Item #84530 [REVOLT & FOOD FIGHT AT HARVARD 1807] STATEMENT OF FACTS RELATIVE TO THE LATE PROCEEDINGS IN HARVARD COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. Harvard Students.
[REVOLT & FOOD FIGHT AT HARVARD 1807] STATEMENT OF FACTS RELATIVE TO THE LATE PROCEEDINGS IN HARVARD COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
[REVOLT & FOOD FIGHT AT HARVARD 1807] STATEMENT OF FACTS RELATIVE TO THE LATE PROCEEDINGS IN HARVARD COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
[REVOLT & FOOD FIGHT AT HARVARD 1807] STATEMENT OF FACTS RELATIVE TO THE LATE PROCEEDINGS IN HARVARD COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

[REVOLT & FOOD FIGHT AT HARVARD 1807] STATEMENT OF FACTS RELATIVE TO THE LATE PROCEEDINGS IN HARVARD COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

Cambridge, Mass. Harvard College Students, 1807. First Edition. Pamphlet. A twelve page pamphlet (4 1/4" x 7 1/4"). Had been previously mounted with duct tape in a Gaylord Pamphlet Binder (Syracuse, NY, patented 1908, included), but freed by a conservator its edge lightly reinforced with kitikata (a semi-translucent Japanese paper especially useful in bookbinding and repair). laying out the case where a group of students, issued a demand to the administration to remedy the food and conditions in the "commons" -- (i.e., the cafeteria), which they claimed to "find nothing but to nauseate the stomach" served by the "uncleanliness and filthiness of the cooks". It was reported that "maggots kept showing up in the students' cabbage soup..." One of the tutors called the head cook from the kitchen and asked him "why he dared send such meat as this into the hall; it was black, nauseous, and intolerable?"

The students wrote a letter demanding that by a certain upcoming date, improvements in the food, cleaner conditions, and cleaner cooks, threatening to walk out. After ten days with no response, the deadline passed, and at the appointed time, a sizeable gathering of students walked out of the commons, en masse. In response, the corporation (administration) demanded a public apology threatening the students' continuing tenure at the college. This pamphlet is their response, wherein they lay out the facts of the case, their profound respect for authority and society's need for orderliness in the name of the common good, etc.. "We do most solemnly, and earnestly protest against any suspicion or imputation of a seditious and rebellious disposition...", they wrote, maintaining that the requirement for such an apology was not only humiliating, but unjust, for the protesting exit was civil and orderly...." The students went on to rhetorically ask why the actions of one should garner punishment for the many, which revealed that there had been a particularly zealous protester amongst their number, as there will always be "in all bodies of considerable number, some who delight in mischief, anarchy, and confusion." "When the incredible demand (for an apology) was made, we consulted that character, and formed our decision. We thought that infamy was not a passport to honor, that degradation was not the road to renown. We deprecate the. influence of authority, and ask for an unbiased mind to the naked statement of facts.We ask a full and perfect credence to that statement, for that statement is truth. Every fact given can be ratified by oath." This is followed by three pages listing participants and/or sympathizers, by class (Seniors, down to Freshmen). Very Good. Item #84530

In 1766—forty-two years previous to the 1807 "Cabbage Rebellion", Harvard hosted the first recorded student protest in American history: a protest against butter. For decades, the quality of food in the College’s dining halls had been sharply declining. The student’s complaints about the food and particularly about the sourness of the butter fell lamely upon the ears of the College president, Edward Holyoke, Class of 1705. So, on September 23, Asa Dunbar of the Class of 1767—the grandfather of Henry David Thoreau—mounted his chair and proclaimed: “Behold, our butter stinketh!—Give us, therefore, butter that stinketh not.” ("Past Tense: A Tradition of ProtestNoah Pisner, 2011").

Price: $150.00

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