Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism: College, Community, and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America by J. Brent Morris

Abstract

Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism: College, Community, and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America. By J. Brent Morris. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Pp. [xviii], 332. $34.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-1827-2.) Thanks in part to the Civil War's sesquicentennial, antebellum abolitionists have enjoyed renewed attention. Yet these portrayals--ranging from popular films to scholarly studies--have generally reinforced dominant narrative: the antislavery movement was actuated by larger-than-life, forceful characters whose approaches to slavery generated division within the ranks, thereby limiting the efficacy of reform. For J. Brent Morris, such an overemphasis on the well-known stories of prominent East Coast abolitionists and their politics has distorted the historical record. By turning west, he argues, we see more conciliatory and egalitarian movement, a workable, practical abolitionist ideology rooted in broader evangelical quest for salvation (pp. 5-6). That Oberlin College owed its foundation in part to the money and influence of eastern reformers is perhaps the central irony of Morris's story. The public exposure that came with Charles Grandison Finney's support and advocacy, along with the deep pockets of Lewis Tappan and Arthur Tappan and their network of reformers, might well have swallowed the Oberlin experiment in the very divisions that came to define much of the East Coast movement. Yet Oberlin, blessed with geographic separation, stood out. When students and some faculty were dismissed from Cincinnati's Lane Seminary in 1834 following difficult debate on the merits of immediate abolition, they found new home at Oberlin, which became center of activity for young abolitionists, place where students experienced no separation between moral endeavors and the students' formal scholarship (p. 41). Oberlin then embarked on grassroots abolition campaign, sending students trained in the art of revival and prepared with paper and persuasion to make converts across the West. Owing partly to economic struggles after the Panic of 1837, Oberlinites shifted their focus toward local, state, and national politics. Morris tracks modest successes and also setbacks as Oberlinites made peace with political parties as part of their more workable approach to abolitionism in the 1840s. In 1850 Oberlin's abolitionism received an unwanted shot in the arm with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. …