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xi Acknowledgments On my first research trip to Oberlin many years ago, I arrived at the college library about an hour before the archives opened. Sitting down to a cup of coffee in the café, I pulled out an old and tattered biography of abolitionist Arthur Tappan (written by his brother Lewis) to look over before heading upstairs to begin my real work. The Tappans had given tens of thousands of dollars to Oberlin in the 1830s, saving the colony and the college from financial ruin and earning the reward of having Oberlin’s central square named in their honor. I had just scurried across Tappan Square and past John Mercer Langston Hall, Keep Cottage, First Church, and the Underground Railroad monument on my way to the library. I was beyond excited to be starting my archival work on Oberlin—I had read almost everything there was to be read on the subject in the secondary scholarship, and I couldn’t wait to begin my own project. But there, toward the end of the Tappan biography, I came across a challenge that brought me back to earth. Charles Grandison Finney, America’s most famous revivalist of the nineteenth century, Oberlin professor of theology , and its second president, seemed to have some words for me before I dug into the archives myself. In a letter to Lewis Tappan reprinted in an appendix , Finney wrote of Oberlin and the antislavery movement, “The fact is thatOberlinturnedthescaleinalloftheNorthwest.Nomancantellthestory right unless he knows this.” I knew that, of course. The purpose of my whole project was to illuminate and emphasize that fact. But what else might Finney have thought necessary to “tell the story right”? I had yet to turn over a page in the archives, and Charles Finney was already looking over my shoulder. I hope that this book would earn his approval. Besides the rich records that Finney and his colleagues left for me, I could not have possibly completed this task without the help and inspiration of many, many people. In Oberlin, I was made to feel like an honorary Oberlinite (as they were called in the nineteenth century) by archivists Roland Baumann, Ken Grossi, and their incredible staff. They more than anyone else will be able to evaluate my use of the Oberlin archives. Also, I am indebted to Gary Kornblith and Carol Lasser for sharing with me their own work on Oberlin, their unique insight as Obies (as they are now called), an insider’s tour of the town, and xii acknowledgments well needed midday cups of coffee. Other scholars, including Richard Newman , Fergus Bordewich, James Horton, Marlene Merrill, William McFeely, Stanley Harrold, Maggi Morehouse, and Peter Wood, also helped me interpret what I discovered in Oberlin and pointed me to new sources as well. My undergraduate mentor and friend at the University of South Carolina, Walter Edgar, drew me from the clutches of law school into the graduate study of history and a career I love, and offered invaluable and continuous moral support and guidance through some tough times. The only way that I can repay my Cornell graduate advisers is by striving to be as much like them as possible in my own academic career. Jon Parmenter, Richard Bensel, and my chair, Ed Baptist, kept their standards high, helped me whenever I asked for it, and stood firmly behind me when I most needed it. They are responsible for making sure my graduate experience was more of a “celebration” than the “ordeal” it could have been. Margaret Washington was also involved in the early development of this work, and it is better for her efforts. Paul E. Johnson was a close adviser on early drafts of the manuscript, and he was just as valuable in that capacity as he was as my professor years ago at the University of South Carolina. In addition , I want to thank the participants in Cornell’s Americas Colloquium who helped me work through several of these chapters around seminar tables in McGraw Hall and then at the table under our picture at the Chapter House. My Ithaca family made everything not just bearable but a joy. I hope I did the same for them. Daegan Miller (who helped me give my final draft a twenty-five-page haircut), Mike Schmidli, Daniel Sledge, Julian Lim, Chris Cantwell, Mari Crabtree, Rebecca Tally, Vernon Mitchell, Heather Furnas, Candace Katungi, and others all read parts of my manuscript, shared their thoughts, and, most importantly, shared their...

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