Jared Sparks (
10 May 1789 -
14 March 1866) was an
American historian, educator, and
Unitarian minister. He served as
President of
Harvard University from 1849 to 1853.
Born in
Willington, Connecticut, he studied in the
common schools, worked for a time at the carpenter's trade, and then became a schoolteacher. In 1809-1811 he attended
Phillips Exeter Academy where he met John G. Palfrey and
George Bancroft, two schoolmates who became his lifelong friends. He graduated from
Harvard University (
A.B., 1815 and
A.M., 1818); taught in a private school at
Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1815-1817; and studied
theology and was college tutor in
mathematics and
natural philosophy at Harvard in 1817-1819. In 1817-1818 he was acting editor of the
North American Review.
He was pastor of the First Independent Church (Unitarian) of
Baltimore, Maryland, in 1819-1823, Dr
William Ellery Channing delivering at his ordination his famous discourse on Unitarian Christianity. During this period Sparks founded the
Unitarian Miscellany and
Christian Monitor (1821), a monthly, and edited its first three volumes; he was chaplain of the
United States House of Representatives in 1821-1823; and he contributed to the
National Intelligencer and other periodicals.
In
1823 his health failed and he withdrew from the ministry. Removing to Boston, he bought and edited in 1824-1830 the
North American Review, contributing to it about fifty articles. He founded and edited, in 1830 the
American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge, which was continued by others and long remained a popular annual.
After extensive researches at home and (1828-1829) in
London and
Paris, he published the
Life and Writings of George Washington (12 vols., 1834-1837; redated 1842), his most important work; and in 1839 he published separately the
Life of George Washington (abridged, 2 vols., 1842). The work was for the most part favorably received, but Sparks was severely criticized by
Lord Mahon (in the sixth volume of his
History of England) and others for altering the text of some of Washington's writings. Sparks defended his methods in
A Reply to the Strictures of Lord Mahon and Others (1852). The charges were not wholly justifiable, and later Lord Mahon (Stanhope) modified them. While continuing his studies abroad, in 1840-1841, In the history of the
American War of Independence, Sparks discovered in the French archives the red-line map, which, in
1842, came into international prominence in connection with the dispute over the
north-eastern boundary of the
United States.
Sparks was one of the American intellectuals who received
Alexis de Tocqueville during his 1831-32 visit to the United States. Sparks's extensive conversations and subsequent correspondence informed Tocqueville's best-known work,
Democracy in America.
In
1842, Sparks delivered twelve lectures on American history before the
Lowell Institute in Boston, In 1839-1849 he was McLean professor of ancient and modern history at Harvard. His appointment to this position, says his biographer, was the first academic encouragement of American history, and of original historical research in the American field. In 1849, he succeeded
Edward Everett as president of Harvard. He retired in 1853 on account of failing health, and devoted the rest of his life to his private studies. For several years he was a member of the Massachusetts board of education.
Jared Sparks died on 14 March 1866, in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. His valuable collection of manuscripts and papers went to Harvard; and his private library and his maps were bought by
Cornell University. He was a pioneer in collecting, on a large scale, documentary material on American history, and in this and in other ways rendered valuable services to historical scholarship in the United States.
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