Yes, this may be the first college student protest recorded in what became the United States of America.
No, this was not just about butter or butter substitutes.
At Harvard College, in 1766, three students, all seniors at the institution, Asa Dunbar, Daniel Johnson, and Thomas Hodgson had had enough of the lack of fresh food being served to the student body. Dunbar, who may be best known as the grandfather of Henry David Thoreau, led the protest, stating that the butter served by the college was “stinketh” and he incited the student body to reject this rancid fare by jumping onto his chair and yelling
“Behold our butter stinketh! Give us therefore butter that stinketh not!”
Dunbar faced disciplinary action, being punished for insubordination and instigating a potential riot. After he received his punishment, the student body enacted another protest, by walking out of the hall, cheering loudly in Harvard Yard, and continuing into Cambridge to dine instead. To give some credit to the college, the adminstration acknowledged the butter ws rancid. With restrictions due to economic difficulties the availability of fresh food was limited however.
As Massachusetts moved closer to open rebellion in their remonstrances against British Parliament and the British crown their example was mirrored by the student body of Harvard. After a month of impassed including “insulting proceedings” the royal governor of Massachusetts, Sir Francis Bernard personally addressed the student body in the chapel on campus and the protests and insubordination of the student body concluded.
A depiction of a student protest courtesy of The Harvard Gazette
Concluding, with a Butter Rebellion, a Tea Party, what food or drink would the colonists focus on next? For me, I think I will sip my Samuel Adams brew. Leave the butter and tea to the Massachusettans.
(Yes, I know that Samuel Adams beer was not around at the time of the American Revolution but I thought it was fitting. And beer and history go together anyways right?)
In honor of April being National Poetry Month, we share the connection of the literary icons of Concord (MA) and its American Revolution heritage. Concord historian Jayne Gordon wrote about these connections in an appendix in our recent release “A Single Blow.” Below is part of that text.
None of the eighteenth-century Concord authors lived through the American Revolution, yet reminders of that eighteenth-century war abounded in Concord in their lifetimes. Their neighbors were the grandchildren of the minutemen; veterans of the war were still among the townsfolk. Buildings, gravestones, old roads, and other landmarks evoked that part of the past, and they were surrounded by the stories of the fateful day of April 19, 1775. They each drew on their interpretations of the Revolution’s symbolic meaning, and incorporated those ideas into both their private and public writings.
The “Old Manse” next to the North Bridge in Concord
In the case of RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882), there was a direct historical link to a grandfather who had played a significant role in the beginnings of the Revolution. Sixty years after colonial militiamen confronted the British troops at the North Bridge within sight of the Old Manse, the grandson of patriot minister Reverend William Emerson would come to his ancestral home to stay, writing in his journal, “Hail to the quiet fields of my fathers! . . . Henceforth I design not to utter any speech, poem, or book that is not entirely & peculiarly my work.”Continue reading “THE AUTHORS AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION IN CONCORD”→
Emerging Revolutionary War Era 