Oberlin Heritage Center Blog

On March 4, 1861, one-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated President of the United States of America. Only a few weeks before in Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis had been inaugurated provisionally as President of the Confederate States. With already seven states having seceded from the Union, Lincoln began his presidency of a fragile United States. Fittingly, his speech was entirely devoted to the “secession flurry.” The country was at a breaking point, he admitted—but it was unnecessarily and wrongly so.  “May his views of prerogative penetrate the nation,” Oberlin’s local paper, The Lorain County News states approvingly, “[but] whether the mild measures which Mr. Lincoln proposes will not excite civil war remains to be seen.”

While the federal government was in strife, small town life in Oberlin was not—“Oberlin Knows no Crisis,” the local paper comments. Yes, the country was in a tough spot, and certainly, Oberlinians were aware of it. Daily life in the village, though, very much like today, was ongoing. So, what was going in Oberlin 150 years ago? A perusal of the local paper finds out: a lot!

The weather in Wellington and Oberlin was mild these first two weeks in 1861, more like “May, instead of March.” Temperatures were recorded as being upwards of sixty.

The college’s student population was threatening to reach an all time high—700 enrolled, and perhaps, could reach 1000! This, despite the “crisis,” the editor of the paper notes. Oberlin College students had just participated in the “Day of Annual Fasting and Prayer for Colleges,” which entailed, as the title speaks of, fasting and prayer for Christian students and the colleges that endeavored to educate them.

Complaints were pouring in about the condition of some of the sidewalks in Oberlin: “One fourth of the walks in our otherwise moral and orthodox village are indecently dangerous! [They are] in a state hardly navigable for cats.” (To modern Oberlinians and readers elsewhere just coming ourselves out of a long and snowy winter: I think we can relate!)

A classified in the local paper reads similar to one we might find today for a car, “For Sale-A valuable Horse, and a first rate new Lumber Wagon, (single or double) cheap for cash. Call on R.J. Shipherd.”

An elderly woman wrote in to the paper and commented on Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “What a critter Mrs. Stowe is to write!” This was just after she had just finished another chapter of the book.

On impure drinking water, the local paper advises: “Set a pitcher of iced water in a room inhabited, and in a few hours it will have absorbed from the room nearly all the respired and perspired gases of the room, the air of which will have become purer, but the water utterly filthy. Hence water…should be often renewed.”

In retrospect, in the first days of March 2011,

Karyn Norwood

Questions? Comments?

Email: [email protected]

Source Consulted:

The Lorain County News, 6 March 1861, p. 2,3; The Lorain County News, 13 March 1861, p. 2.

The opening month of 1861 was one of growing tension and conjecture throughout the country and, certainly, in Oberlin. As five states (Mississippi on the 9^th; Florida on the 10^th; Alabama on the 11^th; Georgia on the 19^th; and Louisiana on the 26^th) joined South Carolina in seceding from the Union, both the North and South speculated on the fragility of a perhaps irreconcilably broken America and, not so much if, but when, the country would descend into civil war.

In its first weekly installment of the year, The Lorain County News, Oberlin and Wellington’s local paper at the time, hesitantly asked, “Should not the North Arm Itself?” in response to news of Southern efforts to drill soldiers. By the middle of the month, the News was already soberly writing of “The War Begun”:

“However much we may regret that the fair fabric, which our noble fathers erected, is to be divided against itself, the fact that civil war has begun, and the permanent division has begun to be, cannot be overlooked.” (The Lorain County News, 16 Jan. 1861, p.2, c. 1.)

Oberlin residents were saddened by the likelihood of an American civil war, but they also believed that the “domineering spirit of slavery” was one that could not ever be reconciled, and that war was, in fact, the best and only opportunity for a solution to the “irrepressible conflict” of interests in the country.

On January 12, Oberlin’s own James Monroe (a Ohio State Senator from 1860 to 1862) in his address to the Ohio Senate opened with this remark in regard to the state of the Union: “A fine old author says, ‘Agree with your friends when you can; differ from them when you must.'”

And so war seemed unavoidable, even necessary; but as Monroe later in that same speech passionately spoke of, the notion of an impending Civil War was utterly heartbreaking to most Americans:

“We may be Democrats or Republicans, Conservatives or Radicals, but we are all Americans…Is there a heart in these bosoms that does not thrill at the words, home, country, native land? Which of you desires to see a single star blotted from the dear old flag? Or to see that flag trailing in the dust, soiled and dishonored? Whose blood does not run at the thought of such a calamity? …Not one, sir. These hearts are American hearts.” (The Lorain County News, 30 Jan.   1861, p. 1, c. 3, 4.)

And yet, the inevitability of civil war was encroaching on all the hearts and minds of Americans this month, 150 years ago.

Questions? Comments?

Please email Karyn at [email protected]

Sources Consulted:

Hansen, Henry. The Civil War: A History. New York: Signet Classics, 2010; The Lorain County News. 2  Jan. 1861, p. 2, c. 1.; The Lorain County News. 16 Jan. 1861, p. 2, c. 1.; The Lorain County News. 30 Jan. 1861, p. 1, c. 3, 4.

This year (2011) marks the beginning of the 150^th Anniversary of the American Civil War—perhaps the most defining and critical event in our country’s history. Oberlin’s involvement and sacrifices in the war were considerable. The Heritage Center is initiating a blog series on Oberlin in the Civil War to highlight some of Oberlin’s brave and innovative men and women, its home front developments, and its military participation. You will find that Oberlin from 1861 to 1865, as per usual, was progressive, inspired, and full of ordinary people doing extraordinary things!

Reform, Progress, and Advancement on the Eve of the Civil War

The presidential election of 1860 is arguably the most infamous in our country’s history. With the confirmation of Lincoln’s presidency Oberlin’s vastly Republican populace was overjoyed, but the Union itself was irrevocably shaken. On December 20^th, South Carolina announced its secession from the Union, and with the coming of the new year war seemed imminent.

For months before the November election day, Oberlinians were actively promoting Lincoln and the Republican cause. The Lorain County News (Oberlin and Wellington’s weekly newspaper at that time), for instance, rarely mentions Stephen Douglas or the Democratic party, and then, only in a negative sense; but it did avidly publish promotional articles on Lincoln, Republicans, and every citizen’s duty to vote Republican with great frequency. A rather humorous example is given below:

“REPUBLICAN!

Are you going on a journey?

Are you going to be married?

Are you going away to teach school?

Are you going away for anything?

IF SO,

Don’t go until after Election! Save your Vote—it will be needed.

Respectfully Yours,

THE PUBLIC GOOD”

-The Lorain County News, 3 October 1860, p. 2, c. 2.

On Election Day, November 6^th, 1860, as The Lorain County News had been promulgating for months, Oberlin men did go out and vote overwhelming Republican, as did Lorain County and Ohio as a whole.  Perhaps most interesting, though, to a modern reader of Oberlin’s local newspaper, is a small article at the bottom of page two delineating the protest of a considerable number of Oberlin ladies desiring the right to vote at the polls. The editor writes kindly of their endeavor, but firmly states “American politics” is not a realm for women. While the article elicits shock and even laughter at its now “antiquated” sensibilities, it illustrates well the strong feelings and need for involvement and progression by a portion of society in the Civil War that is often overshadowed by the battles and soldiers:  the women.  The suffragist movement was gaining momentum at this time, and the progressive Oberlin women were, of course, right on top of it. Hats off to you, ladies!

“Reform, Progress, Advancement

Two or three dozen ladies, married and single, appeared at the polls in this enterprising village yesterday and offered to vote. Owing to some unaccountable omission in the copy of the constitution which was read to them, or owing to the want of gallantry manifested by the judges of election, or owing to a general, floating idea about “spheres” and so forth that prevails to quite an extent, or owing to some other untoward, unlucky, and unfortunate circumstance the ladies did not exercise the right of suffrage.

We think we are progressive, we trust we are generous, we believe we are liberal, we hope we are destitute of gallantry, we desire to be reformatory, in theory at least, we solemnly aver that we are both a phil-anthropos and a phil-gunikos, but, bless you ladies! Don’t vote. Not that we are afraid of having masculine prerogatives taken away, masculine patents interfered with, or masculine rights whelmed, devoured, and swallowed up in a resistless ocean storm of reformatory and aspiring crinoline,–not at all: but ladies don’t vote!

Soberly, we honestly believe that there are some rights, important ones, of which a woman is deprived, but we have yet to be convinced that the right of suffrage is among the number. There is yet room for expansion inside the much talked of “sphere” without walking out at the gap of the ballot box. –We would be glad to see the atmosphere of the hustings purified,–not, however, at the expense of contaminating the womanhood of our country. Women should hesitate long lending their influence to a movement, which if it could ever prove successful, would bring their sex into contact with the most debasing of civilized life—American politics.

Again, God bless you, ladies! But don’t vote.”

–The Lorain County News, 7 November 1860, p. 2, c. 3, 4.

 

Please contact Karyn Norwood, the AmeriCorps Civil War 150 Leadership Corps Volunteer at the Heritage Center, via email: [email protected].

By Chloe Drummond (Oberlin College class of 2012)

This Winter Term, I wanted to stay in Oberlin and work locally. I hadn’t had an internship position for Winter Term before and I thought that working for the Oberlin Heritage Center would be a great opportunity to learn a lot about Oberlin, conduct in-depth history research—something I hadn’t really done before—and give my time to an organization that does a lot for the Oberlin community that I have grown fond of. And let me tell you, I think my Winter Term has been incredibly fulfilling. Not only have I met wonderful people who are truly passionate about their work, but I have learned to use resources I hadn’t previously known about.

I have been working on research about women physicians who practiced in Oberlin in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. I have found interesting information ranging from specific details such as a person’s physical features and notes about communication preferences, to broader context, such as the environment in which women practiced medicine at this time in U.S. history. Because of the centuries I was dealing with, it was tricky to find a lot of specific information that wasn’t recorded by Oberlin College. For example, I was unable to track down day-to-day practice information of the physicians who had private offices. I was, however, able to find a lot of information on the physicians who worked for the college. I believe that my work, as tough as it was to find information, has only scratched the surface. With more time, and by looking at different school records, city directories and hopefully other good pockets of sources, more information on these women will be revealed. It has been an interesting project because I have learned a lot about Oberlin College’s early physical education programs and in general, the kinds of work that women physicians were confined to in the early stages of allowing women to practice medicine in the United States. Personally, I have developed research skills that I know will be useful later on. I am hoping that the Oberlin Heritage Center can make good use of my project.

What are the places in and around Oberlin that you think are most deserving of preservation?   Why? 

Send a comment or try our online survey. 

The City of Oberlin recently erected a sign on route 511 at the city limits that announces Oberlin’s important designation as a “Preserve America Community.”  Preserve America is a federal program that encourages and supports community efforts to preserve and enjoy our priceless cultural and natural heritage.   The program seeks to foster a greater shared knowledge about the nation’s past, strengthen regional identities and local pride, and increase local participation in preserving heritage assets and supporting the economic vitality of communities. 

Oberlin became a Preserve America Community in 2004 after a lengthy application was submitted that was prepared by the Historic Preservation Commission and City Planning Commission with assistance from the Oberlin Heritage Center.  The application provided extensive documentation to demonstrate that Oberlin protects and celebrates its heritage, uses its historic assets for economic development and community revitalization, and encourages people to experience and appreciate local historic resources through education and heritage tourism programs. 

Oberlin is one of very few communities in the United States that is not only a Preserve America Community but also the home of a non-profit organization that has been designated a “Preserve America Steward.”  The Oberlin Heritage Center earned the Preserve America Steward designation earlier this year for its excellent volunteer programs to preserve heritage and culture. 

Oberlin is featured in a color photograph on the cover of a new brochure about Preserve America which was distributed at the National Trust for Historic Preservation conference in Nashville, Tennessee in October 2009.

 As of October, 2009, there are 795 communities, neighborhoods, counties, and tribal communities in the United States that have been designated as Preserve America Communities.  There are 13 Preserve America Stewards.  For more information, visit the website:  www.preserveamerica.gov. 

So back to our opening question for you: What are the places in and around Oberlin that you think are most deserving of preservation?   Why?  We want to know!

 Online Survey