Nathan Lord (November 28, 1793 – September 9, 1870) was an American Congregational clergyman and educator who served as president of Dartmouth College for more than three decades.

[1] He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1809, and attended Andover Theological Seminary, serving afterwards as a pastor at the Congregationalist Church in Amherst, Massachusetts for twelve years.

However, after Garrison challenged the Bible on its alleged endorsement of slavery, deeply religious Lord began to question his support of the abolitionist movement and its cause.

[7] In this address, and in later pamphlets published throughout the 1850s (e.g. A Letter of Inquiry, A True Picture of Abolition), he came to see slavery as "not a moral evil", but as a blessing, "an ordinance of...God",[8]: 30  which "providentially found a settlement in this country".

He married Elizabeth King Leland (1792-1870) and they had ten children;[10] his youngest son, Nathan Lord Jr., (1831-1885), was a colonel of the 6th Regiment of Vermont Volunteers in the Civil War.