Oneida Institute

The institute opened in May 1827 with 2 instructors, Gale and Pelatiah Rawson (sometimes spelled Peletiah), the latter a Hamilton College graduate and engineer that had worked on the just-completed Erie Canal. There were initially 20 students,{{cite news Oneida was the first and leading American example of the manual labor college, which Gale thought he had originated, although there were earlier examples, and Weld had proposed a manual labor program unsuccessfully to Hamilton College.{{cite news "Religious fervor was kept at a white heat. Studies were interrupted to hold protracted revival meetings." Gale replaced the study of Latin and Classical Greek with Hebrew and Biblical Greek. This change, especially regarding Latin, was vigorously opposed by the Presbyterian Presbytery, with financial consequences.{{cite book The charismatic, influential Christian revivalist Charles Finney had been a student of Gale prior to Oneida, and Gale sought at Oneida to train students "as emissaries of the new revivalism". "The result was a large crop of crusaders and reformers, who were later turned loose to fulminate against drink, slavery, Sabbath breaking, [and] irreligion, some of whom became famous in their proseletyzing fields." Gale "lacked the qualities of a leader". In the summer of 1833 a debate on colonization led to the formation of a colonization and an anti-slavery society.{{cite book Student dissatisfaction led to a mass walk-out in 1832, with about 24 students leaving for Lane, then Oberlin. Gale soon desired to be replaced; he went to Illinois, where he began Galesburg, Illinois, and the Knox Manual Labor College, which in 1857 became Knox College. Gale left the institute with "fiscal problems", saddled with "numerous financial obligations". The "Lane Rebels" Theodore Dwight Weld, who had studied at Oneida from 1827 to 1830, was dissatisfied with Gale's leadership. He led a 1833 exodus of "Oneida boys...disenchanted with Gale's leadership and the lack of regular theological courses"; they rafted down the French and Allegheny rivers to Cincinnati, and constituted 24 of the 40 members of the Lane Seminary's original student body. ==The second and last president: Beriah Green==

{{Cquote|It was an heroic age — an age in which principles of truth were striving for recognition in the lives of those bold enough to be right, rather than popular. Among the few institutions that dared to risk their success upon the carrying out of ideas hostile in their time, was the Oneida Institute, at Whitesboro, New York. It was the hot-bed of radicalism as it existed at that day. Many of its ideas have become a part of the national life; while others are still on debatable ground. There was a heavy brain at its head; and there were great men back of it. In 1843, a letter seeking funds gives the "Course of Study" as "Greek, Hebrew, arithmetic, bookkeeping, algebra, anatomy, physiology, geometry, natural philosophy [studying nature, forerunner of science], natural theology, evidences of Christianity, political economy, science of government, exercises in declamation and composition." Green accepted the job on two conditions: that he be allowed to preach "immediatism", the immediate emancipation of slaves, and that it be allowed to admit African-American students. These were agreed to. Prior to Green, there had not been any Black students at Oneida; so far as is known, none had applied. In 1833, allowing African-American students into educational institutions alongside whites was controversial at best, and aroused bitter, even violent opposition. (Even schools for black students only could be the object of violence.) While there had been one African-American graduate each from Amherst, Bowdoin, and Middlebury, these were exceptional cases. of which there was none in United States. The Canterbury Female Boarding School, in Canterbury, Connecticut, was forced to close after it admitted one African-American girl in 1832, and the school for "young ladies and little misses of color" which replaced it was met with such escalating violence from the townspeople that director Prudence Crandall was forced to close it out of concern for the students' safety. New-York Central College was forced to close in part because of local hostility to education of African Americans, and even more so to African-American professors. In 1836, the New York Senate passed a resolution "directing the Committee on Literature [schools] to inquire into the propriety of denying the Oneida Institute all participation in the Benefits of the Literature Fund." This was because it was "regarded as the hot-bed of sedition, [and] that Beriah Green, the principal, had been active and successful in propagating the doctrines of abolitionism." The Legislature took no action after more than 150 people met to protest and to demand academic freedom.). His replacement, David Ogden, was not an abolitionist. This led to a withdrawal from the Whitesboro Presbyterian Church of "seventy-one communicant members, including most of the elders", to form a new Congregational church under Green's direction. As a result, "Green and his school [were left] with fewer and fewer friends"; he could no longer turn to churches for funding. The Oneida Institute ceased operations in 1843. One factor was the New York Anti-Slavery Society's failure to pay the institute $2000 for the printing costs of their paper Friend of Man, but even if it had, there was no way to make the institute financially viable. According to Dana Bigelow, "Green left the institution a wreck". He identifies the causes of its failure as three: first, the manual labor scheme; "unskilled labor was found to be unprofitable". (The $1000 mentioned above, received from crops, did not cover the costs of their production.) Second, replacing the classics with the Bible: "this did much to disconnect the institution with the general theory and habit of culture in the country and to stamp it with a certain reputation of singularity which could not fail to be in many ways disastrous." Finally, the treating of black and white students equally, and its "iconoclastic zeal for the overthrow of social institutions and interests", led to "much popular odium". According to Bigelow, this was a factor in fundraiser Frost's departure.{{cite journal "Oneida was the seed of Lane Theological Seminary [ 1830], Western Reserve University [1826], Oberlin [1833] and Knox College [1837]." Through the Whitestown Seminary it is also a predecessor of Bates College (1855). A graduate, William G. Allen, became the second African-American professor in the country at nearby New-York Central College, which also admitted African-American students and was also short-lived. ==Whitestown Seminary and afterwards==

To satisfy debts its facilities were sold to the Free Will Baptists, who created the Whitestown Seminary in 1844. A condition of the sale was that the new seminary admit students of "all colors". ==Students==

Green's policy was to accept any qualified student that applied. As a result, student Grinnell described the student body as "a motley company", consisting of: Alumni of the Oneida Institute African-American students Listed in bold are students who were at the Noyes Institute before it was destroyed, in August 1835. No Black students from Oneida enrolled at Lane. of John Brown by Augustus Washington, c. 1846 • William G. Allen (1820–1888), lecturer and professor at New-York Central College, the first college to employ African-American professors • Amos G. Beman (1812–1872), abolitionist and Congregationalist pastor in New Haven, Connecticut. • Samuel Green, Beriah Green's oldest son, • William F. Peck, later a professor at Oberlin • Asa A. Stone • Giles Waldo. One of the "Lane Rebels", but, uniquely, shows up as a student at Oneida after leaving Lane. • Calvin Waterbury. In 1831, "Waterbury got a school at Newark on the Licking River in Ohio. When in the spring Waterbury talked too much temperance, the inhabitants threatened to ride him out of town on a rail. He prudently climbed aboard a raft and floated down to Cincinnati." • Edward Weed • Theodore Dwight Weld (1803–1895), leading abolitionist, friend of Finney. Studied at Oneida 1827–1830;{{cite book • Samuel T. Wells • George Whipple • Hiram Wilson (1803–1864), abolitionist, founded the school for fugitive slaves in Canada in which William Allen taught in 1841. One of the "Lane rebels". Alumni of the Whitestown Seminary For a list, taken from History of Oneida County, 1667—1878 by Everets and Farriss, see . • Amos L. Allen (1837–1911), U.S. Representative from Maine • Lewis A. Brigham (1831–1885), U.S. Representative from New Jersey • Edward Davies (1827–1905), minister and author • John Fullonton (1812–1896), Free Baptist Theological School professor, member and chaplain of the New Hampshire House of Representatives • Jay R. Hinckley (1840–?), member of the Wisconsin State Assembly. • James Liddell Phillips, physician and missionary • Jacob A. Prime. Remained at the Whitestown Seminary after the institute closed. • Evan Pugh (1828–1863), head of the Farmers' High School, then the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, predecessors of Pennsylvania State University • Ellis H. Roberts (1827–1918), Treasurer of the United States, 1897–1905 • James Schoolcraft Sherman (1855–1912), Vice President of the United States (1909–1912) • Mary Traffarn Whitney (1852–1942), minister, editor, social reformer, philanthropist, lecturer == See also ==