First, as my grandfather used to tell, there were the woods and the
Oneida Indians and the Mohawks; then the forest was cleared away, and
there was the broad, fertile, grassy, and entrancingly-beautiful Mohawk
valley; then came villages and cities and my own unimportant existence,
and at about the same time appeared the Oneida Institute. This
institution of learning is my first point. The Oneida Institute, located
in the village of Whitesboro, four miles from Utica, in the State of New
York, consisted visibly of three elongated erections of painted,
white-pine clapboards, with shingle roofs. Each structure was three
stories high and was dotted with lines of little windows. There was a
surrounding farm and gardens, in which the students labored, that might
attract attention at certain hours of the day, when the laborers were at
work in them; but the buildings were the noticeable feature. Seated in
the deep green of the vast meadows on the west bank of the willow-shaded
Mohawk, these staring white edifices were very conspicuous. The middle
one was turned crosswise, as if to keep the other two, which were
parallel, as far apart as possible. This middle one was also crowned
with a fancy cupola, whereby the general appearance of the group was
just saved to a casual stranger from the certainty of its being the
penitentiary or almshouse of the county.

The glory of this institution was not in its architecture or lands, but
in that part which could not be seen by the bodily eyes. For,
spiritually speaking, Oneida Institute was an immense battering-ram,
behind which Gerrit Smith, William Lloyd Garrison, and Rev. Beriah Green
were constantly at work, pounding away to destroy the walls which
slavery had built up to protect itself.

Mr. Green was president of the institute, and was the soul and heart and