4

Oberlin College and the Power of Education, 1837–1840

Initially, it was not clear which of the three unmarried Cowles sisters would attend Oberlin College. In the summer of 1837, while living and teaching in the Catskills, enjoying the company of her cousins, and experimenting with new fashions, Betsy received a letter from Cornelia and Martha. Cornelia explained that a friend had urged her to attend Oberlin Collegiate Institute, but she needed Betsy’s input first. “I want to know whether . . . you want me to go to Oberlin or not this Fall. If not write and I will not go.” Betsy’s response is lost to history, but we do know one thing: Betsy attended Oberlin instead of Cornelia.¹

The Panic of 1837 meant that inflation was rampant and unemployment widespread, so it would have been very difficult for the family to afford college tuition for more than one sister. While Cornelia had visited Oberlin in January 1837 and was the first to express an interest in becoming a college student, Betsy had more motivation. She also had the necessary skills to take full advantage of the institution and all that it offered. As a teacher she had continued to develop her own education, reading widely in all the disciplines. Cornelia, on the other hand, had devoted the past few years to her music career and given up her role as an educator. In the end, Betsy convinced her two sisters that she should attend Oberlin. It would take Cornelia many months to accept this decision completely.

When Betsy began to think about attending Oberlin, the nation offered women few opportunities for higher education. While Oberlin had opened its doors to both sexes since its inception, no other collegiate institute admitted female students at the time. Rather, girls and women had been limited to the high school–level seminaries and academies that had sprung up by the hundreds in the antebellum period. These institutions offered young women, mostly white and moderately privileged, access to an education that included mathematics, geography, history, and natural sciences. The curriculum included traditional “feminine” topics as well; students took courses in music, dancing, drawing, and needlework. Women crowded into these new seminaries and happily absorbed the learning provided. Many became teachers. Other graduates married and helped to run businesses and farms, small and large. Many of these women used their education to become active citizens in their communities, joining charitable organizations, literary groups, temperance associations, and antislavery societies. They employed their education in ways that seemed comfortable and natural.

Oberlin offered women a more challenging educational experience. Founded in 1833 by John Jay Shipperd and other Congregationalist evangelicals, the school sought to educate young people and send them into the “wicked Mississippi Valley” to provide spiritual guidance and education to those in need. Influenced by the Second Great Awakening, Oberlinians believed in the individual’s ability to welcome God’s grace and create his or her own destiny. They sought to educate a team of enlightened men and women who would spread this hopeful message to the “uncivilized frontier,” where drinking and fighting took precedence over church attendance and community building.2

Despite its optimistic beginning, the institution suffered a difficult first year that left many wondering if Oberlin would be able to keep its doors open. Fortuitously, the difficulties experienced by the Cincinnati-based Lane Seminary saved Oberlin. Founded in 1830 on similar principles as Oberlin and affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, Lane was led by clergyman Lyman Beecher, a formidable minister best known as father to an extraordinary group of offspring, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Catharine Beecher, and famed clergyman son Henry Ward Beecher, who would garner increased national attention during his adultery trial. Lane, which did not admit women, attracted enthusiastic young men who believed in their ability to create a living testimony to God’s will.

The institution would experience a similar crisis to the one that occurred only a few years earlier at Western Reserve College, where the colonization-versus-immediate-emancipation debate had boiled over. When the handsome, eloquent student Theodore Weld brought his ideas about immediate emancipation to Lane in 1833 and 1834, the eager students could not get enough. Here was an opportunity to act on their faith. The movement for immediate emancipation allowed them to confront the sin of slavery and lead the way toward creating a more perfect world. Weld held informal chats and discussions with many of the students in preparation for an extended public debate between advocates of colonization and immediate emancipation. The forty-five-hour debate spanned eighteen days, and almost every student at Lane attended. Thanks to the individual discussions led by Weld in the months preceding the debate, no one spoke out against immediate emancipation, and only one student spoke in favor of colonization. Southerner William T. Allan lectured for three evenings, describing the destructive influence of slavery on all parts of southern society. Former slave John Bradley, the only African American at Lane, brought the audience to tears with his description of slavery and his advocacy of freedom and education for blacks. In response to the debate, an excited group of students immediately created an antislavery organization on campus and opened a school for African Americans in the local community. Cincinnati residents expressed dismay at these developments. They worried that interracial marriage would result and that local blacks would become increasingly unruly. The Nat Turner rebellion served as evidence to many that education led to violent defiance. The Board of Trustees at Lane, concerned about the institution’s reputation and the potential for mob violence, shut down all antislavery activity at the institution, prohibited nonapproved student organizations (including the newly created antislavery society), and limited student freedom.

Outraged students abandoned the institution in droves. Of the 103 men enrolled in 1833, only 8 returned the following term. Some became full-time abolitionists, and others continued to work in the local black community in Cincinnati. The majority transferred. Oberlin benefitted from this massive withdrawal by attracting many of these Lane “rebels.” Negotiating with a group of antislavery benefactors who sought to find a new home for Lane’s wayward abolitionist students, Oberlin trustees agreed to two conditions: (1) they would admit African Americans, and (2) they would ensure freedom of speech for students. Ignoring the fact that a majority of Oberlin students opposed the admittance of blacks, the trustees knew that the future of the school depended on new sources of income, and the deal regarding the Lane rebels resulted in a $10,000 donation from Arthur Tappan, a wealthy New York abolitionist and former Lane patron. Oberlin thus became the first institution of higher learning in the nation to admit not only women but also African Americans, and the antislavery seed was deeply sown.

By the time Betsy and Cornelia discussed Oberlin in 1837, its antislavery credentials were widely known, as was its reputation as a pious and warm educational home that welcomed women. But while Oberlin was advanced in offering women entrance to the college classroom, men and women experienced the institution differently. Common assumptions about what it meant to be a man and what it meant to be a woman infiltrated all aspects of college life. Oberlin’s founding fathers agreed with most Americans in envisioning women as helpmates to their husbands and protectors of the domestic arena. They saw female students as future wives and mothers who would teach their families moral and spiritual lessons. As Oberlin professor Timothy Hudson explained, “The ladies are taught to be women, and not men.” The culture and work life of Oberlin reflected these notions about gender differences. Because the founders believed that vigorous physical activity ensured good health and helped to produce conscientious, hardworking citizens, students were required to work three hours a day (thus allowing them to leave college debt-free as well). Manual labor was assigned to men and women based on assumptions about what jobs were appropriate to each sex. While men could be found outdoors engaged in agricultural and mechanical labors, women were busy tidying student rooms, serving men at meals, washing laundry, sewing, and gardening. Oberlin trained its female students to care for and clean up after its male students, thus preparing them for their future roles as wives and mothers. Nonetheless, Oberlin also provided women with the most advanced education available at the time. Initially women were admitted to a limited two-year “female” program, but in 1837 they were allowed to enter the full four-year “collegiate” course that men took.3

Why would an independent twenty-eight-year-old woman put her teaching career on hold and pursue an extremely untraditional college education? After all, Betsy had a created a comfortable, successful life for herself. She found satisfaction through her travels, her reform efforts, her teaching, and her collection of family and friends. She made decisions for herself and earned enough money to support her lifestyle. She had already decided to remain single, so she was not seeking a husband. Betsy attended Oberlin due to a complex confluence of issues, including family ties, career goals, and her commitment to antislavery.

Betsy’s brother Lewis already attended Oberlin. Lewis was the youngest in the family, two years junior to Betsy, and a committed reformer. He arrived in the fall of 1835 along with the Lane rebels. Like many college students he complained to his sisters about his cramped dormitory room, but he also described the institution as “a very pleasant” place that boasted “first-rate” faculty and “powerful” preachers. When older brother Edwin visited Oberlin, he confirmed Lewis’s positive evaluation. He also informed Betsy that there were many women at Oberlin and that the institution ran very “smoothly.”⁴

Friends confirmed Oberlin’s excellent reputation. One female acquaintance who attended the institution during Lewis’s term highlighted its warm, nurturing, familial environment. “I am sitting by a delightful chamber window and as I look out I see your Br[other] Lewis,” she wrote. “How delighted I should be to have you step in & dine with us on one of these pleasant days.” Unlike Lewis, who bemoaned his small living quarters, this young woman characterized her room as comfortable and cozy. She eulogized the loving relationships she developed with her roommates and the homelike atmosphere this “happy circle” had created at Oberlin. She was enchanted by the close friendships she developed among her college sisters and predicted that if Betsy attended, she too would find herself mesmerized by the “whole-souled” women at the institution.5

Cowles’s desire to pursue a higher education at Oberlin was also driven by her career ambitions. Women of Cowles’s generation still had few professional options. It would be another decade before Elizabeth Blackwell pursued a career in medicine and Antoinette Brown, who would also attend Oberlin, overcame numerous obstacles to become an ordained minister. Therefore, like Blackwell and Brown, she had to create her own path. Betsy loved teaching and wanted to remain an educator. Her students wrote enthusiastic letters to her year after year, many keeping in touch for decades. As one anxious student wrote during one of Betsy’s absences from school, “How long is it till you come [back]? Can we count the time by weeks, or do we still count it by months?” An Oberlin education would provide Cowles with the tools to rise to positions of power traditionally held by men within the field of education, including principal and superintendent.⁶

Cowles also hoped that an Oberlin education would help her apply her ideas for improvement to the teaching profession. During her years in the classroom she had slowly developed two goals in regard to teaching that she believed would help transform education. First, she wanted to see the ideas of Joanna Bethune incorporated more fully into the classrooms of younger children. She had learned firsthand that playfulness and creativity allowed teachers to engage children more fully and thus improve the learning experience. As one former student reported to Cowles, “I don’t understand much about arithmetic . . . since you have gone.” Second, she hoped to place greater emphasis on education for girls. She believed that providing girls with more challenging coursework would make them into stronger, more thoughtful, and responsible women. By the late 1830s, Cowles was one of a small but growing group of reformers who were rethinking common assumptions about women. Some began to support women’s equality vocally. Abolitionist women in particular, who were often criticized for engaging in “unladylike” activities, began to feel the limitations placed on women more deeply.7

Betsy’s growing concern with elevating and empowering women provided the final push toward Oberlin. As she looked around her, particularly at abolitionist women, she found much inspiration for taking a bold step. For example, as Cowles pondered the potential benefits of a college education, fellow abolitionists Sarah and Angelina Grimké were busy promoting new ideas about women’s place in American society. The Grimké sisters grew up on a slave plantation in South Carolina, but both eventually ended up in the North. After converting to the Quaker faith, they embraced antislavery and eventually began offering public lectures on the horrors of slavery to women-only audiences, using their own experiences in the South as compelling evidence. They were so effective that some men eventually began attending their speeches. This led many, including some fellow abolitionists, to denounce the sisters for lecturing to “promiscuous” mixed-sex audiences. Catharine Beecher wrote an essay condemning the Grimkés for moving outside the proper “woman’s sphere.” Public lecturing had been an activity reserved for men. Women, she argued, lost their piety and virtue by taking to the podium. Beecher’s position represented popular opinion about such matters well. Sarah responded with a spirited defense of their activities, proclaiming that God expected all souls to promote benevolence and act on their faith. Women as well as men must work diligently with whatever talents God provided to create a more perfect world. To ignore such a calling would be to deny God. As Sarah explained, “Whatever it is morally right for man to do, it is morally right for woman to do. Our duties originate, not from difference of sex, but from the diversity of our relations in life, the various gifts and talents committed to our care, and the different eras in which we live.”⁸

The 1837 Beecher-Grimké debate about the proper role of women was widely disseminated, especially among reformers and abolitionists, who regularly shared newspapers, pamphlets, and even letters. Already personally acquainted with the limitations placed on women, Cowles probably read the Grimké sisters’ message with a sense of encouragement. Within a few short years Cowles would join the more radical abolitionists, including the Grimkés, and openly support women’s rights. But in the late 1830s, she was still working out her ideas. She began with the basic conviction that education was critical to women’s emancipation. Oberlin offered Betsy just the higher learning she needed to elevate her career and also work toward her goal of encouraging all young women to gain a proper education.

Friends and family welcomed Cowles to campus when she arrived in the fall of 1838, and Oberlin quickly felt like a second home, despite the presence of about four hundred students. She boarded with her cousin Alice Welch Cowles, the principal of the Female Department, and Alice’s husband Henry Cowles, a professor of languages. Henry had been the Congregational minister in Austinburg before moving to Oberlin, and his daughter Rachel had just married Betsy’s brother Lysander in 1835, so the two families shared close connections and a rich history. Alice sent Betsy a heartfelt letter of reception a few months before her arrival on campus. She prepared Betsy for entering a world full of knowledge, spiritual growth, and physical labor. “I am rejoiced at the prospect of you so soon coming here,” she wrote, “I do believe you will have occasion to be thankful forever.” Aware of Betsy’s financial limitations, Alice described the required three hours of daily labor and the benefit this would have for her expenses. She also bluntly recommended that Betsy bring items from home to furnish her room and not rely on anything her sloppy brother Lewis had left behind. She concluded, “There is so much here that you love, I long to have you enjoy it and as well be benefitted.”9

Despite the warm welcome, Betsy battled mixed feelings. She learned that her sister Cornelia had departed for the Catskills to stay with their extended family and teach music. Betsy had spent many months in the Catskills with this lively group, and she envied her sister. “When I think of you in that dear little retired spot that I love so well . . . I feel that I want to fly [there].” But Betsy concluded by admitting that her ambitions overrode such desires. She was at Oberlin to build a foundation for her future. Family enjoyment would have to wait. Cornelia must have found Betsy’s uncertainty somewhat exasperating since she had given up her position at Oberlin for her sister’s benefit.¹⁰

Indeed, Cornelia held a grudge. She remained aloof with her sister even a year after Betsy began her studies at Oberlin. “Why hast thou not written to me?” inquired Betsy. “Is it because I am at Oberlin? The ties of nature are too important to be severed by so trifling an offense.” Betsy appealed to Cornelia by making it clear that she missed her and desired nothing more than that they be reunited when she finished her studies. This temporary rift in her relationship with Cornelia caused Betsy to suffer from loneliness and anxiety and reveals the importance of Oberlin in her life’s goals. She was willing to risk alienating her dearest friend and sister to secure a place for herself at college.11

Oberlin did not disappoint Betsy. Four weeks into her studies she wrote, “I do enjoy myself very much here; having not seen one thing upon which to fix that I dislike; every thing is perfectly reasonable and rational and every one seems to be happy.” There were four departments at Oberlin: preparatory (a program for those men not yet ready for collegiate-level work), female (the female equivalent of preparatory), collegiate (a four-year program), and theological. Although Betsy entered the two-year female program, she took the same classes as men, including algebra, chemistry, intellectual philosophy, geometry, and Greek. On a typical day Betsy rose at 5 a.m., studied till 6:30 a.m., shared a communal breakfast with other students, attended classes until 11 a.m., studied for another hour, and then had lunch. After lunch there was another one-hour class, then work and study from 1 until 5:30 p.m. Prayers in the chapel came next, followed by supper and then study until 9 p.m.¹²

These long hours of study and work allowed little time for socializing, but Cowles managed to develop close friendships with both women and men while at Oberlin. White women made up approximately one-third of the student body; African American women did not attend Oberlin until the 1840s. The average Oberlin student at this time was in his or her mid-twenties. Men were not supposed to visit women in their rooms or even stroll alongside them on campus, but the sexes and races mingled together at meals. Indeed, women were expected to have a civilizing influence on male students. If a new male student revealed sloppy eating habits, the dining matron often placed a few women students close to him, and inevitably his table manners improved. More seriously, if a male student showed inappropriate attention toward any young woman at Oberlin, the consequences might be dire. When an anxious female student revealed that she had received multiple “obscene” letters seeking a private, illicit meeting from an anonymous fellow student, Cowles’s close friend Professor Timothy Hudson and a group of concerned male students arranged for a bogus meeting to uncover the identity of the letter writer. Their plan succeeded; they confronted the student, Horace Norton, and demanded that he “repent his sins.” When the young man refused, the outraged group brutally whipped his bare back with twenty-five lashes. Oberlin officials expelled Norton, and the Oberlin community supported the vigilantes. When news of the attack spread, it became known as the “Oberlin Lynching,” and the school experienced a backlash. Norton sued the group that attacked him, eventually winning $550 in damages. Hudson expressed no regrets for his role in the attack. He believed Norton had behaved indecently and deserved his punishment. We have no record of Cowles’s reaction at the time, though years later Hudson described Cowles’s support for him during the conflict: “When the Norton affair visited upon me its calamity . . . [you offered only] words of friendship.”13

In addition to classes, work, and even a little socializing, Oberlin required its students to engage in religious study. In response, Betsy developed anxieties about her faith and moral backbone. Was she too shallow and self-absorbed? Did she prefer amusements to the serious business of Christianity? Would she be destined for hell because of “the deep wickedness of our levity,” as her sister Martha once warned? Or because she had a “sense of the ludicrous in a very high degree,” as Hudson once declared? Expectations regarding the strength of women’s moral compass were high in the antebellum period. Ministers had published reams on women’s “natural” virtue, and it was commonly accepted that females were more attuned to right and wrong than males. This resulted in a good deal of fretting among young women as they developed their sense of identity and place in the world.¹⁴

Oberlin was full of apprehensive students. Like many small private colleges in the region, it was founded with the express goal of educating young people so that they might spread the word of God. All students were expected to grapple with their faith but eventually leave the small Ohio institution with a firm spiritual grounding. Though Betsy considered herself a committed Christian, during her youth she occasionally wandered from the church and spent more time worrying about her wardrobe than her soul. At Oberlin, she fretted about the depth of her spiritual belief, wishing that she felt “perfectly willing that the Lord should take care of me; and trust him for it.” She also displaced her own anxieties onto Cornelia, warning her sister to keep vigilant in her faith and not fall victim to enticements. “You like myself are more ready to yield to temptation than to resist,” Betsy cautioned Cornelia. “Do watch and pray” and “guard every avenue to the heart.”15

Though Betsy initially struggled to gain her religious footing at Oberlin, her confidence as a student soared. She immersed herself in her studies and grew increasingly self-assured. This poise seeped into other parts of her life. She became a role model for friends who hoped to pursue an Oberlin education. She shared her experiences in letters and conversations, instructing would-be students in the Oberlin adventure. Within a year she had recruited her eighteen-year-old niece Sarah Austin (older sister Sally’s daughter) to the school and took the young woman under her wing. An Austinburg friend, Clara Preston, desperately wanted to follow in Betsy’s footsteps and attend Oberlin, but financial difficulties prevented her. She idolized Betsy, whom she described as on the “pinnacle of happiness,” and thanked her for attempting to aid her entrance into Oberlin.¹⁶

Men also sought Cowles’s expertise and advice regarding Oberlin. Betsy’s friend Lewis Lawrence asked her for a full description of Oberlin life to help him determine if he wanted to attend. After hearing her summary of the institution, yet another male acquaintance visited Betsy at Oberlin and raved about its many delights upon returning home. The experience awakened in him “the deepest, the tenderest emotions” and shed a “flood of light upon the mind.” He enthused, “It was one of the most interesting seasons of my life.” Perhaps expressing his veiled attraction to Betsy, he also wondered if women’s presence at Oberlin was not “distracting” to men.17

While Cowles was happy to provide young men with information about Oberlin, she was increasingly zealous about educating girls and women. Oberlin, she believed, was “the only place where females are conducted through a full fundamental and thorough [college] course.” Such an education would result in the disciplining of women’s minds, and “then they will become elevated.” The idea of “elevating” women had taken on mainstream currency in the 1830s. Women’s elevation was necessary for the good of the family and the country. But Betsy had much more in mind when she spoke of women’s elevation.

Betsy linked women’s elevation to empowerment and, ultimately, equality. As she wrote to her sister Cornelia toward the end of her two years at Oberlin, “It is true that woman in point of intellect does not occupy the station which was designed by her Maker; & she never will until the standard of female education is elevated.” She recognized that education had to mean more than simply becoming a better wife and mother because these categories did not apply to her. As a single, childless teacher, she had to seek other avenues for personal satisfaction. Education provided her with the tools to support herself and achieve her goals; it fed her independence and ambition. But the society of the time discouraged in women the very qualities that she wanted to develop in herself. Whereas popular literature invited young men to embrace competition, high aspirations, and rugged individualism, the culture inundated women with the message that piety, self-sacrifice, and virtue were their “natural” traits. Many women struggled with these stereotypes as they pursued dreams that contradicted them.¹⁸

Cowles worried that without education women would continue to remain imprisoned by their own ignorance. “Oh! I do hope the time is not far distant when females will feel & act that they are made for something more than to flutter or to serve,” she proclaimed. Such progress was linked to education. As a teacher herself, Betsy was especially concerned about the future education of girls. She assured Cornelia that when she returned to the Catskills, she would raise a “studying fever” among a few of the local girls she had her eye on. Her emphasis on education was as much about her desire to see girls raise their expectations and goals as it was about providing them with tools to improve their skills as future wives and mothers. She hoped that more and more girls would look to the example she set for a life of independence and success.

Betsy graduated from Oberlin in 1840. When she arrived in 1838 she had reluctantly chosen the two-year path. She knew that her family could not afford to lose her financial contribution from teaching as well as fund her college education for more than a few short years. She would have preferred to extend her time at Oberlin but recognized that cash limitations required her to squeeze as much learning as she could into two years. “I wish I was younger & I would stay five years at least,” she wrote to Cornelia in the spring of 1839.

Oberlin changed Cowles’s life. Her interactions with fellow students—a group of mostly bright, thoughtful young people—challenged her in ways that led to emotional and intellectual growth. She became more independent and self-assured. She took courses in philosophy, history, mathematics, and literature. Her world became more complicated and global. Oberlin also expanded Betsy’s employment options. It was extremely rare for a woman to hold a college degree, and Cowles took advantage of her unique position.

Oberlin also nurtured Cowles’s antislavery sympathies. Known as the “hotbed” of abolitionism in the West, Oberlin was brimming with antislavery opportunities. It hosted two female antislavery groups including the Young Ladies Anti-Slavery Society and the Female Anti-Slavery Society, both founded only months after the Ashtabula County Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1835. Though Cowles spent most of her time studying, she also attended antislavery lectures. Several faculty members, including Timothy Hudson and Alice and Henry Cowles, participated in antislavery groups. Hudson would go on to become an antislavery lecturing agent for several organizations, including the Liberty Party in the 1840s. Informal discussions about the latest antislavery news occurred over meals and between classes. Though she could not maintain her previous level of antislavery activism, her awareness of and commitment to the movement remained strong during her two years at Oberlin. When she returned to Austinburg in 1840, looking for employment, she was well prepared to blend her abolitionism with her teaching in ways that further established her leadership among western reformers.