Here after the publication of the "Thoughts on Colonization," and the formation of the National Society, an earnest spirit of inquiry broke out among the students on the subject of slavery.

It was at first encouraged by the President, Lyman Beecher, who offered to go in and discuss the question with his "boys." That eminent man did not long remain in this mind.

The discussions which he so lightly allowed swept through the institution with the force of a great moral awakening.

They were continued during nine evenings and turned the seminary at their close, so far as the students went, into an anti-slavery society.

This is not the place to go at length into the history of that anti-slavery debate, which, in its consequences, proved one of the events of the anti-slavery conflict.