No Harvard Charter Ever Gave College Authority to Grant Honorary Degrees

The following article on "Early Honorary Degrees from Harvard" is reprinted from the current issue of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin.

So far as can be determined, Harvard College never specifically received by charter the authority to grant honorary degrees. There is a long-standing statute of the University itself which says that "honorary degrees are conferred by vote of the Corporation with the consent of the Overseers." It is true also that the so-called "Charter of 1692" contained the following provision.

"And whereas it is a laudable Custom in Universities whereby Learning has been encouraged & advanced to confer Academical Degrees or Titles on those who be their Proficiency as to Knowledge in Theology, Law, Physick, Mathematicks or Philosophy have been judged worthy thereof. It is hereby Enacted and Ordained That ye President and Fellows of the said Collidge shall have power from time to time to grant and admit to Academical Degrees as in the Universities in England such as in respect of Learning and Good Manners they shall find worthy to be promoted thereunto."

Never Went Into Force

The charter of 1692, however, never went into force. It was one of several new Harvard charters passed by both branches of the Colonial Legislature during the early years of the College but not sanctioned by the King or the Governor. The charter of 1650, therefore, was never superseded, and that document contained no reference to the granting of honorary degrees.

But the College authorities evidently took it for granted that the charter of 1692, having been adopted by the Legislature, would become effective, and for four years they acted under it. In 1696 they received word that it had failed to obtain the approval of the King. In the meantime, almost as soon as the charter of 1692 had gone through the Legislature and been signed by the Colonial governor, the Harvard Corporation proceeded to grant honorary degrees, as the following extract from "College Book IV" shows:

"At a meeting of ye Corporation at ye Collidge in Cambridge, Sept. 5o 1692.

"Voted. 1. That the Reverend President be desired to accept Gradum Doctoratus in Theologia, and that a Diploma be drawn up by the Corporation & presented to him.

"Voted. 2. That Mr. Jno Leverett and Mr. Wm Brattle be by ye President admitted ad gradum Baccalaureatus in Theologia, they first making each of them a Sermon in Latin in ye College Hall & responding to a Theological Question."

First Honorary Degrees

The three honorary degrees recorded above were the first ever bestowed by Harvard College. The "Reverend President" mentioned in the vote of September, 1692, was Increase Mather, A.B. 1656, the first American-born president of the College; he was a Fellow of the College from 1675 to 1685, acting president from 1685 to 1686, rector from 1686 to 1692, and president from 1692 to 1701. John Leverett and William Brattle were members of the class of 1680 and both, it appears, were Fellows of the College from 1685 to 1700, although there semes to be some doubt about the beginning of Brattle's term. Brattle also was treasurer from 1713 to 1715.

The first honorary A.M. granted by Harvard was conferred in 1703 on Thomas Wells. The Massachusetts Historical Society is authority for the following extract from Sewall's Diary under the date of July 7, 1703 (Commencement Day): "In the afternoon Mr. Wells of Almsbury is made a Master of Art. Mr. Belcher of Newbury Testified his Education under Mr. Andros at Ipswich, that he was a good Latin and Greek Scholar."

Harvard conferred a single honorary A.M. in each of the years 1709, 1710, and 1712. These notations bring the record up to 1714, when Harvard adopted the custom of granting on the application of graduates of other colleges the same degree they had received from their own Alma Mater, and such applicants made up most of the recipients of honorary Harvard degrees for almost a century. This list of honorary degrees granted ad eundem gradum includes the names of many notable persons, but the College authorities gradually came to the conclusion that the practice was not a worthy one and it was abandoned early in the nineteenth century. From 1724 until 1753 all of the honorary degrees bestowed in Cambridge were ad eundem, but in the latter year Benjamin Franklin received the degree of A.M., not because of an earlier connection with another college but because of his distinguished career.

Winthrop Made LL.D.

The first recipient of the Harvard degree of LL.D. was John Winthrop of the class of 1732, Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy from 1738 to 1779, a Fellow from 1765 to 1779, and acting president during the year 1773-74. He received the honorary degree in 1773. His name is perpetuated in one of the new Harvard Houses. Three years later, in 1776, the same degree was conferred on George Washington, and in 1779 it was bestowed on General Gates who had defeated Burgoyne at the Battle of Saratoga. In 1781 the degree of LL.D. was given to Anne Cesar de La Luzerne, French Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States, to John Adams, of the class of 1755, and to Arthur Lee, United States Minister to France from 1776 to 1779.

Other early recipients of the degree of LL.D. were: 1784, the Marquis de Lafayette: 1787, Thomas Jefferson; 1790, John-Jay; 1792, Samuel Adams of the class of 1740, Alexander Hamilton, and John Hancock of the class of 1754--1793, Samuel Philips of the class of 1771, the founder of Phillips Academy, Andover: 1803, Edward Jenner, the discoverer of Smallpox vaccine; 1806, John Marshall. Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court; 1810, Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College, and Samuel Stanhope Smith, president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton); 1814, Harrison Gray Otis of the class of 1783; 1817, James Monroe; 1822, John Quincy Adams of the class of 1787; 1824, Daniel Webster; 1825, Henry Clay; 1833, Andrew Jackson.

Connected with the award of President Jackson's honorary degree, an amusing story persisted at Harvard for almost 100 years, to the effect that "Old Hickory" listened in evident dismay as the degree was conferred in Latin and then accepted the honor with a string of Latin phrases beginning with e pluribus unum and ending with hic jacel. The legend was doubtless due in part to the fact that Jackson was thoroughly hated in New England.

Almost invariably someone seizes the opportunity to spoil a good story. In this case it was Josiah Quincy of the class of 1821 who tried to put an end to the tale about Jackson. Quincy was at the exercises in 1833 when the Harvard degree was conferred on the President of the United States, and the former's testimony of what took place on that occasion must be accepted at its value. Quincy says in his "Figures of the Past":

"The exercises in the chapel were for the most part in Latin. My father addressed the President in that language . . . Then we had some more Latin from young Mr. Francis Bowen, of the senior class. . . . There were also a few modest words presumably in the vernacular, though scarcely audible, from the recipient (Jackson) of the doctorate.

"But it has already been intimated that there were two Jacksons who were at that time making the tour of New England. One was the person whom I have endeavored to describe (Quincy had written at some length about Jackson), the other may be called the Jackson of comic myth, whose adventures were minutely set forth by Mr. Jack Downing and his brother humorists. The Harvard degree, as bestowed upon this latter personage, offered a situation which the chroniclers of the grotesque could in no wise resist.

"A hint of Downing was seized upon and expanded as it flew from mouth to mouth, until at last it has actually been met skulking near the back door of history in a form something like this: General Jackson, upon being harangued in Latin, found himself in a position of immense perplexity. It was simply decent for him to reply in the learned language in which he was addressed, but, alas' the Shaksperian modieum of 'small Latin' was all that Old Hickory possessed, and what he must do was clearly to rise to the situation and make the most of it. There were those college fellows chuckling over his supposed humiliation, but they were to meet a man who was not to be caught in the classical trap they had set for him. Rising to his feet just at the proper moment, the new Doctor of Laws asfounded the assembly with a Latin address in which Dr. Beck himself was unable to discover a single error. A brief quotation from this eloquent production will be sufficient to exhibit its character: 'Caveat emptor; corpus delicti; ex post facto; dies irae; e pluribus unum; usque ad nauseam; Ursa Major; sic semper tyrannis; quid pro quo; requiescat in pace'. Now this foolery was immensely taking in the day of it. . . The story was, on the whole, so good as showing how the man of the people could triumph over the crafts and subtleties of classical pundits that all Philistia wanted to believe it. And so it came to pass, as time went on, part of Philistia did believe it, for I have heard it mentioned as an actual occurrence. . . ."

"Adams (John Quincy) characterized the conferring of this degree as 'a sycophantic compliment' ", writes one of the later Jackson biographers, "and spitefully and most unjustly wrote in his diary. 'As myself, an affectionate child of our Alma Mater, I would not be present to witness her diagrace in conferring her highest literary honors upon a barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammer and hardly could spell his own name.