Williamson was an abolitionist lawyer from Philadelphia. In 1855, he was charged under the Fugitive Slave Act for assisting a woman and her two sons escape from their enslavement. He served a 100-day jail term for contempt of court and his case brought renewed energy to the abolitionist movement and created a flurry of news coverage.

Less than five months after he was freed from jail, Williamson wrote to Frederick Douglass requesting his autograph for a friend. Douglass replied with a short, but passionate letter:

Passmore Williamson Esq. Please tender my thanks to your friend, the gentleman who honors me by wishing an Autograph letter from me. I comply with your request with very great pleasure--and all the more since I have again glanced at the Authentic history of the prosecution and persecution to which you have been subjected by the aggression and murderous Spirit of American Slavery.

On the back of the letter is a brief postscript: "This note was forgotten after writing it and therefore the delay in sending it--F. D."

First, we love the idea of Douglass forgetting the mail on his desk--busy as he was. It makes him even more human and real.

But what gets us is that he was being pursued by autograph hounds who used the leverage of their famous friends to get a note to the great man. Our copy of the book was presumably owned by the unnamed person Passmore Williamson passed this letter onto. The letter has been safely tucked inside for nearly 170 years.

Celebrate Juneteenth by coming in and taking a look. Ask for Rare E499 .D738 1855.

Splintered Socialism

Most of us, when we think of William Morris (if we think of him at all), think of interior decorations associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement of the late 19th century. If we're more bibliophilic than most, we might even reflect fondly on Morris' founding of the Kelmscott Press and the printed wonders that issued forth from Hammersmith during the 1890s. In addition to his creative output, however, Morris was also a fervent activist on behalf of British socialism, a fledgling political movement that began in 1881 in England with only a hundred or so members. After a schism in the Socialist Democratic Foundation, the only socialist party at the time, Morris and over half of the executive council left to create their own organization in 1885 called the Socialist League.

One of their first acts as a splinter group was to spell out their beliefs. In "The Manifesto of the Socialist League", printed in 1885, William Morris and E. Belfort Bax laid out their political philosophy. Unlike their adversaries in the Socialist Democratic Foundation, the members of the Socialist League felt that all of the prevailing political systems of the age had been tried and found failures "in dealing with the real evils of life." Instead, the League sought complete revolutionary socialism, a rebuilding and redistribution of the means of production from the ground up.

In addition to Morris and Bax, the newly formed league boasted such luminary founding members as Eleanor Marx (daughter of that Karl Marx) and artist Walter Crane, whose artwork is featured on the cover of the group's manifesto. Perhaps somewhat predictably, the League's emphasis on the corrupt

nature of current government attracted a significant number of anarchists. It also, however, had become a haven for socialists who had been turned off by the extremist and nationalistic approach to politics espoused by the SDF, but who still envisioned the possibility of governmental reform. By 1889, the anarchist contingent had gained control of the League. Morris, Marx, and many others left the group, either to form another smaller socialist group or to return to the SDF.

Here in Special Collections, we have an uncut version of the 16-page manifesto, which occupies a single sheet of paper. Our favorite section is from the first note that follows the body of the text; Morris states that physicians should be counted among the working class. Despite their skilled training, they (like literary authors) belong to the "intellectual proletariat" and "have nothing to lose and everything to gain from a social revolution." To see our copy of the manifesto and reflect upon how some things have changed and some things may never change, come to Rauner and ask for Rare HX11 .S63 M26 1885.

An Almanac for America

Almanacs have been in existence since at least the second millennium BCE; their annual predictions of weather and other calendar-related natural phenomena were vital tools used by numerous professions, including farmers, sailors, and astronomers. When Europeans began to settle on the American continent in large numbers, the colonists needed almanacs that were aligned for to their particular area of the world.

The first American almanac for New England was printed in 1639 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was the second document printed in the English colonies in America. In the mid-1700s, an almanac published by Nathaniel Ames became the the most popular brand for nearly fifty years. A medical doctor by trade, Ames was known as a bit of a renaissance man as well as an eccentric. In 1725, when Ames was just seventeen, he published the first edition of his almanac; after his death in 1764, his son continued publishing the almanac for another ten years.

One of the utilitarian modifications that 18th-century colonists made to their almanacs was to interleave blank pages between the printed pages. On those sheets, they would record all sorts of information that was relevant not only to the weather but also to their immediate lived experience, including deaths, births, marriages, and other community occurrences. Here in Special Collections, we have a run of Ames almanacs from 1741 until 1762. Nearly every single printed page is interleaved with a previously blank one that now contains copious notes about the actual weather, deaths, births, and other goings-ons. We don't know who the original owner was, but he was clearly a resident of Portsmouth, NH: he mentions among other things the death of the minister of Portsmouth's South Church, Rev. William Shurtleff III, on May 9, 1747.

To journey back in time and space through the eyes of a colonial New Englander, come to Rauner and ask to see Rare AY53 .A8.

A Stubborn Arctic Survival

George Melville, a Navy engineer in the second half of the 19th century, was a man who just kept getting involved in Arctic disasters. in 1873, he served on board the USS Tigress during its rescue of nineteen survivors of the Polaris expedition, an embarrassingly messy attempt on the North Pole. In 1879, he volunteered for special duty on the USS Jeannette, which was making its own try for the Pole. His fellows regarded him as a stubborn, foul-mouthed genius who was crucial in keeping the ship afloat for as long as possible after it became stuck in the ice.

The Jeannette could not survive forever and, after she sank, the crew spent several months marching across sea ice and then sailing in their remaining small boats in an attempt to get back to civilization before the elements and their low rations could catch up with them. Melville commanded one of the three boats, which held ten other men, during a crucial point: a storm. Despite doing their best to stay together, Melville and his men were unable to double-back when, through the rain, they saw one of the other boats capsize. They soon became separated from the third boat, whose party included the expedition's commander.

Melville's boat made land almost two weeks later, with the good fortune to be in reach of a small Siberian fishing village. The men, all in pitiful shape, were fed and warmed, and began to recover from their ordeal.

George Melville was not one for giving up where there might still be hope. He soon struck back out to search the Siberian coastline for other survivors, encouraged by the discovery of two men from the commander's party who said that they had left their compatriots behind in order to seek help. In their poor condition, they were unable to give much direction. After a months-long search, Melville found the bodies of that group. He retrieved their expedition records, built a temporary memorial, and continued to search for signs of the men who had capsized. He did not find them.

During Melville's search, he wrote and received letters from the Russian officials whom he courted for aid. He copied these letters into a notebook alongside other correspondence, his own record of the trip, and a series of engineering notes; the notebook is now held by Rauner Special Collections Library. Despite his troubles, Melville didn't stay away from the Arctic for long after returning home in 1882. He immediately campaigned for more aggressive attempts to reach the latest endangered Arctic expedition -- that of Lady Franklin Bay. In 1884, he returned to the Far North once more as part of the crew that would succeed in bringing that expedition's survivors home.

To see Melville's letters and other records, ask for Stefansson Mss-188.

"Riot at Dartmouth College"

Usually when we learn about a student protest, we are fairly sympathetic to the students' indignation, but not this time. Back in March of 1841, a group of abolitionists visited Hanover for an anti-slavery convention to debate and vote on this resolution:

"Resolved, That American slavery is a complication of the foulest crimes, such as robbery, adultery, man-stealing and murder and ought therefore to be immediately and unconditionally abolished."

That shouldn't have been very controversial among the student body. There were plenty of ardent abolitionists on campus. But when the convention started, the hall filled with Dartmouth students who began whistling, stamping their feet, clapping and carrying on with "other disgracefully indecorous, (not to say riotous,) conduct." Why? Well, one of the speakers had dissed Dartmouth President Nathan Lord and the students were not going to have any of it. They caused such a commotion that the speakers were disrupted and eventually the convention had to abandon its efforts.

Parker Pillsbury reported on the incident for The Liberator. He ended with a jab at Dartmouth's favorite son:

A few such scenes as that I have attempted to describe, would give Dartmouth College a reputation as lesting as it would be infamous. Daniel Webster did her no injustice when he stood on the Mason and Dixon's line and pledged the North to the interests of the unrighteous despotism of the South. Let him and the College wear the laurels they have won. Their acts are recorded, and posterity will do them justice.

Nine years later, Webster would further infuriate the abolitionist movement with his impassioned plea to the Senate to pass the Fugitive Slave Act. Things changed on campus--in 1855, the student body tried to chase the same president from his office for his pro-slavery views, and in 1862, he was forced to resign by the Board of Trustees (if you want to learn more about about it check out this podcast episode).

To see Parker Pillsbury's account in The Liberator, ask for DC Hist. LD1438.3 .P557 1841.

Dartmouth’s Jewish Quota on the National Stage

A legendary figure at the College, Ernest Martin Hopkins served as Dartmouth’s president from 1916 to 1945. Although he had hoped to gracefully turn the helm over to his successor once the Second World War ended, the run-up to Hopkins’ retirement in October 1945 proved to be anything but graceful.

On February 10 of that year, Hopkins was one of 300 educators to receive a telegram from the Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions decrying a potential hard quota on Jewish applicants to New York medical schools. The cable asked the educators to join with the Committee in condemning the restriction of any religious or racial group’s enrollment in schools. In a response sent that same day, Hopkins declined the Committee’s request, stating:

Understand complexity of problem and am sympathetic with purposes you have in mind. Cannot join with you however if your protest is against proportionate selection for I believe nothing would so increase intolerance and focus racial and religious prejudice as to allow any racial group to gain virtual monopoly of educational advantages offered by any institution of higher education.

While Hopkins doubtless considered the matter closed, Herman Shumlin, a Director of the Committee, was substantially upset by the president’s reply. On March 26, Shumlin, who was Jewish, sent a letter declaring his refusal to purchase a subscription to Americans United for World Organization, an internationalist organization that Hopkins chaired. Shumlin wrote to the organization’s Executive Vice President, Ulric Bell, that he failed to see how “such an organization can do good when the Chairman … is, himself, a prejudiced man,” citing Hopkins’ declination to condemn quotas. Bell forwarded this letter to Hopkins.

A vociferous writer of letters and an uncommonly outspoken and assertive man, the 67-year-old Hopkins then took it upon himself on April 2 to write to Shumlin, unprompted, to elaborate upon and explain his position. Hopkins’ letter went unacknowledged for nearly two months, until, on June 2, Shumlin made his reply, in which he assailed Hopkins’ proffered explanations and justifications. He wrote: “I am filled with anger against you and shame…”

By August 7, Shumlin had turned his correspondence with Hopkins over to the press, for on that day the New York Post and on the next day PM (another NYC-based newspaper) ran articles which blasted Hopkins’ letter to Shumlin as bespeaking clear anti-Semitism in Dartmouth’s admissions. Thus began a maelstrom in the national news for the next several weeks. Hopkins’ letter to Shumlin instantly received wide exposure—even as the first atomic bomb had been dropped only a day earlier and the second was to follow on August 9.

Hopkins’ letter to Shumlin undoubtedly read then, as it does now, as a troubling and often quite startling consideration of its subject matter. Incredibly, it seeks to justify Dartmouth’s anti-Semitic quota as a means of preventing anti-Semitism! Writes Hopkins: “I should not be willing to see the proportion of the Jews in the College so greatly increased as to arouse widespread resentment and develop widespread prejudice within our own family.”

Hopkins cautions Shumlin that, in Germany after the First World War, there was a dramatic increase of anti-Semitism due to “the soldiers finding all their institutions and all of their professions dominated by a race [the Jews] which numbered only one per cent of the population.” To prove this, Hopkins cites (fallacious) statistics given by Australian sociologist Stephen Roberts in his book The House That Hitler Built (1938).

As PM was quick to point out, German institutions were not, in fact, dominated by Jews “in 1919 or 1933 or any other time. Hopkins got his figures from Roberts. Roberts got his figures from an article by Alfred Rosenberg in the Voelkischer Beobachter for Aug. 20, 1933. One would think that the president of an American college would be a little embarrassed about spouting the Hitler-Rosenberg line … that anti-Semitism is the fault of the Jews.” Shumlin had earlier observed the same in his reply to Hopkins: “It is fantastic to me that a man in your position can, at this date, make use of the very allegations which were used by Hitler and his accomplices.” To be sure, Hopkins argues in his letter that, in their “aggressiveness,” those Jews advocating increased Jewish admittances to schools “are raising anti-Jewish prejudice to a level that it has never before reached in this country.”

The New Republic highlighted as well the important detail that Hopkins “appears to assume, flying in the face of all anthropological science, that the Jews are a race.” Hopkins’ suggestion that admitting more Jewish students would make Dartmouth an “urban college” also has racial undertones. Of course, it was the Nazis who suggested that Jews were a separate and inferior “race,” and hence Hopkins’ phrasing may be said to echo the idea of racial anti-Semitism.

It was not until President Hopkins’ retirement was announced on August 30 that the media onslaught began to subside (the War, it should be noted, ended three days later, dominating coverage). However, Dartmouth, President Hopkins, and his ultimate successor President Dickey continued to receive a voluminous quantity of letters from concerned alumni and other parties regarding Dartmouth’s admissions procedures. In personal replies, Hopkins backtracked from his subscription to the Roberts book’s statistics but cited them as “commonly accepted” and thus dangerous even if inaccurate. He also continued to deny that Dartmouth’s practices amounted to the imposition of a “quota.”

To see some of Hopkins' correspondence about the Jewish quota, ask for the two "Criticism" folders in DP-11, box 6073; the two "Criticisms" folders in DP-12, box 7094; and MS-1359, box 4, folder 38 ("Jewish Controversy").

Posted for Matt Skrod ’24, recipient of a Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship for the 2023 Spring term. The Historical Accountability Student Research Program provides funding for Dartmouth students to conduct research with primary sources on a topic related to issues of inclusivity and diversity in the college's past. For more information, visit the program's website.

Deflating Misogyny

“There was a lot of trashing,” recalled one woman in Boston Magazine about her freshman year at Dartmouth. “It was not uncommon–I’d say it happened several nights a week–for drunk guys to come by and scream, ‘Hey you cohogs [ie, coeds]! Get out here and spread your legs. That’s all you’re good for, anyway!”

It was 1972, the year that the College matriculated its first cohort of female students. While this year marked an historic and pivotal moment in the institution’s history, the integration of women to Dartmouth was far from seamless. The College enrolled only about 250 women that first year, resulting in a skewed gender ratio of just one female student for every nine male students.

Throughout the early 1970s, the campus climate was palpably charged. Women’s dorms were broken into and vandalized. “It was not unusual to go home and find your wastepaper basket full of vomit, in protest of your being there,” remarked one woman who came to Dartmouth in 1973. Men coated the toilet seats with honey in one dorm and displayed an axe on the front door of another. Entering the dining hall, a female student could face jeers, cat calls, food fights, or a group of fraternity men holding cards numbered 1-10 to rate women as they walked in. Men urinated on women’s bikes and, in some cases, on women themselves. One woman recalled her third night on campus, when she was blindfolded, kidnapped, and left in the middle of a field with a fraternity pledge class. She and the group had to hitch-hike back to campus.

Hover to view image.

April 1973 brought one of the most brazen instances of harassment from those first few years. It was the morning after “Sink Night,” the culmination of rush, when pledges commit to their fraternities. A letter addressed to “C***s” was slipped under the door of every room in the all-female Woodward Hall. It demanded that women make certain changes in order for “all of us to live in harmony.” Among the demands:

1. Women go topless in the dining hall (“Perhaps you consider this unreasonable – well, f*** you”);
2. Women’s “services” be made available at all times; 
3. The women’s softball team play naked on the green (“C***s with large floppy tits may wear bras. The butt area must remain uncovered”); and
4. Women perform oral sex on President Kemeny, so that he might “lose his f** tendencies.”

The letter further commanded women to “reform accordingly” or “deal directly with the syndicate.” “These are not idle threats,” it warned. “Our movement is large.”

On April 11th, three days after the incident, a letter titled “Reaction to Sink Night Letter”, was published in The Dartmouth by junior Barbara Dills. She condemned the Woodward letters as acts of violence and “manifestations of a deep and serious disease, which it seems the fraternity system as it exists at Dartmouth tends to perpetuate.” She added: “Along with my anger, I must feel compassion for these sick souls who can never know the ecstatic beauty of shared love.” Dills then boldly announced that she was “not the least bit intimidated,” writing, “I openly challenge every ‘man’ involved in this act to express these sentiments put forth in the circular to my face. If no one ‘rises’ to this challenge, I shall be convinced, as I already suspect, that their sickness is merely compounded by weakness and cowardice.”

She ended the letter simply and powerfully: “I live in 309A So. Topliff.”

This April, fifty years later, I spoke to Dills about her time at Dartmouth. She was on campus for only one year, 1972-73, through an exchange program that Dartmouth coordinated with Smith and other women’s colleges. She spoke of Dartmouth fondly, but also vividly recalled the hostility and resentment that certain members of the Dartmouth community directed toward female students.

When I asked her about “Reaction to a Sink Night Letter” and her decision to disclose her dorm location, she told me she didn’t run the idea past anyone; there was never hesitation in her mind. “I just kind of boldly did it… I don’t know if it was a combination of naiveté and strength. But I think what I wanted to do was call their bluff.” 

Around midnight a few days later, Dills was sitting in her small dorm room in Topliff when she heard a pounding on her door and recognized loud male voices. Despite the racket, Dills wasn’t scared. She opened the door to two extremely drunk men hurling the c-word at her and referencing her letter in The Dartmouth.

Dills responded, “Why don’t you come in and sit down?”

The two men seemed shocked that Dills didn’t scream back at them. “I completely disarmed them,” she recalled. “They were like two little puppy dogs.” Dills felt she was “in her power.” Stunned, they walked in and took a seat.

“I just said, you know, ‘So what right do you think you have to treat people like this?’” The men didn’t have an answer.

“It was like they were just sitting in front of their mother scolding them…They just became these completely different people,” Dills told me. “We had a short conversation and then they just kind of went away with their tails between their legs.” After the two left, she remembered thinking, Did that just happen?

Dills was never threatened again, and didn’t recall any similarly offensive letters during her time at Dartmouth. This incident just confirmed for Dills the suspicions she had already voiced in her letter in The Dartmouth: “It was so revealing of how basically impotent the force was against [coeducation] at Dartmouth.”

To see the Woodward Hall letter, come to Rauner and request the "Women of Dartmouth" vertical file. To see Dills' letter in The Dartmouth, come look at our archives of The Dartmouth for 1973.

Posted for Kira Parrish-Penny ’24, recipient of a Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship for the 2023 Spring term. The Historical Accountability Student Research Program provides funding for Dartmouth students to conduct research with primary sources on a topic related to issues of inclusivity and diversity in the college's past. For more information, visit the program's website.