Other early recipients of the degree of LL.D. were: 1784, the Marquis de Lafayette: 1787, Thomas Jefferson; 1790, John-Jay; 1792, Samuel Adams of the class of 1740, Alexander Hamilton, and John Hancock of the class of 1754--1793, Samuel Philips of the class of 1771, the founder of Phillips Academy, Andover: 1803, Edward Jenner, the discoverer of Smallpox vaccine; 1806, John Marshall. Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court; 1810, Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College, and Samuel Stanhope Smith, president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton); 1814, Harrison Gray Otis of the class of 1783; 1817, James Monroe; 1822, John Quincy Adams of the class of 1787; 1824, Daniel Webster; 1825, Henry Clay; 1833, Andrew Jackson.

Connected with the award of President Jackson's honorary degree, an amusing story persisted at Harvard for almost 100 years, to the effect that "Old Hickory" listened in evident dismay as the degree was conferred in Latin and then accepted the honor with a string of Latin phrases beginning with e pluribus unum and ending with hic jacel. The legend was doubtless due in part to the fact that Jackson was thoroughly hated in New England.

Almost invariably someone seizes the opportunity to spoil a good story. In this case it was Josiah Quincy of the class of 1821 who tried to put an end to the tale about Jackson. Quincy was at the exercises in 1833 when the Harvard degree was conferred on the President of the United States, and the former's testimony of what took place on that occasion must be accepted at its value. Quincy says in his "Figures of the Past":

"The exercises in the chapel were for the most part in Latin. My father addressed the President in that language . . . Then we had some more Latin from young Mr. Francis Bowen, of the senior class. . . . There were also a few modest words presumably in the vernacular, though scarcely audible, from the recipient (Jackson) of the doctorate.

"But it has already been intimated that there were two Jacksons who were at that time making the tour of New England. One was the person whom I have endeavored to describe (Quincy had written at some length about Jackson), the other may be called the Jackson of comic myth, whose adventures were minutely set forth by Mr. Jack Downing and his brother humorists. The Harvard degree, as bestowed upon this latter personage, offered a situation which the chroniclers of the grotesque could in no wise resist.

"A hint of Downing was seized upon and expanded as it flew from mouth to mouth, until at last it has actually been met skulking near the back door of history in a form something like this: General Jackson, upon being harangued in Latin, found himself in a position of immense perplexity. It was simply decent for him to reply in the learned language in which he was addressed, but, alas' the Shaksperian modieum of 'small Latin' was all that Old Hickory possessed, and what he must do was clearly to rise to the situation and make the most of it. There were those college fellows chuckling over his supposed humiliation, but they were to meet a man who was not to be caught in the classical trap they had set for him. Rising to his feet just at the proper moment, the new Doctor of Laws asfounded the assembly with a Latin address in which Dr. Beck himself was unable to discover a single error. A brief quotation from this eloquent production will be sufficient to exhibit its character: 'Caveat emptor; corpus delicti; ex post facto; dies irae; e pluribus unum; usque ad nauseam; Ursa Major; sic semper tyrannis; quid pro quo; requiescat in pace'. Now this foolery was immensely taking in the day of it. . . The story was, on the whole, so good as showing how the man of the people could triumph over the crafts and subtleties of classical pundits that all Philistia wanted to believe it. And so it came to pass, as time went on, part of Philistia did believe it, for I have heard it mentioned as an actual occurrence. . . ."

"Adams (John Quincy) characterized the conferring of this degree as 'a sycophantic compliment' ", writes one of the later Jackson biographers, "and spitefully and most unjustly wrote in his diary. 'As myself, an affectionate child of our Alma Mater, I would not be present to witness her diagrace in conferring her highest literary honors upon a barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammer and hardly could spell his own name.