Lane Seminary

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Lane Seminary, sometimes called Cincinnati Lane Seminary,<ref name=Cincinnati/> and later renamed Lane Theological Seminary, was a Presbyterian theological college that operated from 1829 to 1932 in Walnut Hills, Ohio, today a neighborhood in Cincinnati. Its campus was bounded by today's Gilbert, Yale, Park, and Chapel Streets.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Its board intended it to be "a great central theological institution at Cincinnati — soon to become the great Andover or Princeton of the West."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> However, the founding and first years of Lane were difficult and contentious, culminating in a mass student exodus over the issue of slavery, or more specifically whether students were permitted to discuss the topic publicly, the first major academic freedom incident in America.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> There was strong pro-slavery sentiment in Cincinnati, and the trustees immediately prohibited further discussion of the topic, to avoid repercussions. With the city being on the border of the South, a lot of fugitive slaves and freedmen went through Cincinnati, including James Bradley, who would participate in the pivotal Lane slavery debates in the 1830s. Their competition for jobs had led to the anti-abolitionist Cincinnati riots of 1829 and would soon produce the Cincinnati riots of 1836.

InaugurationEdit

"The founding of Lane Seminary was accomplished after years of sometimes disparate efforts on the part of a large number of people."<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp The Presbyterian tradition was to have educated clergy, and there was no seminary serving the vast and increasingly populated lands west of the Allegheny Mountains. As early as 1825, the denomination was on record as saying such a seminary was needed. In 1829 there were only 8,000 ministers to serve a population of 12,000,000, two thousand more churches than ministers, and only 200 ministers per year being trained.<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp While there were local efforts to have the new seminary in Cincinnati, the Presbyterian General Assembly decided in 1827 to locate it in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. The western synods refused to accept this, finding it too far away.<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp

In the summer of 1828 Ebenezer Lane, a New Orleans businessman, "made known his interest in setting up a theological seminary near Cincinnati based on the manual labor system."<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp He and his brother Lane pledged $4,000 for the new school, on condition that it be in Cincinnati and follow the manual labor model. After this, their connection with the Seminary was minimal; Ebenezer was not even happy that it carried his name.<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp The land was donated by Kemper Seminary.<ref name=Pamphlet>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp "Walnut Hill was a pretty little village, quite distant from Cincinnati, the first stopping-place for the stage on the Madisonville or some other northern Ohio route."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp "The location of Lane Seminary is in the midst of a most beautiful landscape. There is just enough, and just the right admixture of hills and dale, forest and field, to give it the effect we love in gazing upon a calm and quiet scene of beauty," wrote a visiting minister in 1842.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Rp

A board was set up in October 1828, and the Ohio General Assembly issued a charter on February 11, 1829, specifying that the manual labor system would be "the fundamental principle" of the Seminary.<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp The Rev. George C. Beckwith was appointed to a professorship in April, accepted in August, and he arrived in Cincinnati in the following November. He "had 3 or 4 students during the winter."<ref name=Fletcher>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp In July, 1830, Beckwith visited the Oneida Institute and wrote back to Cincinnati that manual labor worked well and that the farmers and mechanics of the neighborhood approved of it. He resigned in August 1830.<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp "At that time [1830], the seminary consisted of some woods and one foundation for a building."<ref name=Barnes/>Template:Rp

In January, 1831, George Washington Gale, president of the Oneida Institute, recommended a steward to supervise the Seminary farm; in February the trustees made the appointment. But in the winter of 1830–31, "Lane Seminary was in a state of suspended animation. There were no teachers and apparently only two students, Amos Dresser and Horace Bushnell, who had come out from the Oneida Institute and had been given special permission by the trustees to occupy rooms in the lonesome Seminary building."<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp Bushnell, who on his arrival in 1830 "found [at the embryonic Lane] no theology", slept "on a study-table, with his books for a pillow".<ref name=Pamphlet/>Template:Rp

In 1834, the manual labor department contained six printing presses, operated by 20 students, and had printed 150,000 copies of "Webster's spelling books", for a bookstore. 30 students were employed in cabinet making, and total enrollment before the mass walkout was about 100.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

The Oneida Institute and LaneEdit

File:Theodore Dwight Weld, 1803-1895, bust portrait, facing slightly left LCCN2006687237.tif

Theodore Dwight Weld, leader of the Lane Rebels

By coincidence, the local efforts to set up a seminary fit with the desires of the Tappan philanthropists, Arthur and Lewis, to found a seminary in what was then the growing west of the new country.<ref name=Barnes/>Template:Rp

The charismatic Theodore D. Weld had been one of the first Oneida students, first studying and working on George Washington Gale's farm, then at Gale's Oneida Institute of Science and Industry from its opening in 1827 through 1830. When he left Oneida, he was hired by the new Manual Labor Society, an institution created to employ Weld, its only employee ever. Funded by the same Tappan brothers that had funded Oneida, his charge was "to find a site for a great national manual labor institution...where training for the western ministry could be provided for poor but earnest young men who had dedicated their lives to the home missionary cause in the 'vast valley of the Mississippi'".<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp Weld himself was seeking to continue his preparation for a career as a minister. As he put it in his report, "though I can no longer publicly advocate it as the agent of your society, I hope soon to plead its cause in the humbler sphere of personal example, while pursuing my professional studies, in a rising institution at the west, in which manual labor is a DAILY REQUISITION."<ref name=Labor/>Template:Rp

"Cincinnati was the logical location. Cincinnati was the focal center of population and commerce in the Ohio valley."<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp In the pre-railroad era, Cincinnati was the most accessible city in what was then the west of the United States.

Weld stopped at Cincinnati twice on his manual labor lecture and scouting tour: in February and March 1832, and in the following September. On the earlier visit, when the campus was run by F. Y. Vail, who spent more time fundraising than teaching,<ref name=Perry/>Template:Rp he delivered several lectures and supported the call to famous revivalist Charles Grandison Finney to come west; Finney declined, though he did come three years later, as professor and later president of the new Oberlin Collegiate Institute. Weld's second choice—and it was his choice, because the Tappans relied on his recommendations—was Lyman Beecher, father of Henry Ward Beecher, who would graduate from Lane, and Harriet Beecher Stowe; Lane had been trying to recruit him since February 1831.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Lane, Weld concluded, would do as a manual labor theological school, if Beecher would come. "Such an institution would undoubtedly attract many of Weld's associates who had been disappointed in the failure to establish theological instruction at the Oneida Institute."<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp Beecher did come, as president and as "Chair of Systematic Theology", motivated by the promise of a $20,000 subvention for Lane from "Tappan".<ref name=Pamphlet/>Template:Rp Beecher, along with professor Thomas J. Biggs, future president of Cincinnati College, began as president December 26, 1832;<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp this is when "Lane actually began operation.... Before that time, staff was slight and housing meager."<ref name=Henry>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp The house the Beecher family lived in is now known as the Harriet Beecher Stowe House.<ref name=Writers>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp Template:Cquote "Lane was Oneida moved west."<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp Early in June 1833, Weld, Robert L. Stanton, and "six other young Finneyites" arrived in Cincinnati, having completed their journey by river from Rochester and Oneida. "They were promptly admitted to the seminary on the recommendation of two other 'Oneidas' [Porter and Weed] already in attendance."<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp However, although technically enrolled as a student, and having declined the chair of Sacred Rhetoric and Oratory,<ref name=Thomas>Template:Cite book</ref> Weld was the de facto head of Lane; "He...told the trustees what appointments to make."<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp "Many of the students considered him the real leader of Lane",<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp<ref name=Perry/>Template:Rp their "patron saint".<ref name=Henry/>Template:Rp "In the estimation of the class, he was president. He took the lead of the whole institution. The young men had, many of them, been under his care, and they thought he was a god."<ref name=Beecher/>Template:Rp

The tempo of the seminary was sharply stepped up, its real head now being on the ground. "Weld is here & we are glad," wrote Professor Biggs on July 2.<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp

According to Beecher, "among those students was an embodiment of a greater piety and talent than he had ever known to be collected in any other institution."<ref name=Mahan>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp

The self-assembling at Lane of men from very diverse places, called by a modern writer an invasion,<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp was so colorful that multiple authors have described it. The earliest is from Weld himself; he is one of the "two members": Template:Quote box

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A contemporary commentator points to the work on rafts as reflecting the students' experience with manual labor at Oneida.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

A modern retelling of the same incident:

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Template:Quote box "[T]he institution itself is second in importance to no other in the United States."<ref name=Letter>Template:Cite book</ref> Beecher "assured us that he had more brains in this theological camp than could be found in any other in the United States."<ref name=Pamphlet/>Template:Rp

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Beecher, in his autobiography, takes a dig at Oberlin, while claiming that there were already "colored students" at Lane: "It was with great difficulty, and only in the prospect of rich endowments and of securing a large class of students, that the principle of admission irrespective of color, already in practice at Lane, received from the trustees of Oberlin a cold and ambiguous sanction."<ref name=Beecher>Template:Cite book Template:Rp</ref> What he says about Oberlin is roughly correct, but none of the black students at Oneida moved to Lane. The one black student currently known of at Lane, James Bradley, by his own description "so ignorant, that I suppose it will take me two years to get up with the lowest class in the institution,"<ref name=Myself>Template:Cite book</ref> despite Beecher's regret felt it wiser not to attend a student gathering at Beecher's home.<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp

The slavery debatesEdit

Lane Seminary is known primarily for the debates held there over 18 evenings in February 1834; John Rankin was in attendance,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> as was Harriet Beecher Stowe,<ref name=Williams>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp daughter of Lane's president. They were nominally on the topic of colonization of freed slaves, on sending them to (not "back to") Africa.

They were publicized nationally and influenced the nation's thinking about slavery, creating support for abolition.<ref name=Williams/>Template:Rp A four-page report by H. B. Stanton appeared in March in both The Liberator and the New York Evangelist,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and Garrison and Knapp, printers of The Liberator and most books on slavery in the U.S. in the early 1830s, issued it in pamphlet form. A seven-page response, under the title "Education and slavery", appeared in the Cincinnati-based Western Monthly Magazine;<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Weld published a lengthy reply.<ref>Template:Cite news Reprinted in [1]The Liberator (Boston, Massachusetts), 14 Jun 1834, p. 1.</ref> The affair got further publicity late in 1834, when 51 of the Lane students — the vast majority — published a 28-page pamphlet, A statement of the reasons which induced the students of Lane Seminary, to dissolve their connection with that institution (Cincinnati, 1834).

BackgroundEdit

The abolition–colonization controversyEdit

Part of "the negro problem", as it was seen in the antebellum United States, was the question of what to do with former slaves who had become free. Since the eighteenth century, Quakers and others had preached the sinfulness of slave ownership, and the number of freedmen (and freed women) was rising and showed every sign that it would continue to grow. The freed slaves married and had children, so the number of free people of color (Blacks born free) was rising even faster. Some owners freed their slaves in their wills. Philanthropic societies and individuals raised or donated funds to purchase slaves' freedom; freedmen sometimes were able to purchase the freedom of family members. In some Northern cities there were more than a handful of escaped slaves.

The status of these free blacks was anything but comfortable. They were not citizens and in most states could not vote. They had no access to the courts or protection by the police. In no state could their children attend the public schools. They were subject to discriminatory treatment in everyday life.

The original "remedy" for this problem was to help them go "back to Africa". The British had been doing this, in Sierra Leone, moving former American slaves there who had gained their freedom by escaping to British lines during the American Revolution, and who found Nova Scotia, where the British took many of them, too cold.Template:Efn The British also took to Sierra Leone slaves captured from slaving ships who were being smuggled illegally across the Atlantic to North America. A well-to-do African-American shipowner, Paul Cuffe, transported some former slaves to Sierra Leone.

However, sending former slaves to a British colony as a policy was politically unacceptable. The American Colonization Society was formed to help found a new, American colony of freed blacks. Although there was some talk of locating the colony in the American territories of the Midwest, or on the Pacific coast—a sort of reservation for Blacks<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>—what was decided was to follow the English example and start an African colony. The closest available land was what became Liberia.

The rejection of colonizationEdit

The colonization project got off to a promising start, with various governmental and private donations and the participation of distinguished individuals: U.S. presidents Jefferson, Monroe, and Madison; Senator Henry Clay, who presided over its first meeting; as well as most of the future white abolitionists. The problem had been solved, and in an honorable way; the former slaves would fare better in Africa, it was argued, among other blacks.

The situation quickly started to unravel. First of all, the disease rates among the new colonists were the highest since accurate record-keeping began. Over 50% of them died of malaria and other diseases.

Particularly telling to Gerrit Smith, an abolitionist philanthropist, was that the American Colonization Society allowed the sale of alcohol (as well as guns and chewing tobacco) in the colonies that became Liberia. He commented on it in the Society's African Repository magazine. Smith was for temperance, and according to him, the fact that blacks in Africa were allowed to import liquor from the United States revealed the true goals of many of the white members of the American Colonization Society: to get rid of the Blacks without having them up north.

Weld organizes "debates"Edit

Lyman Beecher, head of the Seminary, was a colonizationist,<ref name=Beecher/><ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp and gave a speech on that topic to the Cincinnati Colonization Society on June 4, 1834.<ref name=Beecher2>Template:Cite magazine</ref> At Lane there was a "colonization society", supporting the efforts of the American Colonization Society to send free blacks to Africa, to Liberia. How it came to be is not known, but it was there when the Oneida contingent and friends arrived. There had been similar groups at Western Reserve and other colleges.

Weld read William Lloyd Garrison's new abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, begun in 1831, and his Thoughts on African Colonization, which appeared in 1832. These had a great influence at the other eastern Ohio college, Western Reserve College, leading to Beriah Green's four published sermons,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and his relocation under pressure to Gale's school, Oneida. What Garrison desired, and he convinced Green, was "immediatism": immediate, complete, and uncompensated freeing of all slaves.

Over a period of several months Weld convinced nearly all of the students individually of the superiority of the abolitionist view. To generate publicity for the abolitionist cause, Weld announced a series of "debates". Weld "had no intention of holding a debate on the pros and cons of antislavery."<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp "There was little opposition, little conflict, and consequently little debate."<ref name=Richards>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp In his correspondence Weld informed friends that he was trying to get the anti-slavery (immediatist) argument and evidence out to as many people as possible. Nevertheless, what was announced was debates, on two points.

When the merits of the proposed solutions to slavery were debated over 18 days at the Seminary in February 1834, it was one of the first major public discussions of the topic, but it was more of an anti-slavery revival than a "debate". No speaker appeared to defend either American slavery or the colonization project.

The stated topics of the debatesEdit

The two specific questions addressed were:

"Ought the people of the slaveholding states abolish slavery immediately?", and
"Are the doctrines, tendencies, and measures of the American Colonization Society, and the influence of its principal supporters, such as render it worthy of the patronage of the Christian public?"<ref name=Courant>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=Cincinnati>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp

The debates were not transcribed, and there was no attempt afterwards, as there would be later with Pennsylvania Hall, to collect the texts which were written out — not all were — and make a booklet of them. However, Garrison promptly published a pamphlet,<ref name=Letter/> and there are excerpts in newspapers and books.

Each question was debated for two and a half hours a night for nine nights. Among the participants:

Eleven had been born and brought up in slave states.
Seven were sons of slaveowners.
One had only recently ceased to be a slaveowner.
One, Bradley, had been a slave and had bought his freedom.
Ten had lived in slave states.
One, Birney, had been an agent of the Colonization Society.

Arguments addressing the first question in favor of the immediate abolition of slavery included:

Slaves long for freedom.
When inspired with a promise of freedom, slaves will toil with incredible alacrity and faithfulness.
No matter how kind their master is, slaves are dissatisfied and would rather be hired servants than slaves.
Blacks are abundantly able to take care of and provide for themselves.
Blacks would be kind and docile if immediately emancipated.

In response to the second question, the Reverend Samuel H. Cox, who had served as an agent for the Colonization Society, testified that his view of the Society's plan changed when he realized that no blacks, despite the claims of those who ventured to speak for them, would ever consent to be removed from their native country and transplanted to a foreign land. He reasoned, therefore, that the plan could only be enacted by a "national society of kidnappers".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

ParticipantsEdit

Notable people presentEdit

"The President, and the members of the faculty, with one exception [Biggs, an "implacable foe" of abolitionism<ref name=Abzug/>Template:Rp<ref name=Thomas/>Template:Rp], were present during parts of the discussion."<ref name="Stanton">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp

Gamaliel Bailey, physician, lecturer on physiology at Lane, who went on to become an abolitionist newspaper editor.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, at that time simply Harriet Beecher, daughter of Lane's president; 18 years later published Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Henry Ward Beecher, alumnus, minister, called, after his father Lyman, "the most noted minister of the nineteenth century".<ref name=Perry>Template:Cite news</ref>Template:Rp Supported sending rifles ("Beecher's Bibles") to emigrants trying to make Kansas a free state.
Lyman Beecher, president of Lane, father of Henry and Harriet.
James G. Birney, attorney, former American Colonization Society Agent, author of a lengthy published break with or attack on the Society. "His knowledge and pervasive influence informed the Lane Seminary debate, lifting it to the height of its subject."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
James Bradley (former slave), the only Black participant.
Samuel Crothers (probable but unconfirmed<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp)
Amos Dresser, Lane student; would become famous for being publicly whipped in Nashville, Tennessee, for distributing abolitionist literature.
Huntington Lyman<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Asa Mahan, minister, and the only Lane trustee who supported the students; resigned with the students and accompanied them to the Oberlin Collegiate Institute, becoming its first president.
John Rankin (abolitionist), author of the first American anti-slavery book, and key figure on the Underground Railroad in Ohio. In 1835 Rankin published a pamphlet defending the students who debated.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Henry Brewster Stanton, future abolitionist speaker and politician, and husband of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Calvin Ellis Stowe, Lane professor, future husband of Harriet Beecher.
Theodore Dwight Weld, former Oneida student, anti-slavery activist.
Hiram Wilson, former Oneida student; moved to Canada and ran Canadian terminus for the Underground Railroad.

Speakers at the debatesEdit

"Mr. Henry P. Thompson, a native and still a resident of Nicholasville, Kentucky, made the following statement at a public meeting in Lane Seminary, Ohio, in 1833 [1834]. He was at that time a slaveholder."

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"Rev. Coleman S. Hodges, a resident of Western Virginia, gave the following testimony at the same meeting:"

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"Mr. Calvin H. Tate, of Missouri, whose father and brother were slaveholders, related the following at the same meeting. The plantation on which it occurred, was in the immediate neighborhood of his father's."

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The most notable speaker at the debates was James Bradley, as he was the only Black participant and so far as is known the only Black in attendance. This is the first instance in the history of the United States that a Black man addressed a white audience:

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Sequela (the following events)Edit

The debates were closely followed by the national press and the religious community.<ref name=Perry/>Template:Rp

"The trustees soon expressed a determination to prevent all further discussion of the comparative merits of the policy of the Colonization Society, and the doctrine of immediate emancipation, either in the recitation rooms, the rooms of the students, or at the public table; although no objection had previously been made to the free discussion of any subject whatever. During the vacation that followed, in the absence of a majority of the professors, this purpose was framed into a law, or rule, of the seminary, and obedience to it required from all."<ref name=Arthur/>Template:Rp

The trustees laid down the doctrine that "no associations or societies ought to be allowed in the seminary, except such as have for their immediate object, improvement in the prescribed course of studies." This was followed by an order in these words: "Ordered that the students be required to discontinue those societies [the Anti-slavery and Colonization societies] in the seminary."<ref name=Arthur>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp

The event resulted in the dismissal of a professor, John Morgan, and the departure of a group of 40 students and a trustee. It was one of the first significant tests in the United States of academic freedom and the right of students to participate in free discussion. It also marked the first organized student body in American history. Several of those involved went on to play an important role in the abolitionist movement and the buildup to the American Civil War.

At the end of the debate, many of the participants concluded not only that slavery was a sin, but also that the policy of the American Colonization Society to send blacks to Africa was wrong. As a result, these students formed an antislavery society and began organizing activities and outreach work among the black population of Cincinnati. They intended to attain the emancipation of blacks, not by rebellion or force, but by "approaching the minds of slave holders with the truth, in the spirit of the Gospel."<ref name=Fletcher/>

After the debatesEdit

Activities in the black communityEdit

"We believe faith without works is dead," Weld wrote to Arthur Tappan in 1834.<ref name=Tappan/> He, Augustus Wattles, and other students created a school out of three rooms, and raised hundreds of dollars to outfit a library and rent classrooms. Classes were run both days and evenings, and the school was soon at capacity. Inspired by Prudence Crandall's example, he also set up a school for black women, and Arthur Tappan paid $1,000 (Template:Inflation) for four female teachers to relocate from New York to Cincinnati.<ref name=Williams/>Template:Rp As Lewis Tappan put it in his biography of his brother, "[T]he anti-slavery students of Lane Seminary established evening-schools for the adults, and day-schools for the children of the three thousand colored of Cincinnati."<ref name=Arthur/>Template:Rp

Weld continued to Tappan:

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The threat of violenceEdit

Cincinnati was convulsed as never before.<ref name=Mahan/>Template:Rp Rumors circulated during the summer of 1834 about mob violence against the Seminary; the threat of violence had caused Miami University of Ohio to ban the discussion of abolition.<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp Cincinnati, largely pro-Southern,<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp had already experienced the anti-black Cincinnati riot of 1829; and the huge anti-abolition riots in New York in July 1834, which specifically targeted the Tappans, were heavily reported in the Cincinnati newspapers.<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp In 1835, after the whipping of Amos Dresser, a Lane student, in Nashville, newspapers of that city "warn[ed] the leaders of that institution to be cautious how they proceed."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Trustees ban the discussion of abolitionEdit

As Cincinnati businessmen, the members of the school's board of trustees were quite concerned about being associated with such a radical expression of abolitionism, which could have led to a physical attack on the Seminary. "A riot was very [narrowly] averted, probably only because of Lane's summer vacation."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

President Beecher did not want to escalate the matter by overreacting, but when the press began to turn public opinion against the students that summer, he was fundraising in Boston. In his absence, the executive committee of the trustees issued a report ordering the abolishment of the school's antislavery society, stating that "no associations or Societies among the students ought to be allowed in the Seminary except such as have for their immediate object improvement in the prescribed course of studies." They also declared that they had the right to dismiss any student "when they shall think it necessary to do so."<ref name=Vermont/> They further adopted a rule to "discourage...such discussions and conduct among the students as are calculated to divert their attention from their studies", meaning that students were not to discuss abolitionism even when dining<ref name=Statement/>Template:Rp (talking to students while they were eating was specifically prohibited in the Standing Rules enacted by the trustees on October 13, 1834.<ref name=Vermont>Template:Cite news</ref>) The committee underlined their position by dismissing professor John Morgan for taking the side of the students. In October, without waiting for Beecher to return, the board ratified the committee's resolutions.<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp

On his return, Beecher and two professors issued a statement intended to assuage the anger of the students regarding the action of the trustees, but it was regarded by the students as a faculty endorsement of the trustees' action.

The "Lane Rebels" resignEdit

On October 21, most of the students resigned,<ref name=Wooster>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=Dumond>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp as did trustee Asa Mahan (another member of Finney's contingent). (Technically, they requested dismissal from the school, which was granted.) In December they published a pamphlet of 28 pages, published anonymously but written by Weld,<ref name=Abzug/>Template:Rp<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp on "the reasons which induced the students of Lane Seminary, to dissolve their connection with that institution."<ref name=Statement>Template:Cite book</ref> The pamphlet received national attention, as it was reprinted in full in The Liberator.<ref>Template:Cite news Page 2 is at https://www.newspapers.com/clip/39211019/the_liberator/ Template:Webarchive.</ref>

Hostile press reports turned this incorrectly into the expulsion of the students, "in consequence of the dangerous principles they held in relation to slavery."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

The Rebels were a loosely defined group, and different sources give different names and figures. The Statement had 51 signatures, but it adds that "several of our brethren, who coincide with us in sentiment, are not able to affix their names to this document, in consequence of being several hundred miles from the Seminary."<ref name=Statement/>Template:Rp According to Lane, there were 40, including the entirety of Lane's first class, the class of 1836 (which began in 1833).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> There were also prospective students who declined to enroll.<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp Lawrence Lesick, author of the only book on the Lane Rebels, gives a figure of 75, but 19 more had left before the trustees took action, and only 8 students, out of 103, remained at Lane at the beginning of the next term.<ref name=Lesick>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp According to Oberlin, 32 of them enrolled,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> although some others who enrolled at the same time, though not students at Lane, are considered part of the Rebels.<ref name=Wooster/> A few enrolled at other schools, such as Auburn Theological Seminary.

Weld and some other student leaders at Lane — William T. Allan, Weld's collaborator and president of Lane's new anti-slavery society; James A. Thome, a prominent speaker during the debates;<ref name=Letter/> and Henry B. Stanton<ref name=Letter/> — had been threatened with expulsion.<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp Weld did not withdraw until the motion to expel him, which would have been nationally publicized, had been defeated.<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp

The "seminary" at CumminsvilleEdit

About a dozen of the Lane Rebels, as they came to be called, established an informal seminary of their own in 1834–1835, in Cumminsville, Ohio.<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp "We went out, not knowing whither we went. The Lord's hand was with us. Five miles from the seminary we found a deserted brick tavern, with many convenient rooms. Here we rallied. A gentleman of the vicinity offered us all necaessary fuel, a gentleman far off [Lewis Tappan] sent us a thousand dollars, and we set up a seminary of our own and became a law unto ourselves. George Whipple was competent in Hebrew, and William T. Allan in Greek. They were made professors in the intermediate state. It was desirable that we should remain near to Cincinnati for a season, as we were there teaching in evening schools for the colored people of that city."<ref name=Lyman>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp

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At Cumminsville, "the students continued their work in the black community. William T. Allan, Andrew Benton, Marius R. Robinson, Henry B. Stanton, and George Whipple taught in the Sabbath schools. John W. Alvord, Huntington Lyman, Henry B. Stanton, James A. Thome, and Samuel Wells gave lectures twice a week in the black community. The students also alternated in preaching at eight different churches, including two black churches. They helped support Augustus Wattles' teachers in schools, enlisted the cooperation of local black ministers, and kept Weld, now an anti-slavery agent, and Joshua Leavitt informed of local events."<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp

This was the point at which the former Lane students came into contact with John J. Shipherd, founder of the new Oberlin Collegiate Institute, "a college in name only" that had been founded the previous year (1833). "The former Lane students literally took possession of the embryo institution."<ref name=Dumond/>Template:Rp

The conditions of the Lane Rebels' enrollment at OberlinEdit

The students negotiated with Shipherd the installation of Asa Mahan, the Lane trustee who resigned, as Oberlin's president. Oberlin also agreed to hire Morgan, the discharged professor. The trustees would not have the power, as they did at Lane, to meddle in the affairs of professors and students. The most controversial condition insisted on by the Rebels was that Oberlin commit itself to accepting African-American students in general, and the very popular James Bradley in particular, equally. This was agreed to reluctantly, after a "dramatic" vote (4–4, tie broken by chair).<ref name=Lesick/>Template:Rp

The Lane Rebels, with Weld at their head, could insist on these conditions because funding from the Tappans came with them. If the trustees did not agree they would lose this crucial funding, as well as Mahan, Finney, and Shipherd, who threatened to quit.

The conditions of the Rebels set limits, for the first time, on an American college's authority over students and faculty. They also were part of the shift in American antislavery efforts from colonization to abolition; many of the Rebels would become part of Oberlin's cadre of minister–abolitionists.<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp

File:Lane Seminary, Walnut Hills, Cincinnati.jpg

Postcard of Lane Seminary, Walnut Hills, Cincinnati. Late 19th century?

The Seminary after 1834Edit

When the Rebels departed in October 1834, "they left behind them but two seminarians in a theological department that had boasted forty, and only five scholars of the sixty formerly enrolled for the literary curriculum."<ref name=Henry1>Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Rp

"Of the several gloomy years that succeeded the abolition secession, I need only say, that the wonder is, that Lane did not perish. It had few students and little money." <ref name=Pamphlet1>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp "The institution was disgraced and wrecked; it never recovered from the experience."<ref name=Chapman>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp

In 1837 "the seminary had no students", but Beecher went on a recruiting trip and persuaded some to enroll.<ref name=Writers/>Template:Rp

Following the slavery debates, Lane Seminary continued as a "New School" seminary, cooperating with Congregationalists and others in mission and education efforts and involved in social reform movements like abolition, temperance, and Sabbath legislation. The seminary admitted students from other denominations and pursued educational and evangelistic unity among Protestant churches in the West. In 1837 there were 41 students from 15 states, and 4 faculty: Beecher, Calvin Ellis Stowe, Thomas J. Biggs, and Baxter Dickinson.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

After the Civil War, the New School and the Old School Presbyterians had reconciled, and Lane Seminary was reorganized along more conservative Presbyterian lines. In 1910, it became affiliated with the Presbyterian Seminary of the South, and the Seminary continued as a small but respected school, though financial pressures continued to increase. Following a brief period of growth in the 1920s, it became apparent that Lane could no longer survive as an independent school. In 1932 it suspended operations and transferred its library and other resources to McCormick Theological Seminary, in Chicago.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> While a permanent Board of Trustees for Lane Theological Seminary remained in service until the Seminary was legally merged out of existence in 2007,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> the faculty, library collections, and students were transferred to Chicago, and the last remnants of the Cincinnati campus, except for the house of president Lyman Beecher, were destroyed in 1956. A historical marker in front of an automobile dealership at 2820 Gilbert Ave. marks the site of the campus.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Historical re-enactmentsEdit

The Lane Debates have been re-enacted in recent years by historians from Yale University,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> the University of Connecticut, and Oberlin College.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Failed verification

MediaEdit

A movie about the debates, Sons & Daughters of Thunder, was released in December 2019. It is based on a play by Earlene Hawley and Curtis Heeter.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Archival materialEdit

Archival materials of Lane are located at the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Historical markerEdit

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Students who enrolled at LaneEdit

24 of the 40 members of Lane's first theological class were from the Oneida Institute.<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp So far as is known, none of Oneida's African-American students made the move. Those identified conclusively are the following. Those that left with the Lane Rebels (according to the table cited above) and enrolled at Oberlin are marked in bold.

William T. Allan (1810–1882) did not study at Oneida. He met Weld when the latter stayed at his parents' house during his manual labor tour. He attended Centre College but moved to Lane, probably through Weld's influence. He graduated from Oberlin in 1836.<ref name=Myers/>Template:Rp
John Watson Alvord (1807–1880), was one of the five students Weld enrolled to travel Ohio lecturing against slavery. Studied at Oneida; graduated from Oberlin; pastor in Connecticut and Massachusetts; superintendent of the schools of the Freedmen's Bureau, 1866–1870.<ref name=Myers>Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Rp
George Bristol
Charles P. Bush; Michigan politician
Horace Bushnell
Amos Dresser
Alexander Duncan, not to be confused with Alexander Duncan (politician), from Cincinnati
Hiram Foote
Augustus Hopkins †1841<ref name=Lane/>Template:Rp
Russell Jesse Judd
John J. Miter
Joseph Hitchcock Payne
Ezra Abell Poole
Samuel Fuller Porter
Charles Stewart Renshaw
Robert L. Stanton, worked in Lane's print shop<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp
Asa A. Stone, †1835<ref name=Lane/>Template:Rp<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Stone published two lengthy letters reporting on Southern slavery.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Sereno Wright Streeter (1810–1880) graduated from Oberlin and was ordained in 1836. After much organizing work and several ministerial positions, he was professor at Otterbein College from 1857 to 1860.<ref name=Myers/>Template:Rp
James A. Thome, of Kentucky
Calvin Waterbury
Augustus Wattles<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=Myers/>Template:Rp
Edward Weed. "There was a town gathering at Chillicothe on the same day of last week, when Mr. Weed arrived in town on some business; and being known as an abolitionist, some indignities were offered to him—such as shaving his horse, removing the wheels of his wagon, &c.; that Mr. Weed soon after left town, was followed by the mob, his wagon broken to pieces, his horse killed, and at length himself suspended to a tree by a rope of bark, until he was dead."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> (italics in original)
Theodore Dwight Weld
Samuel T. Wells, described as "student monitor-general" on Lane's farm<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp
George Whipple "abandoned his school in Kentucky to study theology and teach elementary courses at the seminary".<ref name=Fletcher/>Template:Rp Later he taught at Oberlin.<ref name=Lane>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp
Hiram Wilson

Notable alumniEdit

Edward H. Allen, Kansas City Mayor
Henry Ward Beecher, 1837
Jonathan Blanchard, abolitionist and founder of Wheaton College
John Gregg Fee, abolitionist and founder of Berea College<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

James C. White<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

ReferencesEdit

Template:Reflist

NotesEdit

Template:Notelist

External linksEdit

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|CitationClass=web }}

Web site for Sons and Daughters of Thunder
Lane Debates - Resources. Oberlin College.
Randy McNutt (September 28, 2003). Lane Seminary propelled anti-slavery movement. The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Lane Seminary, 1841
Lane Seminary, Walnut Hills
Lane Rebels Who Came to Oberlin
Presbyterian Historical Society archives

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Lane Seminary

Contents

InaugurationEdit

The Oneida Institute and LaneEdit

The slavery debatesEdit

BackgroundEdit

The abolition–colonization controversyEdit

The rejection of colonizationEdit

Weld organizes "debates"Edit

The stated topics of the debatesEdit

ParticipantsEdit

Notable people presentEdit

Speakers at the debatesEdit

Sequela (the following events)Edit

After the debatesEdit

Activities in the black communityEdit

The threat of violenceEdit

Trustees ban the discussion of abolitionEdit

The "Lane Rebels" resignEdit

The "seminary" at CumminsvilleEdit

The conditions of the Lane Rebels' enrollment at OberlinEdit

The Seminary after 1834Edit

Historical re-enactmentsEdit

MediaEdit

Archival materialEdit

Historical markerEdit

Students who enrolled at LaneEdit

Notable alumniEdit

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

Further readingEdit

UndatedEdit

Most recent firstEdit

NotesEdit

External linksEdit