ng themselves immediately to this task Rev. Mr. Wright and his
associates solicited from philanthropic persons by 1856 the amount of
$13,000. The agents then made the purchase payment on the beautiful
site of Tawawa Springs, long known as the healthy summer resort near
Xenia, Ohio.[1] That same year the institution was incorporated as
Wilberforce University. From 1856 to 1862 the school had a fair
student body, consisting of the mulatto children of southern
slaveholders.[2] When these were kept away, however, by the operations
of the Civil War, the institution declined so rapidly that it had to
be closed for a season. Thereafter the trustees appealed again to the
African Methodist Episcopal Church which in 1856 had declined the
invitation to cooeperate with the founders. The colored Methodists had
adhered to their decision to operate Union Seminary, a manual labor
school, which they had started near Columbus, Ohio.[3] The proposition
was accepted, however, in 1862. For the amount of the debt of $10,000
which the institution had incurred while passing through the crisis,
Rev. Daniel A. Payne and his associates secured the transfer of
the property to the African Methodist Episcopal Church. These new
directors hoped to develop a first-class university, offering courses
in law, medicine, literature, and theology. The debt being speedily
removed the school showed evidences of new vigor, but was checked in
its progress by an incendiary, who burned the main building while the
teachers and pupils were attending an emancipation celebration at
Xenia, April 14, 1865. With the amount of insurance received and
donations from friends, the trustees were able to construct a more
commodious building which still marks the site of these early
labors.[4]

[Footnote 1: _The Non-Slaveholder_, vol. ii., p. 113.]

[Footnote 2: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, pp.
372-373.]

[Footnote 3: _History of Greene County, Ohio_, chapter on Wilberforce;
and _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, p. 373.]

[Footnote 4: _The Non-Slaveholder_, vol. ii., p. 113.]

A brighter day for the higher education of the colored people at home,
however, had begun to dawn during the forties. The abolitionists
were then aggressively demanding consideration for the Negroes. Men
"condescended" to reason together about slavery and the treatment of
the colored people. The northern people ceased to think that they had
nothing to do with these pr