JB Grinnell - Slaves, Free Blacks, and American Indians

Set Mason-Dixon as determining line for new territories and states status in regard to slavery.

"On my second street walk I saw a family in chains, coming over from the Island slave-pens, where it was said there had been an auction block sale of humanity [...] All seemed to be dumb in the shadow of the great outrages. There was an open alliance of politicians and the Church, to keep still, little less shameful than the league to uphold slavery itself. A free pulpit - there was none[...]"

A notice appears in National Era, looking for participants to "collect, with a view to publication in this country and England, the principle mutilations anidexpurgations of English and American publications by American publishers, booksellers,authors, tract and Sunday School Societies, ec- clesiastical assemblies & committees & c. for the purpose of securing sales in slave states, or the favors of ecclesiastical & political parties & persons in authority, with a discussion of the principles connected with such conduct. It is believed that a full statement of these mutilations and expurgations will astonish the American people and the civilized world."

Grinnell, who was serving as minister at NY Congregational Church, becomes involved as superintendent. In two years of research before going west to Iowa, JB finds 17 hymns that had one or more verses expunged because they contained anti-slavery references.

JB examines historian George Bancroft's History of the United States, as new editions contained justifications of slavery, and original editions were VERY rare. "Pains must have been taken to destroy it," JB surmised. "It was shocking that an American author would expunge his own work at the behest of the Slavepower."

The compilation of research findings, initially JB's job, fell to Tappan because JB left for Iowa. Final project never took on cohesive form, but snippets of research and exposition published in newspapers and journals.

Affectively repealed Compromise of 1820, and set slave status for new states as contingent upon "Popular Sovereignty" (right of citizens to choose). It also opened up possibility of Transcontinental Railroad, and consequent railroad networks.

His own town finally gave JB opportunity to create his own community, with his resistance to slavery as central tenet of culture.
For largest contingent of the new population, 60 colonists from Searsport, Maine became far the largest in the original populus of Grinnell, Iowa. Their devout religiosity helped reinforce some of JB's reforms, and became chief motivation for abolition stance.

As recognition of his service in the Black Hawk War, Abe Lincoln recieves parcel of land: "The northwest quarter of the southwest quarter of Section 20 in Township 84 North, Range 15 West." The land is 6 miles NW of Toledo, near Tama.

The Mesquakies came to his attention during his 1856 cam- paign in the form of a charge that "he who would shelter black runaway slaves would favor the Indians, petitioning the state to remain here on their old hunting grounds." Alerted to the wishes of the Mesquakies, Grinnell recalled, "on investigation [I] became their friend." When some of his constituents brought him a petition calling upon the law makers to grant the Mesquakies the right to buy land, Grinnell supported it.

"Though Iowa was a free state, racial prejudice ran deep. Furthermore, as a river town, Davenport depended on trade with the South and did not want to be branded as hostile to its trading partners.
The new Congregational colony of Grinnell would provide a much more friendlier environment.
When the dust settled, however, both the parties from Grinnell and those from Davenport came to realize that neither had the financial, material, or personnel resources that had been optimistically proffered during their “courtship.” Thus the enrollment of the school’s first freshman class was delayed until 1861; and by then the nation was heading into its Civil War, which would soon deplete the college of both students and faculty.

After Harper's Ferry, Brown was turned away by the Quaker community in Tabor. Left with few options while on the lam, he arrived unannounced at JB's door, and was given hospitality and a platform to speak.

Approx. two weeks later, tensions between abolitionist majority and oppositional minority came to head with armed standoff in front of public school, about whether to allow escaped slaves into school.

Under the leadership of head trustee George Magoun, the college affirmed the traditional New England curriculum of Greek, Latin, and mathematics. Magoun was inaugurated as the school’s first president in 1865; in passing over Oberlinite and abolitionist Leonard Parker in favor of Magoun, the trustees, perhaps inadvertently, showed that the era of militant evangelical reform was drawing to a close.