This vow was taken while his father and mother, both natives of slave States, were actively aiding and protecting the slaves that constantly escaped from Virginia, whose bold hills were in full view from their house immediately across the Ohio River. What atmosphere could breathe more purely the spirit of civil and religious liberty and of fearless adherence to principle than that in which Edwin M. Stanton passed his childhood? Dr. David Stanton taught abolitionism to Benjamin Lundy and helped him to establish, if he did not suggest, the first emancipation paper in the United States; and his son Edwin M. and not Abraham Lincoln, as we shall see further along in this volume, was the real author of the great act of final emancipation. CHAPTER III. IN KENYON COLLEGE. During his apprenticeship to Mr. Turnbull, Stanton pursued his studies tenaciously; but, not liking the calling of physician, for which his father had designed him, he demanded a college education before finally deciding on a profession. Therefore, Guardian Collier being willing to advance the necessary funds and Mr. Turnbull to cancel the apprenticeship, he left by stage, in April, 1831, for Kenyon College at Gambier, Ohio, then under the personal direction of Bishop Philander Chase and known as "The Star in the West." At Wooster he was detained two days by an attack of asthma,* from which, after his tenth year, he was never free. Choosing an "irregular course" which permitted him to select his own studies, he fell to work with vigor and enthusiasm. The college was located in the unbroken forest. In winter the rising bell rang at 5 o'clock and the first recitation was held twenty minutes later. In summer the first bell rang before sunrise, and the second at sunrise, for prayers. At 9 o'clock in the evening all lights had to be out and all students in bed. The boys were required "to sweep their own rooms, make their own beds and fires, bring in their own water, and take an occasional turn at grubbing in the fields, or working on the roads." Stanton at once joined the Philomathesian Literary Society, early becoming prominent in its exercises and deliberations, and donating its first record book, on the cover of which the inscription. is yet plain: "Presented by E. M. Stanton." About this time the prevailing State-rights and nullification controversy invaded the Philomathesian Society. Those who adhered to John C. Calhoun's theory that a State is greater than the United States, which Stanton *Mrs. J. C. Duerson of Washington, D. C., his mother's sister, says: "Edwin inherited a predisposition or tendency to asthma. His grandfather, Thomas Norman, was afflicted with asthmatic convulsions for more than sixty years and the symptoms of the two cases were similar.” combated with vehemence, resigned and founded a new association. Stanton was elected secretary of the reorganized Philomathesians and served on several committees and appeared on one side or the other of nearly every debate until he left Gambier. One of the noted incidents in Kenyon history is his escapade with Bishop Chase's fine horse "Cincinnatus." He was considerably smitten with a lively and beautiful Miss Douglass, who lived in a log cabin in the forest some miles distant from the college. Desiring, one boisterous night, to visit her and her sisters, Stanton and a companion together rode Cincinnatus out to the Douglass home and back through deep, fatiguing roads. When, on the following morning, the Bishop found his good horse exhausted and spattered with mud, his wrath knew no bounds. The offenders were discovered, and the matter was brought before the faculty. The Bishop would listen to nothing in extenuation, so Dr. Heman Dyer, one of the faculty, advised Stanton to confess and ask forgiveness. "I'll do it," was the reply. "Now," says Dr. Dyer, "Stanton was a fellow of good heart, and full of feeling. He went to the Bishop, made a clean breast of it, acknowledged his error, and asked forgiveness. The Bishop's wrath was soon gone. His big heart was touched. He spoke to Stanton tenderly of his widowed mother and of the life that was before him, and before long both were in tears and parted good friends." "One day Stanton was minded to have some potatoes on his own hook," says the Reverend S. A. Bronson of Mansfield, Ohio. "A professor saw him and called out: 'Stanton, those potatoes belong to the College.' 'So do I,' answered Stanton, digging away, which, I believe, settled the matter." In August, 1832, his guardian, D. L. Collier, wrote to Stanton that it "seemed necessary to suspend the college course for perhaps a year or two in order to earn something to improve the financial situation at home." Therefore, on September 7, 1832, he left Kenyon, as he supposed, for "a year or two," but, as fate willed, forever. Some of the controlling influences and most enduring friendships of his life, however, came from Kenyon. There the doctrines. of the Episcopal Church, in which he died, took root; there he sent his son Edwin L. who, in 1863, graduated with the highest honors in the history of the institution; thither he often returned with affectionate interest, and from its graduates and tutors he chose some |