Note 758 — Chapter XVIII · THE MORAL EVOLUTION SINCE THE INCOMING OF DEMOCRACY: THE NEW SOCIAL AND INTERNATIONAL CONSCIENCE

“When Garrison began his work, he thought nothing was more like the spirit of Christ ... than to bring a whole race of people out of sin and debasement, ... but he soon found that neither minister nor church anywhere in the lower South continued to protest against slavery; that the cloth in the North was arrayed against him, and that many northern divines entered the lists against abolition, especially Moses Stuart, Professor of Hebrew in Andover Theological Seminary, who justified slavery from the New Testament; President Lord of Dartmouth College, who held that slavery was an institution of God, according to natural law; and Hopkins, Episcopal bishop of Vermont, who came forward as a thick and thin defender of slavery. The positive opposition of churches soon followed” (Albert Bushnell Hart, Slavery and Abolition (1906), p. 211). In 1832 took place the secession of students from Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, because the trustees and Dr. Lyman Beecher had forbidden them to discuss the slavery question. Four fifths of the student body withdrew.