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Introductory remarks on Nott sermon bicentennial
First Presbyterian Church, Albany NY
July 25, 2004

Two weeks ago today on July 11, much media attention was paid to bicentennial reenactment of the historic duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. TV networks covered the event in Weehawken, NJ and interviewed family descendents on both sides. Both family sides still maintained that their man was in the right. Print media, like the NY Times, ran major stories and offered commentary. Those who are historically inclined were momentarily caught up in the excitement of an anniversary of consequence - 200 years to the day on July 11 this famous duel was fought!

But, poof, public consciousness faded completely after the staged drama. However, the actual event of July 11, 1804 itself did not quickly pass from the consciousness of citizens two hundred years ago. Remember the political magnitude of what happened: a sitting Vice-president of the United States, Aaron Burr, deliberately squared off with a former Secretary of the Treasury and revered founding father, Alexander Hamilton, and mortally wounded him. Just a few years before, the natural deaths of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin had been moments of national sadness, but the death of Hamilton at Burr's hands was different -it was a moment of national anger that festered in the psyche of a new nation.

Alexander Hamilton was born on the Caribbean island of Nevis, but he came as a young man of 20 to New York City and took his degree at King's College (now Columbia University). Hamilton married Elizabeth Schuyler, the daughter of Philip Schuyler, a military hero of the Revolutionary War, one of Albany's most revered political leaders, and one of Union College's founding Trustees. Hamilton was a frequent visitor to his in-laws Albany, and indeed was counted as a parishioner of this very congregation. Hamilton had become friends with Eliphalet Nott, the very young pastor of this church who had been called by the church's elders in 1798. Hamilton's death was a personal tragedy for Nott as well as a political tragedy for the country. As you will hear in the eulogy, Nott was morally outraged and politically angry.

From the perspective of my own discipline of political science, there are two great forces that shape political life, both past and present. One is the material realities that present themselves to a society. These physical realities include both natural resources and the technology to transform those resources into human inventions. Hamilton well understood the importance of material factors; he was, after all, the founder of the national bank of the United States and the first Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton also foresaw the importance on international commerce as the basis of building America's wealth.

Eliphalet Nott too had a firm grasp of the importance of material forces in the development of mankind. Nott was a scientific inventor with several patents to his name; in a famous painting of American inventors at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington called "Men of Progress", Nott is clearly visible in the foreground. During his extraordinary tenure as President of Union College, Nott soon developed an alternative curriculum that became known as the "scientific course" and was designed "to meet the needs and interests of young men looking for a life of action rather than one of scholarship." In 1845, Nott established an engineering program at Union, one of the first three in the US. Like Hamilton, Nott was highly conscious of money and what money could produce. Nott persuaded the NY State Legislature in 1805 to authorize four lotteries that would generate $80,000 for Union College's buildings and operations; and Nott sought a much bigger lottery in 1814 that led to major controversy and nasty allegations. Both Hamilton and Nott made part of their mark in American life through the pursuit and understanding of material realities.

The second great force that shapes politics is human ideas, totally ephemeral entities from our imagination whose intellectual visions and framed perceptions give meaning to material reality and set norms for human behavior. Hamilton was a man full of ideas. His views on human nature and social institutions still receive attention today as part of the Federalist Papers, and his views on America's industrial future and international trade collided strongly with Jefferson's views on populist agrarianism.

Nott was no less a man of ideas than Hamilton. Nott believed in universal education. He believed in the power of moral suasion, and Nott quickly established a reputation for accepting students at Union who had been expelled from other colleges for misbehavior and then guiding them to productive lives under close moral tutelage. Nott believed in an educational strategy that ran counter to the didactic model of the times - in the words of one author, "substituting challenge for explication, making the text not a Scripture to be conned but a vulnerable text to be challenged." Nott believed in scientific progress, in action, and in free will. His angry eulogy reflected his fundamental belief that men had used their free will to make bad choices.

It was this second great force of politics - ideas - that framed the duel and led to such a great outcry. Dueling, after all, is an idea, a product of human imagination - and dueling for purposes of honor is an even more ephemeral idea. The horror of the Burr-Hamilton duel was not the technology of pistol weaponry or the tiny waste of natural resources. The horror of the duel was the idea of dueling itself. Dueling over honor had long been part of European society, but in 1804 in the new world with new visions, American political culture was uneasy. Nott's eulogy and its condemnation of dueling spoke to a new understanding of human relationships, galvanizing opinion away from its historic norms. Long an aristocratic tradition, dueling was out of synch with American democracy. And it was certainly out of synch with Nott's vision of appropriate human conduct.

What led to the duel was the word "despicable." The historian Joseph Ellis has laid out what happened. When Burr had run for Governor of New York early in 1804, a letter was published in an Albany newspaper questioning Burr's fitness for office. Its author, Dr. Charles Cooper, recalled a conversation in which Hamilton had railed against Burr's qualifications, and Cooper's letter concluded with the statement "I could detail to you a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Mr. Burr." Cooper's letter came to Burr's attention, and he wrote to Hamilton about this indictment of his character, inquiring about what Hamilton had actually said or intended. Burr may well have expected Hamilton to deny having said anything to Cooper, in which case the matter would be closed. But as Ellis points out, Hamilton responded with a private letter to Burr deliberately designed to irritate Burr even further. Both men's communications contained the implicit threat of a duel, and Hamilton's chosen response sealed the fate of honorable men.

So here we are at this moment of history. The duel was fought and Hamilton died. Eighteen days after the duel, the City of Albany held its official funeral ceremony for Hamilton, and Nott was invited to deliver the eulogy. This morning we are gathered to commemorate the bicentennial of Nott's sermon at that service on July 29. While one of the great declamations of the 19th century and widely quoted for years, Nott's sermon did not put any immediate end to dueling. Duels over political honor continued in America for four decades after Burr killed Hamilton, from the lowest levels of government through members of Congress. The last duel between two sitting members of Congress came in the late 1850's. But it was Nott's sermon that made the case against dueling most eloquently, and it was cited repeatedly up and down the East Coast afterward as public opinion continued to mount against dueling. Nott used the force of ideas to change behavior, and ultimately public opinion swung heavily enough that dueling came to an end. It is a classic example of Nott's belief that "perseverance conquerors all." When you listen to the sermon this morning, feast your ears on Nott's ideas.

Finally, a historical footnote that links First Presbyterian Church in Albany with Union College this morning. In attendance at Nott's eulogy were a grief-stricken Philip Schuyler and other Albany dignitaries, a few of whom were also Union College trustees. Nott's words were so powerful that, with the Union College presidency open that summer of 1804, it was less than a month later that the Trustees offered the College's presidency to Nott. So it is fitting that this morning' s celebration is really two bicentennials in one - the bicentennial of Nott's famous eulogy as the Presbyterian pastor in Albany and the bicentennial of Nott's becoming Union College's president in Schenectady.

Nott's full eulogy sermon, completely delivered from memory, took about an hour. This morning you will hear an excerpted version, about half the original length, specifically prepared for this commemoration. David Cotter has chosen to dress in the manner in which Nott dressed when he preached from the First Presbyterian church pulpit in 1804; I call your attention to Nott's portrait hanging next door in the Assembly Hall for comparison. David is Associate Professor of Sociology at Union College and an elder in the Union Avenue Presbyterian Church in Schenectady. Note that David's youthful age is approximately that of Nott in 1804. We greatly appreciate David's willingness to address us this morning as Eliphalet Nott. Following David's delivery and the recessional, you are invited to join us for a reception next door in Assembly Hall.

Byron A. Nichols
Department of Political Science
Union College