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.