161-404: Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe ( / s t oʊ / ; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and abolitionist . She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which depicts the harsh conditions experienced by enslaved African Americans . The book reached an audience of millions as a novel and play, and became influential in
322-491: A lecture against slavery while dressed as a soldier, after which he plunged a sword into a bible containing a bladder of fake blood ( pokeberry juice) that splattered those nearby. On September 9, 1739, a literate slave named Jemmy led a rebellion against South Carolina slaveholders in an event referred to as the Stono Rebellion (also known as Cato's Conspiracy and Cato's Rebellion.) The runaway slaves involved in
483-509: A Los Angeles-based green energy startup focused on modernizing and personalizing home energy monitoring. In 2014, LaunchU announced the creation of an online network in order to build stronger connections between entrepreneurs within the Oberlin College students and alumni network with a focus on attracting younger alumni. The Oberlin student body has a long history of activism and a reputation for being notably liberal. The college
644-459: A black Oberlin student was caught shoplifting two bottles of wine from Gibson's Bakery and Market, a downtown Oberlin business. A scuffle ensued between Oberlin students and Gibson's staff, and the students involved pled guilty to misdemeanor charges. Oberlin faculty and students subsequently staged large demonstrations urging a boycott of Gibson's on the grounds that the store was racist, and Gibson's sued alleging libel and other charges. In June 2019,
805-410: A book had just been published, which Stewart was reading to Shipherd. Oberlin had brought social Christianity to an isolated region of France, just as they hoped to bring to the remote Western Reserve region of northeastern Ohio . Their vision was: A community of Christian families with a Christian school which should be "a center of religious influence and power which should work mightily upon
966-548: A concern for Black civil rights. However, James Stewart advocates a more nuanced understanding of the relationship of abolition and anti-slavery prior to the Civil War: While instructive, the distinction [between anti-slavery and abolition] can also be misleading, especially in assessing abolitionism's political impact. For one thing, slaveholders never bothered with such fine points. Many immediate abolitionists showed no less concern than did other white Northerners about
1127-750: A crime, in 1865. This was a direct result of the Union victory in the American Civil War . The central issue of the war was slavery. Historian James M. McPherson in 1964 defined an abolitionist "as one who before the Civil War had agitated for the immediate, unconditional and total abolition of slavery in the United States". He notes that many historians have used a broader definition without his emphasis on immediacy. Thus he does not include opponents of slavery such as Abraham Lincoln or
1288-602: A doubt that freedom would have foundered in the storm. Indeed it is doubtful whether there would have been any storm. The nation probably would have meekly yielded to the dominion of the slave power , and the Western Hemisphere would have become a den of tyrants and slaves. As it was, we were scarcely saved. Asa Mahan (1799–1889) accepted the position of first president of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute in 1835, simultaneously serving as
1449-510: A famous preacher and abolitionist, Charles Beecher , and Edward Beecher . Harriet enrolled in the Hartford Female Seminary run by her older sister Catharine, where she received a traditional academic education – rather uncommon for women at the time – with a focus in the classics , languages, and mathematics. Among her classmates was Sarah P. Willis, who later wrote under the pseudonym Fanny Fern . In 1832, at
1610-594: A forum at the Oberlin Public Library that attracted over 200 people, including members of the college administration, the Oberlin city council and national press, saw speakers compare the atmosphere of the college to "a gated community". In September 2014, on Rosh Hashanah , Oberlin Students for Free Palestine placed 2,133 black flags in the main square of the campus as a "call to action" in honor of
1771-486: A group exodus of Oneida students, and others from upstate New York, to come to Lane. "Lane was Oneida moved west." This coincided with the emergence of "immediatism": the call for immediate and uncompensated freeing of all slaves, which at the time was a radical idea, and the rejection of "colonization", sending freed slaves to Africa by the American Colonization Society . "The anti-slavery and
SECTION 10
#17327800508381932-601: A lecture tour of Britain and, to make up the royalties that she could not receive there, the Glasgow New Association for the Abolition of Slavery set up Uncle Tom's Offering. According to Daniel R. Vollaro, the goal of the book was to educate Northerners on the realistic horrors of the things that were happening in the South. The other purpose was to try to make people in the South feel more empathetic towards
2093-530: A manual labor school located just outside Cincinnati, were looking for students. Weld visited Cincinnati in 1832, determined that the school would do, got the approval of the Tappans, and by providing recommendations to them took over as de facto head of the Seminary, to the point of choosing the president ( Lyman Beecher , after Finney turned it down) and telling the trustees whom to hire. He organized and led
2254-456: A married woman is nothing at all. She passes out of legal existence. In the 1870s, Stowe's brother Henry Ward Beecher was accused of adultery, and became the subject of a national scandal. Unable to bear the public attacks on her brother, Stowe again fled to Florida but asked family members to send her newspaper reports. Through the affair, she remained loyal to her brother and believed he was innocent. After her return to Connecticut, Mrs. Stowe
2415-474: A married woman ... is, in many respects, precisely similar to that of the negro slave. She can make no contract and hold no property; whatever she inherits or earns becomes at that moment the property of her husband ... Though he acquired a fortune through her, or though she earned a fortune through her talents, he is the sole master of it, and she cannot draw a penny ... [I]n the English common law
2576-639: A missionary among the Cherokees in Mississippi, and at that time residing in Mr. Shipherd's family," who was studying Divinity with Shipherd. The institute was built on 500 acres (2 km ) of land donated by Titus Street, founder of Streetsboro, Ohio , and Samuel Hughes, who lived in Connecticut . Shipherd and Stewert named their project after Alsatian minister Jean-Frédéric Oberlin , about whom
2737-415: A missionary army of Christian soldiers to save the world and inaugurate God's government on earth, and the radical notion that slavery was America's most horrendous sin that should be instantly repented of and immediately brought to an end." Its immediate background was the wave of Christian revivals in western New York State, in which Charles Finney was very much involved. "Oberlin was the offspring of
2898-508: A newer attached building, and was able to raise the substantial funds necessary to restore the house. It is now open to the public. The Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Hartford , Connecticut , is the house where Stowe lived for the last 23 years of her life. It was next door to the house of fellow author Mark Twain . In this 5,000 sq ft (460 m) cottage-style house, there are many of Beecher Stowe's original items and items from
3059-482: A number of hours daily, in which nothing is required of the student." ) He was charged with finding 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." By coincidence, the administrators of new and barely-functioning Lane Seminary ,
3220-445: A pamphlet explaining their decision. A trustee, Asa Mahan , resigned also, and the trustees fired John Morgan, a faculty member who supported the students. A chance encounter with Shipherd, who was travelling around Ohio recruiting students for his new Collegiate Institute, led to the proposal that they come to Oberlin, along with Mahan and the fired Lane professor. They did so, but only after Oberlin agreed to their conditions: "In
3381-493: A political movement is usually dated from 1 January 1831, when Wm. Lloyd Garrison (as he always signed himself) published the first issue of his new weekly newspaper, The Liberator (1831), which appeared without interruption until slavery in the United States was abolished in 1865, when it closed. Abolitionists included those who joined the American Anti-Slavery Society or its auxiliary groups in
SECTION 20
#17327800508383542-405: A principle was far more than just the wish to prevent the expansion of slavery. After 1840, abolitionists rejected this because it let sin continue to exist; they demanded that slavery end everywhere, immediately and completely. John Brown was the only abolitionist to have actually planned a violent insurrection, though David Walker promoted the idea. The abolitionist movement was strengthened by
3703-493: A prominent Bostonian, wrote The Selling of Joseph (1700) in protest of the widening practice of outright slavery as opposed to indentured servitude in the colonies. This is the earliest-recorded anti-slavery tract published in the future United States. Slavery was banned in the colony of Georgia soon after its founding in 1733. The colony's founder, James Edward Oglethorpe , fended off repeated attempts by South Carolina merchants and land speculators to introduce slavery into
3864-730: A sense of protection from their government. Led by Nathaniel Bacon , the unification that occurred between the white lower class and blacks during this rebellion was perceived as dangerous and thus was quashed with the implementation of the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 . Still, this event introduced the premise that blacks and whites could work together towards the goal of self-liberation, which became increasingly prevalent as abolition gained traction within America. The first statement against slavery in Colonial America
4025-448: A slave. According to historian Steven Pincus , many of the colonial legislatures worked to enact laws that would limit slavery. The Provincial legislature of Massachusetts Bay , as noted by historian Gary B. Nash , approved a law "prohibiting the importation and purchase of slaves by any Massachusetts citizen." The Loyalist governor of Massachusetts , Thomas Hutchinson , vetoed the law, an action that prompted angered reaction from
4186-483: A title-page designed by Hammatt Billings . In less than a year, the book sold an unprecedented 300,000 copies. By December, as sales began to wane, Jewett issued an inexpensive edition at 37 + 1 ⁄ 2 cents each to stimulate sales. Sales abroad, as in Britain where the book was a great success, earned Stowe nothing as there was no international copyright agreement in place during that era. In 1853, Stowe undertook
4347-567: A tradition that began at the Oneida Institute of Science and Industry , in Oneida County, New York , near Utica . Oneida was "a hotbed of anti-slavery activity", "abolitionist to the core, more so than any other American college." A fundraising trip to England sought funds for both colleges. Oberlin's anti-slavery activities supplanted those of Oneida, which fell on hard times and closed in 1843. Funding previously provided by
4508-502: A vision of a dying slave during a communion service at Brunswick's First Parish Church, which inspired her to write his story. What also likely allowed her to empathize with slaves was the loss of her eighteen-month-old son, Samuel Charles Stowe. She noted, "Having experienced losing someone so close to me, I can sympathize with all the poor, powerless slaves at the unjust auctions. You will always be in my heart Samuel Charles Stowe." On March 9, 1850, Stowe wrote to Gamaliel Bailey , editor of
4669-597: A year, 300 babies in Boston alone were named Eva (one of the book's characters) , and a play based on the book opened in New York in November. Southerners quickly responded with numerous works of what are now called anti-Tom novels , seeking to portray Southern society and slavery in more positive terms. Many of these were bestsellers, although none matched the popularity of Stowe's work, which set publishing records. After
4830-511: Is a "wealth of primary documents and scholarly works". Robert Samuel Fletcher (class of 1920) published a history in 1943, that is a landmark and the point of departure of all subsequent studies of Oberlin's history. His disciple Geoffrey Blodgett (1953) continued Fletcher's work. "'Oberlin' was an idea before it was a place." It began in revelation and dreams: Yankees' motivation to emigrate west, attempting perfection in God's eyes, "educating
4991-420: Is a fascinating document. It has strong communal overtones, though, in the end, private property is allowed. It is very keen on plain, straight living—no smoking, no chewing [tobacco], no coffee or tea; jewelry and tight dresses are explicitly renounced, as are fancy houses, furniture, and carriages. But the main thrust of the covenant is clearly toward missionary education to save a perishing world. The terms of
Harriet Beecher Stowe - Misplaced Pages Continue
5152-708: Is a member of the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Five Colleges of Ohio consortium. Oberlin College was preceded by Oberlin Institute , founded in 1833. The college's founders wrote voluminously and were featured prominently in the press, especially the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator , in which the name Oberlin occurred 352 times by 1865. Original documents and correspondence survive and are readily available. There
5313-621: Is buried in the historic cemetery at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts , along with her husband and their son Henry Ellis. Multiple landmarks are dedicated to the memory of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and are located in several states including Ohio, Florida, Maine and Connecticut. The locations of these landmarks represent various periods of her life such as her father's house where she grew up and where she wrote her most famous work. The Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati, Ohio ,
5474-491: Is controversial for her support of Elizabeth Campbell, Duchess of Argyll , whose grandfather had been a primary enforcer of the Highland Clearances , the transformation of the remote Highlands of Scotland from a militia-based society to an agricultural one that supported far fewer people. The newly homeless moved to Canada, where very bitter accounts appeared. It was Stowe's assignment to refute them using evidence
5635-638: Is described as "a time for students to pursue interests outside of regular course offerings through immersive learning experiences." Students may work alone or in groups, either on or off campus, and may design their own project or pick from a list of projects and internships set up by the college each year. Students must complete a winter term project three years out of their four in the College of Arts and Sciences. Projects range from serious academic research with co-authorship in scientific journals, humanitarian projects, making films about historic Chicago neighborhoods, and learning how to bartend. A full-credit project
5796-413: Is located on the college campus. Conservatory admission is selective, with over 1400 applicants worldwide auditioning for 120 seats. There are 500 performances yearly, most free of charge, with concerts and recitals almost daily. The Conservatory was one of the recipients of the 2009 National Medal of Arts . The Allen Memorial Art Museum , with over 13,000 holdings, was the first college art museum west of
5957-613: Is part of the restored Dawn Settlement at Dresden, Ontario , which is 20 miles east of Algonac, Michigan . The community for freed slaves founded by the Rev. Josiah Henson and other abolitionists in the 1830s has been restored. There's also a museum. Henson and the Dawn Settlement provided Stowe with the inspiration for Uncle Tom's Cabin . Abolitionism in the United States In the United States, abolitionism ,
6118-711: Is suggested to involve five to six hours per weekday. Created in 2005 as a part of the Northeast Ohio Collegiate Entrepreneurship Program (NEOCEP), a Kauffman Campuses Initiative, and sponsored by the Burton D. Morgan and Ewing Marion Kauffman , the department is focused on supporting and highlighting entrepreneurship within the student body. This is done through a series of classes, symposia, Winter Term programs, grants, and fellowships available at no cost to current students and in some cases, recent alumni. One such opportunity
6279-467: Is the Creativity and Leadership Fellowship, a one-year fellowship for graduating seniors that includes a stipend of up to $ 30,000 to advance an entrepreneurial venture. In 2012, the Creativity and Leadership department announced LaunchU, a business accelerator open to Oberlin College students and alumni who are pursuing an entrepreneurial venture. The selective, three-week intensive program connects
6440-585: Is the former home of her father Lyman Beecher on the former campus of the Lane Seminary. Her father was a preacher who was greatly affected by the pro-slavery Cincinnati Riots of 1836 . Harriet Beecher Stowe lived here until her marriage. It is open to the public and operated as a historical and cultural site, focusing on Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Lane Seminary and the Underground Railroad. The site also presents African-American history. In
6601-447: Is the oldest coeducational college in the United States, having admitted four women in 1837 to its two-year "women's program". These four women, who were the first to enter as full students, were Mary Kellogg (Fairchild), Mary Caroline Rudd, Mary Hosford, and Elizabeth Prall. All but Kellogg graduated. Mary Jane Patterson graduated with honors in 1862, the first black woman to earn a B.A. degree. Soon, women were fully integrated into
Harriet Beecher Stowe - Misplaced Pages Continue
6762-609: The American Revolutionary War and was reorganized in 1784, with Benjamin Franklin as its first president. In 1777, independent Vermont , not yet a state, became the first polity in North America to prohibit slavery: slaves were not directly freed, but masters were required to remove slaves from Vermont. The Constitution included several provisions which accommodated slavery, although none used
6923-737: The Boxer Rebellion . The Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association , an independent foundation, was established in their memory. The Association, with offices on campus, sponsors Oberlin graduates to teach in China, India, and Japan. It also hosts scholars and artists from Asia to spend time on the Oberlin campus. Henry Churchill King became Oberlin's sixth president in 1902. At Oberlin from 1884 onward, he taught in mathematics, philosophy, and theology. Robert K. Carr served as Oberlin College president from 1960 to 1970, during
7084-710: The Lorain County jail. In 1866, James Fairchild became Oberlin's third president, and first alumnus to lead it. A committed abolitionist , Fairchild, at that point chair of theology and moral philosophy, had played a role in the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, hiding fugitive slave John Price in his home. During Fairchild's tenure, the faculty and physical plant of the college expanded dramatically. In 1889, he resigned as president but remained as chair of systematic theology . In 1896, Fairchild returned as acting president until 1898. Oberlin College
7245-642: The Massachusetts courts in freedom suits , spurred on the decision made in the Somerset v. Stewart case, which although not applying the colonies was still received positively by American abolitionists. Boston lawyer Benjamin Kent represented them. In 1766, Kent won a case ( Slew v. Whipple ) to liberate Jenny Slew , a mixed-race woman who had been kidnapped in Massachusetts and then handled as
7406-813: The Oberlin College Conservatory of Music . Despite increasing minority hiring, Starr's tenure was marked by clashes with students over divestment from South Africa and the dismissal of a campus minister, as well as Starr's reframing Oberlin as the "Harvard of the Midwest". A particularly vitriolic clash with students on the front lawn of his home in April 1990 led Starr to take a leave of absence from July 1991 to February 1992. He resigned in March 1993, effective in June of that year. Nancy Dye became
7567-651: The Ohio River was booming, drawing numerous migrants from different parts of the country, including many escaped slaves , bounty hunters seeking them, and Irish immigrants who worked on the state's canals and railroads. In 1829, the ethnic Irish attacked blacks , wrecking areas of the city, trying to push out these competitors for jobs. Beecher met a number of African Americans who had suffered in those attacks, and their experience contributed to her later writing about slavery. Riots took place again in 1836 and 1841 , driven also by native-born anti-abolitionists. Harriet
7728-581: The Ohio Western Reserve . When the Oberlin Collegiate Institute was formed in 1833 the founders did not anticipate including black Americans in the student body. Additionally, the slavery question did not play any part in the college's or colony's establishment. Such matters arose only when Oberlin's trustees agreed to admit the Lane Seminary Rebels from Cincinnati to Oberlin. The Lane Rebels collectively demanded that students at
7889-604: The OhioLINK consortium. In the summer of 2007, the main level of the main library was converted into an Academic Commons that provides integrated learning support and is a hub of both academic and social activity. The college's "Experimental College" or ExCo program, a student-run department, allows any student or interested person to teach their own class for a limited amount of college credit. ExCo classes by definition focus on material not covered by existing departments or faculty. Oberlin's Winter term, occurring each January,
8050-598: The Republican Party ; they called for the immediate end to expansion of slavery before 1861. The religious component of American abolitionism was great. It began with the Quakers , then moved to the other Protestants with the Second Great Awakening of the early 19th century. Many leaders were ministers. Saying slavery was sinful made its evil easy to understand, and tended to arouse fervor for
8211-846: The Underground Railroad , where Oberlin was a stop, as well as to resist the Fugitive Slave Act . One historian called Oberlin "the town that started the Civil War " due to its reputation as a hotbed of abolitionism . In 1858, both students and faculty were involved in the controversial Oberlin–Wellington Rescue of a fugitive slave, which received national press coverage. Two participants in this raid, Lewis Sheridan Leary and John Anthony Copeland , along with another Oberlin resident, Shields Green , also participated in John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry . This heritage
SECTION 50
#17327800508388372-472: The Underground Railroad . This was made illegal by the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 , arguably the most hated and most openly evaded federal legislation in the nation's history. Nevertheless, participants like Harriet Tubman , Henry Highland Garnet , Alexander Crummell , Amos Noë Freeman , and others continued with their work. Abolitionists were particularly active in Ohio , where some worked directly in
8533-595: The United States Constitution did or did not protect slavery. This issue arose in the late 1840s after the publication of The Unconstitutionality of Slavery by Lysander Spooner . The Garrisonians, led by Garrison and Wendell Phillips , publicly burned copies of the Constitution, called it a pact with slavery, and demanded its abolition and replacement. Another camp, led by Lysander Spooner , Gerrit Smith , and eventually Douglass, considered
8694-551: The international slave trade , but South Carolina reversed its decision. Between the Revolutionary War and 1804, laws, constitutions, or court decisions in each of the Northern states provided for the gradual or immediate abolition of slavery. No Southern state adopted similar policies. In 1807, Congress made the importation of slaves a crime, effective January 1, 1808, which was as soon as Article I, section 9 of
8855-549: The transatlantic slave trade . In Colonial America, a few German Quakers issued the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery , which marked the beginning of the American abolitionist movement. Before the Revolutionary War , evangelical colonists were the primary advocates for the opposition to slavery and the slave trade, doing so on the basis of humanitarian ethics. Still, others such as James Oglethorpe ,
9016-521: The upper South , freed slaves, sometimes in their wills. Many noted they had been moved by the revolutionary ideals of the equality of men. The number of free blacks as a proportion of the black population in the upper South increased from less than 1 percent to nearly 10 percent between 1790 and 1810 as a result of these actions. Some slave owners, concerned about the increase in free blacks, which they viewed as destabilizing, freed slaves on condition that they emigrate to Africa . All U.S. states abolished
9177-667: The 13th president of Oberlin College in July 1994, succeeding the embattled Starr. Oberlin's first female president, she oversaw the construction of new buildings, increased admissions selectivity, and helped increase the endowment with the largest capital campaign to that point. Dye was known for her accessibility and inclusiveness. Especially in her early years, she was a regular attendee at football games, concerts, and dorm parties. Dye served as president for nearly 13 years, resigning on June 30, 2007. Marvin Krislov served as president of
9338-793: The 1830s and 1840s, as the movement fragmented. The fragmented anti-slavery movement included groups such as the Liberty Party ; the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society ; the American Missionary Association ; and the Church Anti-Slavery Society . Historians traditionally distinguish between moderate anti-slavery reformers or gradualists, who concentrated on stopping the spread of slavery, and radical abolitionists or immediatists, whose demands for unconditional emancipation often merged with
9499-588: The 1870s and 1880s, Stowe and her family wintered in Mandarin , Florida, now a neighborhood of modern consolidated Jacksonville , on the St. Johns River . Stowe wrote Palmetto Leaves while living in Mandarin, arguably an eloquent piece of promotional literature directed at Florida's potential Northern investors at the time. The book was published in 1873 and describes Northeast Florida and its residents. In 1874, Stowe
9660-483: The 1880s with the fading of evangelical idealism. Nonetheless, Oberlin graduates accounted for a significant percentage of African-American college graduates by the end of the 19th century. One such black alumnus was William Howard Day , who would go on to found Cleveland's first black newspaper, The Aliened American . The college was listed as a National Historic Landmark on December 21, 1965, for its significance in admitting African Americans and women. Oberlin
9821-452: The 2,133 Palestinians who died in the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict . In January 2016, hundreds of Oberlin alumni signed a letter to the Oberlin administration stating that this protest was an example of anti-Semitism on the campus. Oberlin SFP responded with their own letter, detailing why protest of Israel does not constitute anti-semitism. They wrote, "Feeling discomfort because one must confront
SECTION 60
#17327800508389982-596: The 2023-2024 edition of U.S. News & World Report ' s "Best Colleges" ranking. Of Oberlin's nearly 3,000 students, nearly 2,400 are enrolled in the College of Arts & Sciences, a little over 400 in the Conservatory of Music, and the remaining 180 or so in both College and Conservatory under the five-year Double-Degree program. The College of Arts & Sciences offers over 50 majors, minors, and concentrations. Its most popular undergraduate majors, based on 2023 graduates, were: The Conservatory of Music
10143-655: The Alleghenies. The Oberlin College Libraries has branches for art, music, and science, a central storage facility, and the Mary Church Terrell Main Library. The libraries have collections of print and media materials and provide access to various online databases and journals. Beyond the 2.4 million-plus items available on campus, Oberlin students have access to more than 46 million volumes from over 85 Ohio institutions through
10304-493: The Bridge Street African Methodist Episcopal Church , and lived on Duffield Street. His fellow Duffield Street residents Thomas and Harriet Truesdell were leading members of the abolitionist movement. Mr. Truesdell was a founding member of the Providence Anti-slavery Society before moving to Brooklyn in 1838. Harriet Truesdell was also very active in the movement, organizing an anti-slavery convention in Pennsylvania Hall (Philadelphia) . Another prominent Brooklyn-based abolitionist
10465-648: The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1780). The Quaker Quarterly Meeting of Chester, Pennsylvania , made its first protest in 1711. Within a few decades the entire slave trade was under attack, being opposed by such Quaker leaders as William Burling, Benjamin Lay , Ralph Sandiford, William Southby, John Woolman , and Anthony Benezet . Benezet was particularly influential, inspiring a later generation of notable anti-slavery activists, including Granville Sharp , John Wesley , Thomas Clarkson , Olaudah Equiano , Benjamin Franklin , Benjamin Rush , Absalom Jones , and Bishop Richard Allen , among others. Samuel Sewall ,
10626-431: The Constitution allowed. A small but dedicated group, under leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass , agitated for abolition in the mid-19th century. John Brown became an advocate and militia leader in attempting to end slavery by force of arms. In the Civil War, immediate emancipation became a war goal for the Union in 1861 and was fully achieved in 1865. American abolitionism began well before
10787-416: The Constitution to be an anti-slavery document. Using an argument based upon Natural Law and a form of social contract theory, they said that slavery fell outside the Constitution's scope of legitimate authority and therefore should be abolished. Another split in the abolitionist movement was along class lines. The artisan republicanism of Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright stood in stark contrast to
10948-430: The Duchess provided, in Letter XVII Volume 1 of her travel memoir Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands . Stowe was criticized for her seeming defense of the clearances. In 1868, Stowe became one of the first editors of Hearth and Home magazine, one of several new publications appealing to women; she departed after a year. Stowe campaigned for the expansion of married women's rights, arguing in 1869 that: [T]he position of
11109-424: The Lord's work for him lay farther west." Shipherd attempted to convince Finney to accompany him west, which he did in 1835. Oberlin was to be a pious, simple-living community in a sparsely populated area, of which the school, training ministers and missionaries, would be the centerpiece. The Oberlin Collegiate Institute was founded in 1833 by Shipherd and another Presbyterian minister, Philo Stewart, "formerly
11270-424: The Marshall Key family, one of whose daughters was a student at Lane Seminary. It is recorded that Mr. Key took her to see a slave auction, as they were frequently held in Maysville. Scholars believe she was strongly moved by the experience. The Marshall Key home still stands in Washington. Key was a prominent Kentuckian; his visitors also included Henry Clay and Daniel Webster . The Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site
11431-484: The North. In 1835 alone, abolitionists mailed over a million pieces of anti-slavery literature to the South, giving rise to the gag rules in Congress, after the theft of mail from the Charleston, South Carolina , post office, and much back-and-forth about whether postmasters were required to deliver this mail. According to the Postmaster General , they were not. Under the Constitution, the importation of enslaved persons could not be prohibited until 1808 (20 years). As
11592-564: The Oberlin covenant, as summarized by Shipherd, were: Each member of the colony shall consider himself a steward of the Lord, & hold only so much property as he can advantageously manage for the Lord. Everyone, regardless of worldly maxims, shall return to Gospel simplicity of dress, diet, houses, and furniture, all appertaining to him, & be industrious & economical with the view of earning & saving as much as possible, not to hoard up for old age, & for children, but to glorify God in
11753-446: The South, members of the abolitionist movement or other people opposing slavery were often targets of lynch mob violence before the American Civil War . Numerous known abolitionists lived, worked, and worshipped in downtown Brooklyn , from Henry Ward Beecher , who auctioned slaves into freedom from the pulpit of Plymouth Church, to Nathaniel Eggleston, a leader of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society , who also preached at
11914-511: The Underground Railroad. Since only the Ohio River separated free Ohio from slave Kentucky, it was a popular destination for fugitive slaves. Supporters helped them there, in many cases to cross Lake Erie by boat, into Canada. The Western Reserve area of northeast Ohio was "probably the most intensely antislavery section of the country." The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue got national publicity. Abolitionist John Brown grew up in Hudson, Ohio . In
12075-689: The United States and in Great Britain , energizing anti-slavery forces in the American North , while provoking widespread anger in the South . Stowe wrote 30 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential both for her writings as well as for her public stances and debates on social issues of the day. Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut , on June 14, 1811. She
12236-515: The United States was founded as a nation. In 1652, Rhode Island made it illegal for any person, black or white, to be "bound" longer than ten years. The law, however, was widely ignored, and Rhode Island became involved in the slave trade in 1700. The first act of resistance against an upper-class white colonial government from slaves can be seen in Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. Occurring in Virginia,
12397-558: The United States". Oberlin sent forth cadres of minister-abolitionists every year: From this fountain streams of anti-slavery influence began at once to flow. Pamphlets, papers, letters, lecturers and preachers, and school teachers, some five hundred each winter, went forth everywhere preaching the anti-slavery word. It was the influence emanating from this school that saved our country in its great hour of peril. There were thousands of other co-operating influences, but had that which went out from Oberlin been subtracted, there can hardly remain
12558-597: The activities of free African Americans, especially in the Black church , who argued that the old Biblical justifications for slavery contradicted the New Testament . African-American activists and their writings were rarely heard outside the Black community. However, they were tremendously influential on a few sympathetic white people, most prominently the first white activist to reach prominence, Wm. Lloyd Garrison , who
12719-660: The age of 21, Harriet Beecher moved to Cincinnati, Ohio , to join her father, who had become the president of Lane Theological Seminary . There, she also joined the Semi-Colon Club , a literary salon and social club whose members included the Beecher sisters, Caroline Lee Hentz , Salmon P. Chase (future governor of Ohio and United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Abraham Lincoln ), Emily Blackwell , and others. Cincinnati's trade and shipping business on
12880-490: The book almost exactly word for word. This was done unconsciously from memory, the author imagining that she composed the matter as she went along. To her diseased mind the story was brand new, and she frequently exhausted herself with labor that she regarded as freshly created. Mark Twain , a neighbor of Stowe's in Hartford, recalled her last years in the following passage of his autobiography: Her mind had decayed, and she
13041-567: The building-trades, and with the SCLC participated in demonstrations at Hammermill Paper . In 1995, Emeritus Professor of Sociology (1966–2007), James Leo Walsh told The Oberlin Review that students "carried out dozens of protests against the Vietnam war ranging from peaceful picketing to surrounding a local naval recruiter's car". In November 2002, 100 college workers, students, and faculty held
13202-587: The campus is now protected as a National Historic Landmark. The Stowes were ardent critics of slavery and supported the Underground Railroad , temporarily housing several fugitive slaves in their home. One fugitive from slavery, John Andrew Jackson , wrote of hiding with Stowe in her house in Brunswick as he fled to Canada in his narrative titled The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina (London: Passmore & Albaster, 1862). Stowe claimed to have had
13363-428: The case of Commonwealth v. Nathaniel Jennison , reaffirmed the case of Brom and Bett v. Ashley , which held that even slaves were people who had a constitutional right to liberty. This gave freedom to slaves, effectively abolishing slavery. States with a greater economic interest in slaves, such as New York and New Jersey, passed gradual emancipation laws. While some of these laws were gradual, these states enacted
13524-461: The cause. The debate about slavery was often based on what the Bible said or did not say about it. John Brown , who had studied the Bible for the ministry, proclaimed that he was "an instrument of God". As such, abolitionism in the United States was identified by historians as an expression of moralism , it often operated in tandem with another social reform effort, the temperance movement . Slavery
13685-526: The chair of intellectual and moral philosophy and professor of theology . Mahan's strong advocacy of immediatism—the immediate and complete freeing of all slaves—greatly influenced the philosophy of the college. The same year, two years after its founding, the school began admitting African Americans. The college experienced financial distress, and Rev. John Keep and William Dawes were sent to England to raise funds in 1839–40. A nondenominational seminary, Oberlin's Graduate School of Theology (first called
13846-544: The college from 2007 to 2017, moving on to assume the presidency of Pace University . On May 30, 2017, Carmen Twillie Ambar was announced as the 15th president of Oberlin College, becoming the first African-American person and second woman to hold the position. Oberlin's first and only hired trade union expert, Chris Howell, argued that the college engaged in "illegal" tactics to attempt to decertify its service workers' July 1999 vote to become members of United Automobile Workers union. Howell wrote that college workers sought
14007-616: The college was found liable for libel and tortious interference in a lawsuit initiated by the store ; the bakery was awarded damages of $ 44 million by the jury, but a legal cap on damages reduced the award to $ 31.5 million. In October 2019, the college appealed the case to the Ohio District Courts of Appeals in Akron, Ohio. On March 31, 2022, the Court of Appeals unanimously dismissed both appeals, Oberlin and Gibson, upholding
14168-494: The college, and comprised from a third to half of the student body. The religious founders, especially evangelical theologian Charles Grandison Finney , saw women as morally superior to men. Oberlin ceased operating for seven months in 1839 and 1840 due to lack of funds, making it the second-oldest continuously operating coeducational liberal arts college in the United States . Mahan, who was often in conflict with faculty, resigned his position as president in 1850. Replacing him
14329-505: The colonization questions had become exciting ones throughout the whole country, and the students deemed it to be their duty thoroughly to examine them, in view of their bearing upon their future responsibilities as ministers of the gospel." Shortly after their arrival at Lane, the Oneida contingent held a lengthy, well-publicized series of debates, over 18 days during February 1834, on the topic of abolition versus colonization, concluding with
14490-472: The colony. His motivations included tactical defense against Spanish collusion with runaway slaves, and prevention of Georgia's largely reformed criminal population from replicating South Carolina's planter class structure. In 1739, he wrote to the Georgia Trustees urging them to hold firm: If we allow slaves we act against the very principles by which we associated together, which was to relieve
14651-551: The corporate name, "Oberlin College Institute"[,] was chosen. Oberlin was very much a part of the Utopian perfectionist enthusiasm that swept the country in the 1830s. "Shipherd came close to being a Christian communist , and as he traveled about the country signing up recruits for the Oberlin colony, he carried with him a copy of the Oberlin covenant, which each colonist was required to sign." The Oberlin covenant
14812-522: The disposal of the blacks, and that this foul and unnatural crime of holding men in bondage will finally be rooted out from our land." In the 1830s there was a progressive shift in thinking in the North. Mainstream opinion changed from gradual emancipation and resettlement of freed blacks in Africa, sometimes a condition of their manumission , to immediatism: freeing all the slaves immediately and sorting out
14973-707: The distresses. Whereas, now we should occasion the misery of thousands in Africa, by setting men upon using arts to buy and bring into perpetual slavery the poor people who now live there free. In 1737, Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay published All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage: Apostates , which was printed by his friend, Benjamin Franklin. The following year, during the 1738 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in Burlington, New Jersey , Lay gave
15134-612: The end of the 20 years approached, an Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves sailed through Congress with little opposition. President Jefferson signed it, and it went effect on January 1, 1808. In 1820, the Act to Protect the Commerce of the United States and Punish the Crime of Piracy was passed. This law made importing slaves into the United States a death penalty offense . The Confederate States of America continued this prohibition with
15295-513: The endorsement of the former and rejection of the latter. (Although announced as debate, no one spoke in favor of colonization on any of the evenings.) The trustees and administrators of Lane, fearful of violence like the Cincinnati riots of 1829 , prohibited off-topic discussions, even at meals. The Lane Rebels, including almost all of Lane's theological students, among them the entire Oneida contingent, resigned en masse in December, and published
15456-755: The fate of the nation's "precious legacies of freedom". Immediatism became most difficult to distinguish from broader anti-Southern opinions once ordinary citizens began articulating these intertwining beliefs. Nearly all Northern politicians, such as Abraham Lincoln , rejected the "immediate emancipation" called for by the abolitionists, seeing it as "extreme". Indeed, many Northern leaders, including Lincoln, Stephen Douglas (the Democratic nominee in 1860), John C. Frémont (the Republican nominee in 1856), and Ulysses S. Grant married into slave-owning Southern families without any moral qualms. Anti-slavery as
15617-523: The first abolition laws in the entire " New World ". In the State of New York, the enslaved population was transformed into indentured servants before being granted full emancipation in 1827. In other states, abolitionist legislation provided freedom only for the children of the enslaved. In New Jersey, slavery was not fully prohibited until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment . All of
15778-537: The formulation of abolitionist ideology in the United States. The federal government prohibited the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, prohibited the slave trade in the District of Columbia in 1850, outlawed slavery in the District of Columbia in 1862, and, with the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution , made slavery unconstitutional altogether, except as punishment for
15939-579: The founder of the colony of Georgia , also retained political motivations for the removal of slavery. Prohibiting slavery through the 1735 Georgia Experiment in part to prevent Spanish partnership with Georgia's runaway slaves, Oglethorpe eventually revoked the act in 1750 after the Spanish's defeat in the Battle of Bloody Marsh eight years prior. During the Revolutionary era, all states abolished
16100-467: The general public. American abolitionists were cheered by the decision in Somerset v Stewart (1772), which prohibited slavery in the United Kingdom, though not in its colonies. In 1774, the influential Fairfax Resolves called for an end to the "wicked, cruel and unnatural" Atlantic slave trade . One of the first articles advocating the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery
16261-581: The growing American debate over slavery and marked an increase in violence against abolitionists in the United States. Oberlin College Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio , United States. Founded in 1833, it is the oldest coeducational liberal arts college in the United States and the second-oldest continuously operating coeducational institute of higher learning in
16422-539: The home of a Jewish professor at Oberlin was vandalized and a note that read "Gas Jews Die" was left on his front door. Oberlin came under federal investigation in late 2023 by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights for alleged breach of Title VI, which protects students from discrimination because of their religion. The focus of the investigation was on past statements of Professor Mohammad Jafar Mahallati , which some viewed as antisemitic. In 2016,
16583-425: The jury verdict and Judge Miraldi's decisions. The Supreme Court of Ohio chose to not accept the appeal and cross-appeal on August 29, 2022. In December 2022, Oberlin College paid Gibson's Bakery $ 36.59 million, the entire amount due. "We hope that the end of the litigation will begin the healing of our entire community", said the college. Oberlin was ranked tied for the 51st-best national liberal arts college in
16744-662: The little woman who wrote the book that started this great war", but this story has been found to be apocryphal. Her own accounts are vague, including the letter reporting the meeting to her husband: "I had a real funny interview with the President." Stowe purchased property near Jacksonville, Florida . In response to a newspaper article in 1873, she wrote, "I came to Florida the year after the war and held property in Duval County ever since. In all this time I have not received even an incivility from any native Floridian." Stowe
16905-452: The movement that sought to end slavery in the country , was active from the colonial era until the American Civil War , the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery, except as punishment for a crime , through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified 1865). The anti-slavery movement originated during the Age of Enlightenment , focused on ending
17066-601: The national movement toward integration by more than a half century. The marker commemorating the Stowe family is located across the street from the former site of their cottage. It is on the property of the Community Club, at the site of a church where Stowe's husband once served as a minister. The Church of our Saviour is an Episcopal Church founded in 1880 by a group of people who had gathered for Bible readings with Professor Calvin E. Stowe and his famous wife. The house
17227-543: The organization of Wesleyan Methodist Connection by Orange Scott in 1843, and the formation of the Free Methodist Church by Benjamin Titus Roberts in 1860 (which is reflected in the name of Church). The True Wesleyan a periodical founded by Orange Scott and Jotham Horton was used to disseminate abolitionist views. The Methodist and Quaker branches of Christianity played an integral part in
17388-547: The other states north of Maryland began gradual abolition of slavery between 1781 and 1804, based on the Pennsylvania model and by 1804, all the Northern states had passed laws to gradually or immediately abolish it. Some slaves continued in involuntary, unpaid "indentured servitude" for two more decades, and others were moved south and sold to new owners in slave states . Some individual slaveholders, particularly in
17549-403: The participants with other entrepreneurs and business leaders chosen from the surrounding northeast Ohio region as well as the extensive Oberlin College alumni network. LaunchU culminates in a public pitch competition before a guest panel of investors, where the participants have the opportunity to be awarded up to $ 15,000 in funding. The winner of the 2014 LaunchU pitch competition was Chai Energy,
17710-451: The people they were forcing into slavery. The book's emotional portrayal of the effects of slavery on individuals captured the nation's attention. Stowe showed that slavery touched all of society, beyond the people directly involved as masters, traders and slaves. Her novel added to the debate about abolition and slavery, and aroused opposition in the South. In the South, Stowe was depicted as out of touch, arrogant, and guilty of slander. Within
17871-492: The perspective of the slave, recognizing their agency and subsequent humanity as cause for self-liberation. Slave revolts following the Stono Rebellion were a present mode of abolition undertaken by slaves and were an indicator of black agency that brewed beneath the surface of the abolitionist movement for decades and eventually sprouted later on through figures such as Frederick Douglass, an escaped black freeman who
18032-525: The philanthropist brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan was transferred to Oberlin. Oberlin became the new "academic powder keg for abolitionism." Oneida was founded by George Washington Gale , of whom Oberlin President Charles Grandison Finney was a disciple. The institute's second and final President, Beriah Green , moved to Oneida after he proved too abolitionist for Western Reserve College , Oberlin's early competitor in
18193-517: The politics of prominent elite abolitionists such as industrialist Arthur Tappan and his evangelist brother Lewis . While the former pair opposed slavery on a basis of solidarity of "wage slaves" with "chattel slaves", the Whiggish Tappans strongly rejected this view, opposing the characterization of Northern workers as "slaves" in any sense. (Lott, 129–130) Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting
18354-469: The problems later. This change was in many cases sudden, a consequence of the individual's coming in direct contact with the horrors of American slavery, or hearing of them from a credible source. As it was put by Amos Adams Lawrence , who witnessed the capture and return to slavery of Anthony Burns , "we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists." The American beginning of abolitionism as
18515-562: The realities of Operation Protective Edge carried out in the name of the safety of the Jewish people does not amount to anti-Semitism." In early 2016, an Oberlin professor, Joy Karega, suggested Israel was behind 9/11 and blamed it for the Charlie Hebdo attacks and for ISIS , prompting a rebuke from faculty and administration. After five-and-a-half months of discussion, the school suspended and then fired her. The following week,
18676-534: The rebellion saw European indentured servants and African people (of indentured, enslaved , and free negroes ) band together against William Berkeley because of his refusal to fully remove Native American tribes in the region. At the time, Native Americans in the region were hosting raids against lower-class settlers encroaching on their land after the Third Powhatan War (1644–1646), which left many white and black indentured servants and slaves without
18837-484: The revivals of 1830, '31, and '32." Oberlin founder John Jay Shipherd was an admirer of Finney, and visited him in Rochester, New York , when en route to Ohio for the first time. Finney invited Shipherd to stay with him as an assistant, but Shipherd "felt that he had his own important part to play in bringing on the millennium, God's triumphant reign on Earth. Finney's desires were one thing, but Shipherd believed that
18998-502: The revolt intended to reach Spanish-controlled Florida to attain freedom, but their plans were thwarted by white colonists in Charlestown, South Carolina. The event resulted in 25 colonists and 35 to 50 African slaves killed, as well as the implementation of the 1740 Negro Act to prevent another slave uprising. In her book, "The Slave's Cause" by Manisha Sinha, Sinha considers the Stono Rebellion to be an important act of abolition from
19159-504: The salvation of men: And that no one need to be tempted to hoard up, the colonists (as members of one body, of which Christ is the head), mutually pledge that they will provide in all respects for the widowed, orphan, & all the needy as well as for themselves & households. With the noble exception of the Oneida Institute in the state of New York, which, in the midst of persecution, has stood erect and preeminently true to
19320-544: The seminary have the right to freely debate antislavery issues, and that the seminary's faculty members manage the affairs of the institution. The charismatic Theodore Dwight Weld , after three years (1827–1830) studying with Gale at Oneida, was hired by the new Society for Promoting Manual Labor in Literary Institutions , a project of the Tappans. (By "literary institutions" what is meant is non-religious schools, as in "In every literary institution there are
19481-500: The sentence of death and prohibited the import of slaves. In 1830, most Americans were, at least in principle, opposed to slavery. However, opponents of slavery deliberated on how to end the institution, as well as what would become of the slaves once they were free. As put in The Philanthropist : "If the chain of slavery can be broken, ... we may cherish the hope ... that proper means will be devised for
19642-502: The slave, mighty in its free testimony, and terrible to the oppressor, the Institution of Oberlin is the only one in the United States in which the black and colored student finds a home, where he is fully and joyously regarded as a man and a brother. The Lane Rebels are commonly mentioned in the early history of Oberlin. These original Oberlin students, who had little to do with Lane other than walking out on it, were carrying on
19803-605: The slaves of masters who failed to register them with the state, along with the "future children" of enslaved mothers. Those enslaved in Pennsylvania before the 1780 law went into effect were not freed until 1847. Massachusetts took a much more radical position. In 1780, during the Revolution, Massachusetts ratified its constitution and included within it a clause that declared all men equal. Based upon this clause, several freedom suits were filed by enslaved African Americans living in Massachusetts. In 1783, its Supreme Court, in
19964-529: The start of the Civil War , Stowe traveled to the capital, Washington, D.C., where she met President Abraham Lincoln on November 25, 1862. Stowe's daughter, Hattie, reported, "It was a very droll time that we had at the White house I assure you ... I will only say now that it was all very funny – and we were ready to explode with laughter all the while." What Lincoln said is a minor mystery. Her son later reported that Lincoln greeted her by saying, "so you are
20125-490: The student body by tripling the enrollment of minorities at the college. He recruited and hired the first four African-American athletic coaches at a predominantly white American college or university, including Tommie Smith , the gold medalist sprinter from the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City . In 1970, Oberlin made the cover of Life as one of the first colleges in the country to have co-ed dormitories. Fuller
20286-671: The summer of 1835, they all arrived in Oberlin—President Mahan, Father Finney, Professor Morgan, the Lane rebels, the first black students, and the Tappans' money." The Oberlin Anti-Slavery Society, calling for "immediate emancipation", was founded in June 1835. The names of Shipherd, Mahan, and Finney are first on its founding document, followed by names of the Oneida contingent. Oberlin replaced Oneida as "the hot-bed of Abolitionism", "the most progressive college in
20447-424: The surrounding country and the world—a sort of missionary institution for training laborers for the work abroad"—the school to be conducted on the manual labor system , and to be open to both young men and young women. It was not proposed to establish a college but simply an academy for instruction in English and useful languages; and, if providence should favor it, in "practical Theology". In accordance with this plan
20608-446: The time period. In the research library, which is open to the public, there are numerous letters and documents from the Beecher family. The house is open to the public and offers house tours on the hour. In 1833, during Stowe's time in Cincinnati , the city was afflicted with a serious cholera epidemic. To avoid illness, Stowe made a visit to Washington, Kentucky , a major community of the era just south of Maysville . She stayed with
20769-542: The topic. The result was a mass exodus of the Lane students , together with a supportive trustee and a professor, who moved as a group to the new Oberlin Collegiate Institute after its trustees agreed, by a close and acrimonious vote, to accept students regardless of "race", and to allow discussions of any topic. It was in the literary club at Lane that she met Rev. Calvin Ellis Stowe , a widower who
20930-462: The transatlantic slave trade by 1798. South Carolina , which had abolished the slave trade in 1787, reversed that decision in 1803. In the American South , freedom suits were rejected by the courts, which held that the rights in the state constitutions did not apply to African Americans . The formation of Christian denominations that heralded abolitionism as a moral issue occurred, such as
21091-556: The tumultuous period of student activism. Under his presidency, the school's physical plant added 15 new buildings. Under his leadership, student involvement in college affairs increased, with students serving on nearly all college committees as voting members (including the board of trustees). Despite these accomplishments, Carr clashed repeatedly with the students over the Vietnam War , and he left office in 1969 with history professor Ellsworth C. Clayton becoming acting president. Carr
21252-527: The undergraduate Theological Department), was established alongside the college in 1833. In 1965, the board of trustees voted to discontinue graduate instruction in theology at Oberlin, and in September 1966, six faculty members and 22 students merged with the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University . Oberlin's role as an educator of African-American students prior to the Civil War and thereafter
21413-537: The union's representation in response to the administration's effort to "speed up work" to meet a "mounting budget crisis". In February 2013, the college received significant press concerning its so-called "No Trespass List", a secret list maintained by the college of individuals barred from campus without due process. Student activists and members of the surrounding town joined to form the One Town Campaign, which challenged this policy. On February 13, 2013,
21574-399: The weekly anti-slavery journal The National Era , that she planned to write a story about the problem of slavery: "I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak ... I hope every woman who can write will not be silent." Shortly after in June 1851, when she was 40, the first installment of Uncle Tom's Cabin
21735-703: The word. Passed unanimously by the Congress of the Confederation in 1787, the Northwest Ordinance forbade slavery in the Northwest Territory , a vast area (the future Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin) in which slavery had been legal, but population was sparse. The first state to begin a gradual abolition of slavery was Pennsylvania, in 1780. All importation of slaves was prohibited, but none were freed at first, only
21896-500: The world. The Oberlin Conservatory of Music is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States. In 1835, Oberlin became one of the first colleges in the United States to admit African Americans, and in 1837, the first to admit women (other than Franklin College 's brief experiment in the 1780s). It has been known since its founding for progressive student activism. The College of Arts & Sciences offers more than 60 majors, minors, and concentrations. Oberlin
22057-461: Was Rev. Joshua Leavitt , trained as a lawyer at Yale, who stopped practicing law in order to attend Yale Divinity School , and subsequently edited the abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator and campaigned against slavery, as well as advocating other social reforms. In 1841, Leavitt published The Financial Power of Slavery , which argued that the South was draining the national economy due to its reliance on enslaved workers. In 2007, Duffield Street
22218-406: Was a pathetic figure. She wandered about all the day long in the care of a muscular Irish woman. Among the colonists of our neighborhood the doors always stood open in pleasant weather. Mrs. Stowe entered them at her own free will, and as she was always softly slippered and generally full of animal spirits, she was able to deal in surprises, and she liked to do it. She would slip up behind a person who
22379-689: Was a popular orator and essayist for the abolitionist cause. The struggle between Georgia and South Carolina led to the first debates in Parliament over the issue of slavery, occurring between 1740 and 1742. Rhode Island Quakers, associated with Moses Brown , were among the first in America to free slaves. Benjamin Rush was another leader, as were many Quakers. John Woolman gave up most of his business in 1756 to devote himself to campaigning against slavery along with other Quakers. Between 1764 and 1774, seventeen enslaved African Americans appeared before
22540-450: Was a professor of Biblical Literature at the seminary. The two married at the Seminary on January 6, 1836. The Stowes had seven children, including twin daughters. The Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 , prohibiting assistance to fugitives and strengthening sanctions even in free states. At the time, Stowe had moved with her family to Brunswick, Maine , where her husband was now teaching at Bowdoin College . Their home near
22701-402: Was also attacked, to a lesser degree, as harmful on economic grounds. Evidence was that the South, with many enslaved African Americans on plantations , was definitely poorer than the North, which had few. The institution remained solid in the South, and that region's customs and social beliefs evolved into a strident defense of slavery in response to the rise of a growing anti-slavery stance in
22862-547: Was also influenced by the Lane Debates on Slavery . The biggest event ever to take place at Lane, it was the series of debates held on 18 days in February 1834, between colonization and abolition defenders, decisively won by Theodore Weld and other abolitionists. Elisabeth attended most of the debates. Her father and the trustees, afraid of more violence from anti-abolitionist whites, prohibited any further discussions of
23023-640: Was among the founders of the Hartford Art School, which later became part of the University of Hartford . Following the death of her husband, Calvin Stowe, in 1886, Harriet started rapidly to decline in health. By 1888, The Washington Post reported that as a result of dementia the 77-year-old Stowe started writing Uncle Tom's Cabin over again. She imagined that she was engaged in the original composition, and for several hours every day she industriously used pen and paper, inscribing passages of
23184-464: Was commemorated on campus by the 1977 installation of sculptor Cameron Armstrong's "Underground Railroad Monument", a railroad track rising from the ground toward the sky, and monuments to the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue and the Harper's Ferry Raid, which followed an 1841 incident in which a group of "fanatical abolition anarchists" from Oberlin, using saws and axes, freed two captured fugitive slaves from
23345-601: Was constructed in 1883 which contained the Stowe Memorial stained glass window , created by Louis Comfort Tiffany . The Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Brunswick, Maine , is where Stowe lived when she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. Her husband was teaching theology at nearby Bowdoin College , and she regularly invited students from the college and friends to read and discuss the chapters before publication. Future Civil War general, and later Governor, Joshua Chamberlain
23506-510: Was deep in dreams and musings and fetch a war whoop that would jump that person out of his clothes. And she had other moods. Sometimes we would hear gentle music in the drawing-room and would find her there at the piano singing ancient and melancholy songs with infinitely touching effect. Modern researchers now speculate that at the end of her life she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease . Harriet Beecher Stowe died on July 1, 1896, in Hartford, Connecticut , 17 days after her 85th birthday. She
23667-423: Was famed abolitionist and preacher Charles Grandison Finney, a professor at the college since its founding, who served until 1866. At the same time, the institute was renamed Oberlin College , and in 1851 received a charter with that name. Under Finney's leadership, Oberlin's faculty and students increased their abolitionist activity. They participated with the townspeople in efforts to assist fugitive slaves on
23828-446: Was forced to resign in 1970. Oberlin (and Princeton ) alumnus Robert W. Fuller 's commitment to educational reform—which he had already demonstrated as a Trinity College dean—led his alma mater to make him its tenth president in November 1970. At 33 years old, Fuller became one of the youngest college presidents in U.S. history. During his Oberlin presidency—a turbulent time at Oberlin and in higher education generally—Fuller reshaped
23989-637: Was given the name Abolitionist Place , and the Truesdells' home at 227 Duffield received landmark status in 2021. Abolitionists nationwide were outraged by the murder of white abolitionist and journalist Elijah Parish Lovejoy by a proslavery mob in Alton, Illinois on 7 November 1837. Six months later, Pennsylvania Hall , an abolitionist venue in Philadelphia , was burnt to the ground by another proslavery mob on May 17, 1838. Both events contributed to
24150-427: Was honored by the governor of Florida as one of several northerners who had helped Florida's growth after the war. In addition to her writings inspiring tourists and settlers to the area, she helped establish a church and a school, and she helped promote oranges as a major state crop through her own orchards. The school she helped establish in 1870 was an integrated school in Mandarin for children and adults. This predated
24311-410: Was its most effective propagandist. Garrison's efforts to recruit eloquent spokesmen led to the discovery of ex-slave Frederick Douglass , who eventually became a prominent activist in his own right. Eventually, Douglass would publish his own widely distributed abolitionist newspaper, North Star . In the early 1850s, the American abolitionist movement split into two camps over the question of whether
24472-437: Was prominent in sending Christian missionaries abroad. In 1881, students at Oberlin formed the Oberlin Band to journey as a group to remote Shanxi province in China. A total of 30 members of the Oberlin Band worked in Shanxi as missionaries over the next two decades. Ten died of disease, and in 1900, fifteen of the Oberlin missionaries, including wives and children, were killed by Boxers or Chinese government soldiers during
24633-500: Was published in serial form in the newspaper The National Era . She originally used the subtitle "The Man That Was a Thing", but it was soon changed to "Life Among the Lowly". Installments were published weekly from June 5, 1851, to April 1, 1852. For the newspaper serialization of her novel, Stowe was paid $ 400. Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in book form on March 20, 1852, by John P. Jewett with an initial print run of 5,000 copies. Each of its two volumes included three illustrations and
24794-449: Was ranked among The Princeton Review 's list of "Colleges with a Conscience" in 2005. In the 1960s, Memorial Arch became a rallying point for the college's civil rights activists and its anti-war movement. Oberlin supplied a disproportionate number of participants in Mississippi Freedom Summer, rebuilt the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in the Carpenters for Christmas project, supported NAACP sponsored sit-ins in Cleveland to integrate
24955-441: Was significant. In 1844, Oberlin Collegiate Institute graduated its first black student, George Boyer Vashon , who later became one of the founding professors of Howard University and the first black lawyer admitted to the Bar in New York State. The college's treatment of African Americans was inconsistent. Although intensely anti-slavery, and admitting black students from 1835, the school began segregating its black students by
25116-400: Was succeeded by the longtime Dean of the Conservatory, Emil Danenberg , who served as president from 1975 to 1982, and died in office. In 1983, following a nationwide search, Oberlin hired S. Frederick Starr , an expert on Russian and Eurasian affairs and skilled musician, as its 12th president. Starr's academic and musical accomplishments boded well for his stewardship of both the college and
25277-462: Was the sixth of 11 children born to outspoken Calvinist preacher Lyman Beecher . Her mother was his first wife, Roxana (Foote), a deeply religious woman who died when Stowe was only five years old. Roxana's maternal grandfather was General Andrew Ward of the Revolutionary War . Harriet's siblings included a sister, Catharine Beecher , who became an educator and author, as well as brothers who became ministers, including Henry Ward Beecher , who became
25438-411: Was then a student at the college and later described the setting. "On these occasions," Chamberlain noted, "a chosen circle of friends, mostly young, were favored with the freedom of her house, the rallying point being, however, the reading before publication, of the successive chapters of her Uncle Tom's Cabin , and the frank discussion of them." In 2001, Bowdoin College purchased the house, together with
25599-429: Was to stop slavery within the Quaker community, where 70% of Quakers owned slaves between 1681 and 1705. It acknowledged the universal rights of all people. While the Quaker establishment did not take action at that time, the unusually early, clear, and forceful argument in the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery initiated the spirit that finally led to the end of slavery in the Society of Friends (1776) and in
25760-419: Was written by Thomas Paine . Titled "African Slavery in America", it appeared on 8 March 1775 in the Postscript to the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser . The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage (Pennsylvania Abolition Society) was the first American abolition society, formed 14 April 1775, in Philadelphia, primarily by Quakers. The society suspended operations during
25921-402: Was written in 1688 by the Religious Society of Friends . On 18 February 1688, Francis Daniel Pastorius , the brothers Derick and Abraham op den Graeff and Gerrit Hendricksz of Germantown, Pennsylvania , drafted the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery , a two-page condemnation of slavery, and sent it to the governing bodies of their Quaker church. The intention of the document
#837162