The Usable Past: A Study of the Harvard College Rebellion of 1834
![handle is hein.journals/wmlr11 and id is 601 raw text is: THE USABLE PAST: A STUDY OF THE HARVARD
COLLEGE REBELLION OF 1834
ROBERT A. MCCAUGHEY*
Whatever failings historians might acknowledge, reticence is not
among them. Yet in the scholarly commentary that accompanies the
current crisis of the American universities, they have deferred to the
sociologists and philosophers, to the political scientists and even to
the law professors.' As an historian I am tempted to suggest
that such forbearance is symptomatic of an unseasonal fit of magna-
nimity that has lately infected the profession; but more persuasive, if
less laudable, explanations keep intruding.
Only recently have American historians begun to expend a sizable
portion of their collective energies examining the institutions in which
they pursue their professional lives. With a few notable exceptions
(e.g., Samuel Eliot Morison), the most gifted historians of the first
half of this century wrote off the study of higher education as parochial,
partisan, and professionally self-serving. Much of the work done in
the field, as Professors Bernard Bailyn and Lawrence Cremin have
indicated, lends credence to this view.2 Consequently, few of the
monographic studies that must precede a synthetic study of the role
of higher education in America have yet been undertaken.3 We con-
tinue to know more about the origins of the Boston and Albany Rail-
road than those of Columbia University, and are more familiar with
the compositions of workingmen's clubs in the 1830's than those of
college faculties of the same era. Compared with the enigma of aca-
*Assistant Professor of History, Barnard College, Columbia University. A.B., Univer-
sity of Rochester, 1961; M.A., University of North Carolina, 1965; PhD., Harvard
University, 1969.
1. See D. BELL & L KmsrOL, CONFRONTATIoN-THE STUDENT REBELLION AND THE
UNIVERsITIES (1968); THE BERKELEY STUDENT REVOLT (S. Lipset & S. Wolin eds. 1965);
L. FEUER, THE CONFLICr OF GENERATIONS (1969); C. FRANKEL, EDUCATION AND TH
BAmucADEs (Jan. 1968).
2. B. BAILYN, EDUCATION IN TmE FORMING OF AMERICAN SOCIETY 53-60 (1961); L.
CREIAN, THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF ELLWOOD PATTERSON CUBBERLEY 42-46 (1965).
3. Two of the closest approximations of such a study are R. HOFSTADTFR & W.
METZGER, THE DEVELOPMENT OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN THE UNITED STATES (1955) and
F. RUDOLPH, THE AiNmIucAN COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY (1962). Rudolph's bibliographical
essay is a useful survey of the work that has been accomplished in the field and the
problems that await future consideration.
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The Usable Past: A Study of the Harvard College Rebellion of 1834
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