extraordinary Louisburg campaign of ’45; so that when he made his famous prayer with the American troops before they started for Bunker Hill he was only reënacting a rôle familiar to him thirty years before.
In his display of “usefulness through a publick spirit” by real military service, however, John Oliver left no imitators among the rest of the Harvard students, although some few served in the colonial wars after graduation. Considering our modern experience in these matters, it is a sorry contrast to record that of undergraduates who actually doffed cap and gown to buckle on the harness of war, Mr. S. E. Morison, ’08, who has made exhaustive search,[1] can find not one until the Louisburg expedition. For that astounding operation, Benjamin Prescott (H. C. 1747), of Concord, and David Lee (H. C. 1748), of Marblehead, were among the volunteers. Since Lee took the step “without leave,” he was degraded fourteen places in the class for his unauthorized patriotism. He survived the campaign, and gamely returned to take his punishment, but died before graduation. Prescott was “killed by the Indians at C. Breton,” and thus seems entitled to the honor of being the first Harvard undergraduate who fell in the service of his country.
- ↑ “Harvard in the Colonial Wars,” Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, xxvi, 554, Many of the facts in the preceding paragraphs have been taken from this valuable study.
