Beriah Green

American abolitionist (1795–1874)

Beriah Green Jr. (March 24, 1795May 4, 1874) was an American reformer, abolitionist, temperance advocate, college professor, minister, and head of the Oneida Institute. He was "consumed totally by his abolitionist views". Former student Alexander Crummell described him as a "bluff, kind hearted man," a "master thinker". "obdurate," "caustic, belligerent, [and] suspicious". "He was so firmly convinced of his opinions and so uncompromising that he aroused hostility all about him." His father was a cabinet and chair maker. and he may have attended the Pawlet Academy. In 1826 his wife died, leaving him with two children, and the same year he married Daraxa Foote, also of Middlebury, who outlived Beriah. In 1829 he accepted a call to the distinctly "orthodox" (conservative) church of Kennebunk, Maine, but the next year left, to occupy a new position, His salary was $600 per year (600.0 in 1829 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years). The buildings of this "Yale of the West" — Green calls it that
— imitated those of Yale College. It had the same motto, "Lux et Veritas" (Light and Truth), the same entrance standards, and almost the same curriculum. It aspired to be as intellectually outstanding as Yale as well. For the time, it was well funded. It was a prestigious appointment.

In the Cleveland area (the "Connecticut Western Reserve") Beriah came in contact with more African Americans than he had in Vermont or Maine. The college first admitted an African American student in 1832, John Sykes Fayette; he graduated in 1836. Three other African American students — Richard W. Miller, Samuel Nelson, and Samuel Harrison — were also admitted during this time period. Fugitive slaves traveling to Canada on the Underground Railroad passed through northeast Ohio: John Brown, of the 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, grew up in Hudson (1805–1825), running a tannery, then moved to a more isolated and safer (for fugitive slaves) site in northwest Pennsylvania, a major Underground Railroad stop. That the two met is possible but undocumented; there is no known correspondence between them. What is documented is his contact with Wm. Lloyd Garrison, who through his weekly newspaper The Liberator, launched in 1831, led the fight for immediate, uncompensated liberation of all slaves. Green wrote that "One copy of Mr. Garrison's 'Thoughts' has reached us [Thoughts on African Colonization, 1832] and we take a few copies of his admirable paper." As fellow professor Elizur Wright wrote, Green was "pastor of our college church". In his sermons, Green took the position, unusual in his day, that negroes were the equals of whites, and the victims of irrational prejudice based on no more than the color of their skin. These sermons created "a rumpus" on the campus. In the pamphlet was a brief message from College President Storrs and Elizur Wright, another professor, certifying that the published texts were the same as those delivered in the College chapel, and that "the sentiments embodied on these discourses, we believe to be scriptural. The exhibition of them in the college chapel we believe to have been not only warranted, but imperiously demanded, by a just regard to pastoral fidelity." They were influential nationally, contributing to the foundation, the following year, of the American Anti Slavery Society. Green presided over its founding meeting, and was chosen as its first President.

Expecting to be fired, Green resigned in 1833 and became the President of the Oneida Institute, a Presbyterian institution in Whitesboro, New York. Green accepted the presidency at Oneida on two conditions: that he be allowed to preach immediatism (the immediate abolition of slavery), and that he be allowed to accept African American students. As President, Green dramatically changed the college by accepting numerous African Americans, more than any other college during the 1830s and 1840s. Green did not believe that it was right to have separate schools for blacks and whites. This belief led him to attempt to get Gerrit Smith to merge his unsuccessful black manual labor school in Peterboro with the Oneida Institute, and it made Oneida a hotspot for abolitionist activity. Many future black leaders and abolitionists were students at Oneida while Green was president. These include William Forten, Alexander Crummell, Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, William G. Allen, Jermain Wesley Loguen, and Rev. Amos Noë Freeman. In 1832, Green began to correspond with Gerrit Smith on the issue of black education. The two men became very close friends and much of what is known about Green is known from their letters. The two men worked together toward the goal of abolition. They continued correspondence until 1872, when they stopped writing because of long held disagreements about civil government and political abolition. Green was chosen as president of the organizational meeting of the American Anti Slavery Society, formed in 1833 in Philadelphia. He was famous for refuting the arguments of men who used the Bible to defend slavery. In the late 1830s, Green focused most of his time contesting these arguments. Green engaged in a series of public debates in Utica with Joseph H. Danforth of the American Colonization Society, about whether free Blacks should emigrate to Africa. The debates were followed by "riotous proceedings," and Green was hung in effigy.