Washington Sentinel

A NEW MANIFESTATION OF FANATICISM AT HARVARD.

The corporation of the university of Harvard lately sent in to the Board of Visitors the names of Robert C. Winthrop and Samuel A. Eliot, esqs., as candidates for the degree of LL.D. The degree was promptly conferred upon Mr. Winthrop, but denied to Mr. Eliot. The reason of this denial is that Mr. Eliot, who was in the House of Representatives of the United States at the session of 1850, voted for the fugitive slave bill. Nothing could save him. Character, standing, respectability, services to the college, all went for nothing when set off against the fact that he had voted for the fugitive slave bill.

Even anti-Nebraskaism, even the fact that he was chairman of a meeting in Faneuil Hall last year, which denounced the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and talked strongly against the extension of slavery, did not avail. The Abolitionists would not relent.

The Advertiser thus sums up Mr. Eliot's claim to the honor. It says:

"Mr. Eliot being a graduate of Harvard College, son of the liberal founder of the Greek professorship, himself a benefactor to the college, having for ten years, or more, discharged with signal ability and fidelity, the office of treasurer, managing the investments of its funds, all without receiving one cent of compensation—and being withal a gentleman of education and culture, distinguished and honored in the community in which he lives—there was an obvious propriety in selecting him as a candidate for an honorary degree. For the overseers to wander from the paths of literature, into those of politics, to discover a single objectionable vote in Congress on a question in which he undeniably fairly represented his constituents, as a reason for withholding the honor—was certainly a novel course of proceeding."

Harvard is plunging deeper and yet deeper in the mire.