The Bitter Harvest
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Lane’s first theological class began in November of 1833 and consisted of about forty members. It was in this class that Henry Spalding was enrolled. It was described by him as “the largest Junior Theological Class in America.”33 The Spaldings would have been extremely relieved to leave their traumatic experiences at Western Reserve behind. Lane’s President was Lyman Beecher, a renowned minister and affirmed colonizationist, whom the Spaldings greatly admired.34 Lane also had a very large and very dynamic student Colonization Society. The knowledge that both the faculty and the student body were avid supporters of colonization would have been very encouraging to the Spaldings. They had no way to know that their years at Lane were to be affected by the same antislavery controversy which had so disrupted their last year at Western Reserve.35
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Theodore Dwight Weld also enrolled in Lane in November of 1833. By this time, Weld was nationally known for his advocacy of the abolition movement. His reasons for enrolling in Lane were identical to Henry and Eliza Spalding’s, but his plans were quite different. That fall he wrote a fellow abolitionist: “This Institution stands fiercely committed for Colonization and against abolition.”36 In a letter to Weld in November of 1833, Elizur Wright praised Weld’s strategy: “I rejoice that you have prepared the line of attack for a general pitched battle with the colonizationists.”37 Weld immediately began his immensely successful mission to convince the student colonizationists of the virtues of abolitionism. Augustus Wattles, one of the first students whom Weld influenced, later wrote: “I had been for a year the President of a Colonization Society . . . I did unremittingly what I now see was a great wrong.”38 Over the course of his first year at Lane, Weld rapidly recruited a many of the former colonizationists, who began to believe as he did that “Faith without works is dead.”39 Charles Beecher later recalled that “they were an unusual group--a little uncivilized, entirely radical, and terribly in earnest.”40 The students put their newly-discovered faith to work among the Black people of Cincinnati.
They were “daily hissed and cursed, loaded with brutal and vulgar epithets, oaths and threats, filth and offal were often thrown at them.” They received letters “filled with threats, to be executed unless they discontinued [their activities].”41
However, the rebellious students of Lane persevered despite overwhelming opposition.
Lyman Beecher, dismayed by the controversial activities of the student abolitionists, responded by speaking out in favor of colonization. He stressed the value of colonization, saying that if he were forced to choose between colonization and abolition, he would stay with the Colonization Society. Beecher feared the kind of equality espoused by Weld and the abolitionist movement. He defended his racial prejudices by attributing them to “the condition and character”42 of the Black people. He refused to live among those he considered inherently inferior.43 He and his followers, which included the Spaldings, continued to advocate their colonizationist fantasy of “land enough on this western continent for a colony of colored people.”44
During the winter of 1834, the simmering colonization controversy came to a full boil. The students elected to hold a debate to consider two questions. The first question was “Ought the people of the Slaveholding States to abolish Slavery immediately?” The second question to be debated was “Are the doctrines, tendencies, and measures of the American Colonization Society, and the influence of its principal supporters, such as render it worthy of the patronage of the Christian Public?”45 On February 4, 1834, the students asked President Beecher’s permission to hold the debate. He told them: “Go ahead, Boys. . . .”46 However, when Beecher approached the faculty with the idea, he was told that the issues were too controversial and permission was withdrawn. That evening, Beecher asked the students to postpone the debate to some future time “when the subject could be examined freely and openly.”47
The debate began the very next evening, February 5, 1834, without the permission of the faculty. “Each question was examined for nine evenings, two and one half hours per night.”48 By the end of the debate, the vast majority of student colonizationists had seen the error of their ways. They enthusiastically and incontrovertibly embraced the doctrine of immediate emancipation. There is no record of Henry Spalding either attending the debate or defending his cherished American Colonization Society during the debate. He most likely avoided them as he had avoided Beriah Green’s sermons at Western Reserve.49
Lyman Beecher encouraged the meager number of students who had remained devoted to colonization after the debate, which number included Henry and Eliza Spalding, to form a new colonization society in an effort to “offset the negative public sentiment towards the students.”50 On July 4, 1834, this newly-organized Colonization Society elected Henry Spalding as one of five officers. Three days later, on July 7, Spalding’s society arrogantly issued a Constitution, a statement of reasons for its formation, and four resolutions.
These students made it clear that they had no objections to the activities of abolitionists, “so far as they are judiciously directed to that object only.” They would not, however, endorse “that mistaken philanthropy which would introduce a promiscuous association of all classes, without regard to the principles of equality based upon intellectual and moral culture, and thereby increase the very difficulty sought to be removed. (Emphases added.)51
Their credo, so explicitly racist, was formulated from the ideals of Henry and Eliza Spalding. In contrast to those around who them were experiencing profound enlightenment, were realizing that all men are equal in the eyes of God, and were proclaiming the doctrine of abolition “tho’ the very ‘Stars of Heaven’ should be shaken by it,” the Spaldings clung steadfastly to their racial prejudices.
That fall, the Lane faculty passed regulations banning student organizations, specifically the Anti-Slavery Society, and threatened to expel any student who did not comply with its regulations. When the fall term began on October 15, 1834, the students sent a delegation to the faculty and asked them to explain the regulations. Their request was granted. A second delegation of students was then sent to ask the faculty if they could discuss the new regulations among themselves. This request was denied. A final delegation was sent to the faculty to ask if they could discuss among themselves whether they should withdraw from Lane in protest of the new regulations. This request was also denied. Finally, one student stood up and announced that he would not remain a student at Lane under these circumstances, and said that if anyone else felt the same, he or she should leave with him. The majority of the students followed his example.
By the end of the school year, 95 of 103 students previously enrolled in Lane had requested dismissal.52 “Spalding, being a colonizationist, was not in sympathy with the group in the abolition society and was, therefore, unaffected by the faculty action.”53 At the beginning of the school year of 1834-35, only eight former students enrolled. Six of these, including Henry Harmon Spalding, were sworn colonizationists. Theodore Weld wrote of them: “The Colonizationists . . . are making spasmodic efforts to fill the multitude of vacancies. They may succeed in procuring things but not men.”54
The Spaldings’ final year at Lane was quiet, due to the absence of the abolitionist students. In the fall of 1834, a representative of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions visited Lane. Henry Spalding arranged to meet with him and to apply for a position as a missionary.55 The next year, in the fall of 1835, he received an appointment as a missionary to the Osage Indians of Missouri.
The Spaldings began their journey to Missouri on Friday, February 12, 1836. They traveled fifteen miles, arriving at Howard, New York, where they stayed at an inn for the night. There, a breathless Marcus Whitman, famed missionary and explorer, who had been pursuing them all night, caught up with them. He informed them that he had obtained permission from the American Board for a change in their plans. They were now going to Old Oregon with he and his wife, Narcissa. There they were to establish a mission among the Nez Perce Indians.56
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33. Ibid., 55.
34. Lyman Beecher (1775-1863) was born in New Haven, Connecticut. A graduate of Yale, he began his ministry at East Hampton on Long Island. He then preached in Litchfield and Boston. He became one of the most acclaimed Protestant ministers of his time. He was the father of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He was an advocate of the missionary societies and the American Colonization Society. He was in his middle fifties when he accepted the position as President of Lane. In a letter to his daughter Catherine, written on July 8, 1830, he explained the urgency of his move to Cincinnati:
The moral destiny of our nation, and all our institutions and hopes, and the world’s hopes, turns on the character of the West. . . . in which the Catholics and infidels have got the start of us.
Barbara M. Cross, The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961), II:167.
35. Drury, Henry Harmon Spalding, 55; Thomas, Theodore Weld, 70.
36. Thomas, Theodore Weld, 70; Abzug, Passionate Liberator, 89.
37. Lesick, The Lane Rebels, 77.
38. Vincent Harding, with a forward by Jerald C. Brauer, A Certain Magnificence: Lyman Beecher and the Transformation of American Protestantism (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishing, Inc., 1991).
39. Estimates regarding the actual number of Lane Rebels vary from “three dozen” to “hundreds.” Lesick, The Lane Rebels, 13.
40. Charles Beecher was one of the sons of Lyman Beecher. Cross, The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, 322-23; Thomas, Theodore Weld, 49.
41. Harding, A Certain Magnificence, 352.
42. Ibid., 356.
43. In 1839, two Negro ministers, Samuel Cornish and Theodore Wright, wrote the following “Prayer of the Colonizationists:”
We thank thee, O God, for the success which has thus far attended the efforts which have been made to raise up and increase prejudice; . . . carry it on to a full consummation; but if this cannot be granted, change, thou, then their color . . . that we may, thus, be persuaded to love them. . . .
Murray, Presbyterians and the Negro, 85.
44. Harding, A Certain Magnificence, 355, 356.
45. Abzug, Passionate Liberator, 90.
46. Lesick, The Lane Rebels, 78, 79.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. In a letter to a fellow abolitionist Weld wrote: “Five or six of the determined colonizationists refused to attend the debate.” Barnes, Weld-Grimké Letters, 132.
50. Lesick, The Lane Rebels, 95.
51. Ibid.; Cincinnati Journal, 11 July 1834; quoted in Lesick, The Lane Rebels, 156, n. 87.
52. Theodore Weld deferred requesting dismissal, preferring instead to be expelled. However, Lyman Beecher interceded on his behalf and he was not expelled. He then requested a dismissal. Lesick, The Lane Rebels, 130.
53. Drury, Henry Harmon Spalding, 56.
54. Lesick, The Lane Rebels, 129-31; Dwight L. Dumond, ed., The Letters of James Gillespie Birney, 1831-1857, (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, Incorporated, 1938), 1:146.
55. Drury, Henry Harmon Spalding, 60.
56. Ibid., 67, 71.
My Father How Long
