some five hundred each winter, went forth everywhere preaching the anti-slavery word. It was the influence emanating from this school that saved our country in its great hour of peril. There were thousands of other co-operating influences, but had that which went out from Oberlin been subtracted, there can hardly remain a doubt that freedom would have foundered in the storm. Indeed it is doubtful whether there would have been any storm. The nation probably would have meekly yielded to the dominion of the slave power, and the Western Hemisphere would have become a den of tyrants and slaves. As it was, we were scarcely saved.
=== 19th century – post founding ===
Asa Mahan (1799–1889) accepted the position of first president of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute in 1835, simultaneously serving as the chair of intellectual and moral philosophy and professor of theology. Mahan's strong advocacy of immediatism—the immediate and complete freeing of all slaves—greatly influenced the philosophy of the college. The same …
