Our Radical Past Buried Alive - The Great Lane Theological Seminary Debates On Abolition

It is one of the worst parts of the collective, received amnesia Americans have about our real radical history that so little is known about the part that the Protestant mainstream churches, especially the Calvinists played in that history of real and productive radicalism.  I think it is a real radical legacy that would find more fertile ground in the United States than the romantic, when not fictitious left I've been dealing with earlier this week.  Religion is an ongoing concern in the United States, even the abducted and disappeared liberal protestant tradition that's supposed to be on life support to have the power cut any time now.  Oh, yeah, it's an ongoing concern in the way that Marxism, anarchism, various other would be radical isms, are not and have never been.

It is a real shame that no transcript of the epic debate over slavery, abolition and colonization of slaves to Liberia was kept.  Considering the massive scope of the debate, the incredible effort involved and the fact that it took place in what was, in 1834, the sticks, on the very frontier between free soil and slave power the effort is astonishing.  I would like to know of any similar effort being undertaken by college students today.  It is certainly one of the key events in the history of American abolitionism, little known today, which led, among other things, to the establishment of Oberlin College as a hotbed of abolitionism and an early center of equal education.   Here, from a pamphlet containing the speech of one of the participants, a divinity student, son of a slave owner, James A. Thome of Kentucky, with a description of the debates and other material is a description of the format of the debates.

GREAT DEBATE AT LANE SEMINARY. 

Lane Seminary, Walnut Hill, near Cincinnati, Ohio, March 10, 1334. 

Brother Leavitt — Many of your readers are undoubtedly interested in whatever concerns this rising institution. Therefore, I send you the following. Slavery and its proposed remedies — immediate abolition and colonization, have been subjects of occasional remark among the students, since the commencement of the late term (June). A flourishing Colonization Society has existed among us almost from the foundation of the institution. Our interest in these topics increased gradually until about the first of February, when it was resolved that we discuss publicly the merits of the colonization and abolition schemes. At this time, there were but few decided abolitionists in the Seminary. The two following questions were discussed, separately : 

1st. " Ought the people of the Slaveholding States to abolish Slavery immediately?" 

2d. '"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?" 

Our respected faculty, fearing the effect the discussion would have upon the prosperity of the Seminary, formally advised, that it should be postponed indefinitely. But the students, feeling great anxiety that it should proceed, and being persuaded from the state of feeling among them, that it would be conducted in a manner becoming young men looking forward to the ministry of the gospel of reconciliation, resolved to go on. The President, and the members of the faculty, with one exception, were present during parts of the discussion. 

Each question was debated nine evenings of two hours and a half each ; making forty-five hours of solid debate. We possessed some facilities for discussing both these questions intelligently. We are situated within one mile of a slaveholding State; eleven of our number were born and brought up in slave States, seven of whom were sons of slaveholders, and one of them was himself a slaveholder, till recently ; one of us had been a slave, and had bought his freedom, " with a great sum," which his own hands had earned ; ten others had lived more or less in slave States, besides several who had traveled in the midst of slavery, making inquiries and searching after truth. 

We possessed all the numbers of the African Repository, from its commencement, nearly all the Annual Reports of the Colonization Society, and the prominent documents of the Anti-Slavery Society. In addition to the above, our kind friends in the city, furnished us with Colonization pamphlets in profusion. Dr. Shane, a young gentleman of Cincinnati, who had been out to Liberia, with a load of emigrants, as an agent of the Colonization Society, furnished us with a long statement concerning the colony ; and a distinguished instructress, recently of Hartford, Connecticut, now of Cincinnati, sent us a communication from her hand, which attempted to prove, that Colonizationists and Abolitionists ought to unite their efforts, and not contend against one another. — 
These were our materials. And, sir, it was emphatically a discussion of facts, facts, FACTS. 

So, you can see, it was no "Oxford style debate" for the entertainment of the participants but a long, concerted effort by seminary students to find The Truth that would set people free.  I can't imagine the attention span of today's "reality community" extending for the first two hours.   Few facts would be involved, soundbites, factoids and slogans of common received non-wisdom would take the place of those.  It would be Stephen Fry level erudition.

The results were conclusive, almost all of the those who took part in or heard the debate came down for abolition of slavery as the only moral course to take.  They formed an anti-slavery society, the trustees of the Lane Theological Seminary cracked down, fearing a loss of financial support and involving the institution in the hottest political and financial controversy at the time - choosing the world over the soul of the institution - and about 75 our of 100 students left, a large part of them going over to Oberlin College and continuing to struggle against slavery.

I would encourage you to make you way through the pamphlet because it really is remarkable to read what the sons of slave owners concluded, obviously to their own financial disadvantage because they believed they were religiously required to take an active part in opposing slavery.  From the little I've been able to look at, the material that needs to be brought out and made known to reclaim our real radical heritage is overwhelming.  Here is a site of links to resources just for this one incident.  A few of the links don't work but most of them do.

Update:  "So the Triumph of Expediency over Right May Soon Terminate"

from  "Statement of Reasons," to which fifty-one students attached their signatures.

"Finally, we would respectfully remind the trustees, that even though students of a theological seminary, we should be treated as men—that men, destined for the service of the world, need, above all things in such an age an this, the pure and impartial, the disinterested and magnanimous, the uncompromising and fearless—in combination with the gentle and tender spirit and example of Christ; not parleying with wrong, but calling it to repentance; not flattering the proud, but pleading the cause of the poor. And we record the hope that the glorious stand taken upon the subject of discussion, and up to the close of the last session, maintained by the institution may be early resumed, that so the triumph of expediency over right may soon terminate, and Lane Seminary be again restored to the glory of its beginning.

"CINCINNATI, Dec. 15, 1834."