The case was attended with serious embarrassments. Neither counsel nor court had thorough knowledge of the history of the school and the college, and the relations of each to the other. Had they possessed this knowledge, the line of argument in some respects would have been very different, although perhaps with the same general results. More than this, there were no precedents. Indeed, at that early day questions of constitutional law had occupied very little of the attention of the American courts. There would have been embarrassment had the British Parliament, before our Revolution, assumed the right to alter materially the Charter of the college. Changes in chartered institutions in America, especially, by that body, although within the scope of its power, were usually met with the sternest protests. After the Revolution, there were wide differences of opinion as to who had power over charters granted antecedent to that event. In the case of Dartmouth's Charter any one of several opinions might have found plausible support. To determine whether it was a fit matter for State or national legislation, or judicial control, we must revert to the history of the Charter. There we find that it was the unvarying purpose of the founder, adhered to through a long period of severe and persistent effort, to obtain a Charter which would enable him to locate his school or schools in any of the American colonies. He was determined to be as free as possible from local obligations and local control. There can be no doubt that in securing the Charter of the college he believed that he had accomplished a similar purpose. The Charter appointed as a majority of the first Board of Trustees residents in Connecticut,--making it for the time being, by design of the founder, for good and sufficient reasons, in a sense, a Connecticut institution,--with a provision that after the lapse of a brief period a majority of the Board should be residents in New Hampshire. In writing upon this subject to a business correspondent, in June, 1777, President Wheelock says, referring to a third party: "Let him see how amply this incorporation is endowed, and how independent it is made of this government or any other incorporation," and adds that "a matter of controversy" relating to the township granted by the king to the college nearly at the same time with the Charter, "can be decided by no judicatory but supreme, or one equal to that which incorporated it, _i. e._, the Continental Congress." The views of no one person will be received by all, as conclusive on a subject of so much importance. But certainly, Eleazar Wheelock had a right to construe the provisions of an instrument which in almost every line bore his impress, never possessed by any other individual.