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

In this well-crafted book, J. Brent Morris explores both the symbolic and substantive importance of Oberlin as a “hotbed of abolitionism.” Morris explains how the perfectionist Christianity of the town’s founders inspired the nation’s first multiracial, co-educational college, and sustained an unusually integrated community. Further, Morris analyzes how Oberlinites rose to prominence in the national antislavery movement by pioneering a “practical abolitionism” that combined political activism, moral suasion, and civil disobedience. More broadly, Morris argues that historians cannot understand the growth of antislavery sentiment without focusing on the West, a region where abolitionist leaders avoided the ideological divisions prevalent in the East and instead pursued multiple strategies for fighting slavery, prejudice, and discrimination.

From its founding in 1833 through the present, “Oberlin” has been shorthand for radical abolitionism. Morris digs beneath this myth by mining institutional records, private correspondence, memoirs, and newspapers to reconstruct the daily lives, spiritual beliefs, and political strategies of Oberlin abolitionists. Noting the close links between town and college, he uses the broad label “Oberlinites” to refer to students, faculty, alumni, and local residents. In nine chronologically organized chapters, Morris demonstrates how Oberlin’s antislavery influence expanded throughout the antebellum period.

Reverend John J. Shipherd and Philo Stewart founded Oberlin in the Northern Ohio wilderness as a utopian community whose “sole mission was to save souls and prepare the world for the coming millennium of Christ” (p. 2). To further this goal, founders opened the Oberlin Institute, which became famous in 1835 for accepting abolitionist faculty and students expelled from Lane Theological Seminary. The Lane Rebels, along with theology professor Charles Grandison Finney, insisted that African American students be admitted on the same terms as whites and that free speech be protected.

By the mid-1830s, progressive students from across the North came to study at Oberlin and many went on to become antislavery leaders. In 1835–1836, Oberlin students and faculty made up half of the traveling lecturers hired by the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1840, when eastern leaders split into two antislavery organizations, Oberlinites remained neutral and continued their tradition of open debate. Far removed from the bitter rivalries in New York and Boston, and on the path of fugitives fleeing the South, Oberlinites adopted a practical approach to ending slavery by whatever means necessary. As Morris succinctly explains, “if the moral heart of abolitionism remained in New England, and the political heart was in upstate New York, the Ohio abolitionists united these two and become their counterpart in the West” (pp. 6–7).

Morris also recovers the significance of Oberlin as a radical experiment in gender and racial equality unique for its time. Though black students were always a small part of the student body — between two and five percent in any given year — more black students studied at Oberlin before 1860 than at all other American colleges combined. They joined white students in dining halls, classrooms, and religious meetings. In an 1854 letter, black student John Mercer Langston recalled his astonishment when his white peer Henry Howe invited him to play checkers and study Latin. Langston “had never before had a young white friend who was willing to treat me as his friend” (p. 71). These small, daily interactions were what, as much as anything, made Oberlin a beacon for those seeking racial equality.

Black students and townspeople became key leaders in the fight for abolition and racial equality. During the 1850s, John Mercer Langston and William Howard Day worked tirelessly to channel northern voters’ anger at the “Slave Power” toward abolition and equal rights. Black residents led illegal efforts to aid fugitive slaves, turning Oberlin into a hub of the Underground Railroad. In 1858, this local defiance erupted into national politics when Oberlinites rescued a fugitive from the neighbouring town of Wellington in...