The Final Impact
With a Cause, Without a Home
After leaving Lane Seminary, the Rebels longed to continue their studies. Here stepped in abolitionist John Jay Shipherd, co-founder of the new Oberlin Collegiate Institute.
Seeking students, Shipherd heard about the Rebels and went to Cincinnati, where he believed "God has here put my hand on the end of a chain linking men & money to our dear Seminary" (Shipherd in a letter, quoted in A History of Oberlin College).
The students had three conditions: that John Morgan and Charles G. Finney be professors, and that Asa Mahan be the school's President. (See slideshow below for more information about Oberlin's foundation.)
All three accepted, and 32 Lane Rebels went to Oberlin.
Seeking students, Shipherd heard about the Rebels and went to Cincinnati, where he believed "God has here put my hand on the end of a chain linking men & money to our dear Seminary" (Shipherd in a letter, quoted in A History of Oberlin College).
The students had three conditions: that John Morgan and Charles G. Finney be professors, and that Asa Mahan be the school's President. (See slideshow below for more information about Oberlin's foundation.)
All three accepted, and 32 Lane Rebels went to Oberlin.
"For people in Ohio, who thought that you didn't need that type of aggressive abolitionism, [the Lane debates were] considered a wakeup call. . . . At first, [Ohioans] might've thought that even if they adopted antislavery as the standard in the early 1830s, they might not have to be as loud. . . . Not so much the case, with the rebels at Lane."
-Richard Newman, Professor of History, Rochester Institute of Technology
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Oberlin and AbolitionIn 1858, Oberlin and Wellington residents helped an escaped slave cross into Canada. Thirty-seven people were tried for violating the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which decreed that everyone had to aid slave-catchers.
The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue ended with the court siding with public opinion: the men were released. |
". . . the Oberlin Wellington Rescue is an event of incredible importance. Some declare that dedicated abolitionists made Oberlin the town that started the Civil War." |
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Where They Went: the Rebels after Lane and Oberlin
"All of [the Lane Rebels], without any known exception, were courageous and outspoken opponents of slavery." |
This slideshow traces some Rebels after leaving school.
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"The Lane debate reverberated throughout the nation."
-Gilbert Hobbs Barnes, historian (The Anti-Slavery Impulse 1830-1844, 1933)