career of his iconoclasm. Lee was an improper teenager at the time and resorted to other methods of protest.
Lee entered Harvard at the age of sixteen in 1834. Back then, the college wasnât an altogether reputable place. The students terrorized unsuspecting tutors and partied hard, and Lee was no exception. In his first year, his class of freshmen initiated what has come to be known as the Harvard Rebellion of 1834. One day, a Greek tutor by the name of Dunkin asked a freshman, John Bayard Maxwell, to recite his lesson. The pupil refused and was suspended for insubordination. In response, his classmates set Dunkinâs room on fire. Things escalated from there. The president of Harvard was burned in effigy, guards were badly beaten, and tutors, all of them, were physically intimidated. Amid the chaos, Lee bolted one of his tutors into his bedroomâscrewing the door closed from the outside, making it impossible for the tutor to escape. For this relatively harmless prank Lee was suspended and exiled to the manor house of Ezra Ripley, the minister in the nearby town of Waltham.
This is where Emerson and Lee first met, at the home of Ezra Ripley. An odd fellow, Ripley was respected by the traditional members of the Harvard community, but unlike most of them, he welcomed debate between conservative and liberal thinkers. Emerson was thirty-four when the young Lee was âsentencedâ to Waltham, and they met during one of Emersonâs visits. Their interaction was fleeting at the time, but Emerson came to see Lee as more than an average hooligan. In the next three years Emerson would write and then deliver two of the most critical lectures on the failures of Harvard and, by extension, the failures of the American educational system: âThe American Scholarâ and the âDivinity School Address.â In these lectures he poetically gave voice to the general sentiment of Leeâs class of 1834: American education and religion needed to leave the dogmatism of the past behind and tailor their lessons to the promise and innovation of young minds.
âThe American Scholar,â delivered in 1837, was at first widely admired. âWe will walk on our own feet,â Emerson promised, âwe will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds ⦠A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.â Anne Hutchinson would have been proud. Equal parts egalitarian and progressive, âThe American Scholarâ was just reverent enough to keep from alienating the stuffy Harvardites. But the âDivinity School Addressâ was another matter. Given in the summer of 1838, the lecture pulled no punches regarding the role of church hierarchy in pursuing salvationâsaying it had none. At the outset, Emerson said, âLet me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.â For the Harvard overseers, this was blasphemy, and they proclaimed that Emerson would never again give a lecture on college grounds. The proclamation almost held: He wasnât invited back for thirty-two years. Only in 1870 was he asked to give the University Lectures that initiated graduate studies at Harvard. And who welcomed him back? The onetime hooligan Henry Lee.
Lee remained a troublemaker, but he had become famous during the Civil War for organizing Union troops in Boston when President Lincoln called for the defense of Washington in 1861. With this reputation and ample family funds, he was invited to serve on the Harvard Board of Overseers in 1867; he accepted and held the post until 1879. He oversaw the construction of Memorial Hall, the massive High Victorian Gothic building at the center of campus, and supported the organization of the University Lectures, which included a very grateful Emerson and a
Lee entered Harvard at the age of sixteen in 1834. Back then, the college wasnât an altogether reputable place. The students terrorized unsuspecting tutors and partied hard, and Lee was no exception. In his first year, his class of freshmen initiated what has come to be known as the Harvard Rebellion of 1834. One day, a Greek tutor by the name of Dunkin asked a freshman, John Bayard Maxwell, to recite his lesson. The pupil refused and was suspended for insubordination. In response, his classmates set Dunkinâs room on fire. Things escalated from there. The president of Harvard was burned in effigy, guards were badly beaten, and tutors, all of them, were physically intimidated. Amid the chaos, Lee bolted one of his tutors into his bedroomâscrewing the door closed from the outside, making it impossible for the tutor to escape. For this relatively harmless prank Lee was suspended and exiled to the manor house of Ezra Ripley, the minister in the nearby town of Waltham.
This is where Emerson and Lee first met, at the home of Ezra Ripley. An odd fellow, Ripley was respected by the traditional members of the Harvard community, but unlike most of them, he welcomed debate between conservative and liberal thinkers. Emerson was thirty-four when the young Lee was âsentencedâ to Waltham, and they met during one of Emersonâs visits. Their interaction was fleeting at the time, but Emerson came to see Lee as more than an average hooligan. In the next three years Emerson would write and then deliver two of the most critical lectures on the failures of Harvard and, by extension, the failures of the American educational system: âThe American Scholarâ and the âDivinity School Address.â In these lectures he poetically gave voice to the general sentiment of Leeâs class of 1834: American education and religion needed to leave the dogmatism of the past behind and tailor their lessons to the promise and innovation of young minds.
âThe American Scholar,â delivered in 1837, was at first widely admired. âWe will walk on our own feet,â Emerson promised, âwe will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds ⦠A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.â Anne Hutchinson would have been proud. Equal parts egalitarian and progressive, âThe American Scholarâ was just reverent enough to keep from alienating the stuffy Harvardites. But the âDivinity School Addressâ was another matter. Given in the summer of 1838, the lecture pulled no punches regarding the role of church hierarchy in pursuing salvationâsaying it had none. At the outset, Emerson said, âLet me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.â For the Harvard overseers, this was blasphemy, and they proclaimed that Emerson would never again give a lecture on college grounds. The proclamation almost held: He wasnât invited back for thirty-two years. Only in 1870 was he asked to give the University Lectures that initiated graduate studies at Harvard. And who welcomed him back? The onetime hooligan Henry Lee.
Lee remained a troublemaker, but he had become famous during the Civil War for organizing Union troops in Boston when President Lincoln called for the defense of Washington in 1861. With this reputation and ample family funds, he was invited to serve on the Harvard Board of Overseers in 1867; he accepted and held the post until 1879. He oversaw the construction of Memorial Hall, the massive High Victorian Gothic building at the center of campus, and supported the organization of the University Lectures, which included a very grateful Emerson and a
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