"good classical education (is) essential to a full development of the human mind and to that discipline of its powers." - John Finley CroweKentucky Presbyterians played a central role in the efforts to use local, regional and national Church governing bodies to implement steps that would put slavery on the road to extinction. Central among these Kentucky Presbyterians was Reverend James Blyth President of Transylvania University in Lexington and later President of the seminary in Hannover (see also article by Andrew Lee Feight).
By 1835 the Presbyterian Church in the US harbored six theological seminaries: Princeton in New Jersey, Auburn in New York State, Western in Pennsylvania, Lane in Ohio, Columbia in South Carolina and the school founded in Indiana which later moved to Chicago.
In may 1822 the first issue (of 12) of the Abolitionist Intelligencer and Missionary Magazine came out. One of only two national abolitionist papers in the US. It's editor, John Finley Crowe, was to be the founder of Hannover Theological Seminary (1825,1826), a log college, the predecessor of McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. In the history of this seminary in Hannover we can read that John Finley(Many of his line believe he added Finley later to have a middle name.) Crowe, after two years of private study,
'entered Transylvania University at Lexington, from which he was duly graduated in 1813, at the age of twenty-six. During his student days Mr. Crowe devoted a part of his time and energy to the rather irregular publication of an abolitionist paper, which did not contribute to his popularity in the Blue Grass country. He also became a member and an elder in the church of Rev. James Blythe whom he later induced to become the first president of Hanover College.' In the Kentucky context 'John Finley' obviously refers to the Scots-Irish pioneer who explored Kentucky at the end of the 18th century together with Daniel Boone.
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