Of the classic documents addressing issues in higher education, few have provoked as much commentary as the Yale Report of 1828--and perhaps fewer still have been subject to such undeserved infamy. Today, the document requires a thorough new reading. Since the late 1960s historians of higher education have been trying to overturn the traditional view of the antebellum college. They have challenged practically all major cliches regarding antebellum colleges and, in many instances, successfully discredited them. On the curricular policies of antebellum colleges in particular, scholars like Stanley Guralnick have suggested that if colleges did anything wrong, it was not in experimenting too little but in trying too much. Yet few know about the new claims and findings, outside the narrow circle of specialists. This becomes all too evident in some of the recent readings of the Yale Report attempted by scholars who are not specialists in the history of the antebellum college. As for the more up-to-date readings of the Report offered by the specialists, they have been desultory and fragmentary, usually included as an afterthought or footnote to some other related theme. There has yet to be a comprehensive new reading of the Report. This article attempts such a new reading. An exegesis of the Report here serves as an occasion to reflect on not only the historical reality surrounding the antebellum college, but also the historiographical debates it has inspired over the years. For as the recent wave of revisionism nears the end of its cycle, it has become increasingly necessary to assess its achievements and shortcomings. (Contains 65 footnotes.)