Jasper Adams

Jasper Adams (August 27, 1793 – October 25, 1841) was an American clergyman, college professor, and college president. He was born in East Medway, Massachusetts in 1793, to Major Jasper and Emma Rounds Jasper.

Adams graduated from Brown University in 1815. He was a teacher at Phillips Academy of Andover, Massachusetts, for three years, later becoming a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Brown in 1819. He was ordained a priest of the Episcopal Church in 1820. He became the president of College of Charleston, in 1824, leaving the post temporarily in 1826 to become the president of Geneva College, now called Hobart College. Adams returned to the presidency of the College of Charleston in 1828, remaining there through 1838. During this period he wrote the Elements of Moral Philosophy, published in 1837. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1835. He then became a chaplain, and a professor of geography, history and ethics, at the United States Military Academy, a position he retained through 1840. He died in Pendeleton, South Carolina, in 1841.

Adams was a Freemason. He was a member of Mt. Vernon Lodge No. 4 in Providence, Rhode Island.

Selected Writings by Jasper Adams
"The Relation of Christianity to Civil Government in the United States" (1833), in The Sacred Rights of Conscience, edited by Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2009): 597-610.