After Theodore Weld and other antislavery rebels left Lane Seminary in Cincinnati in 1834, they enrolled at Oberlin Collegiate Institute, which had recently been founded in northeastern Ohio by John Jay Shipherd, a Congregationalist minister, to advance the cause of Protestant Christianity in the West. Shipherd had designed the college as a manual-labor school, seeking to train the body and heart of each student as well as the intellect. According to his original plan, students would labor four hours a day; in addition to the Male Department, a Female Department already was contemplated, in which female students would engage in domestic tasks, the culture of silk, and the manufacture of clothing. Eliza Branch, the first female student, taught the infant school while she also was attending the academic course. In addition she helped Esther Shipherd care for the sixteen members of the tiny colony who...