Lane Seminary
Lane Seminary, sometimes called Cincinnati Lane Seminary, and later renamed Lane Theological Seminary, was a Presbyterian theological college that operated from 1829 to 1932 in Walnut Hills, Ohio, today a neighborhood in Cincinnati. Its campus was bounded by today's Gilbert, Yale, Park, and Chapel Streets. Its board intended it to be "a great "central theological institution" at Cincinnati — soon to become the great Andover or Princeton of the West." However, the founding and first years of Lane were difficult and contentious, culminating in a mass student exodus over the issue of slavery, or more specifically whether students  were permitted to discuss the topic publicly, the first major academic freedom incident in America. There was strong pro-slavery sentiment in Cincinnati, and the trustees immediately prohibited further discussion of the topic, to avoid repercussions. With the city being on the border of the South, a lot of fugitive slaves and freedmen went through Cincinnati, including James Bradley, who would participate in the pivotal Lane slavery debates in the 1830s. Their competition for jobs had led to the anti-abolitionist Cincinnati riots of 1829 and would soon produce the Cincinnati riots of 1836. Inauguration. "The founding of Lane Seminary  was accomplished after years of sometimes disparate efforts on the part of a large number of people." The Presbyterian tradition was to have educated clergy, and there was no seminary serving the vast and increasingly populated lands west of the Allegheny Mountains. As early as 1825, the denomination was on record as saying such a seminary was needed. In 1829 there were only 8,000 ministers to serve a population of 12,000,000, two thousand more churches than ministers, and only 200 ministers per year being trained. While there were local efforts to have the new seminary in Cincinnati, the Presbyterian General  Assembly decided in 1827 to locate it in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. The western synods refused to accept this, finding it too far away. In the summer of 1828 Ebenezer Lane, a New Orleans businessman, "made known his interest in setting up a theological seminary near Cincinnati based on the manual labor system." He and his brother Lane pledged $4,000 for the new school, on condition that it be in Cincinnati and follow the manual labor model. After this, their connection with the Seminary was minimal; Ebenezer was not even happy that it carried his name. The land was  donated by Kemper Seminary. "Walnut Hill was a pretty little village, quite distant from Cincinnati, the first stopping-place for the stage on the Madisonville or some other northern Ohio route." "The location of Lane Seminary is in the midst of a most beautiful landscape. There is just enough, and just the right admixture of hills and dale, forest and field, to give it the effect we love in gazing upon a calm and quiet scene of beauty," wrote a visiting minister in 1842. A board was set up in October 1828, and the Ohio General Assembly issued a charter  on February 11, 1829, specifying that the manual labor system would be "the fundamental principle" of the Seminary. The Rev. George C. Beckwith was appointed to a professorship in April, accepted in August, and he arrived in Cincinnati in the following November. He "had 3 or 4 students during the winter." In July, 1830, Beckwith visited the Oneida Institute and wrote back to Cincinnati that manual labor worked well and that the farmers and mechanics of the neighborhood approved of it. He resigned in August 1830. "At that time , the seminary consisted of some woods and one foundation for  a building." In January, 1831, George Washington Gale, president of the Oneida Institute, recommended a steward to supervise the Seminary farm; in February the trustees made the appointment. But in the winter of 1830–31, "Lane Seminary was in a state of suspended animation. There were no teachers and apparently only two students, Amos Dresser and Horace Bushnell, who had come out from the Oneida Institute and had been given special permission by the trustees to occupy rooms in the lonesome Seminary building." Bushnell, who on his arrival in 1830 "found [at the embryonic Lane] no theology", slept "on a study -table, with his books for a pillow". In 1834, the manual labor department contained six printing presses, operated by 20 students, and had printed 150,000 copies of "Webster's spellling books", for a bookstore. 30 students were employed in cabinet making, and total enrollment before the mass walkout was about 100. The Oneida Institute and Lane. By coincidence, the local efforts to set up a seminary fit with the desires of the Tappan philanthropists, Arthur and Lewis, to found a seminary in what was then the growing west of the new country. The charismatic Theodore D. Weld had been one  of the first Oneida students, first studying and working on George Washington Gale's farm, then at Gale's Oneida Institute of Science and Industry from its opening in 1827 through 1830. When he left Oneida, he was hired by the new Manual Labor Society, an institution created to employ Weld, its only employee ever. Funded by the same Tappan brothers that had funded Oneida, his charge was "to find a site for a great national manual labor institution...where training for the western ministry could be provided for poor but earnest young men who had dedicated their lives to  the home missionary cause in the 'vast valley of the Mississippi'". Weld himself was seeking to continue his preparation for a career as a minister. As he put it in his report, "though I can no longer publicly advocate it as the agent of your society, I hope soon to plead its cause in the humbler sphere of personal example, while pursuing my professional studies, in a rising institution at the west, in which manual labor is a DAILY REQUISITION." "Cincinnati was the logical location. Cincinnati was the focal center of population and commerce in the Ohio valley." In the  pre-railroad era, Cincinnati was the most accessible city in what was then the west of the United States. Weld stopped at Cincinnati twice on his manual labor lecture and scouting tour: in February and March 1832, and in the following September. On the earlier visit he delivered several lectures and supported the call to famous revivalist Charles Grandison Finney to come west; Finney declined, though he did come three years later, as professor and later president of the new Oberlin Collegiate Institute. Weld's second choice—and it was his choice, because the Tappans relied on his recommendations—was  Lyman Beecher, father of Henry Ward Beecher, who would graduate from Lane, and Harriet Beecher Stowe; Lane had been trying to recruit him since February 1831. Lane, Weld concluded, would do as a manual labor theological school, if Beecher would come. "Such an institution would undoubtedly attract many of Weld's associates who had been disappointed in the failure to establish theological instruction at the Oneida Institute." Beecher did come, as president and as "Chair of Systematic Theology", motivated by the promise of a $20,000 subvention for Lane from "Tappan". Beecher, along with professor Thomas J. Biggs, future president  of Cincinnati College, began as president December 26, 1832; this is when "Lane actually began operation... Before that time, staff was slight and housing meager." The house the Beecher family lived in is now known as the Harriet Beecher Stowe House. "Lane was Oneida moved west." Early in June 1833, Weld, Robert L. Stanton, and "six other young Finneyites" arrived in Cincinnati, having completed their journey by river from Rochester and Oneida. "They were promptly admitted to the seminary on the recommendation of two other 'Oneidas' [Porter and Weed] already in attendance." However, although technically enrolled as a student, and  having declined the chair of Sacred Rhetoric and Oratory, Weld was the "de facto" head of Lane; "He...told the trustees what appointments to make." "Many of the students considered him the real leader of Lane", their "patron saint". "In the estimation of the class, he was president. He took the lead of the whole institution. The young men had, many of them, been under his care, and they thought he was a god." The tempo of the seminary was sharply stepped up, its real head now being on the ground. "Weld is here & we are glad," wrote Professor Biggs  on July 2. The self-assembling at Lane of men from very diverse places, called by a modern writer an invasion, was so colorful that multiple authors have described it. The earliest is from Weld himself; he is one of the "two members": A contemporary commentator points to the work on rafts as reflecting the students' experience with manual labor at Oneida. A modern retelling of the same incident: "[T]he institution itself is second in importance to no other in the United States." Beecher "assured us that he had more brains in this theological camp than could be found in  any other in the United States." Beecher, in his autobiography, takes a dig at Oberlin, while claiming that there were already "colored students" at Lane: "It was with great difficulty, and only in the prospect of rich endowments and of securing a large class of students, that the principle of admission irrespective of color, already in practice at Lane, received from the trustees of Oberlin a cold and ambiguous sanction." What he says about Oberlin is roughly correct, but none of the black students at Oneida moved to Lane. The one black student currently known of at Lane, James Bradley , by his own description "so ignorant, that I suppose it will take me two years to get up with the lowest class in the institution," despite Beecher's regret felt it wiser not to attend a student gathering at Beecher's home. The slavery debates. Lane Seminary is known primarily for the debates held there over 18 evenings in February 1834; John Rankin was in attendance, as was Harriett Beecher [Stowe], daughter of Lane's president. They were nominally on the topic of colonization of freed slaves, on sending them to (not "back to") Africa. They were publicized nationally and  influenced the nation's thinking about slavery, creating support for abolition. A 4-page report by H. B. Stanton appeared in March in both "The Liberator" and the "New York Evangelist," and Garrison and Knapp, printers of "The Liberator" and most books on slavery in the U.S. in the early 1830s, issued it in pamphlet form. A 7-page response, under the title "Education and slavery", appeared in the Cincinnati-based "Western Monthly Magazine"; Weld published a lengthy reply. The affair got further publicity late in 1834, when 51 of the Lane students — the vast majority — published a 28-page  pamphlet, "A statement of the reasons which induced the students of Lane Seminary, to dissolve their connection with that institution" (Cincinnati, 1834). Background. The abolition–colonization controversy. Part of "the negro problem", as it was seen in the antebellum United States, was the question of what to do with former slaves who had become free. Since the eighteenth century, Quakers and others had preached the sinfulness of slave ownership, and the number of freedmen (and freed women) was rising and showed every sign that it would continue to grow. The freed slaves married and had children, so the number of  free people of color (Blacks born free) was rising even faster. Some owners freed their slaves in their wills. Philanthropic societies and individuals raised or donated funds to purchase slaves' freedom; freedmen sometimes were able to purchase the freedom of family members. In some Northern cities there were more than a handful of escaped slaves. The status of these free blacks was anything but comfortable. They were not citizens and in most states could not vote. They had no access to the courts or protection by the police. In no state could their children attend the public schools. They were  subject to discriminatory treatment in everyday life. The original "remedy" for this problem was to help them go "back to Africa". The British had been doing this, in Sierra Leone, moving former American slaves there who had gained their freedom by escaping to British lines during the American Revolution, and who found Nova Scotia, where the British took many of them, too cold. The British also took to Sierra Leone slaves captured from slaving ships who were being smuggled illegally across the Atlantic to North America. A well-to-do African-American shipowner, Paul Cuffe, transported some former slaves to  Sierra Leone. However, sending former slaves to a British colony as a policy was politically unacceptable. The American Colonization Society was formed to help found a new, American colony of freed blacks. Although there was some talk of locating the colony in the American territories of the Midwest, or on the Pacific coast—a sort of reservation for Blacks—what was decided was to follow the English example and start an African colony. The closest available land was what became Liberia. The rejection of colonization. The colonization project got off to a promising start, with various governmental and private donations  and the participation of distinguished individuals: U.S. presidents Jefferson, Monroe, and Madison; Senator Henry Clay, who presided over its first meeting; as well as most of the future white abolitionists. The problem had been solved, and in an honorable way; the former slaves would fare better in Africa, it was argued, among other blacks. The situation quickly started to unravel. First of all, the disease rates among the new colonists were the highest since accurate record-keeping began. Over 50% of them died of malaria and other diseases. Particularly telling to Gerrit Smith, an abolitionist philanthropist, was that the American  Colonization Society allowed the sale of alcohol (as well as guns and chewing tobacco) in the colonies that became Liberia. He commented on it in the Society's "African Repository" magazine. Smith was for temperance, and according to him, the fact that blacks in Africa were allowed to import liquor from the United States revealed the true goals of many of the white members of the American Colonization Society: to get rid of the blacks without having them up North. Weld organizes "debates". Lyman Beecher, head of the Seminary, was a colonizationist, and gave a speech on that topic to  the Cincinnati Colonization Society on June 4, 1834. At Lane there was a "colonization society", supporting the efforts of the American Colonization Society to send free blacks to Africa, to Liberia. How it came to be is not known, but it was there when the Oneida contingent and friends arrived. There had been similar groups at Western Reserve and other colleges. Weld read William Lloyd Garrison's new abolitionist newspaper "The Liberator", begun in 1831, and his "Thoughts on African Colonization", which appeared in 1832. These had a great influence at the other eastern Ohio college, Western Reserve College, leading  to Beriah Green's 4 published sermons, and his relocation under pressure to Gale's school, Oneida. What Garrison desired, and he convinced Green, was "immediatism": immediate, complete, and uncompensated freeing of all slaves. Over a period of several months Weld convinced nearly all of the students individually of the superiority of the abolitionist view. To generate publicity for the abolitionist cause, Weld announced a series of "debates". Weld "had no intention of holding a debate on the pros and cons of antislavery." "There was little opposition, little conflict, and consequently little debate." In his correspondence Weld informed friends that  he was trying to get the anti-slavery (immediatist) argument and evidence out to as many people as possible. Nevertheless, what was announced was debates, on two points. When the merits of the proposed solutions to slavery were debated over 18 days at the Seminary in February 1834, it was one of the first major public discussions of the topic, but it was more of an anti-slavery revival than a "debate". No speaker appeared to defend either American slavery or the colonization project. The stated topics of the debates. The two specific questions addressed were: The debates were not  transcribed, and there was no attempt afterwards, as there would be later with Pennsylvania Hall, to collect the texts which were written out — not all were — and make a booklet of them. However, Garrison promptly published a pamphlet, and there are excerpts in newspapers and books. Each question was debated for two and a half hours a night for nine nights. Among the participants: Arguments addressing the first question in favor of the immediate abolition of slavery included: In response to the second question, the Reverend Samuel H. Cox, who had served as an agent for the Colonization Society, testified  that his view of the Society's plan changed when he realized that no blacks, despite the claims of those who ventured to speak for them, would ever consent to be removed from their native country and transplanted to a foreign land. He reasoned, therefore, that the plan could only be enacted by a "national society of kidnappers". Participants. Notable people present. "The President, and the members of the faculty, with one exception [Biggs], were present during parts of the discussion." Sequela (the following events). "The trustees soon expressed a determination to prevent all further discussion of the comparative merits  of the policy of the Colonization Society, and the doctrine of immediate emancipation, either in the recitation rooms, the rooms of the students, or at the public table; although no objection had previously been made to the free discussion of any subject whatever. During the vacation that followed, in the absence of a majority of the professors, this purpose was framed into a law, or rule, of the seminary, and obedience to it required from all." The trustees laid down the doctrine that "no associations or societies ought to be allowed in the seminary, except such as have for their  immediate object, improvement in the prescribed course of studies." This was followed by an order in these words: "Ordered that the students be required to discontinue those societies [the Anti-slavery and Colonization societies] in the seminary." The event resulted in the dismissal of a professor, John Morgan, and the departure of a group of 40 students and a trustee. It was one of the first significant tests in the United States of academic freedom and the right of students to participate in free discussion. It also marked the first organized student body in American history. Several of those involved  went on to play an important role in the abolitionist movement and the buildup to the American Civil War. At the end of the debate, many of the participants concluded not only that slavery was a sin, but also that the policy of the American Colonization Society to send blacks to Africa was wrong. As a result, these students formed an antislavery society and began organizing activities and outreach work among the black population of Cincinnati. They intended to attain the emancipation of blacks, not by rebellion or force, but by "approaching the minds of slave holders with the truth , in the spirit of the Gospel." After the debates. Activities in the black community. "We believe faith without works is dead," Weld wrote to Arthur Tappan in 1834. He, Augustus Wattles, and other students created a school out of three rooms, and raised hundreds of dollars to outfit a library and rent classrooms. Classes were run both days and evenings, and the school was soon at capacity. Inspired by Prudence Crandall's example, he also set up a school for black women, and Arthur Tappan paid $1,000 () for four female teachers to relocate from New York to Cincinnati. As  Lewis Tappan put it in his biography of his brother, "[T]he anti-slavery students of Lane Seminary established evening-schools for the adults, and day-schools for the children of the three thousand colored of Cincinnati." Weld continued to Tappan: The threat of violence. Rumors circulated during the summer of 1834 about mob violence against the Seminary; the threat of violence had caused Miami University of Ohio to ban the discussion of abolition. Cincinnati, largely pro-Southern, had already experienced the anti-black Cincinnati riot of 1829; and the huge anti-abolition riots in New York in July 1834, which  specifically targeted the Tappans, were heavily reported in the Cincinnati newspapers. In 1835, after the whipping of Amos Dresser, a Lane student, in Nashville, newspapers of that city "warn[ed] the leaders of that institution to be cautious how they proceed." Trustees ban the discussion of abolition. As Cincinnati businessmen, the members of the school's board of trustees were quite concerned about being associated with such a radical expression of abolitionism, which could have led to a physical attack on the Seminary. "A riot was very [narrowly] averted, probably only because of Lane's summer vacation." President Beecher did not  want to escalate the matter by overreacting, but when the press began to turn public opinion against the students that summer, he was fundraising in Boston. In his absence, the executive committee of the trustees issued a report ordering the abolishment of the school's antislavery society, stating that "no associations or Societies among the students ought to be allowed in the Seminary except such as have for their immediate object improvement in the prescribed course of studies." They also declared that they had the right to dismiss any student "when they shall think it necessary to do so." They  further adopted a rule to "discourage...such discussions and conduct among the students as are calculated to divert their attention from their studies", meaning that students were not to discuss abolitionism even when dining (talking to students while they were eating was specifically prohibited in the Standing Rules enacted by the trustees on October 13, 1834.) The committee underlined their position by dismissing professor John Morgan for taking the side of the students. In October, without waiting for Beecher to return, the board ratified the committee's resolutions. On his return, Beecher and two professors issued a statement intended to  assuage the anger of the students regarding the action of the trustees, but it was regarded by the students as a faculty endorsement of the trustees' action. The "Lane Rebels" resign. On October 21, most of the students resigned, as did trustee Asa Mahan (another member of Finney's contingent). (Technically, they requested dismissal from the school, which was granted.) In December they published a pamphlet of 28 pages, written by Weld, on "the reasons which induced the students of Lane Seminary, to dissolve their connection with that institution." The pamphlet received national attention, as it was reprinted in full  in "The Liberator". Hostile press reports turned this incorrectly into the expulsion of the students, "in consequence of the dangerous principles they held in relation to slavery." The Rebels were a loosely defined group, and different sources give different names and figures. The "Statement" had 51 signatures, but it adds that "several of our brethren, who coincide with us in sentiment, are not able to affix their names to this document, in consequence of being several hundred miles from the Seminary." According to Lane, there were 40, including the entirety of Lane's first class, the class of 1836 (which  began in 1833). There were also prospective students who declined to enroll. Lawrence Lesick, author of the only book on the Lane Rebels, gives a figure of 75, but 19 more had left before the trustees took action, and only 8 students, out of 103, remained at Lane at the beginning of the next term. According to Oberlin, 32 of them enrolled, although some others who enrolled at the same time, though not students at Lane, are considered part of the Rebels. A few enrolled at other schools, such as Auburn Theological Seminary. Weld and some other student leaders at  Lane — William T. Allan, Weld's collaborator and president of Lane's new anti-slavery society; James A. Thome, a prominent speaker during the debates; and Henry B. Stanton — had been threatened with expulsion. Weld did not withdraw until the motion to expel him, which would have been nationally publicized, had been defeated. The "seminary" at Cumminsville. About a dozen of the Lane Rebels, as they came to be called, established an informal seminary of their own in 1834–1835, in Cumminsville, Ohio. "We went out, not knowing whither we went. The Lord's hand was with us. Five miles from  the seminary we found a deserted brick tavern, with many convenient rooms. Here we rallied. A gentleman of the vicinity offered us all necaessary fuel, a gentleman far off [Lewis Tappan] sent us a thousand dollars, and we set up a seminary of our own and became a law unto ourselves. George Whipple was competent in Hebrew, and William T. Allan in Greek. They were made professors in the intermediate state. It was desirable that we should remain near to Cincinnati for a season, as we were there teaching in evening schools for the colored people of that city." At  Cumminsville, "the students continued their work in the black community. William T. Allan, Andrew Benton, Marius R. Robinson, Henry B. Stanton, and George Whipple taught in the Sabbath schools. John W. Alvord, Huntington Lyman, Henry B. Stanton, James A. Thome, and Samuel Wells gave lectures twice a week in the black community. The students also alternated in preaching at eight different churches, including two black churches. They helped support Augustus Wattles' teachers in schools, enlisted the cooperation of local black ministers, and kept Weld, now an anti-slavery agent, and Joshua Leavitt informed of local events." This was the point  at which the former Lane students came into contact with John J. Shipherd, founder of the new Oberlin Collegiate Institute, "a college in name only" that had been founded the previous year (1833). "The former Lane students literally took possession of the embryo institution." The conditions of the Lane Rebels' enrollment at Oberlin. The students negotiated with Shipherd the installation of Asa Mahan, the Lane trustee who resigned, as Oberlin's president. Oberlin also agreed to hire Morgan, the discharged professor. The trustees would not have the power, as they did at Lane, to meddle in the affairs of professors  and students. The most controversial condition insisted on by the Rebels was that Oberlin commit itself to accepting African-American students in general, and the very popular James Bradley in particular, equally. This was agreed to reluctantly, after a "dramatic" vote (4–4, tie broken by chair). The Lane Rebels, with Weld at their head, could insist on these conditions because funding from the Tappans came with them. If the trustees did not agree they would lose this crucial funding, as well as Mahan, Finney, and Shipherd, who threatened to quit. The conditions of the Rebels set limits, for the first  time, on an American college's authority over students and faculty. They also were part of the shift in American antislavery efforts from colonization to abolition; many of the Rebels would become part of Oberlin's cadre of minister–abolitionists. The Seminary after 1834. When the Rebels departed in October 1834, "they left behind them but two seminarians in a theological department that had boasted forty, and only five scholars of the sixty formerly enrolled for the literary curriculum." "Of the several gloomy years that succeeded the abolition secession, I need only say, that the wonder is, that Lane did  not perish. It had few students and little money." never recovered from the experience." In 1837 "the seminary had no students", but Beecher went on a recruiting trip and persuaded some to enroll. Following the slavery debates, Lane Seminary continued as a "New School" seminary, cooperating with Congregationalists and others in mission and education efforts and involved in social reform movements like abolition, temperance, and Sabbath legislation. The seminary admitted students from other denominations and pursued educational and evangelistic unity among Protestant churches in the West. In 1837 there were 41 students from 15 states, and 4 faculty: Beecher, Calvin  Ellis Stowe, Thomas J. Biggs, and Baxter Dickinson. After the Civil War, the New School and the Old School Presbyterians had reconciled, and Lane Seminary was reorganized along more conservative Presbyterian lines. In 1910, it became affiliated with the Presbyterian Seminary of the South, and the Seminary continued as a small but respected school, though financial pressures continued to increase. Following a brief period of growth in the 1920s, it became apparent that Lane could no longer survive as an independent school. In 1932 it suspended operations and transferred its library and other resources to McCormick Theological Seminary, in Chicago . While a permanent Board of Trustees for Lane Theological Seminary remained in service until the Seminary was legally merged out of existence in 2007, the faculty, library collections, and students were transferred to Chicago, and the last remnants of the Cincinnati campus, except for the house of president Lyman Beecher, were destroyed in 1956. A historical marker in front of an automobile dealership at 2820 Gilbert Ave. marks the site of the campus. Historical re-enactments. The Lane Debates have been re-enacted in recent years by historians from Yale University, the University of Connecticut, and Oberlin College. Media. A  movie about the debates, "Sons & Daughters of Thunder", was released in December 2019. It is based on a play by Earlene Hawley and Curtis Heeter. Archival material. Archival materials of Lane are located at the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia. Former Oneida students who enrolled at Lane. 24 of the 40 members of Lane's first theological class were from Oneida. So far as is known, none of Oneida's African-American students made the move. Those identified conclusively are the following. Those that left with the Lane Rebels (according to the table cited above) and enrolled at Oberlin are  marked in bold.