The Bitter Harvest

In the fall of 1831, Henry Spalding, having completed two years of study at Franklin Academy, enrolled at Western Reserve College in Hudson, New York.8 The students and faculty of Western Reserve, including Spalding, were dedicated to the principles of the American Colonization Society.9 Members of the faculty included Charles B. Storrs, the President of Western; Professor Beriah Green; and Professor Elizur Wright, Jr.10

Henry Spalding’s first year at Western Reserve was peaceful and uneventful, with one exception--he had fallen in love. Sometime in 1830, while a student at Franklin Academy, Spalding had begun a correspondence with a young woman, Miss Eliza Hart. Miss Hart, like Spalding, had expressed an interest in becoming a missionary to the Indians. They were now corresponding with each other regularly. During his first semester at Western Reserve, Spalding visited Eliza Hart at her parents’ home in Prattsburg where they met for the first time. At this time their friendship began to deepen into something more. They continued their correspondence and in September of 1832, he visited Eliza a second time. This time he proposed to her and his proposal was accepted. However, in order to become better acquainted with her intended, Eliza made the decision to move to Hudson and attend a girls’ school there. She was living in Hudson when Henry began his second year at Western Reserve.11

That year, the school year of 1832-33, there occurred a controversy which shook the once-peaceful college to its very foundations. President Storrs, having recently read William Lloyd Garrison’s “The Liberator,” had been suddenly and indisputably converted to abolitionism. “The colonizationists were more than grieved by the sudden change of support by Mr. Storrs, who had been considered one of their leaders. Some called it desertion.”12 At this time, Professor Green and Professor Wright, also former colonizationists, had begun to be swayed by Garrison’s arguments.

Then, on October 12, 1832, a budding abolitionist named Theodore Dwight Weld visited the campus. This visit was to have a profound influence not only on the faculty, but on Weld himself. The purpose of Weld’s visit was to discuss the idea of immediate emancipation with President Storrs, Professor Green, and Professor Wright, all of whom he knew to be deeply interested in the subject. As a result of their passionate discussions, by the time Weld left Lane they were all dedicated to working toward the immediate abolition of slavery. Professor Green and Professor Wright soon became leaders of the abolition movement at Western Reserve. They preached the aggressive abolition doctrines of William Lloyd Garrison. “It was radical and militant and brooked no temporizing.”13 Another leader in the abolition movement, James Gillespie Birney, wrote in his diary of Green:

Of all my friends and acquaintances in the abolition ranks--and they certainly contain a great deal of talent--Beriah Green’s arguments strike me as the most forceful and convincing.14

The abolitionists firmly believed that to be a member in the American Colonization Society was to make a compromise with sin.15

In early November of 1832, Professor Green assigned as a subject for a traditional monthly debate “‘the points which separate the patrons of the American Colonization Society from the advocates of immediate emancipation.’”16 The student colonizationists, unswayed by the abolitionists’ arguments, considered the abolitionists to have lost the debate. Professor Green, “shocked by the arguments advanced by the advocates of colonization,”17 decided to enter the debate himself. He began a series of Sunday sermons, four in total, in which he inferred that colonization and Christianity contradicted each other. He stated that anyone who believed in the colonization movement could not be a Christian, and reproached the colonizationists for their “rank impiety and gross hypocrisy.”18 The White citizens of Hudson, the trustees of Western Reserve, and the colonizationists reacted with predictable outrage to these accusations.19

In December of 1832 Professor Wright wrote to Weld:

In my circumstances I feel clear to stick to our beloved college, and act through it as long as possible. Should the storm that now seems to be gathering, or any other cause, drive me off, I should rejoice to be deemed worthy to exert a more direct influence in favor of immediate, universal emancipation. This is the doctrine of the Savior, and it must be preached, from one end of the land to the other, tho’ the very “Stars of Heaven” should be shaken by it.20

In February of 1833, Wright and Green wrote Weld that “every day adds strength to [our] conviction that this is the cause of Him who died for us; that the Colonization doctrines in regard to slavery have been the worst obstacle in the path of our missionary effort. . . .”21

In August of 1833 Henry Spalding’s graduation ceremony turned out to be the most memorable one in the history of Western Reserve. Professor Wright in a letter to Beriah Green dated September 18, 1883, wrote that “some time before Commencement I had resolved to resign my place. . . .”22 Having thus decided, he took this opportunity to make one last unforgettable protest to the citizens of Hudson and the colonizationists of Western Reserve--he appeared in the academic procession walking arm-in-arm with a Black barber from Pittsburgh. This caused quite a commotion and most of the assembly left in outrage.23 He had also written a discourse on colonization which was presented by a group of students under his instruction. The reaction by the trustees and citizens of Hudson being as he had anticipated, Elizur Wright resigned the next morning.24

In the midst of all the excitement, Henry Spalding’s speech on “Claims of the Heathen on the American Churches”25 must have garnered little attention. As he had no family present, Eliza Hart was the only one in the audience who really cared about what he had to say. By this time Spalding had earned a reputation as an “angry, fiery-tempered man, obsessed with his cause,”26 and his cause was the American Colonization Society. In September of 1833 he wrote to Eliza’s parents:

His [Professor Green’s] abolition has about ruined this college. It was the cause of his being dismissed from this institution. I hope it will never be admitted into your institution. However, we hope decided measures are now taking [sic] by the Trustees to put a stop to its raging. All the professors have been dismissed but one, and he is a friend of colonization.27

Spalding's outrage concerning the activities of the impenitent abolitionists was reflected by the trustees of the college who, horrified, considered the entire incident a catastrophe of immense proportions. They had been scandalized by the activities of the abolitionists. They later wrote:

Had the trustees been able to meet in January, and had they dismissed Professor Green at that time, the catastrophe at Western Reserve College would have been less. The disaster was so great that many years were required to repair the damage done. . . .28

In a letter to Weld dated September 5, 1833, Professor Wright wrote concerning Professor Green’s dismissal:

Bro. Green, as you have doubtless heard, has left us. . . . His farewell addresses here were very happy for the cause he so much loved. They came near banishing the last shreds of the “patch-work morality” from this college. Only a half-dozen now remain who pretend to support the Colonization scheme.29

Henry and Eliza Spalding were among the half-dozen.

Before graduating from Western Reserve, Spalding applied for admission at Lane Theological Seminary30 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The winter term was to begin in November of 1833. Unwilling to part with each other at Hudson, Henry and Eliza discussed marrying earlier than they had originally intended. As his wife, Eliza could not only accompany him to Lane but would be entitled to attend classes there as well.31 By this time, Eliza was well-acquainted with Henry, having been his sole companion and confidant for the year at Western Reserve. She knew his beliefs and ambition reflected her own. On Sunday evening, October 13, 1833, they were married in the chapel at South College, Western Reserve, by a reverend of the local village church.32

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8. “Western Reserve College (hereafter referred to as “Western Reserve”) was still a pioneer institution when Spalding arrived in the fall of 1831. It had been established in the Connecticut Western Reserve of northeastern Ohio in 1826, at Hudson. . . .” The Connecticut Western Reserve was a parcel of land in what later became New York and Ohio that was purchased in 1754 by a group of Connecticut citizens. In September 1786 Congress validated Connecticut’s claim to “New Connecticut,” otherwise known as the “Western Reserve.” During the Revolutionary War, several Connecticut towns had been burned by the British. The victims of the burning were subsequently deeded a half-million acres of the Western Reserve, which land subsequently became known as the “Fire Lands” or “Burned-Over District.” Ibid., 44; Frederick Clayton Waite, Western Reserve University, The Hudson Era: A History of Western Reserve College and Academy at Hudson, Ohio, from 1826-1882 (Cleveland, Ohio: Western Reserve University Press, 1943), 8-10.

9. “‘Colonization’ will refer to that movement which believed that slavery was an evil, that slaves should be freed over time, that blacks and whites were unable to live as equals in a free society, and therefore free blacks should be transported out of the United States.” Colonizationists believed in the doctrine of Black inferiority. Lesick, The Lane Rebels, 8; Andrew E. Murray, Presbyterians and the Negro: A History (Philadelphia, Pa.: Presbyterian Historical Society, 1966), 79.

10. Charles Backus Storrs (1794-1833) moved to Ohio in 1822. In 1828 he became professor of Theology at Western Reserve. In 1831 he was made President. His death in 1833, within a year of the antislavery debate at Western, cut short what would have been a brilliant career in the antislavery movement. Beriah Green (1795-1874) was a preacher in Connecticut, Vermont and Maine. In 1831 he became professor of sacred literature at Western Reserve. After leaving Western Reserve, he became president of the Oneida Institute. Elizur Wright, Jr. (1804-1885) was born in Connecticut and grew up on the Western Reserve in Ohio. In 1829 he became professor of mathematics and philosophy at Western Reserve. He resigned this position in 1833 to devote the rest of his life to the abolitionist cause. Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond, eds., Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sarah Grimké, 1822-1844, vol. 1 (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1965), 94, 96; Benjamin P. Thomas, Theodore Weld: Crusader for Freedom (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1950), 35-36.

11. Drury, Henry Harmon Spalding, 46, 47.

12. Waite, Western Reserve College, 98.

13. Thomas, Theodore Weld, 35-36.

14. Robert H. Abzug, Passionate Liberator: Theodore Dwight Weld and the Dilemma of Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 87.

15. Drury, Henry Harmon Spalding, 47, 48.

16. Waite, Western Reserve College, 98-99.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Barnes, Weld-Grimké Letters, 97.

21. Ibid., 103-104.

22. Waite, Western Reserve College, 102.

23. “Wright was persuaded not to take the Negro . . . to the afternoon service.” Drury, Henry Harmon Spalding, 49.

24. Waite, Western Reserve College, 102-103.

25. Drury, Henry Harmon Spalding, 49.

26. Dawson, “Laboring in My Savior’s Vineyard,” 30.

27. Drury, Henry Harmon Spalding, 48.

28. Waite, Western Reserve College, 110.

29. Barnes, Weld-Grimké Letters, 116.

30. Hereafter referred to as “Lane.”
 

31. Eliza had not been permitted to attend classes at Western Reserve College. Lane Seminary encouraged the wives of their students to attend their husbands’ classes. Drury, Henry Harmon Spalding, 58.

32. By this time, Reverend Green had been dismissed. Henry and Eliza, in order to avoid his sermons on colonization, had been attending the local village church. Ibid., 50-54.

Go Down Moses        (Let My People Go)