By David A. Carrino
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2024, All Rights Reserved
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in May 2024.
Little Round Top. Devil’s Den. Cemetery Ridge and Seminary Ridge. Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill. The Peach Orchard. The Wheatfield. The Copse of Trees. Civil War enthusiasts know these places well and comprehend the awe-inspiring magnitude of these hallowed places. These sites on the Gettysburg battlefield are indelibly etched on the roster of revered places in U.S. history. Another famous site in Gettysburg is the cupola of the Lutheran Theological Seminary. The prominent cupola looms like a somber shrine over the battlefield, seemingly brooding about the terrible carnage and profuse loss of life that happened during those three awful days. With its elevated location, the cupola would have been an excellent vantage point to observe the horror that took place around it. Because of this, it is not hard to imagine that when those who grasp the historic solemnness of those three days look up at the cupola in its lofty perch, they wish that it could recount to the onlookers the numerous frightful events that it witnessed.
The cupola has become such an iconic landmark of the Battle of Gettysburg that one of the popular activities during a visit to the battlefield is to go up into the cupola for a guided tour. We Civil War enthusiasts are more than willing to pay the cost for tickets, because a tour of the cupola gives us a unique opportunity to experience a special closeness to the battle by standing inside something that was present there while the two armies clashed. But in contrast to implements of war, the cupola and the Lutheran Theological Seminary were not intended to ever be in a battle. The seminary building and its cupola were constructed for an entirely different purpose, and the man who was chiefly responsible for bringing the seminary into existence in Gettysburg had no idea that just over three decades after the cupola was built, it would become a towering witness to the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.
The person who deserves the majority of the credit for the cupola in Gettysburg is Samuel Simon Schmucker. Samuel Schmucker was born in Hagerstown, Maryland on February 28, 1799. His parents, Johann and Catherine, were German immigrants, and Johann was a pastor in the Lutheran Church. When Samuel was only 15 years old, he entered the University of Pennsylvania and graduated two years later, after which, at the young age of 17, he taught at a school for a short time. Schmucker then went on a missionary journey to Ohio and Kentucky in what was at that time the western frontier. Following his return, Schmucker, pursuing the same career as his father, entered the Princeton Theological Seminary and was ordained a Lutheran minister in 1820. From 1820 to 1825, Schmucker served as a pastor in New Market, Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley, and this experience came to influence his views on slavery.
Schmucker, who has been described as “endowed with rare natural ability,” quickly became very influential in the Lutheran Church in the U.S. He was an important figure in the creation of the General Synod in 1820, which was one of the first organizations in the American Lutheran Church that brought together different regional congregations. Subsequently, Schmucker wrote the constitution and the hymnal for the General Synod. Upon its formation, the General Synod proposed establishing a seminary in order to provide a source of ministers. Over the next few years, progress on creating a seminary moved slowly, so much so that Schmucker established a small private seminary in his New Market parish. In 1824 Schmucker gave a sermon in Middletown, Maryland in which he described his private seminary and urged the establishment of a larger centralized seminary. This sermon provided a needed impetus to the formation of a general seminary. Even as far back as his time as a seminary student in Princeton, Schmucker was a strong advocate for a centralized theological seminary, which Schmucker now insisted would save the U.S. Lutheran Church from “her former lifeless and distracted condition.”
In 1825 a committee was formed to develop a plan for a theological seminary. Schmucker was one of the people who was appointed to this committee, but even before the committee’s first meeting, Schmucker had already written a plan for establishing and operating a seminary. This plan was adopted by the General Synod, which then elected a board of directors for the seminary and also elected the seminary’s first professor. Not surprisingly, Schmucker was elected the first professor, and he was given the responsibility of writing a constitution for the seminary.
When the board of directors held its first meeting on March 2, 1826, it elected Schmucker its president. One of the important decisions that the board faced at this meeting was the location of the seminary. Five locations were under consideration: Hagerstown and Frederick in Maryland as well as Carlisle, Chambersburg, and Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. However, only Hagerstown, Carlisle, and Gettysburg had submitted proposals for the seminary. Hagerstown’s proposal was for $6,635, Carlisle’s proposal was for $2,000 plus a 100-square-foot plot of land, a house for the professor, and $3,000 for the construction of a building for the seminary, and Gettysburg’s proposal was for $7,000 plus the use of a building until the seminary’s own building was built.
After lengthy discussion, a vote was taken. On the first ballot by the board of directors, four votes were cast for Gettysburg, three for Hagerstown, and two for Carlisle. Because none of the locations received a majority, a second vote was conducted. This time Gettysburg received six votes and Hagerstown three, which made Gettysburg the location for the seminary. While the choice was officially made by vote, another factor played a significant role in this decision, as noted in a book about the seminary’s history that was published in 1926 by the U.S. Lutheran Church. There is a description in this book of the process by which the seminary was founded, and this description indicates that, with regard to choosing the location for the seminary, “everywhere there was a disposition to consult the preference of the Professor-elect.” In other words, Schmucker likely had a strong influence on the choice of Gettysburg for the seminary.
Ironically, one factor for Gettysburg being selected for the seminary was also a reason why the battle was fought there. The board of directors considered Gettysburg quite accessible due in large part to the number of roads that led into it. Similarly, the number of roads leading into Gettysburg from several different directions caused both the scattered elements of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac to come together there, and then the momentous battle ensued.
When operations began at the seminary in September 1826, the seminary was housed in an academic building that was provided in the proposal submitted from Gettysburg. Construction of a new building for the seminary began in 1831 and was completed in time for fall classes in 1832. That new building with its prominent cupola is the building that is now commonly referred to as the Lutheran Theological Seminary, although the building was officially renamed Schmucker Hall in 1976 in honor of the person who is primarily responsible not only for the establishment of the seminary, but also for the seminary being located in Gettysburg. Regarding the move into the new building, the aforementioned book about the history of the seminary colorfully states, “In September, 1832, the young school of the prophets abandoned its cradle and moved out into a new stage of its existence.” The new building served as the main building for the seminary from 1832 until 1895 and thereafter was used as a student dormitory until 1951.
Eventually more faculty members were added, and Samuel Schmucker served as chairman of the faculty (essentially president of the seminary). During this time, Schmucker was vocal on current matters in society. For example, he was a critic of the war with Mexico, which he believed ran counter to the Constitution. He was also vehemently opposed to slavery, an opinion that was shaped by the time that he lived in the Shenandoah Valley and witnessed slavery firsthand. In his writings and lectures, Schmucker strongly and repeatedly attacked slavery, which he framed as a violation of God’s precepts. In an 1846 discourse that was subsequently published in print, Schmucker stated, “As a patriot and a Christian, I feel bound to bear my testimony against the unjust laws relating to our despised and often oppressed colored population…Some of the laws on this subject are direct violations of the laws of God…Until we have used our utmost efforts to purify our own statute book, and to have slavery abolished…we must stand guilty at the bar of heaven of participation in this sin.” Schmucker made clear in this discourse that he viewed slavery as a sinful violation of God’s laws.
Schmucker expressed similar sentiments in his 1840 “Of Slavery: Propositions on the Subject of Slavery,” in which he also attacked some of the rationalizations for slavery. Among the assertions that he made therein, Schmucker wrote, “Slavery as it is legally authorized in the United States…is the very worst form of such an evil, because by converting the moral agent of God, into a mere chattel, the person into a mere thing, the immortal being into a mere article of property, it in theory strips him of all his personal rights.” For any slaveholders who insisted that they treated their slaves kindly, Schmucker wrote, “Experience proves that whilst there are thousands of humane and Christian masters, who treat their slaves with kindness and work them moderately, yet even in their hands the system itself unavoidably leads to the intellectual and moral degradation of the slave.” Schmucker also had strong criticism for those who believed that justification for slavery can be found in the Bible, and he expressed this by writing, “That a system compounded of elements so immoral and so clearly opposed to the character of God, finds any sanction in his word can be asserted only from want of careful and adequate examination, or from ignorance or prejudice, or insincerity.” For the opponents of slavery who did not actively work toward bringing it to an end, Schmucker wrote, “Every instance or institution which violates the inalienable rights and obligations of individuals is in its own nature an evil. Further, all who materially and knowingly establish it, or who…fail sincerely to desire and faithfully to labor for its extinction, are guilty of sin.”
Importantly, Schmucker did more than just write about inequalities. Through his efforts, the first African American student was admitted to the Gettysburg seminary in 1837. Schmucker also helped to establish schools for women. Thus, he put his words and his opinions into action. Due to his writings, Schmucker’s staunch anti-slavery views became known throughout the country, including in the South, and as a result his house was ransacked during the time that the Army of Northern Virginia was in Gettysburg.
Schmucker led the Lutheran Theological Seminary for nearly 40 years, from its founding in 1826 until 1864, the year after the seminary’s main building became an iconic landmark of the most famous battle of the Civil War. Prior to his time at the seminary, Schmucker married Eleonora Geiger in 1821, but she died in childbirth in 1823 at the age of 24. Two years later Schmucker married Mary Catherine Steenbergen, and they had 11 children, three of whom died as infants. Mary died in 1848 at age 40, and Schmucker died in 1873 at age 74. Samuel and Mary Schmucker are interred in Evergreen Cemetery in Gettysburg.
In addition to his indispensable role in the establishment of the seminary in Gettysburg, Schmucker made other significant contributions. In 1832, six years after the seminary began operations, Schmucker founded Gettysburg College (originally known as Pennsylvania College). He also, through his writings and sermons, profoundly influenced doctrinal thinking and religious practices in the American Lutheran Church. Moreover, Schmucker’s insightful intellect, focused efforts, and religious zeal reinvigorated the Lutheran Church in America and deeply impacted the parameters of Lutheran theology in the U.S. Samuel Schmucker has been called “easily the outstanding Lutheran of our country in his generation,” and the seminary in Gettysburg with its iconic cupola is a monument to his innate talents, his devotion to his religion, and his resolute tenacity.
The Gettysburg cupola did not spring forth by some magical spontaneous generation, but through the dedicated and intense work of Samuel Schmucker. It is unfortunate that the most well-known tangible object that Samuel Schmucker left on this Earth is associated not with him, but with a Union cavalry commander. When we Civil War enthusiasts stand in the cupola, the experience most likely conjures up the memory of how John Buford stood in that same cupola in 1863 and used it as a lookout to gather information about enemy movements. But as we gaze at the same landscape that John Buford scanned, we should also keep something else in mind. If not for Samuel Schmucker, John Buford would not have had the cupola to stand in, and neither would we.
Sources (Click on the book title below to purchase from Amazon. Part of the proceeds from any book purchased from Amazon through the CCWRT website is returned to the CCWRT to support its education and preservation programs.)
A number of sources were used for this article. The most useful sources are as follows.
History of the Gettysburg Theological Seminary by Abdel Ross Wentz (1926)
Samuel Simon Schmucker (1799-1873), Dickinson College Archives
Rev. Samuel S. Schmucker, History of Cumberland and Adams Counties, Pennsylvania
Schmucker, Samuel Simon, Dd, McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia
Rev Samuel Simon Schmucker, Find a Grave
“A National Sin”: Samuel Simon Schmucker, Founder of Gettysburg College, on the Peculiar Institution by Meg Sutter
The Christian Pulpit, The Rightful Guardian of Morals, in Political No Less Than in Private Life: A Discourse Delivered at Gettysburg, Nov. 26, the Day Appointed by the Governor for Public Humiliation, Thanksgiving, and Prayer by S.S. Schmucker, D.D. (1846)
“Of Slavery: Propositions on the Subject of Slavery” by Samuel Simon Schmucker
Building History, Seminary Ridge Museum & Education Center