"Then was the Wrath of the sons of Harvard kindled within them and they gathered themselves together and went to the House of Edward the Chief Ruler, and said, we will not confess, and if our Rulers shall punish Asa we will depart everyone to his own Home and leave the Rulers to the Meditation out of their own hearts.

"Edward said, will ye confess or will ye not; but all the Sons of Harvard held up their Hands, thereby signifying they would not confess.

"So on the 10th month, and on the 11th Day of the Month, the Great Sanhedrim of Harvard [the Board of Overseers] met and many of the Sons of Harvard were prevailed upon by the Threatenings of the Members of the Great Sanhedrim & confessed.

"So after this there were no more murmurings in Harvard, but all was Peace and Quietness as it is to this Day. Cambridge, November 19, 1766."

And Food Again

But the Peace and Quietness lasted for only two years. The Great Rebellion of 1768, like the first insurrection, was incited by the College food and lasted for nearly a month. The riots were now more violent but even more unsuccessful. Penalties were generally severe, though the feeling that the punished were the martyred still lingered.

As the Revolutionary War approached, the groans of hunger were drowned out by a growing patriotic spirit which entranced even the undergraduates of Harvard College. Rioting broke out only once during the days surrounding the Revolution and that was when two Tory students brought tea into the College dining room in 1775.

In 1780 occurred the most successful student revolt in the history of the college; it was also the mildest. A large body of students gathered in the Yard one evening, passed resolutions against President Samuel Langdon, and noisily demanded his dismissal. After reading the charges brought against him, Langdon submitted his resignation without objection.

The next major event took place in 1807, the rotten Cabbage Rebellion, another protest against College food. The student body assembled for the first time under a tree at the end of Hollis Hall which was to become Rebellion Elm, and begged that the food be improved, especially the cabbage. They had marched out of the dining hall in a body and 17 of them were eventually dismissed. The food remained largely the same.

The 'Rebelliad'

In 1819, a fight between freshmen and sophomores raged in the dining hall for several hours finally developing into open revolt when several of the participants were suspended. For the second time, students met under Rebellion Elm and made demands on the College. The entire sophomore class resigned but returned within two weeks to have several of its members sent away again. This insurrection was chronicled in the once famous "Rebelliad; Or Terrible Transactions at the Seat of the Muses," a poem in four cantos which was printed and privately circulated for many years after the revolt.

One of the most curious rebellions of them all was the one which developed in 1823 over a little squabble involving several members of the senior class. One of those men was first in his class and about to graduate as such; another, a bit further down the class list, reported to the President several charges against the moral conduct of the first student, who was then fairly stiffly punished. The senior class gathered under Rebellion Elm to protest the charges and the punishment and threatened the informer with bodily harm. Four of them were suspended, and rioting raged for several days. Cannonballs were thrown from windows of dormitories, and bonfires spread through the Yard. It was a much cruder protest than the earlier ones had been but the penalties were much the same--37 seniors were dismissed from College and denied the degrees they would have received in a very short while.

The student who made the original charges later became a clergyman and was at one time a member of the Massachusetts General Court. Shortly before his death he confessed that the accusations he had made were entirely false.

The last of the nineteenth century rebellions was the most violent one. It started when a freshman refused to obey the instructions of a tutor and was accordingly punished by the administration. His classmates came to his rescue, assembled under Rebellion Elm, and stirred rioting which interrupted classes for two months. Tutors' windows and furniture were smashed, torpedoes were sailed through the Chapel, President Josiah Quincy was hanged in effigy, and explosions violated the virtuous Yard. A number of the rioters received the customary dismissal but at least two were taken to court and tried on a variety of civil charges.

'Rinehart'