Ohio History Journal

MIAMI UNIVERSITY, CALVINISM, AND THE ANTI-

SLAVERY MOVEMENT 1

 

By JAMES H. RODABAUGH

 

Miami University is a daughter of the Old Northwest. Its

origins may be traced to the land grant made by Congress to John

Cleves Symmes in 1787. According to the contract, among the

lands of the Symmes Purchase one township was to be reserved

for an "academy or college." After years of controversy and

litigation during which Symmes sold the reserved lands, Congress,

in 1803, granted in trust to the state of Ohio another township

in lieu of that within the purchase. By authorization of the legis-

lature of Ohio, the present college township was set aside. On

February 17, 1809, an act was passed establishing the Miami

University. After years of political controversy over the location

of the university itself, during which time a small endowment

was built up from the leasing of the lands, the institution was

opened in the fall of 1824.

At that time Robert Hamilton Bishop, a Scotsman well-

known in the West as a preacher and teacher, became president.

Small hope had been held by some for the little college buried in

the wilderness, but Bishop, who foresaw the growth of Ohio

and the Middle West, assumed his position with optimism for

the institution's future. It began to thrive immediately, and by

the late 1830's was the leading university west of the Alleghenies.

During these years new buildings were constructed, the endow-

ment was increased by the leasing of the college lands, and the

number of students, reaching 250 in 1839, was greater than in

any other western school and compared favorably with the great

universities of the country.

Although a state institution, Miami University was virtually a

Presbyterian stronghold during the first fifty years of its exis-

 

1 This address was delivered before the Mississippi Valley Historical Association,

April 29, 1938.

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MIAMI UNIVERSITY: RODABAUGH              67

 

tence. All of its presidents up to 1873 were Presbyterian minis-

ters, and its trustees and professors were, in general, members of

that denomination. Presbyterian philanthropic associations, such

as the Presbyterian Education Society and the Board of Education

of the General Assembly, gave financial aid to Miami and to a

number of its students. This close connection with the church in-

volved the university in the strife which split the Presbyterians

into the Old and New Schools in the 1830's.

During the early decades of the nineteenth century the

rugged individualists of the United States, and particularly of

the West, began slowly to arise from the clutches of the pure

Calvinism which had been inherited from the old countries. Pure

Calvinism had taught that because of Adam's original sin, all men,

except the elect who had been foreordained to salvation by divine

decree, were inherently evil and damned to a fiery hell by an

angry God. Here was a doctrine at which the democratic spirits

of the West gradually revolted as they listened to the thundering

voices of such theological liberals as Nathaniel W. Taylor of Yale

and his protege, Lyman Beecher; George W. Gale and his con-

vert, Charles, Grandison Finney and Finney's pupil, Theodore

Dwight Weld. In the process of the evolution of religious doc-

trines from orthodox Calvinism to a new freedom of the spirit

came inevitable and bitter struggles such as those between the

Old and New Schools of the Presbyterian Church. Although

there were various doctrinal points of difference between the Old

and New Schools, the great distinction was psychological, one of

attitudes. Whatever seemed to be liberal in the sense of repre-

senting something new in theological principle or religio-social

policy can perhaps be generally associated with the New School.

On the other hand, the Old School, narrowly sectarian, generally

represented the orthodox, conservative point of view, which ac-

cepted the existing order as right and decried anything new.

Bishop was, by his training, essentially a reformer. Although

steeped in the religious teachings of the Burgher Church of Scot-

land, his contacts at the University of Edinburgh opened to him

a wider interest in mankind, and he turned with enthusiasm to the

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68    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

new studies of human society, namely, history, politics, and social

relations. At Edinburgh he fell under the influence of Dugald

Stewart, then the leading philosopher of the British Isles, a liberal,

an anti-cleric, and an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolu-

tion. Other students attending Stewart's lectures while Bishop

was there included the later Whig leaders, Lord Henry Cockburn,

Lord Henry Petty, Francis Horner, Lord Francis Jeffrey, and

Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham. Under the influence of Stew-

art and his students Bishop began to criticize the idea of having

various denominations.

He carried these influences with him to the United States in

1802. From 1804 to 1824 Bishop taught at Transylvania Uni-

versity; there and later at Miami he taught courses in social re-

lations, said to be among the first of such courses taught in the

United States. While in Kentucky he became involved in a bit-

ter controversy in the Associate Reformed Church, in which he and

several other young ministers were attacked for their liberal teach-

ings. With this background Bishop assumed the presidency of

Miami University. When the church divided in 1836-37, Bishop

pled for unity. As early as 1833 he sensed the oncoming revolu-

tion and published A Plea for United Christian Action, Addressed

Particularly to Presbyterians. This sermon was re-published all

over the country, and served to involve Bishop and Miami Uni-

versity in the conflict. Bishop's great work in the strife was an

attempt to compromise and harmonize the opposing schools, and

the university became the center from which this movement

emanated.

Bishop's colleagues in the attempt to re-unite the church in-

cluded Samuel Crothers, an anti-slavery leader then preaching in

Adams County, Calvin E. Stowe, husband of Harriet Beecher

Stowe, John W. Scott, a Miami professor and father of President

Benjamin Harrison's first wife, and several former students of

Miami, most prominent of whom was Thomas E. Thomas. In

1838, they formed an organization known as the "Reformers," or

"Conservatives," or "Ministers and Elders of the Presbyterian

Church, who declined to adhere to either division." This asso-

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MIAMI UNIVERSITY: RODABAUGH              69

ciation held a number of conventions and published on the Bishop

press at Oxford a magazine called the Western Peace maker and

Monthly Religious Journal. From May, 1839, to September, 1840,

a determined campaign for peace and friendly relations within the

church and religious community was carried on in the Peace-

maker and other journals and papers. The "Conservatives"

adopted Bishop's proposals advocating the establishment of a

truly democratic form of government in the church such that the

local churches would not be subject to the dictation of the General

Assembly. Along this line Bishop wrote that although the church

is of much importance, after all it is up to "each man, in his

place," to "attend particularly to himself. . . . When every pro-

fessor of religion will keep his own heart and his own conduct

right, we will have a reformed state of, society."

Although Bishop soon passed from active leadership in the

attempt to re-unite the church, that leadership fell into the hands

of several of his former students. During the middle decades of

the century Thomas and Joseph Glass Monfort both graduates of

Miami in 1834, and William C. Anderson, who had fallen under

Bishop's influence although not a student at Miami, kept active

the struggle for reunion. By 1866, these men were able to bring

the proposals for reunion to a point where negotiations were

started. Monfort and two other former students of Bishop at

Miami were appointed to the Joint Committee on Reunion. Mon-

fort drew up the plan for reunion on the basis of "the Standards

pure and simple," and propagandized successfully for the accep-

tance of the plan, according to which the Old and New School

assemblies agreed to unite in May and November, 1869. This

amounted to a virtual adoption of the portion of Bishop's plan

which guaranteed self-government to the synods and presbyteries.

The connection between the Presbyterian Church and Miami

University has been a very real one; the university through its

administrators and graduates exerting a great influence on the

church. The denomination in turn vitally affected the university.

The theological controversy enveloped Miami University and as-

sisted in bringing troule within its walls, which forced Bishop

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70    OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

out of the directorship of the institution. Another controversy

was raging at the same time which, with the theological strife,

took its toll at Miami in the removal of liberal leadership from

the university and replacing it with dogmatic and arbitrary rule.

That was the anti-slavery movement.

The anti-slavery movement was accepted by the social re-

former, Bishop, with open arms. His Scottish educational heri-

tage instilled in him an essentially humane and democratic point

of view. While in Kentucky he had formed a warm friendship

with the Reverend David Rice, the father of Presbyterianism in

the West and the man who took the first conspicuous step toward

the abolition of slavery in Kentucky. Bishop was chosen to edit

Rice's Memoirs. Bishop spent several years in organizing Sunday-

schools for Negroes in and around Lexington and was more

than once returned to the grand jury for these activities.  In

Ohio, Bishop apparently assisted in forming the Ohio Coloniza-

tion Society and was elected one of its vice-presidents. A local

colonization society was organized among the students and pro-

fessors at Miami. By 1830, the colonization idea, however, had

displayed its impracticability and a new organization, the Ameri-

can Anti-Slavery Society, got under way about 1833.

The famous Lane Seminary debate in 1833 and the formal

agitation of the American Anti-Slavery Society beginning in 1834,

set in motion the organization of a number of local anti-slavery

societies in the West. Shortly after the Lane debate, the Miami

University Anti-Slavery Society was formed on June 12, 1834.

The students, among them James G. Birney, Jr., expended much

time and energy speaking throughout the region, distributing

pamphlets, and procuring subscriptions to various anti-slavery

papers, and they assisted James G. Birney, Sr., to develop the first

circulation of the Philanthropist. These activities of the students

received the support of Bishop and Scott. These men, however,

refused to join the society, preferring to press first for an anti-

slavery stand within the Presbyterian Church. Bishop was not

a rabid abolitionist of the Garrisonian type.

In the anti-slavery movement within the church Bishop was

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MIAMI UNIVERSITY: RODABAUGH              71

allied, on the whole, with the same men with whom he was united

in the religious controversy. These men wished to see the church

declare slavery a sin, while, at the same time they agreed

that, in order to solve the problem, expediency as well as right-

ness would have to be taken into consideration. In the Peace-

maker, the religious periodical previously mentioned, Bishop and

Scott wrote that the problem of abolition was an educational one,

and it was therefore the responsibility of the church through its

ministers to teach some means of abolishing slavery. As the move-

ment for emancipation grew, it became Bishop's "determination

to compel the Presbyterian Church to take anti-slavery ground,

and to assist in arresting the onward progress of Slavery, and

ultimately remove the curse from American soil." He began his

active crusade in the conventions of the "Reformers" who passed

resolutions condemning slavery and calling upon the whole church

to take a similar stand.

Southwestern Ohio was an area of divided opinion both on

the religious and slavery questions. Bishop's sympathy with the

New School and with the anti-slavery movement won him the en-

mity of a large portion of the community and of a majority of the

Board of Trustees who were either members of the Old School or

pro-slavery in sentiment. They chose to attack Bishop's administra-

tion for laxity of discipline, that being based solely on the fact

that he permitted the students in their literary societies to debate

the important religious and political questions of the day. Bishop

frankly encouraged the students to have and to speak their own

opinions freely, and in his final address as president of Miami

he said: "I love to see in young men a disposition to think and to

act in all things for themselves and on their own responsibility.

. . Nor have I yet any occasion to repent of throwing myself

upon the understandings and the hearts of any number of young

men."

The Board forced the resignations of Bishop and Scott. The

administration of the university was then turned over to George

Junkin, the "heresy-hunter" of the Presbyterian Church, an Old

School leader, who, in 1835, brought on the split in the church

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72    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

by his prosecution of the Philadelphia minister, Albert Barnes, for

heresy. In addition, Junkin was an ardent anti-abolitionist. He

immediately felt called upon, as he said, "to labor for the sup-

pression of a class of disputations that result in evil," namely, the

debates on religious and political questions in the literary so-

cieties. In the course of an eight-hour address against abolitionism

Junkin stated that when he came to Miami, "it was early impressed

upon my mind, that this brand [abolitionism] had already kindled

up a fire which had well nigh consumed Miami University. To

such a runinous degree did the fire burn within her bosom, that

the Trustees took up the subject and passed strong resolutions

condemnatory of this wild fire." Junkin's job would have been

difficult enough even if he had not been a bigot. But he attempted

to replace the liberal administration of Bishop, which was emi-

nently successful, with the dogmatic rule of a tyrant, or monarch,

as he chose to call himself. The result was that the students rose

up against him, the number in attendance began to decrease, and

agitation was soon set on foot in the community and among the

alumni demanding his removal. After three years of fighting

everything that did not conform to his Old School orthodoxy, of

winning the hatred of the Methodists and other sects, and of

battling abolitionism, Junkin resigned in 1845.

The influence of Miami University in the anti-slavery move-

ment in the Presbyterian Church continued as Bishop's students

carried on his program. Again it was Thomas who led the agita-

tion, assisted particularly by Anderson. Monfort edited an anti-

slavery church paper called the Presbyter. In 1864, after years

of bitter debate, the Old School General Assembly adopted as em-

phatic an abolition declaration as any abolitionist could desire.

This, wrote the historian of the relation of the Presbyterian

Church to the Federal Union in the Civil War, "was indeed a

triumph for the southern Ohio group, that for over twenty years

had been fighting to get the Assembly to adhere to its 1818 stand,"

that is, take a frankly abolitionist position.

Thus Miami University exerted her influence on the anti-

slavery crusade, especially in the Presbyterian Church. Not only

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MIAMI UNIVERSITY: RODABAUGH               73

 

did she produce students such as Jared M. Stone, Freeman G.

and Samuel F. Cary, John, James and William Thomson, Robert

Schenck, David Bruen, and Thomas and Monfort who carried

on the struggle, but through the activities of Bishop and Scott,

the university became the center of the early movement within

the Old School to force the church to take an anti-slavery stand.

As a virtual Presbyterian school, Miami became a storm center

of two great controversies which rocked the national church;

first, the controversy between liberal and orthodox Presbyterians;

second, the struggle between the slavery and anti-slavery forces

of the church; with each group fighting for the control of the

university. By 1845, the conflicts had brought disaster to the

administrations of Miami's first two presidents. Nevertheless,

the Presbyterians still remained in control of the university.

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