IN the summer of 1835, Finney removed to Oberlin to begin his career as educator. The circumstances which led to this change of base, and which gave such marked and long-continued success to his labors there, should now be detailed with considerable fullness.

Reference has already been made to his association, in New York city, with Arthur and Lewis Tappan, two business men of great energy and skill, who were, at that time, in the midst of a most successful mercantile career. In addition to their interest in the revival measures characterizing the period, they were among the first to take an active part in promoting the anti-slavery cause. Indeed, it may be said that the initiation and early direction of that movement were more dependent upon the activity of Arthur Tappan than upon that of any other one man. With his wealth he was able, by well-directed pecuniary aid, to make himself felt at every point of need.

But the anti-slavery cause by no means absorbed all of Tappan's energies. This was only one of many efforts on his part to help on enterprises designed to improve the general condition of his fellow-men. He was foremost in the temperance reformation. He was a faithful supporter of John McDowell in his efforts to repress licentiousness in New York city. He was an earnest and practical advocate of the strict observance of the Lord's Day. The New York "Journal of Commerce" was founded by him in 1827 for the express purpose of elevating the character of the daily press, and of demonstrating that a daily paper of the highest character could be published without involving any Sunday labor. He took radical grounds against the use of tobacco. In his opposition to slavery he had naturally interested himself in the objects of the American Colonization Society, organized in 1816 in aid of a movement which for many years was supposed to be one of the necessary steps to the final abolition of slavery. As time went on, he was one of the first to perceive that this society was really an ally of slavery, and a main supporter of the spirit of caste which he so much despised. But he had gone so far at one time in the support of this society as to contemplate establishing a line of packets between New York and the colony of Liberia for opening trade with the interior of Africa. His confidence in the society, however, was shaken by finding that ardent spirits, tobacco, and powder and balls were leading articles of trade at the colony, and were considered indispensable in making up an invoice of goods to be sent thither. He therefore at length came to believe, with many others, that he had been drawn into the society under a delusion, and that the effect of its work was to foster the system of caste by aiming to get rid of the free colored people, thus giving additional security to the system of slavery in this country.

Opposition to the Colonization Society rapidly became the test question as to one's real attitude towards slavery; and Arthur Tappan was among the first to join bands with Garrison in criticising its aim and opposing its progress. In 1831, while residing temporarily in New Haven, Conn., he, with Rev. Mr. Jocelyn, planned a college for colored people in that city, for which Tappan was to supply the necessary funds. But a hue and cry was raised, a public meeting was called by the mayor, and amidst great excitement it was "Resolved, by the Mayor, Aldermen, Common Council, and freemen of the city of New Haven, in meeting assembled, that we will resist the establishment of the proposed college in this place by every lawful means."⁽²⁷⁾ In view of this, the scheme was abandoned. Soon after, in the autumn of 1832, Miss Prudence Crandall, a member of the Society of Friends and a successful teacher, at the invitation of friends in Canterbury, Conn., had purchased a large house for the establishment of a school for young ladies. A worthy colored girl of the village, who was a member of the village church, and who all her life had attended the public schools, applied for admission. Her application was resisted by the citizens, and, upon Miss Crandall's determination to admit the girl, all her other pupils withdrew. Seemingly the only course left was to establish a school exclusively for colored girls. She made an announcement accordingly, and her school was filled with pupils of this class gathered from a wide range of country.

But as in New Haven, so in Canterbury, the citizens gathered together in town-meeting to abate the nuisance, and passed resolutions similar to those passed in New Haven. As this was not effective, they appealed to the state legislature, and speedily secured a law making it a misdemeanor to establish in Connecticut any school or literary institution for the education of colored persons not inhabitants of the State. The passage of this law was received in Canterbury with the firing of cannon, the ringing of bells, and a general demonstration of delight. Under its provisions, Miss Crandall was arrested on the 27th of June, and, after imprisonment in a felon's cell for one night, was bound over for trial before the county court in August. Her adviser was Rev. Mr. May, a Unitarian minister in an adjoining town. On learning the facts, Arthur Tappan wrote to Mr. May, promising to be his banker, and instructing him to spare no necessary expense, to employ the best legal counsel, and to let the great question of the constitutionality of the law be fully tried. Tappan soon after visited May and Miss Crandall, and, on seeing the hostility of public sentiment, authorized May to establish at once a newspaper in which he could get a hearing for the truth. Accordinly the "Unionist" was started, and put under the editorship of C. C. Burleigh, Mr. Tappan paying the bills, together with those incurred in the trial of Miss Crandall.

In 1830, Garrison, while editing an anti-slavery paper in Baltimore, in company with Benjamin Lundy, was thrown into prison and subjected to a fine for having commented severely upon a ship captain from his native town of Newburyport, Mass., who had consented to take slaves as freight from Baltimore to New Orleans. On hearing of this, Arthur Tappan paid the fine, released Garrison from prison, and had an interview with him as he passed through New York, on his way home to Boston, a few weeks after. Garrison immediately established the "Liberator." To this enterprise, also, Tappan gave considerable support, subscribing for a large number of copies to be sent to different individuals.

In March, 1833, Tappan established in New York city the "Emancipator," which became one of the most influential anti-slavery organs. During the same year, he was one of the first to recognize the great merits of John G. Whittier, who had recently published a pamphlet at Haverhill, Mass., upon "Justice and Expediency; or, Slavery considered with a View to its Rightful and Effectual Remedy, Abolition." Of this, Whittier had ventured to print only five hundred copies. But Tappan, on reading it, at once ordered the issue of five thousand copies at his own expense, and it became one of the most important factors in increasing abolition sentiment in the country.

During the same year, the Tappans, in company with a few others, issued an immense number of anti-slavery tracts, and sent them broadcast over the land, besides giving direct assistance to the "New York Evangelist," edited by Joshua Leavitt, and to the "Genius of Temperance," edited by William Goodell, both of which gave much space to the anti-slavery discussion.

As a result of all these influences, public sentiment was now wrought up to such a state that it seemed best to organize an anti-slavery society in New York city. Consequently a call was issued for a convention on the 2d of October, 1833, to accomplish this purpose, and Clinton Hall was chosen as the place of meeting. Immediately upon the announcement of this meeting, the following placard⁽²⁸⁾ was posted in the streets of the city: -

NOTICE. - To all persons from the South. All persons interested in the subject of a meeting called by J. Leavitt, William Green, Jr., William Goodell, John Rankin, and Lewis Tappan, this evening at seven o'clock, are requested to attend at the same hour and place.

MANY SOUTHERNERS.

NEW YORK, October 2, 1833.

From this it was clear that a riot was imminent, and the owners of the hall withdrew their permission for its use. The mob, however, gathered, but, not finding their victims, they adjourned to Tammany Hall to adopt denunciatory resolutions and listen to inflammatory speeches. Meanwhile the Tappans offered the use of one of the lecture-rooms in Chatham Street Chapel, where Finney was pastor, and the society completed its organization as soon as possible. Hardly was this done, and the constitution adopted, with the election of Arthur Tappan as president, when the mob, to the number of two thousand or more, appeared at the gates of the building, shouting, "Garrison! Garrison! Tappan! Tappan! Where are they? Find them! Find them! Ten thousand dollars for Arthur Tappan!" But Tappan and his associates had escaped through a back way, and the mob entered the lecture-room only to find it empty.

The excitement among the men of a baser sort was increased by the utterances of the press and of various eminent representatives of the Colonization Society. At a meeting on the 10th of October, Chancellor Walworth referred to the members of the Anti-slavery Society as "visionary enthusiasts" and "reckless incendiaries," whose proposition was unconstitutional and dangerous. At the same meeting, David B. Ogden, Esq., denounced them as "fanatics and zealots." On the 4th of December, the American Anti-slavery Society was organized at Philadelphia, and, though not present, Arthur Tappan was elected to the presidency of the society, an office which he cheerfully accepted, and the duties of which he laboriously performed. He also subscribed three thousand dollars annually for its work. Under his administration, auxiliaries multiplied all over the country; anti-slavery publications were scattered far and wide; and antislavery lecturers appeared everywhere throughout the free States.

Though the reform was conducted with rare discretion, as the annual reports and other publications of the society abundantly show, opposition to the movement became more and more violent. On the 4th of July, 1834, about the time Finney returned from his voyage to the Mediterranean, arrangements were made for a meeting in his chapel to celebrate the Declaration of Independence. Mr. David Paul Brown, an eminent lawyer and philanthropist from Philadelphia, was to give the address, but a noisy mob took possession of the room, and made it impossible to go on with the exercises. After several vain attempts to proceed, the meeting closed amid the hurrahs of the rioters. This was on Friday. The papers of the city laid the blame of these irregularities, not on the mob, but on the "Tappanists," who, they said, produced them. During the following week, the city was kept in a ferment by incendiary editorials in the pro-slavery papers. On the evening of the 7th, a meeting of colored people in the chapel was violently interrupted by a mob, and a portion of the furniture was destroyed. Upon the following evening, the mob again gathered in front of the chapel, under the impression that there was another meeting to be broken up. Finding that they were mistaken, they went over to the Bowery Theatre, where an objectionable actor was performing, and broke up the play. Thence they proceeded to Rose Street, to the house of Lewis Tappan, who with his family was absent in the country, broke in the doors and windows, piled the furniture in the streets, and made a bonfire of it. On Thursday, the mob surged backward and forward in the vicinity of the house of Lewis Tappan, and made threatening demonstrations against Arthur Tappan's store, but little damage was done. On Friday, riotous demonstrations were again numerous: the church of Dr. Samuel Hanson Cox, a warm friend of the Tappans, was attacked, likewise a Presbyterian church on Spring Street, and the streets were barricaded. Total demolition of the buildings was prevented only by the appearance of the military. A church for colored people on the corner of Leonard and Church streets was also attacked, and several of their houses were demolished and a large number of others more or less injured. The same day, the mob reappeared in Pearl Street before Tappan's store; but on learning that a well-trained body of clerks was inside, abundantly armed to give them a deadly reception, they withdrew without inflicting serious injury. By this time, the whole city was alarmed, and effectual measures were taken by the mayor to suppress further disturbances. The papers, however, did not cease to vent their spite upon Arthur Tappan and his associates, some of them going so far as to urge their indictment as public nuisances.

But, as already said, the promotion of an anti-slavery sentiment was only a small portion of Arthur Tappan's comprehensive designs. He was, first of all, a broad-minded, simple-hearted Christian man, resolved on administering his stewardship in the fear of God and for the good of his fellow-men, and we can trace the effects of his farsighted benevolence in almost all the philanthropic and religious enterprises that originated during the busy portion of his life. In 1820, he gave $5,000 to the American Sunday-school Union to establish schools in the valley of the Mississippi; and in the same year he endowed a scholarship in the theological seminary at Andover. We find him active, at an early period, in promoting interest in the American Bible Society and the American Tract Society, giving $20,000 to the latter for the purpose of erecting its building on Nassau Street. As a manager of the American Bible Society he was among the most urgent in devising methods to provide every family in the United States with a Bible, giving $5,000 to the object, in 1828. In 1826, the year of its organization, he became a director of the American Home Missionary Society, and was its auditor for thirteen years. Unknown to the public, he had in 1823, the most critical period of its history, given $15,000 to Auburn Theological Seminary to establish the Richards Professorship. About the same time, he contributed also to the founding of a professorship in Kenyon College at Gambier, Ohio. He was likewise active in founding the theological seminary at New Haven. In 1828, he offered to pay $3,000 a year, for four years, to meet the tuition of students in Yale College preparing for the ministry. Amherst College, also, depended upon him for similar aid. He was for some years president of the American Education Society, and for a longer time chairman of its executive committee, giving regularly and largely to its funds.

Among the other educational enterprises in which he was interested was Lane Theological Seminary, an institution which was founded for the education of Presbyterian and Congregational ministers, at Walnut Hills, a suburb of Cincinnati. The building up of this institution was part of Tappan's general scheme for promoting the higher interests of the great Mississippi valley. It was through his influence largely that Lyman Beecher was persuaded to leave his important work in Boston, in 1832, and become senior theological professor in the above-named institution, Tappan subscribing a generous sum for the endowment of the chair. Upon the consummation of Beecher's connection with Lane Seminary, there was a remarkable influx of students, a large number from the Oneida Institute - in which Tappan was greatly interested, and which was then under the charge of Beriah Green - being among the first to avail themselves of the rare opportunities afforded at Walnut Hills. To these students Tappan forwarded liberal sums of money, which were specially to be used in sustaining schools among the colored people of Cincinnati.⁽²⁹⁾

But opposition to the anti-slavery movement gave a sudden and unlooked-for change to affairs in Lane Seminary. The students began to discuss the merits of the Colonization Society, and, with the approbation of Mr. Beecher, formed an anti-slavery society. The interest in these discussions very soon after became so great that the trustees were alarmed, and advised the students to suspend the discussions altogether. During the vacation in 1834, while Beecher was absent in New England, the trustees went so far as to issue a positive order "that the students be required to discontinue those societies [the Anti-slavery and Colonization] in the seminary," and 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 study;" and students were forbidden "to communicate with each other on the subject, even at the table in the seminary commons." This was more than the students could brook, and to the number of fifty or more (at least four fifths of the whole) they withdrew in a body, and took possession of a building offered them by a benevolent gentleman in Cummingsville, a few miles away, where for five months they continued their studies together, with such instruction as they could afford each other; Dr. Bailey, afterwards editor of the "National Era," giving them a course of lectures on physiology.⁽³⁰⁾ The state of affairs at Lane Seminary, of course, greatly distressed Tappan. Of these young men, Beecher was saying, before large public audiences at the East, that they were "a set of noble men, whom he would not at a venture exchange for any others."⁽³¹⁾ Among them were numbered James A. Theme and William T. Allen, sons of slaveholders, but who were ready to suffer expatriation, and disinheritance even, rather than stifle their convictions on so important a question.

On his return West, Beecher, while passing through New York, had an interview with Arthur Tappan and a few other friends of the anti-slavery cause, and tried to persuade them that the differences between the friends of the Colonization Society and those of the Anti-slavery Society were not so great but that they could be harmonized without material sacrifice of opinion and feeling. But Tappan had thought too long upon the subject to be convinced by Beecher's arguments, and freely yet kindly expressed his dissent. Beecher acknowledged that the course of the trustees in Lane Seminary was indefensible, and said that he would never consent to the suppression of discussion among the students.

On his arrival at Cincinnati, Beecher found that the trustees were immovable in their determination. He attempted to persuade the students to remain, however, in hope that the order would not be executed, and that after a little time it might be repealed. But to this they were too high-spirited to consent. Upon the consummation of the withdrawal of these students, Arthur Tappan offered to furnish them $5,000 to provide instruction for the remainder of their course, and conferred with Finney as to the feasibility of his going there temporarily for that purpose.

It is at this critical juncture that Oberlin comes into the field, and we have in the result one of those remarkable providences that keep alive the sense of God's continual agency in the direction of human affairs. In 1833, Rev. John J. Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart (afterwards a successful inventor and manufacturer of stoves in Troy, N. Y.) established a colony and an educational institute in the township of Russia, Lorain County, O., thirtythree miles west of Cleveland and ten miles south of Lake Erie. Their plans were similar to many others of the day, for elevating the standard of education and religion in the Mississippi valley. Among others, Nelson, author of "The Cause and Cure of Infidelity," started an enterprise of a similar sort in Missouri, and succeeded in procuring considerable funds in New York for his project. Oberlin is one of the few such schools and colonies which proved successful, and it is evident that its success is due to that remarkable conjunction of events which led Finney to cast in his lot with the enterprise.

The location of Oberlin was determined by the gift of an unimproved tract of land owned by parties in New Haven, Conn. The donation consisted of five hundred acres of level, stiff clay soil, heavily covered with timber, at an elevation of 250 feet above the lake. This was in the centre of a larger tract which the same parties had for sale at moderate rates, which was mostly sold to the colonists with the promise that a portion of the proceeds should form an endowment for the college. The name of the place was chosen out of admiration for John Frederick Oberlin, the distinguished French pastor of Alsace, in the Vosges Mountains, the fame of whose Christian philanthropy had then just reached America. The families constituting the colony were largely gathered from Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, where Mr. Shipherd had a wide acquaintance. These subscribed a covenant in which the degeneracy of the church was lamented, the importance of building up institutions of Christian learning in the valley of the Mississippi was emphasized, and dependence upon the counsel of the Lord was acknowledged. They pledged themselves to hold in possession no more property than they could profitably manage as faithful stewards of God, and to practice industry and economy, that they might have as much as possible to appropriate for the spread of the gospel. They expressed it as their intention to eat only plain and wholesome food, to renounce all bad habits, especially the use of tobacco, and the drinking of even tea and coffee as far as practicable. They expressed it as their purpose also to discard unwholesome fashions of dress, to observe plainness and durability in the construction of their houses and furniture, and to provide for the widows and orphans of the colony as for their own families. They also affirmed their determination to maintain a deep tone of personal piety, to provoke each other to love and good works, to live together in all things as brethren, and to glorify God in their bodies and spirits. But it was not a communistic covenant: all the property was held in personal right. Nor did the covenant serve any practical purpose in settling such disputes as afterwards arose. Its principal value was in sifting out from the applicants those who were not actuated by the purest of motives. The result was the collection at Oberlin of a class of pioneers of very high character.

A school was opened upon the 3d of December, 1833, when only eleven families were on the ground. Both sexes were admitted, and half of the forty-four attendants were from the East. In February, 1834, a charter was obtained under the name of Oberlin Collegiate Institute, which was changed to Oberlin College in 1850. The first circular announced it as one of the designs of the school to secure "the elevation of female character, by bringing within the reach of the misjudged and neglected sex all the instructive privileges which have hitherto unreasonably distinguished the leading sex from theirs."⁽³²⁾ During the next summer, there were in attendance one hundred and one students, who filled every available room in the settlement, Everything was new and rough. Roads had been cut through the forest, indeed, but they were still full of stumps, and an agile and enterprising boy could almost cross the college square upon them without touching the ground. The little opening was surrounded on every side by an impenetrable wall of gigantic forest trees. Scholarships had been issued at the rate of one hundred and fifty dollars each, entitling the donor perpetually to the privileges of the school for a single pupil. The plan of the school contemplated all departments of instruction, from "the infant school up through the collegiate and theological courses." The first college class was organized in October, 1834, and consisted of four young men. But Western Reserve College was already well established and under an able corps of teachers at Hudson, about forty miles away, and to sober observers the scheme of Mr. Shipherd and Mr. Stewart seemed chimerical in the extreme.

Late in the autumn of 1834, the trustees authorized Mr. Shipherd to go East for the purpose of securing funds and a president. From a note in Mrs. Shipherd's diary, it appears that her husband decided to go to New York by way of Cincinnati, in response to an impulse of which he could give no satisfactory account to himself, and entirely without the knowledge of the condition of affairs in Lane Seminary.

This statement is confirmed by the account given by President Mahan,⁽³³⁾ according to which an almost irresistible impression came over Shipberd's mind, while he was engaged in prayer on the subject, that he should go to Cincinnati before going to New York. Although he could give no reason for this impression, in obedience to it he started south instead of east. After he had passed over the first 150 miles of the journey, and had reached Columbus, he found the traveling so had and his own strength so exhausted, that he determined to abandon the project of visiting Cincinnati, and was about to take the national road, - a macadamized highway just completed by the government from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi, - and go directly to New York. At the hotel he chanced to meet Theodore Keep, the son of Rev. John Keep, president of the Oberlin board of trustees. Young Keep had recently graduated from Yale College, and had been to Cincinnati to join Lane Seminary, but on learning the condition of the institution, had turned back and was on his way home. From him Mr. Shipherd learned the state of affairs at Lane Seminary and the attitude of Rev. Asa Mahan, the only one of the trustees who had openly espoused the cause of the protesting students. Mahan was then pastor of the Sixth Presbyterian church, now the Vine Street Congregational, of Cincinnati. Keep suggested to Shipherd that Mahan would be an admirable president for Oberlin, and urged Shipherd by all means to go on and call upon him.

The only public conveyance between the cities was a two-wheeled cart, drawn by four horses, upon which was a rude box holding the mail. Into this open box, with the mail bags, Shipherd threw himself, and was in due time drawn over the horrid midwinter roads to the thriving metropolis upon the Ohio River, 150 miles away. He called upon Mahan, visited the protesting students in their quarters at Cummingsville, and became convinced that Mahan was indeed admirably fitted for the presidency, and that John Morgan, one of the instructors who sided with the students, was a proper person for a professorship which he was commissioned to fill. The protesting students assured him also that, if these appointments should be made at Oberlin, they would all go there and join the institution at the beginning of the spring term.

When this plan was unfolded to Mahan, he at once assented to it. On the 15th of December, 1834, Shipherd wrote from Cincinnati, urging the trustees to appoint Asa Mahan president and John Morgan professor of mathematics, at the same time saying that neither of these men would accept the appointment unless the trustees would also give assurance that students would be received into the institution irrespective of color.

This letter having been dispatched, Mahan and Shipherd, without delay, though keeping their plans to themselves, set out together for the East to obtain an endowment and to find a professor of theology. Their first purpose was to secure for that position Theodore D. Weld, an early convert of Finney. Weld had recently been a student at Lane Seminary, but was now devoting his splendid abilities to lecturing against slavery. Ascending the Ohio River to Ripley, they called upon Rev. John Rankin, the distinguished abolitionist, and with his team drove thirty miles north to Hillsborough to make the contemplated proposition to Weld, who at that time was giving a course of anti-slavery lectures there. Weld at once replied to them that he himself was not the man to undertake the work proposed at Oberlin, but that Rev. Charles G. Finney was, and that they ought to go to New York city and make proposals to him. Weld thought Finney would listen to the call at that time, because his health was so greatly impaired that it was doubtful if he could continue his former activity in evangelistic labors. In accordance with this advice, they started on immediately for New York, and, upon arriving, at once made their errand known to Finney and his friends. What was Shipherd's dismay, however, to receive information that the trustees at Oberlin had voted that until more definite information should come before them, they did not feel prepared to pledge themselves to receive colored students. But with his usual hopefulness he maintained his courage, and wrote an importunate letter to the trustees, urging the claims of the colored people from every point of view, stating that they would doubtless be received into all such institutions by and by; why should Oberlin be the last to do them justice? He added, as a clincher, "The men and money which would make our institution most useful cannot be obtained if we reject our colored brother. Eight professorships and ten thousand dollars are subscribed, upon condition that Rev. C. G. Finney become professor of theology in our institute; and he will not come unless the youth of color are received. Nor will Professor Mahan nor Professor Morgan serve unless this condition is complied with; and they all are the men we need, irrespective of their anti-slavery sentiments. If you suffer expediency and prejudice to pervert justice in this case, you will in another. Such is my conviction of duty in the case, that I cannot labor for the enlargement of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute if our brethren in Jesus Christ must be rejected because they differ from us in color. . . . I have pondered the subject well with prayer, and believe that if the injured brother of color, and consequently brothers Finney, Mahan, and Morgan, with eight professorships and ten thousand dollars, must be rejected, I must join them, because by so doing I can labor more effectually for a lost world and the glory of God, - and, believe me, dear brethren and sisters, for this reason only."

The reception of this letter created no small amount of discussion and excitement in Oberlin, where, it appears, all but Mr. Shipherd and two or three students were still attached in sentiment to the Colonization Society. The trustees were called together at Mr. Shipherd's house on the morning of February 9th, and it became evident that they were very likely to exclude colored pupils. Mrs. Shipherd, in the midst of her household cares, was not uninterested in the result, as she was fully in accord with her husband. John Keep, temporary chairman, also sympathized with her views, and took pains in the midst of the deliberations to inform her that it was extremely doubtful how the matter would turn. Mrs. Shipherd at once dropped her work, and collected her female friends in a neighboring house, where they devoted themselves to unceasing prayer until the decision should be announced. The vote was a tie, and was carried in favor of the admission of colored students only by the casting ballot of the chairman. The resolution itself is so indirect and peculiar as to be worthy of record: -

"Whereas, - There does exist in our country an excitement in respect to our colored population, and fears are entertained that on the one hand they will be left unprovided for as to the means of a proper education, and on the other that they will in unsuitable numbers be introduced into our schools, and thus in effect forced into the society of the whites, and the state of public sentiment is such as to require from the board some definite expression on the subject; therefore, resolved, that the education of the people of color is a matter of great interest, and should be encouraged and sustained in this institution."⁽³⁴⁾

On such a delicate balance of influences did the future of Oberlin turn. But the end was accomplished. After the adoption of this resolution, Finney was elected professor of theology. Arthur Tappan gave the promised $10,000 for the erection of a building, and secured a loan of $10,000 more for other buildings, while several other gentlemen united with him in engaging to pay quarterly the interest upon $80,000 to provide salaries for eight professors at $600 each, intending eventually to pay the principal as a permanent endowment.

President Mahan came on to Oberlin the following May, and with his family occupied the first log house that had been erected, until, with the means furnished from New York, the president's house could be built. The protesting students of Lane Seminary, to the number of thirty, came soon after, and at once a senior theological class of fourteen was formed. To provide accommodations for them, "Cincinnati Hall" was erected. This was one story high, one hundred and forty-four feet long, and twenty-four feet wide. Its sides, partitions, ceilings, and floors were of beech boards fresh from the mill. On the outside it was battened with slabs retaining the bark of the original tree. One end of the hall was fitted up as a kitchen and dining-room, and the remainder was divided into rooms twelve feet square, with a single window to each, and a door opening out upon the street.

Professors Finney and Morgan came upon the ground in June, and began their teaching in such cramped quarters as the place furnished. Tappan Hall, with four lecture-rooms and a dormitory, was speedily erected, however, together with two commodious brick buildings for the families of President Mahan and Professor Finney. The colonists soon after erected a wooden building, also, which in the upper story provided other dormitories, while the lower story was devoted to the joint purposes of chapel and church. Until this was built, Finney preached in the dining-room of the new boarding house, which had just been erected. But to secure at once a more commodious place of meeting for the larger gatherings in Oberlin, and to facilitate evangelistic services in the neighborhood, the friends of Finney, by small subscriptions sent in principal part to the editor of the "New York Evangelist," provided a tent one hundred feet in diameter, capable of holding an audience of three thousand. There was a streamer at the top of it, on which was written in large characters, "Holiness unto the Lord." This was dedicated and first used in connection with the Commencement in July, 1835.

The plan of Finney and his associates in New York did not originally contemplate the surrender of all his work in that city. The long vacation at Oberlin was placed in the winter, like that of most other schools at this time, and Finney 'was expected to spend only about one half of the year with his classes, and to return to his church for the rest of the year. This he did for two seasons. But finding his health impaired, and the double burden too great to carry, he resigned his pastorate, and was dismissed by advice of the New York Association, April 6, 1837, to devote himself more exclusively to his work at Oberlin, where he continued to be the guiding and inspiring spirit for a period of forty years.

This is, perhaps, the best place to mention that, among other trials through which Finney and his coadjutors at Oberlin were so soon called to pass, not the least was the embarrassment connected with the commercial crisis of 1837. On the 16th of December, 1835, the very year in which Tappan and his friends had so liberally promised to endow the institution, a disastrous fire occurred in New York city, and Tappan's store was burned to the ground. From the effects of this, however, he was rapidly recovering when the influence of the approaching financial storm, which overwhelmed almost every firm in the country, began to be felt in his business, and the suspension of his house was publicly announced in May, 1837. From this it never rallied, and Tappan at length went into bankruptcy. Oberlin had actually received but ten thousand dollars of what he had promised to give, and that was in a building; thus, in this time of business depression, the friends of the institution were compelled to lay their financial foundations anew. The difficulties of the situation were extreme; but through the faith and patience of Finney and his associates, they were able to hold on until funds came in which were sufficient for the present need. A large part of this help came from anti-slavery friends in England.

27. The Life of Arthur Tappan, p. 150.

28. Emancipator, August 6, 1834.

29. The Life of Arthur Tappan, p. 236.

30. Oberlin: The Colony and the College, pp. 54, 55.

31. The Life of Arthur Tappan, p. 228.

32. Oberlin: The Colony and the College, p. 41.

33. Autobiography: Intellectual, Moral, and Spiritual. By Rev. Asa Mahan, D.D., LL.D. 1882), p. 190.

34. Oberlin: The Colony and the College, p. 64.