About all that I knew of Antioch, before I went West, was this,--that it
was a college for the instruction of both sexes. I would like to have my
readers know more of Antioch than I did, and to feel, without seeing it,
the same intense interest that warms me now. They have heard of Oberlin,
I suppose,--heard of it as a sort of fanatical way-station between the
district school and Harvard University, where men, women, and "colored
people" are all taught together. If I should show them what Oberlin has
actually _done_, I think they may see more plainly what it is possible
for Antioch to do: so I shall begin with some account of this college,
which has "saved the North-west."
It is no idle boast: and, when I had stayed a week at Antioch, and was
thoroughly roused to a sense of its immense importance; when I had seen
how admirably fitted was Dr. Hosmer for the work given him to do,--I
decided this in my own mind; namely, that if any one thing had stood in
the way of Antioch hitherto, if any thing had prevented her complete
work, it was the Eastern prejudice, the idea that men and women could
not be educated together. And, as they had been trying this experiment
at Oberlin for thirty-two years, I thought I would go there, and see how
it had worked. If I had known then, what I know now, that out of the
bosom of Oberlin twenty-two colleges had sprung, and that, of the
twenty-two, ten are at this moment officered by her own graduates, I
think I might have spared myself the trouble. Here are their names; for
you will care more for Oberlin, if you get some glimpse of the work she
has done, before I tell you the details of her story. I have put an
asterisk against the names of the colleges whose presidents are
graduates of Oberlin. All of those named receive pupils of both sexes.
_Ohio._--Baldwin University, Berea, three colleges and one
university, 326 pupils, 1846; Heidelberg College, Tiffin; Antioch
College, Yellow Springs; Mount Union College, Alliance; Otterbein
College, Westerville, a Gallery of Fine Arts forming, 360 students.
_Michigan._--*Olivet College, 308 pupils; *Hillsdale College, 609
pupils; *Albion College; *Adrian College, with an endowment of
$300,000.
_Wisconsin._--Madison University; *Ripon College, 87 pupils.
_Illinois._--Wheaton College, 219 pupils; Lombard University.
_Indiana._--*Union Christian College, Mecom, 115 graduates.
_Minnesota._--*Northfield College.
_New York._--Genesee College, Lima; Elmira College.
_Kentucky._--Berea College.
_Kansas._--State University, Lawrence; Lincoln College, Topeka;
Baker University.
_Iowa._--Grenell College; *Tabor College, 192 pupils.
To these we may add Oberlin herself, with 1,145 pupils for the term
which has just closed, and the prospect of a college in Missouri, which
her president has recently been solicited to organize. Wherever I have
obtained the catalogues of 1866, I have recorded the present number of
students in these colleges. To those I have not marked, it will be fair
to allow an average of 210 students. Those are not high schools, be it
understood, but colleges in the proper sense. There is no doubt, that
Oberlin, as the principal educational influence in Ohio, imposed upon
Antioch and all other "Christian" colleges the necessity of educating
both sexes.
In 1832, Oberlin was a little religious colony, born into a complete
wilderness out of the Presbyterian Church. The plan of the colony
involved a school, for which a tract of five hundred acres was given.
The sale of the remainder of a tract of six thousand acres furnished a
small fund with which to begin teaching. A year later, the students of
Lane Seminary determined to hold an antislavery prayer meeting. The
trustees forbade it. "You are right," said old Dr. Beecher, when the
mutinous lads appealed to him,--"you are right; but we are too weak to
hold Lane Seminary on antislavery principles. Go and make it possible
for us." They went--Theodore Weld and Henry B. Stanton among them--to
speak the truth at Oberlin. Arthur Tappan called from the Broadway
Tabernacle the man who had been in the front of the great awakening
which has swept through the land, instinct in every fibre of his being
with the spirit of aggressive Christian work. "Go," he wrote to
President Finney,--"go and teach the young men whom Lane refuses." One
hundred thousand dollars was pledged by the merchants. Oberlin studied
in summer that her pupils might teach all winter. So, promising to
return to New York for the winter seasons, President Finney found his
way, one muddy spring morning, to Oberlin. What he found there was two
frame-houses in the midst of the forest, and half a dozen log-cabins. He
found also his sixty students.
Very soon they had no end of difficulties to contend with. A jealous
college, that had wanted Dr. Finney for its president, did its best to
break down Oberlin. The crash of 1837 came; and Arthur Tappan, and the
rest who had not paid out capital, ceased to pay interest. It was
necessary to raise $50,000, and President Finney went to England and did
it. Every man's hand was against them. The cross-roads were ornamented
with pictures of fugitive slaves, pursued by lions and tigers, and
running in the direction of Oberlin. But when Oberlin became a station
on the underground railroad, and the slave-hunters actually came there
after their chattels, the case altered. The neighborhood took part with
the college, as if by miraculous conversion, and the offensive pictures
disappeared. Then a thousand scholarships were instituted, at $100 each.
Some were perpetual; some for six, eight, or ten years. On the interest
of this investment the college now lives. The scholarships, as they fall
in, increase its means. It costs $15,000 per annum, and $15 is the
student's yearly fee. He rents his scholarship of a broker in the town.
The college is managed with exquisite economy, and the most perfect
attention to essential neatness.
For twenty years the college sent out into the West five hundred
antislavery pupils yearly, to take the post of teachers, ministers,
editors, and lawyers. They were heretics, so they were pushed farther
and farther West. For the last fifteen years, it has sent out a thousand
yearly. In all, twenty-five thousand men and women have gone out from
her bosom, who have eaten and drank and recited at the same board with
the colored man. Through all her pecuniary troubles, her original
teachers have stayed by her, have given up all else for her sake; and
President Finney has never been without a colored student at his table.
There are two large churches in the town; for a population of four
thousand persons has grown up to supply the wants of the college, which
has the great advantage of still retaining the services of those who
originally created it. Last year, Dr. Finney, now nearly eighty years
old, resigned his position as president, but still remains at the head
of the Theological School. I had always thought Oberlin bigoted to
evangelical ways. I did not find it so. I was made as welcome to
cross-question classes as if I had been an ordained graduate of their
own. All theological teaching is done by discussion; and the fact that
the colleges which have grown up under her graduates are of all
persuasions, from the Methodist to the Christian, will show that
doctrine is not urged. In all the recitation-rooms, questions were
freely asked by both sexes; and this questioning is encouraged by all
the professors but one, a young man from Yale. "Yes," said President
Fairchild, himself a graduate of Oberlin, when I had pointed this out;
"yes, that is what remains of New-England stiffness. Six months will
convert him: we shall let him take his own time." I have never seen any
thing like the enthusiasm this college inspires in those who labor for
it. Would that I could see a man bred at Harvard with the same patient
fire in his soul as President Finney! As I knelt by his side morning and
evening, I felt that under his ministry the very _stones_ must cry out.
The twenty-five thousand men sent out from Oberlin did not go out as
citizens merely, but as _teachers_. I was not surprised to find, that, a
few months before the Proclamation of Emancipation, a letter had gone to
Washington, from President Finney, entreating Mr. Lincoln to "recognize
the hand of the Lord in this matter." In Oberlin, it is believed to have
substantially modified the proclamation. Oberlin sent eight hundred and
fifty men into the field during the rebellion. Professor Peck, our
minister to Hayti, is the man who was once imprisoned by slave-hunters
in Cleveland jail. An indignant mass-meeting was held in that city. Six
hundred sabbath-school children went from Oberlin to greet their
imprisoned superintendent, and the prosecuting attorney thought it best
to give up the case. Professor Monroe, married to a daughter of
President Finney, is our consul at Rio, and is well known as a
controlling political power in Ohio. One of the faculty headed the first
Oberlin regiment; a graduate of the Theological School, the second;
Colonel Cooper, of the third, who went through with Sherman, is still
doing antislavery work in Arkansas; and the present Governor of Ohio,
Major-General Cox, also married to a daughter of Mr. Finney, has a
record so brilliant, that it demands a volume in itself.
During the war, the college realized one unexpected advantage from the
presence of women. The female pupils kept the college working! In the
original constitution of Oberlin, it was stated that its main object was
"to diffuse pure religion throughout the Mississippi Valley, and to
elevate the female character." To both these objects it has been
religiously faithful. In the Ladies' Library Room I saw a picture of
Camp Dennison. It was drawn by one of the graduates; was sent from camp
to college, with the inscription beneath, "From the boys at Camp
Dennison to the girls of '61,--the dearest girls in all the world." It
was not put out of sight, but proudly shown to me. I have never been in
any educational institution where the interests of the _pupils_ so
evidently rule. The vacation comes in winter, that the pupils may pass
it in teaching; but the professors do not then take a vacation. They
open a winter school, where students who are behindhand may make up
deficiencies. I do not mean that all the pupils go through the entire
college course: many cannot afford it. They stay as long as they can,
and go reluctantly away.
They follow the fashions at Oberlin: the Continental pronunciation took
possession of the Greek and Latin class-rooms last year. They employ
undergraduates to teach the preparatory students at thirty cents an
hour. The common or town school has 830 pupils, 180 of whom are colored.
In the college, the colored pupils are 5 to 100, and the female pupils
40 out of 50. There are scarcely any rules. The few that are printed are
enforced as friendly advice. President Finney says he has often known a
year to pass without an opportunity for a presidential admonition. The
management of the girls seems to me admirable. The teachers _feel_ no
doubt of their method; therefore they show none. Once a fortnight the
lady principal meets the ladies, and talks with them privately on all
questions of womanly habits and manners. The splendid endowment of
Vassar College could not give to Oberlin a woman better suited to this
purpose than Mrs. Dascomb. Once a week there is a religious meeting.
The college has just now the brightest prospects. Its old buildings were
far less convenient than those at Antioch; but at a late Commencement an
appeal was made, and by a spasmodic response, like that which recently
gave us $30,000 for Meadville, the graduates subscribed as much for a
new "Ladies' Hall." The contracts were made before the war, the expenses
managed with scrupulous prudence; and now a beautiful brick building,
121 feet by 121, is opened. It has a library, reading-room, and parlors;
and a dining-hall, to which the male students are admitted, and where
truly excellent board is given for three dollars a week. The kitchen
would do anybody's heart good. On every floor is a wood and water room,
where the wood and ashes go up and down on a dumb-waiter, where water is
carried up in a well-protected pipe, and slops may be thrown into a
sink. Two excellent new buildings for recitations will be ready for the
spring term. Some idea of the admirable tact and prudence which have
prevailed at Oberlin may be gleaned from the following anecdote:
Thirty-three years passed before a colored _teacher_ was employed in the
Preparatory School. "We knew," said President Fairchild, "that we must
not try the experiment till it was sure to be a magnificent success." In
1865, Oberlin had in Miss Fanny Jackson a pupil worthy of the
experiment. She had been a slave in the District of Columbia, and so
puny, that, at an early age, she was sold to her own aunt, a freedwoman,
for a trivial sum. She was sent here, and with fear and trembling now
yielded to the wish of the president. That no one might be compelled to
enter her class, _two_ advanced classes in English grammar were
organized, one under the present wife of Dr. Finney. On the first day,
an over-grown lad came to the president, and said, "My father would not
like it very well if he knew I was taught by a woman,--but a woman and a
negro!" "Stay in the class three days to please me," said the president;
and, at the end of that time, the boy refused to be removed. After a
day's absence from illness, Miss Jackson was received with cheers; and,
when her class had to be subdivided, the heart-burnings of those who had
to leave it were pitiable. She is now teaching in the Colored High
School in Philadelphia, where she will remain till she has paid the
price of her freedom. The brilliancy of her classical teaching is
considered very remarkable in Philadelphia.
It remains only to consider the double system. Everybody at Oberlin was
loud in its praise; no one would teach now in any other sort of college.
The presence of women secured discipline. There was no chance for hazing
or any other antiquated folly. Pupils and teachers who had gone from
Oberlin to Vassar both missed the pleasant excitement of the old life.
"But," said President Finney, when I turned from all the rest to him,
"it must not be forgotten that we have had great advantages. We came
here for a religious reason; our pupils _came_ for years. It is only
lately that they have been _sent_. I expect that some difficulties may
arise, but none worse than would arise in a neighborhood-school. It is
God's way to rear us." The old man showed me, with great emotion, a
confession, signed by three young girls, and read at college prayers in
1837. They had been walking, and met one of the students with an
improvised sledge; without thinking, they jumped on and took a drive.
There were no rules against it; but, when they came home, they
remembered how much depended on their prudence as members of an
antislavery institution, and wrote the confession of their own accord.
One of these lovely women is now the wife of President Fairchild.
I record with pride the history of Oberlin, the first college which
undertook to teach resident pupils of both sexes. I feel that it has
been a great success. I am ashamed of the half-denominational prejudice
which kept me from taking a warmer interest in it, in advance; and I
greet its new life under President Fairchild, a graduate of the
institution, with the warmest feelings of hope and admiration.
It has just received $25,000 from the executors of the estate of the
Rev. Charles Avery, of Pittsburg, who left $150,000 in trust, to be
devoted, according to the best judgment of the directors, to the
"education and elevation of the colored people in the United States and
Canadas." The conditions are, that the college shall never make any
discrimination, on account of color, against colored students, and that
it shall furnish free tuition to fifty of its most needy colored
students who may apply for it; preference being given to twenty to be
nominated by the American Missionary Association.