Only a few days after Harvard’s first professor of Political Economy died on January 29, 1900, the President of Harvard himself, Charles William Eliot, read the following memoir of the life of Charles Franklin Dunbar before the Massachusetts Historical Society on February 8, 1900. The memoir was published in The Harvard Graduates’ Magazine‘s June, 1900 issue and reprinted along with biographical sketches of other “Sons of the Puritans” in 1908. Page numbers for the 1908 reprint of the memoir have been placed within square brackets below. The account of Dunbar’s Harvard career begins on page 75.
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CHARLES FRANKLIN DUNBAR
By Charles W. Eliot
[59] Charles Franklin Dunbar, born at Abington in July, 1830, was of Scotch descent, as his sandy hair and complexion, his shrewdness, reticence, and quiet humor plainly testified. He was much interested in his family descent, and gave no little time to tracing it both in Scotland and in Massachusetts. In one of his journeys to Scotland he visited the chief seats of the Dunbar Clan in Morayshire, and found reason to believe that from and after the year 1400 Dunbar was one of the prevailing names in that region. The first Dunbar in Massachusetts was Robert Dunbar of Hingham, who said of himself, in a deposition he made in court in 1659, that he was a servant of Mr. Joshua Foote when Mr. Foote lived in Boston. By a series of careful investigations Charles Franklin Dunbar established the strong probability that this Robert Dunbar who was held to the services of Joshua Foote for a term of years as early as 1655, and possibly as early as 1652, was one of Cromwell’s Scottish prisoners taken at the battle of Dunbar in 1650, [60] or at the battle of Worcester in 1651. It is certain that some of the prisoners taken at the battle of Dunbar were sent to the Colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1650-51, after having endured frightful sufferings which killed three quarters of the prisoners originally captured. Robert Dunbar, who died in Hingham in 1693 at about sixty years of age, was therefore, in all probability, of very tough fibre.
The father of Charles Franklin Dunbar was Asaph Dunbar, who was born in 1779 and died in 1867. Charles was Asaph’s youngest child. He had three brothers, all of whom filled out a reasonable span of life, and two sisters, one of whom died in infancy and the other at the age of twenty-one. The father’s business was making boots and shoes, and Charles’s three older brothers grew up in that business in Plymouth County, but while still young went away to New Orleans to sell there the goods which their father manufactured. One of these three brothers returned to New York to establish himself there in the same business. Charles was the only one of the brothers who received a liberal education. He was sent to Phillips Academy, Exeter, — probably because he had always shown a strong desire to read and an aptitude for study. The [61] success with which he accomplished the academic course at Exeter determined his being sent to Harvard College, where he graduated with credit in 1851. The fact that he was sent to Exeter at thirteen years of age determined his subsequent career; and he always felt unbounded gratitude to that ancient academy, a gratitude which he expressed by serving it for many years as a member of the board of trustees. At Harvard College he won the respect and friendship of scores of young men, many of whom have come to the front in one way or another during the forty-eight years which have elapsed since he graduated. Some of them were associated with him in after life; and he always retained their warm regard and admiration.
After leaving college he went for a time to his brothers in New Orleans; but soon came back, first to New York and then to Boston, applying himself steadily to business. A threatening of serious trouble in the lungs obliged him to abandon this indoor occupation; whereupon he bought a farm at Lexington, and entered cheerfully on the quiet out-of-door life of a farmer, for which he developed a strong taste and aptitude. Here he soon recovered his health and strength; so that he took up the study of the law at the [62] Harvard Law School, and in the office of Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, and was in due course admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1858. Practice coming to the young lawyer but slowly, he had ample time to write for the Boston Daily Advertiser, and, finding this occupation congenial, he became within a little more than a year editor and part owner of that influential newspaper. In this enterprise he was supported and helped by the occasional labors of a group of young men whom he had known at Exeter and in College; but he himself gave his whole time and strength to the paper. He remained in the position of editor for ten years, — all through the Civil War, and through the early years of reconstruction and gradual pacification. During the Civil War he personally wrote every editorial article in any way related to the war which appeared in that newspaper. The Advertiser became by common consent the leading paper in Boston, and no newspaper since has exercised the same influence in this community. His position brought him into contact with a large proportion of the leading men of the time in eastern Massachusetts, — with merchants, manufacturers, politicians, soldiers, lawyers, and preachers. He wrote, of course, constantly on military [63] events and prospects; but the subjects he best liked to deal with were financial, economic, or political, — such as the war loans, tariffs, and banking acts, the suspension of specie payments, and the measures taken to collect a great internal revenue. The amount and the quality of the work he did in the ten years between 1859 and 1869 were remarkable, considering that he began this work at twenty-nine and ended it at thirty-nine years of age. At thirty years of age he was wielding an influence which would now seem almost impossible of attainment at that age.
A few citations from his editorials will suffice to give an idea of the elevation of their tone, and of their moderation, judicial quality, and prophetic insight.
As early as July 4, 1861, he thus defined the objects of the war for the Union, and the spirit of the Northern people: —
“We are fighting now, as eighty-five years ago, to defend a cause in which the grandest principles of government and the highest interests of man are involved. Our people now as then have thrown aside all remembrances of old divisions, and have united in an enterprise which they believe to be just and holy. Life, fortune, and sacred honor [64] are again pledged to the support of the patriotic declarations with which the second war for liberty has been undertaken; and again has Congress assembled, prepared to forego the ordinary topics of political strife, to forget as is believed all tests save the one question of fidelity to country, and to take counsel in singleness of heart for the one great object.”
Immediately after the heavy defeat of the Union troops at the first battle of Bull Run, he wrote, July 23, 1861: —
“We said at the outset that this reverse had temporarily defeated the scheme for advancing through Virginia. Let no man to-day whisper the thought of abating a jot of our vast undertaking. Taught by one reverse the nation will rise above its misfortune, and press on in its just and holy cause. The people who have poured out their blood and treasure so freely will be kindled to new efforts. … Our present misfortune will disclose to all the true secret of our weakness, and will teach all that the advance for which some have so long clamored is not to be accomplished in a single effort. With a full knowledge on all hands of the nature of our undertaking, and with such further preparation as must now be made for this grand enterprise, we can doubt its final success as little as we can doubt the justice of the cause in which [65] it is undertaken, or the wisdom of the Providence which rules all things for our good.”
He early foresaw the fate of slavery as an institution. Writing on the last night of the year 1861 a survey of the events of the year, he made this prophetic utterance a year before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued: —
“It leaves our own people with renewed courage, united beyond all hope in support of the government in a most trying case, and fully ahve to the importance of closing the war at once. It also leaves the majority with an unshaken resolution to confine the war to its proper objects, and to sustain the President in the firm and conservative course which he has pursued through the ten months in which he has held office. At the same time, the year has demonstrated to our whole people the great fact, that in the designs of Omnipotence the South has been led through its own folly to write the doom of slavery. Heavier and heavier are the blows which descend upon that institution, and more and more significant are the proofs that the South built upon a weak foundation, when, within this very year, it announced slavery as the cornerstone of its fabric, political and social.”
Near the close of the year 1862 Secretary Chase communicated to the Committee on Ways [66] and Means the draft of a bill to provide the necessary resources for the prosecution of the war. The second section authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to borrow nine hundred million dollars in any of the modes heretofore authorized for making loans. The bill also contained the details of the national bank scheme. Mr. Dunbar’s comments on this bill are in part as follows: —
“The most important feature of this bill, so far as regards the immediate emergencies of the country, is the second section, and this it seems to us has been well conceived. . . . Should this power be granted by Congress, we trust that the secretary will use it with liberal forethought. Armed with full powers, he will be able to feed the market with such securities as are most popular, at times when prices are favorable. Unrestricted by needless trammels, he can avail himself of the most favorable proposals which may be suggested from time to time by those who have money to loan, or who can present well-considered plans for meeting the wants of the Treasury with the least cost to the nation.”
Of that very important part of the bill which related to the establishment of the national bank system he speaks as follows, in his few words [67] showing that he had a clear vision of the wide scope and far-reaching consequences of the project:—
“It has been taken for granted that this measure will provoke a violent opposition, which, nevertheless, as yet has not manifested itself in any very definite shape. It is nowhere denied that the Secretary’s plan insures several very decided advantages; it looks rather to the establishment of a sound currency for the country upon a permanent basis than to any immediate results. If it be said that it will be time enough to legislate to this end when we have got out of the war and the financial difficulties incident thereto, it may be answered with at least equal force that the necessity of reform will then be less generally apparent. ‘Why don’t you mend your roof ?’ asked a traveler of a negro in whose leaky hut he had taken refuge during the shower. ‘Cause it rains’ was the answer. ‘But why don’t you mend it at some time when there is no rain ?’ ‘Cause then it don’t leak.’ This sort of logic will hardly justify Congress in refusing a careful attention to Mr. Chase’s plan, notwithstanding the statement paraded in advance, that ‘the majority of the Ways and Means are hostile to Mr. Chase’s scheme,’ and that ‘this sentiment of disapproval cannot possibly be changed.’”
[68] After the great victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, July 3-5, 1863, Mr. Dunbar wrote as follows on the 8th of July: —
“We speak of these events as of extreme political importance, because they have now for the first time fairly established the ascendency of the national power over the rebellion. Hitherto the struggle has been often a drawn game, and even in our moments of success has left the military strength of the rebels so formidable as to keep their hopes alive. The handwriting is now on the wall in characters which the rudest may read, warning the rebels that henceforth theirs is a hopeless cause, and that from this time their efforts must decline. We may now, at any rate, count upon the moral effect of defeat and loss of faith in their cause, and may hope for the appearance of those discontents and divisions to which despondency gives rise, and which precede the final ruin of a cause which, like the rebellion, has no root in sound principle.”
Looking back on this statement after an interval of thirty-seven years, we are struck with its absolute accuracy.
In his review of the year 1863, on the 31st of December, his comments on the Proclamation of Emancipation illustrate the perfect balance of his judgment: —
[69] “The most distinctly marked event in the conduct of the war for the year, however, is unquestionably the Proclamation of Emancipation issued on the 1st of January, 1863. Of this measure it can now be said, that it has equally disappointed its advocates and its opponents. It has failed to effect the dissolution of the rebel power which was so confidently predicted as certain to be its instantaneous effect, and has left the actual work of emancipation to be performed by the steady advance of military operations. On the other hand, it has failed to make that disastrous division among the loyal which was predicted by many of its opponents. The mass of the people have acquiesced in it as a military measure taken in good faith. But we must remark, they have done this the more readily since on independent grounds the policy of emancipation has gained favor in the popular mind rapidly during the year.”
Speaking of the extraordinary sales of 5-20 bonds in the summer and autumn of 1863, he writes as follows: —
“Throughout the country these bonds have been eagerly sought, with the noblest demonstrations of confidence and affection towards the government in defense of which the money is contributed. The success with which the government now deals with a debt of great magnitude has inspired the country [70] with faith in its ability to cope with the future, heavy as are the burdens promised by the Secretary of the Treasury.”
How far-seeing is the following paragraph, which occurs in the same review of the year 1863: —
“The feelings of the French Emperor towards the United States had long been suspected, but were first fully appreciated by our people when his designs in Mexico were fairly unmasked, and when he announced his deliberate design of erecting a throne in that country to be occupied by a prince nominated by himself. It was immediately perceived that France had created for herself upon this continent an interest adverse to that of the United States. The occupation of the Rio Grande by our forces, however, together with the established certainty that the Emperor will for the present find enough to do in dealing with the Mexican people, who do not accede to the fiction that Maximilian is their choice, has finally quieted all fears as to the course of France for the present.”
In his review of the year 1864, Mr. Dunbar wrote as follows: —
“Never has the struggle seemed so gigantic as in this year, never have the contending forces so [71] convulsed the continent with their efforts, or so appalled the spectators of a strife as terrible and unrelenting as the of the elements. Indeed, this is an elemental strife, which we have seen approaching its climax and crisis, — a strife which, in the words of a philosophic observer who was lately among us, is waged ‘not only between Aristocracy and Democracy, between Slavery and Social Justice, but between ferocious Barbarism and high Civilization.
“It is only when we view the contest in this light that it is possible to realize completely the futility of such efforts at pacification as that which has characterized this year, and which was defeated by the will of the people a few weeks ago. These raging elements are as far beyond the reach of all such attempts to quiet their agitation as is the tempest which purifies the physical atmosphere. The forces have long been gathering, they are in the full height of their sublime power, and are not to be stayed until the mission assigned to them by Providence is accomplished. A great political party thought otherwise, and sought by months of carefully studied effort to still the contention by premature peace; and it finds itself to-day shivered to atoms, and its candidates swept aside like chaff and forgotten. The judgment of the nation and its will have risen to the height of the occasion, and have settled irrevocably the devotion of this [72] people to their grand task to the very end. In its moral aspects, then, the result of the election has been the great event of the year and of the war.”
Mr. Dunbar was often called upon to express the strongest emotions of the people under circumstances of tremendous excitement. After listening all day to the rejoicings in the streets of Boston over the surrender at Appomattox, he wrote at night an editorial in which two out of the four paragraphs are as follows: —
“Four years ago this morning we were obliged to say in this place ‘we do not seek to pierce the gloom which now seems to overspread the future.’ Four years of that future as they have enrolled themselves have shown many another crisis, or agony more acute, but none of gloom so depressing as settled on us all in that week of uncertainty. This day is the anniversary of the humiliating correspondence between General Beauregard and Major Anderson, in which he demanded the surrender of Fort Sumter as a foregone necessity. To-morrow is the anniversary of the day on which he opened his fire. These four years have called upon the nation to show its steadfast endurance. They have called for that loyalty to institutions which does not seek to pierce the gloom of the future. They have bidden the nation stand firm on the eternal principles of its government, [73] and trust God to give it victory, when for victory the time had come. Through that gloom, or the flushes of hope which at one moment or another varied it, the nation has stood firm, and at last the end has come. . . .
“Such are the moral advantages of the victory. They make a nation so strong that war in its future is wholly unnecessary, — it seems hardly possible. This nation is just, — it can be as generous as it is just. It has no entangling foreign alliances, it need have no petty foreign jealousies. God has shown it His mercy in a thousand ways, and now that He blesses it with Peace, it has His promise that Peace shall lead in every other angel of his Kingdom.”
At the close of the year 1865 he wrote as follows, prophesying a period of discussion and evolution which has not yet ended: —
“The year, we may trust, is the last in the succession of years which by striking and exciting events compete for the leading place in our annals. The period of great deeds is perhaps over; we now have remaining questions of magnitude to be debated and settled, or to be suffered to work towards their own solution by process of time, and not concentrating their fierce interest into single great transactions, of which we have known so many since 1860. The question as to the future [74] of the freedmen is not to be settled by the turn of any crisis, but by many discussions, the long-continued operation of opinions, and the progress of immigration, of industry, and of ideas. Financial questions, of which we have so many of importance, are as little to be determined by any special action, but cast their shadow far over the coming years. The foreign questions, of which the closing year leaves us a supply not trifling in importance if scanty in number, are as little likely, we may hope, to assume such form as to bring back the unhealthy excitements which have long been familiar, but will rather relapse into the ordinary course of international litigation, or be settled by causes and influences which in power are far above the counsels of emperors. In short, we now enter in public matters upon a period of discussion; and if results appropriate to this method of action are wrought out with half the skill and power which we have seen displayed in the marvelous twelvemonth now ending, we shall find our prosperity and happiness, and our development in all that ennobles a people, settled on a foundation more solid than our fathers ventured to hope for.”
During his administration the Advertiser as a property increased greatly in value; so that when in 1869 Mr. Dunbar found it necessary again to pay attention to his health, and to give [75] up work for a time, he sold his interest in the newspaper for a sum which amounted to a competency for himself and his family. This was really a value which his own mental gifts and moral character had imparted to the newspaper. There is no more satisfactory way in which a man can earn a competent support for his family before he is forty years of age. All through his life Mr. Dunbar was a careful, frugal, and successful man of business, although he gave but a very small portion of his time to that side of life.
In order to recover from the nervous exhaustion which he experienced in 1868, he made two journeys to Europe, the first alone, but the second with his family. I had come into the Presidency of Harvard College in 1869, and one of the first measures which the Corporation resolved to prosecute with vigor was the establishment of a Professorship of Political Economy, and the selection of an incumbent for the chair. Mr. Dunbar being well known to all the members of the Corporation, the appointment was offered to him in 1869, and he gave a conditional acceptance to take effect two years later. A quiet life in various parts of Europe restored his health and gave him opportunity, [76] for the prosecution of studies which prepared him further for his new function; and In 1871 he took up the work of his professorship, to which he thereafter steadily devoted himself for more than twenty-eight years.
Professor Dunbar was the first Professor of Political Economy that Harvard University ever had. That great subject had previously been one of the numerous subjects assigned to the Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity. Professor Dunbar announced for the year 1871-72 a course prescribed to Juniors on Rogers’s “Political Economy” and Alden’s “Constitution of the United States,” two hours a week for half a year, and an elective course in Political Economy for the Senior Class, based on Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” Bowen’s “American Political Economy,” and J. S. Mill’s “Political Economy;” but these courses were announced under the head of Philosophy. The elective course was attended by seventy-five Seniors. The next year his elective course appears under its proper heading, — Political Science, — the description of the course being altered to the following: J. S. Mill’s “Political Economy,” McCulloch on Taxation, Subjects [77] in Banking and Currency. Professor Dunbar also conducted in 1872-73 a required course for Juniors in Political Science, two hours a week during half a year. That year he used as textbooks for the Junior’s Fawcett’s “Political Economy” and the Constitution of the United States. In 1873-74 Professor Dunbar had for the first time the assistance of an instructor, because the required course in the Elements of Political Economy was transferred from the Junior to the Sophomore year, — on its way to extinction, — so that this required course had to be given that year to two large classes. Under Professor Dunbar’s elective course, Bagehot’s “Lombard Street “appears for the first time. In the next year Professor Dunbar gave, in addition to the prescribed Political Economy, two elective courses parallel to each other, one being preferable for students of History. The rapidly increasing number of students in the department made it desirable to offer these two parallel courses, so that neither class should be too large. One hundred and thirty-one students chose these electives. In 1875-76 Professor Dunbar was conducting three progressive courses: the prescribed elementary course, a first elective course on J. S. Mill’s “Political Economy,” [78] and the Financial Legislation of the United States; and an advanced course on Cairns’s “Leading Principles of Political Economy;” and McKean’s “Condensation of Carey’s Social Science;” and the number of students attending his course was steadily increasing. In the following year Professor Dunbar became Dean of the College Faculty, an administrative position which he held for six years. The prescribed course in Political Economy for Sophomores now disappeared. The elective courses were fully maintained. Professor Dunbar had some assistance in the elementary elective course, because of the necessity of devoting a good deal of his time to the administrative work of the Dean’s office. His assistant in the year 1877-78 was Mr. Macvane, now Professor of History in Harvard University. The next year his assistant was Dr. James Laurence Laughlin, who had the title of Instructor in Political Economy. In 1880-81 another course in Political Economy was added to the two already given, Professor Dunbar working in all three courses, but being assisted in the first two by Dr. Laughlin. The most advanced elective under Professor Dunbar was based on Cairns’s “Leading Principles of Political Economy,” [79] McLeod’s “Elements of Banking,” Bastiat’s “Harmonies Economiques.” In the year 1882-83 Professor Dunbar took leave of absence in Europe. His work was carried on by Dr. Laughlin and a new instructor, Mr. Frank W. Taussig, now Professor of Political Economy in Harvard University. A new half-course was added this year, — a course on the Economic Effects of Land Tenures in England, Ireland, France, Germany, and Russia. The next year brought considerable expansion to the Department. Professor Dunbar returned to his work; Dr. Laughlin was made an assistant professor; and Dr. Taussig offered for the first time a course on the History of Tariff Legislation in the United States. The number of courses offered by the Department suddenly expanded to four courses running through the whole year, and three running through half a year. Economic History appeared for the first time as part of the instruction given by the Department, Professor Dunbar having charge of the course. It was in that year that the plans of Professor Dunbar for the development of his department in the University became apparent to the academic world. Dr. Taussig soon became an assistant professor; Dr. Laughlin was [80] promoted to a full professorship at Cornell University, whence he was subsequently transferred to the University of Chicago; and a series of young men, all selected by Professor Dunbar, were brought forward in the Department as teachers. The number of teachers and courses increased until, in 1894-95, this Department, called Economics since 1892-93, employed three full professors, one assistant professor, and three instructors, and the number of courses had risen to six full courses and seven half-courses. In 1899 the lowest elective course in Economics was opened to Freshmen; so that the Harvard student thenceforth had access to that subject in all the four years of his college course. For the present year, 1899-1900, courses were announced which gave employment to three full professors, one assistant professor, and six instructors. In the academic year 1898—99 the choices made of courses in Economics numbered 1263.
Such was the development given in twenty-eight years to a subject which certainly should be second to none in value or dignity at an American university. At every step of the process it was Professor Dunbar’s sagacity, sobriety, and fairness which commanded confidence [81] and secured success. He thus made, in the course of twenty-eight years, as it were with his own hands, a complete collegiate instrument for training young Americans in Political Economy, the first such instrument ever constructed. If it should occur to any one that this growth was made possible by the general atmosphere at Harvard, the answer would be that Professor Dunbar had much to do with determining the quality of that atmosphere.
In 1886 a timely gift of a fund of $15,000 from one of Professor Dunbar’s pupils enabled the Corporation to establish the Quarterly Journal of Economics, published for Harvard University. They took this step by the advice of Professor Dunbar, and on the condition that he should edit the Journal. He acted as editor for ten years, and in that time established the position of the Journal in this country and in Europe as a valuable medium for economic discussions and researches. The subjects of some of the articles which he wrote for this Journal will indicate the wide range of his studies: In 1886, “The Reaction in Politics;” in 1887, “Deposits and Currency,” and a note on Ricardo’s Use of Facts; in 1888, a notice of an old tract entitled “The New-Fashioned Goldsmiths,” [82] a tract which appears to have been the source of the generally accepted statement as to the origin of private banking in London in the seventeenth century. In the same year appeared “Notes on Early Banking Schemes “from his pen, and an article on “Some Precedents Followed by Alexander Hamilton.” At the end of this last paper, after a learned review of the system advocated by Hamilton, and of the sources of the measures which he recommended, Professor Dunbar said in conclusion: “No statesman could have a greater task set for him, and political science can hardly have in store any greater triumph than this application of the experience of other men and other nations.” In 1889 he wrote for the Quarterly Journal an article on the Direct Tax of 1861, the conclusion of which was, “The direct tax provided for by the Constitution has at last been discredited as a source of revenue, and it has also been too prolific of misconception and confusion to have any Influence henceforth as a practical measure of finance.” A single sentence from an essay he published in the Journal in 1891 on the academic study of political economy admirably expresses the true conception of the function of an instructor in any moral [83] science: “That the student should learn to reason truly is of far more consequence than that he should perceive and accept any particular truth, and the real success of the instructor is found, not in bringing his students to think exactly as he does, — which is unlikely to happen, and, indeed, unnatural, — but in teaching them to use their own faculties accurately and with a measure of confidence.” In another passage in the same essay, speaking of the conditions under which an instructor may or may not be silent concerning his own beliefs, he says, “There are few men whose weight of authority is such as to compel any extraordinary caution in the declaration of their minds.” Those two statements are highly characteristic of Professor Dunbar’s habitual attitude towards his own students.
One may easily trace through all the activities of Professor Dunbar as a teacher and writer the effect on his mind of his ten years’ work as the editor of a daily paper during a period of startling and far-reaching military, financial, social, and political events; but it is interesting to observe that commercial and economic questions began to engage his attention some years before the war. Thus we find in the North American Review an article by him on the Danish [84] Sound Dues written as early as 1856, when he was twenty-six years of age. His services as a university teacher grew naturally out of the studies and interests of his early manhood.
Professor Dunbar was Dean of the old College Faculty for six years, from 1876 to 1882, and the first Dean of the new Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1890 to 1895. He therefore gave a large amount of administrative service to the University. As an administrative officer he was prompt, efficient, and wise. One peculiarity he had which was rather trying to some of the many students and parents of students with whom he came into contact, — he was sometimes too reticent and silent. He would listen patiently to a long tale in which the narrator felt great interest, and take it all in, but hardly utter a word in reply. Sometimes, however, after his interlocutor had despaired of getting an answer, he would give a concise but comprehensive reply which showed how sympathetically he had apprehended the whole subject under discussion. Ordinarily patient and cautious, he was entirely capable of quick decision and prompt action. On a reconnaissance he was circumspect and thorough; but when he once made [85] up his mind how the land lay and how the adversary was intrenched, he moved on the position, in the safest possible way, to be sure, but with energy and persistence. As a rule, his aspect was serene and mild; but on occasion his face could become set, and from his blue-gray eyes there came a steel-like gleam dangerous to his opponent. In his judgment of others he was gentle, unless he became satisfied that some man he had been observing did not play fair, or was untrustworthy at the pinch; then he became stern and unrelenting. It was these qualities which made him the successful journalist that he was at thirty years of age. The Faculty was always afraid to take a step of which he did not approve, and seldom did so, unless his occasional infirmity of silence had concealed from them his opinion. They felt in him a remarkable sagacity combined with quick insight and unwavering disinterestedness; and they found him to be uniformly just. If he now and then betrayed a prejudice, they felt sure that he had good grounds for it, and were much disposed to share it with him. Every one who has seen much of the world will perceive how rare a combination of qualities was [86] embodied in this modest and retiring man, and will understand how great a loss the University has suffered in his death.
In addition to the solid satisfactions Mr. Dunbar derived from his forty years of professional work, he had great delights in his domestic life. He married, soon after leaving college, Julia Ruggles Copeland, of Roxbury, and he survived his wife only two months. Five children were born to them between 1855 and 1862, of whom three sons and a daughter survive their father and mother.
I have already mentioned the life of the young family at Lexington. When he became editor of the Advertiser, he moved, first, to Roxbury; but finding the inevitable exposures of returning to Roxbury from his office late at night (often after the omnibuses had ceased to run) too great for his strength, he moved to a small house on River Street, at the foot of Beacon Hill. This house was comparatively sunless, and, though close to Beacon Street, had no outlook whatever. It was a great Relight to him and his wife and his growing children to establish the household in 1872 in a spacious house on the hill which rises north of Brattle Street, Cambridge, not far from Elmwood, [87] a house which commanded a charming prospect, and was surrounded by fine trees. He had earned the luxury of fine prospects, abounding sun and air, and garden grounds, as product of the work of his own brain. His tastes and habits were simple, but refined. Luxuries and superfluities had no charm for him. He was fond of driving and sailing, but needed no elaborate equipment for obtaining these pleasures. He valued these sports mainly as means of getting into contact with the beauties of nature by land and by sea. He had the natural healthy enjoyment in food and drink, but always preferred simple things to elaborate, and was displeased by extravagance or excess.
In 1886 he bought the larger part of Bear Island, off Mount Desert, the smaller part being already occupied by the United States as the site of a lighthouse; and here he built in 1893 a cottage for the summer occupation of his family. When visiting friends on the neighboring shore of Mount Desert, he had often marked the beautiful form of this island, and admired the exquisite views it commanded in several directions. In deciding upon the site of his house on this island, it was his chief care to avoid impairing the aspect of the island from [88] the neighboring shores, — a thoughtful result which he perfectly achieved. All his life he had great pleasure in carpentering. He always had a carpenter’s bench in any house he occupied, and delighted in good tools and in using them with skill. He could build with his own hands fireplaces, corner buffets, desks, tables, and other pieces of furniture. At Bear Island he built a large boat-house with chambers in its upper story, doing most of the work with his own hands, after the heavy framing had been put up. He enjoyed thinning the woods which covered the northern shore of the island, and studying the flora and fauna of his isolated kingdom. A thrifty little spruce, looking as if it could easily resist all the ice and snow, all the gales, and all the droughts of that northern clime, a single graceful birch, a mountain ash loaded with red berries, or a clump of ferns, sufficed to give him great enjoyment. With reading and writing interspersed, such pleasures filled his summer days so completely and so happily that he seldom wished to leave his island. Friends came to stay with him; but he seldom cared to go far from his cottage, unless on a sail or a drive with one of his neighbors of the main island. There was no road on his island, [89] and hardly a path, except little tracks between the hummocks and ledges; and there were no sounds, except the beat of the waves on the rocky shores, the singing of birds, and the rushing of the wind through the trees. One of the peculiarities of the climate of the Maine coast had singular charm for Professor Dunbar. On almost every summer evening near sunset, there falls a great calm and stillness. No matter how boisterous the day may have been, near sundown there comes a widespread, profound silence, unspeakably grateful to such a temperament as his. The hills of Mount Desert, in full view from his island, reminded him of the similar hills built of primary rocks which his Scottish forbears had looked on in far-away Morayshire.
Outside his family circle his intimate associates were not numerous; but his friendships were intense, and his rare and concise expressions of affection were overwhelmingly strong. As I look back on this completed life, it seems to me filled with productive labors and large services from which came deep satisfactions. Grave trials and sorrows hallowed it; but its main warp and woof were both made of innumerable threads of happiness and content.
[90] In his religious convictions he was a Unitarian, and he valued highly that simple and optimistic faith; but his mind was hospitable to all forms of theological opinion, while he was strenuously averse to ecclesiasticism and aestheticism in religion. Simplicity, cheerfulness, duty, and love were the articles of his faith, and human joy and well-being their natural fruit.
Source: Sons of the Puritans. A Group of Brief Biographies. Boston, American Unitarian Association, 1908. Sketches reprinted from The Harvard Graduates’Magazine, Vol. VIII, No. 32 (June, 1900), pp. 469-484.
Image Source: The Harvard Graduates’Magazine, Vol. VIII, No. 32 (June, 1900), Frontspiece. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.
