Early History
On August 5, 1846, the university's first president, Edward Thomson, delivered his inaugural address. He maintained that the college was a product of the liberality of the people of Delaware, and it was fortunate that Ohio Wesleyan was founded in a community divided in religious and political opinions; Thomson believed that the friction of a mixed society prevented dogmatism and developed energy. The spirit of the college, he said, is the spirit of liberty.
Thomson stated in the early days of Wesleyan that a college education should be a barrier to avarice by furnishing "the understanding, the taste, and the perspective that directs us to life's higher purposes ... It would serve political tranquillity, both by accrediting the truly apt candidates for office and by creating citizenry astutely able to assert its liberty against any government's tendency to encroach".
Thomson was frequently vocal in the national political debates of his time, notably slavery and the expansion of the United States. In 1857 he denounced the argument that southern Christians The Underground Railroad, used as a "transportation system" for anti-slavery activists to free black slaves fleeing from the South to Canada, was extensively utilized in Ohio. In the 19th century, Ohio had one of the most active Underground Railroad operations in the nation. One of the state's most frequently used corridors on the Underground Railroad passed through Delaware County near Ohio Wesleyan University, now marked along the bikeway trail at U.S. Routes 23 and 36 in the city of Delaware.
Elizabeth Boynton Harbert (class of 1864), a women's suffrage activist, published several books on women's issues and suffrage, Out of Her Sphere and The Woman's Kingdom, and was the chief editor of a women's suffrage newspaper, The New Era, in 1885 Despite women's suffrage being a controversial issue, Harbert became an associate president of the World's Unity League, vice-president of the Woman's Civic League of Pasadena, vice-president of the Southern California Woman's Press Association, and president of the National Household Economic Association.
Read more about this topic: Activism At Ohio Wesleyan University
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or history:
“If you are willing to inconvenience yourself in the name of discipline, the battle is half over. Leave Grandma’s early if the children are acting impossible. Depart the ballpark in the sixth inning if you’ve warned the kids and their behavior is still poor. If we do something like this once, our kids will remember it for a long time.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)