Horace Mann was a man of firsts. At least two of them, anyway. All Antiochians know he was the first ever president of Antioch College, but before that he was the first ever Secretary to the first ever state board of education (Massachusetts) in American history. Appointed to his post in 1836 after being public education’s most strenuous advocate in the State Senate, for the next twelve years Mann advocated for standardization of free and universal education for all Americans. Mostly his work is documented in his 12 Annual Reports on Education, much of which largely form the basis of public education in the United States. Another of his duties was to edit a monthly publication, The Common School Journal. What follows is most of his editorial from the first issue for 1848, and perhaps the only instance of Mann delivering a holiday greeting in print.

THE

COMMON SCHOOL JOURNAL.

VOL. X.        BOSTON, JANUARY 1, 1848.        No. 1.

     A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL ! A reformed life to those who have led a bad one ; and a better life, even to those who have led a good one. Where Ignorance has heretofore presided, may Knowledge hereafter reign ; and where Folly has held her courts, may Wisdom hold her councils.

     We propose to renew, for another year, the relation heretofore subsisting between our subscribers and ourselves. It seems unnecessary, however, on this occasion, to enter into any detail respecting our purposes and our plans. Those who know the history and character of the Journal for the last nine years, know our objects; and they know also the fidelity and the success, or the want of them, with which those objects have been pursued. It would be easy for us to expatiate in hope-inspiring words, to become exuberant in professions and promises, with regard to our future course ; but words are, at best, but buds and blossoms, while deeds alone are fruit. Our efforts during the past, must be accepted as the guaranty of our endeavors for the future.

     The publication of the Common School Journal was not undertaken for any partisan or sectional object, but to promote the great cause of Popular, or rather, Universal Education. Hence, all the interests connected with this grand movement,—-the greatest movement of modern times,—have come legitimately within its purview. This has necessarily opened a wide field for inquiry; but it is a field no part of which could remain unexplored, without causing most serious deductions from the value of the survey. The State, and the municipal corporations into which it is divided, are primarily interested in the partition of our territory into districts. On districts, generally speaking, devolves the pecuniary responsibility of erecting schoolhouses. The legal voters of the towns, each for itself, elect the superintending school committees. Committees grant or withhold certificates of approval, when sought for by candidates for teaching. The labor of teachers is rendered more or less irksome and arduous, and is more or less successful, according to the means and appliances for instruction, which are placed at their command, within the schoolroom ; and according to the sympathy and cooperation with which they are cheered by parents and the public, without it. Parents, children, the State itself,—that great moral entity, which embraces the idea not only of the present but of future generations,—have an interest, precious and unspeakable, in the prosperity of the schools, and in the expansion and efficiency of the system that supports them. The foundations of this system are laid in the laws of the statute-book; but these laws would be a dead letter, if they were not vivified and energized by the intelligence and the vigor with which they are administered. Hence, obviously, the scope and range of the work which was undertaken, were vast. Not one of the more solemn and important objects of life, is more comprehensive ; not one embraces a greater variety and extent of detail. With such ability as we could command, we have endeavored to make the Journal fulfill the purpose that originated it. As its pages have been enriched, from time to time, with the productions of some of the best minds in the country, we feel a higher degree of confidence, that those who have intelligently perused it from the beginning, do know something on the subject of Common Schools, and of the best means and methods of sustaining and conducting them, and of the priceless value of education.

     Taking a brief retrospect, we may say, that the previous volumes of the Journal contain every law of the State, now in force, respecting Public Instruction, together with a complete digest of those laws, and the decisions of the civil courts interpreting all their leading provisions ; they contain, in full, all the Reports of the Board of Education, since its establishment ; a history of the origin, progress and success of the State Normal Schools ; model plans for schoolhouses, with directions specific and detailed, as to the best methods of constructing, seating, furnishing, warming and ventilating them ; copies of school registers and of committees’ returns, by which the statistics of the schools are obtained,—a system believed to be more extensive and exact than exists in any other part of the world ;—assays and extracts from the ablest educators and educationists, on the subjects of school order and school, discipline, and on the best methods of teaching each one of all the Common School branches articles original and selected, of a moral literary and scientific character ; with passing accounts or notices, of the condition, the prospects or the progress of education in other States of our own country, and in other parts of the world.

     It is this comprehensiveness in the plan and scope of the Journal, which has given to it one of its distinctive features. There is no other educational Periodical in this country, or, so far as we know, in the world, which has proposed to itself the same end. Coupled with the well-deserved celebrity of the Massachusetts school system, it causes the Journal to be sought after by almost every State, city, or community of any size, which proposes the establishment of a Common School system. Many systems have been modelled, in all their substantial details, according to our plan ; and it affords us pleasure to add, that there is at present, in the rich and populous, (though also poor and degraded,) county of Lancashire, in England, a general movement, led on by some of the ablest men in England, in favor of petitioning the British Parliament for a charter, empowering the county to establish a system of Free Schools, according to the Massachusetts plan. May the cause of Free Schools advance until it embraces the earth.

     Would that it were in our power, on the present occasion, to compose an anthem worthy of the glorious cause of Education. Would that we could adequately describe her might and majesty, when she goes forth, like a puissant goddess, and speaks deliverance to captive nations from their hereditary and long-transmitted bondage to ignorance ; when she drives away, by myriads, the vampires of superstition, that have sucked the life blood from the hearts of men; when she turns wildernesses and jungles into habitable lands; when she takes the crude and apparently intractable substances of the earth, and turns them into the thousand fold implements of the useful arts, and into all the every-day comforts and conveniences of life ; when she makes indocility docile, and changes tribes of wandering and houseless savages into happy, home-loving and home-possessing families; when she teaches her disciples that obedience which wards off diseases and pestilences, and makes their days long in the land; when she propels ships across the ocean, speeds locomotives over continents, rears temples, prints libra¬ries, turns the lightning into a vehicle of thought and builds for it an aerial railway, to increase its celerity and fix its destination ; and when she instructs us how to wrap in unconsciousness each of our millions of nervous filaments, so that we can resist, like a rock, every arrow of pain.   It is indeed glorious to contemplate education in these sublimer manifestations of its power. But scarcely less interesting is it, to trace out and examine any single operation of her divine skill,—to see how she can rescue an individual, as well as reform a State; how she can console and bless the poorest and most forlorn wretch upon the earth, as well as ennoble and aggrandize a world. Education is as great in her minutest as in her mightiest operations.

     Let us, at the present time, follow the footsteps of Education,—not in one of her grand progresses, where she displays her trophies to the world, and challenges the admiration of mankind;—but let us accompany her in one of her silent and as yet almost unobserved walks, as she goes to visit the most hopeless and dreary abodes of the earth, and there make known the beauty and tenderness of her maternal ministrations.

Unfinished Unbroken is the book I went all that way for. The cover features Wilson’s mural at Woodrow Wilson Junior High in Terre Haute.

Inspiration for this installment comes from recent adventures in Indiana and the release of a lost book published fifteen years after the death of its distinguished author. It all started on October 9th when Duffy got a Google alert late on a Friday afternoon that there was an Antioch-related book release happening at The Swope Art Museum in Terre Haute on the 11th. My plans for the weekend had suddenly changed, and Sunday morning I drove 200 miles to be present for the release of the long lost book about the local artist who created the very coolest thing Antioch College owns.

The Swope is a gorgeous old Beaux Arts commercial building in downtown Terre Haute converted into an Art Museum in the 1940s.

That’s not really where it all started. In January 2019, the Library received a call from Chicago writer/editor Robert Elder who said that, at long last, the biography of muralist Gilbert Brown Wilson by Edward K. Spann was finally coming out in print. What they needed was a current photograph of Wilson’s mural that has hung in the East Gym since the late 1930s. Wakka Ciccone, class of 2005, took the photo and Antiochiana provided additional historic images for publication as it has done for over a century.

That’s actually not where it all started, either, at least not for me. Ed Spann, emeritus professor of History at Indiana State University, first contacted the College in 2002 to inquire about the mural for a book he was writing about the artist. As far as I knew at the time, it was Wilson’s only extant work since his available writings alluded to his previous public art having been destroyed by those who hated it, most notably the mural he did for Woodrow Wilson Junior High School in his hometown of Terre Haute. Ed assured me the mural was not only still there but had undergone preservation. He visited campus soon after.

Atomic Whale by Gilbert Wilson expressing Moby Dick as an allegory for nuclear power along with some archivist. It hangs in the front lobby of the Swope.

While we examined Wilson’s Antioch mural, Spann asked if I wanted to co-author an article with him on the subject. I didn’t yet realize that the first of Ed’s seven books, Ideals and Politics: New York Intellectuals and American Liberalism, 1820-1880, had been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1972, but it took very little guesswork to conclude that he was an experienced scholar with an impressive publishing record and I was not. I readily accepted, and the article we wrote together soon appeared in a 2003 issue of Timeline, the magazine of what was then called The Ohio Historical Society. That was a big moment for me (far bigger than it was for him) and one of the reasons I hold Ed Spann in such high regard.

The Debs Home on the campus of Indiana State University because I had to see where great trade unionist and five time Socialist candidate for president had lived. Sadly, the place was closed that day.

Our article did not include certain details of Wilson’s life (particularly those regarding his sexuality) Ed’s research had uncovered, which he was saving for a nearly finished full length biography. Ed never did finish it, though, dying at age 73 in 2004. Plans for a posthumous publication by the Indiana Historical Society in 2007 never came to fruition. 

Enter into the story Rob Elder, who learned of Ed Spann’s “great lost book of the Midwest” during a visit to the Swope Art Museum in 2016. Almost instantly Rob became Gilbert’s champion, and three years later, he completed and released the book that many, including me, thought would never get released. Since no one there told me of the event, my presence was something of a surprise to all, which is perhaps one of the reasons I appeared in the next day’s issue of the Terre Haute Tribune-Star. I also bore gifts for the collections of Swope in the form of the many pages of 1930s Antioch publications devoted to the controversy the mural started (which was then kept going by Antiochians as only they can do), including Gilbert’s address to the community reprinted below.

From the Antioch Alumni Bulletin, May 1939

The Murals in the Gym

Gilbert Wilson Gives the Philosophy which Guides his Painting

I have been asked to express here something of my philosophy of art, and to make some remarks relative to the mural. It so happens that I am one who believes that no kind of art—no painting, no literature, no play, no work of a creative nature—in our day can have validity except as it relates vitally to the social scene. And so, upon the premise that all art must relate vitally to the social scene, I have approached the painting of the mural in the Gymnasium here at Antioch.

I believe that the intense instability of the social condition of the world prohibits me from painting as artists before my time have painted, both as to technique and to subject matter. I cannot see the virtue of painting murals in a lasting medium on what is, figuratively speaking, a crumbling wall. I believe that we who find ourselves impelled to create in this present day are committed by the very nature of the times in which we live to employ our talents, not toward the creation of beauty, but rather toward a preparation—I might even go so far as to say—a preservation of the chance for beauty.

There is an ancient proverb that runs like this: “Foolish is the man who boasts of his beautiful bracelets, having lost both of his arms in war.” It is simply that this is a day when the primary concern is arms, not the bracelets we wear on them. I am taking the bracelets, of course, as a symbol of all culture, all human refinement, all the accomplishment which the human race can lay claim to, above and beyond a purely physical or animal existence. 

What is culture;—what is refinement;—what is human intelligence in the face of a thing like Fascism? Its tendency is not only to destroy these aspects of man’s life but literally to destroy life itself. Fascism is to the social state what insanity is to individual personality. Its only expression is violence. Its ultimate end is annihilation. To identify Fascism with destructiveness we have but to look at its inextricable relationship to the war approaching in Europe. Without seeming to be too much of a “calamity howler,” may I ask, if it is preposterous to assume that our civilization may possibly be on the verge of destroying itself? Never in all history, before 1914, did we have a World war. Another World war is following only two decades later. Doesn’t the very implication of the word “World,” as a descriptive term for these wars, have possibly some significance as to the ominous seriousness in which present civilization finds itself?

Returning to the analogy of the “bracelets,” we might even say that it is a more serious question than the mere preservation of a man’s arms. It is virtually a question of saving the whole man.

That the world problem becomes infinitely complex when considered in its manifold ramifications, I grant you. It seems horribly impossible of solution. But this vast and staggering complexity does not alter the fundamental simplicity of the world problem when looked at in terms of Man and Nature. 

Mankind, the world over, since the primitive ages, has had a common enemy; nature. All in all, the forces of Nature are so savage, so inalterably relentless, so hostile and utterly regardless of Man that it seems sheer suicide for the human species to ignore the fact that that it is only through collective effort that they can ever expect to subdue and order the elemental principles involved in the struggle to live. The very instinctive impulse which impelled primitive man to band together instead of foraging as separate individuals must and will continue to effect a union of the world’s peoples. This ultimate union we might well believe to be a natural consequence were it not frustrated by the various forces growing out of the competitive idea of survival. Competition to survive in an age as potentially plentiful as ours is as senseless as grunting compared to speech.

It is widely claimed that there is in Man’s nature an inherent disposition to be bad, to be hateful, to be cruel and destructive. I do not believe it! And that is one of the premises upon which I base my philosophy as a painter. I believe all of Man’s anti-social traits derive from the age-old attitude of competitive survival, which is nothing more, I suppose, than the “economic determinism” of Karl Marx. Put the economic system right and Man will be right. I believe that.

And this leads me to believe that we must come to some form of society in which world’s wealth is owned and shared equally–by all people of the earth. To continue with the belief that it is possible to maintain an individualistic attitude toward the struggle to live is to deny the simple validity of “Together we stand, divided we fall.” The world’s armaments might be taken as the epitome of the physical abuse of the physical sciences. This towering of armaments is inevitable in an economic system based upon a nationalistic competition for world markets. Nations are but individuals exercising an individualistic attitude toward survival.

In the mural, where I have sought to paint the collapse of modern civilization under capitalism, it is but a picture of what one artist feels is ahead if something is not done.

What to do? The most as I see it is this: It is the artist’s task to try to sift the world problem down to the simplest, most cogent terms. Then it is his take to paint something which will seek to remind us of the few basic and fundamental premises upon which a solution of the world’s problems rests, namely these: First, absolute equality of the two sexes; second, that all races are equal—that they must and will slowly merge into one greater entity which will be the consummation of them all; and third, that mankind must so order his society that machines will do the labor, leaving him free to expand the spiritual propensities of his nature. The world problem cannot very well be reduced to simpler terms than these; and these simple terms are essentially what eh mural at Antioch shall attempt to set forth.

In essence then, the mural shall endeavor to set forth both a warning and an ideal. In the first panel, I am trying to paint the epitome of COLLAPSE. It will be an effort to express as complete a statement of chaos and destruction as is possible with pigments. A mural, you know, should be something which cannot be expressed in any other way except form and color. In this first panel I am trying as an artist to sound the last note in the scale of human values, the very deepest of doomful depictions, the utter essence of finality so far as a defeated civilization under a machine age can be conceived.

In contrast to this, without sentimentality, or dreamy fanciful imagination, I have tried to state as simply as possible the social idea—the ordered world state. Whereas the COLLAPSE panel is constructed with sharp angles and an absence of horizontal anfd vertical lines, the panel called ORDER will be built on the geometrical form known as the circle. Around a circular table are grouped the different races of the world eating. Beneath is a machinery comprised chiefly of wheels to express again the circle. The machinery is placed at the bottom of the ORDER panel because we might assume that is where order belongs in the ideal society. (In the COLLAPSE panel the machinery is at the top.) In the upper part of the ORDER panel is a circular symbol embodying Photosynthesis. 

While Antioch College is famous for its work in photosynthesis, as carried on by the Kettering Foundation it is not simply for that reason that it has been incorporated into the mural. I have used the idea of photosynthesis primarily because it so significantly ties up with a depiction of THE ORDERED SOCIETY. The implications of photosynthesis are so vast in the beneficent possibilities to be released for the human race, once the secret of chlorophyll is resolved, that it might almost be said to presuppose the socialization of that virtually unlimited source of power. And that is how I have expressed it in the mural.

In the central panel, there shall be an effort to state simply the absolute equality of the two sexes—that neither is superior to the other. And in this same pictorial statement shall be an emphasis (in contradiction to the idiotic ideologies underlying Fascism) of the absolute equality of the races, their eventual and inevitable blending into one color; likewise the ultimate expansion of the spiritual propensities inherent in the generic human being. In essence, the central panel will proclaim the true emergence of Man—something expressing the human being that will be possible once mankind is freed from the tragic insecurity and suffering attending his present state.

It is upon this assumption—idealistic indeed—that some such state of human perfection can be realizable once man has ordered his society.

I believe it is the task of art to objectify and set forth these ideals. 

An ordered society is undeniably one of the major goals of the human race. To the degree that it is achieved, we might suppose, to the extent that Man be allowed to take the next step in his long evolution up from the mud and slime out of which science tells us he began. When Man has ordered the economics of his physical existence, then—and then only—will he step forward and begin his spiritual evolution—a program as comparably vast, truly, as his physical evolution has been vast, And he will expand into an inconceivably wonderful state of being beyond any past or present estimation.

Would I be though mad if I say I see the people of the future communicating with each by means of what we now rather hoaxingly term mental telepathy? Mad if I see the eventual control of health and physiological functions so perfected and brought within the discipline of the mind that death will be unknown on the face of the earth? If I say I see men visiting the planets wresting them from unlivable temperatures and making them habitable? If I see these planets peopled and reached within the twinkling of an eye? Mad if I say I see ythe measureless measured? Infinity become finite? If I say I see the universe and eternity encompassed in the palm of a hand! Yes, I suppose it is madness. But in this madness, let me sing Walt Whitman’s Song of the Universe:

In this broad earth of ours;
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe in its central heart,
Nestles the seed perfection.
By every life a share of more or less,
None born but is born,
Conceal’d or unconceal’d
The seed is waiting.
…Give me, O God, to sing that thought,
Give me, give him or her I love
This quenchless faith,
In thy ensemble, whatever else withheld
Withhold not from us,
Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space,
Health, peace, salvation universal.
Is it a dream?
Nay but the lack of it the dream,
And failing it life’s lore and wealth a dream,
And all the world a dream.

For decades, Antiochians held the mistaken belief that, despite their school’s abysmal track record in football, not to mention its general lack of interest in intercollegiate athletics, Antioch College had once beaten mighty Ohio State University in a football game. The score 7-6 was frequently cited, as was the earliest known printed source for it, an article written by Waldemar “Wally” Argow, class of 1938, for the Nov 1937 Antiochian, “Our Glorious Past.” As Wally put it: “The saga of varsity football at Antioch began somewhere in the 1880s. And it began with a resounding bang. For during one of those nascent years, Antioch met Ohio State on the field of honor and embarrassed the enemy to the tune of 7 to 6. Now to appreciate that statement, it is necessary to realize that today Ohio State University has…a football team that has smeared everybody but the U.S. Marines.” The story found its way into print again and again, such as in 1971 graduate John Fleischman’s Ohio Magazine article from Aug 1984, “God, Country and Antioch: Unbeaten and Untried for Sixty Years,” in which John writes: “Antioch tradition reports an undated football victory over the Buckeyes 7-6, but the Ohio State Sports Information Department can find no such record.”

The Antioch College Football Team of 1892

Give Fleischman credit: his article at least mentioned the one Antioch College game that OSU did have on record: a 32-0 wipeout in 1894, which is also the only one that Antiochiana has on record. It doesn’t take much Internet legwork to find the coverage of the game in the 10 Oct 1894 issue of The Lantern, OSU’s campus newspaper. Under the unambiguous headline “ANTIOCH ANNIHILATED,” this unattributed article reads: “The football team of Antioch bubbled up from Yellow Springs last Saturday afternoon, after a short spasmodic effort to run up hill, dried up and went back into its hole. From the fountain head of Yellow Springs, OSU dipped up seven touch downs and two goals and left the fountain dry, broken in spirit and in truth. Not many people at OSU had ever heard of Antioch, and nobody who was at Saturday’s game seemed to find out much more concerning it.” Scornful of dear old Antioch though it is, the article is an embryonic example of an attitude we tend to think of as a fairly recent trend in higher education: that a university’s greatness is measured first by its prowess in athletics, and particularly in football. And lest there be any doubt of this be-all-or-end-all outlook regarding the sport, The Lantern article asked rhetorically: “Why is Harvard, Yale and Princeton greater than O.S.U.? Because they have a better football team. What we want to do is to get a great football team and we shall then be a great University.” While it’s tempting to say “the more things change…” in regard to this abject comparison of Ohio State to the Ivies, we should at least take into account that the Buckeye football program was but four years old at the time, and not a juggernaut by any means, especially given the fact that they lost their next game to Wittenberg. Most amazing is that anyone would put so much stock in a game that, without the as-yet invented forward pass, is a profoundly boring one.

The Antiochian’s response to such unbridled arrogance follows, along with its own description of the game. Sandwiched in between in most unchronological fashion is mention of the OSU-Wittenberg game where several Antiochians were in attendance. After taking The Lantern contributor to task and making note of the “fights and fouls” in Springfield, we finally get to the game itself. Note the superlatives for Wills, clearly regarded as the College’s best player, who is probably J. Walter Wills, class of 1899 and the second African American graduate of Antioch College. It’s hard to tell from the badly faded photo of the 1892 team in Antiochiana’s collection, but the second player from the right in the front row just might be him. Even casual football fans will note that a 4-0 halftime score is not possible as a touchdown and missed extra point adds up to six, but until 1897, a touchdown was only worth four points.

Headline from the 10 Oct 1894 issue of the OSU student newspaper, The Lantern.

​From The Antiochian, vol. XX, no. 2, Oct 1894

     We were very much surprised at the article in the Lantern on the foot ball game between O.S.U. and Antioch. We are certain that such an article does not properly represent the feelings of the majority of Columbus boys towards our team. Antioch never received better treatment than she did at the hands of the foot ball team and manager. We found all of them gentlemen. We would not be rash in making the same statement of the little man with the big head who wrote that article. We have heard some few things about the little fellow, and from these are able to judge his motives in writing as he does. He did not do it for elevation of his college in the eyes of the world; he did not do it for Antioch’s good; but simply for the basest of purposes—to give his own insignificant self a little notoriety. He makes a beautiful display of his knowledge when he says that no one had ever heard of Antioch before. O, you poor, ignorant creature! Ask ten O.S.U. students who within the past few years have been students here; ask one member of O.S.U.’s base ball team, one member of the foot ball team, both of whom formerly played on Antioch’s team, if they know of Antioch. Finally let him ask some boy bigger than himself—his pa or schoolteacher; let him ask any of the world’s educators if they have ever heard of Horace Mann; of the college he founded at Yellow Springs; of the great principle for which Antioch was founded, and he will learn more in a short time than he ever knew before.

     A crowd of Antioch boys went to Springfield last Saturday and saw the foot ball game between O.S.U. and Wittenberg. The game was full of fight and fouls and resulted in a score of 18 to 6 in favor of Springfield. The O.S.U. boys say that in the matter of fouls this game was in marked contrast to the game with Antioch. Wittenberg surely plays to win.

     The O.S.U. foot ball team out-classed our eleven both in endurance and in team play. Their interference was of a high order and resulted in some few touchdowns which amounted to a total of 32 points. On our team, left halfback Wills was the star player of the day and his work was very favorably commented upon by the Columbus press. The only time the O.S.U. goal was in danger of invasion was when Wills was sent across the field by the revolving wedge. Marshall played his usual good game at tackle and Allen played well at guard. Jenkins was hard-pressed by a 220-pounder but stood up to him like a man. The first half of the game was very interesting, neither side scoring until just before time was called, when O.S.U. secured the first touch down but failed to kick the goal. The score stood 4 to 0 when time was called. In the second half, ****** points, making a total of 32 against our 0.

The centerpiece of just about every Antioch College Alumni Reunion has been an evening meal usually accompanied by a speech. When Algo Henderson delivered the following address at the 1935 Alumni Dinner, he was concluding his second year as interim president, filling in for Arthur Morgan who was away building dams for the Tennessee Valley Authority. Here one of the more articulate commentators ever on Antioch College addresses among other subjects, the College as sailing vessel, perhaps a natural metaphor for institutions of higher learning. Most striking in this address is Henderson relating his visit to the cathedral of Chartres to the often elusive concept of ideals, and how one person’s experience informs perception in a most individual and particular way. In this way, he suggests that no two people are likely to agree on what the specific ideals of Antioch College are, although they may have similar interests and goals, because of the powerful influence of experience upon impression. Also that ideals, even when written down and agreed upon, are in a constant state of change. Interestingly, even before the Antioch Civil Liberties Code was conceived, Henderson emphasizes freedom of expression as perhaps the highest of ideals, or at least the vehicle that carries us closer to realizing them. And while he delineates the contributions toward ideals made by faculty, students, and alumni, he concludes that all must work in concert if those ideals are to be strengthened. Some things never change.

THE ANTIOCH PORT

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY
ACTING PRESIDENT A.D. HENDERSON
AT THE ALUMNI DINNER
JUNE 28, 1935

Yellow Springs, Ohio

It was not without some difficulty that I selected a topic for my talk this evening. The first speech I started to write I submitted to another person for criticism and was told that it was much too undignified for such a solemn occasion. My next effort was abandoned after I had covered six pages with outline and had only two of the three selected points behind me. I feared I might be in the same position in which a speaker on a similar occasion found himself. He announced that he would talk about his Alma Mater, Yale; “Y” stands for youth, “A” for age, “L” for life, and “E” for eternity. To cover these points adequately he talked for two solid hours. When he finally sat down one listener whispered to a fellow sufferer, “It’s a good thing he didn’t graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

It then occurred to me that I might simply tell you about such progress as the college has been making recently. On second thought I realized that if you had been on the campus for as long as two hours before this dinner you would already know more about the progress of the college than I could hope to know.

This past winter I had occasion to read certain comments which a large number of the Antioch faculty members had written about the college. Evidently the faculty are fond of metaphors because several of them had spoken of Antioch as a ship sailing the seas of time. In fact the comparison occurred so many times as to seem to be more than a coincidence and to have possible significance. Now, if Antioch is a ship, it must have a port. Hence the title, “The Antioch Port.” 

What is the Antioch Port?

Obviously, in one sense, it is the pause made by the College annually at Commencement time. One group of passengers disembarks and the College prepares for a new contingent. All of the alumni have at some time or other landed at this port.

Of greater significance, however, would seem to be the other port—the ultimate objectives or goal toward which Antiochians are striving—the Antioch ideals. The Antioch ideals, then, constitute the Antioch Port. This statement alone, however, is not sufficient. The ideals need definition before we know the real Antioch Port.

The impression which one receives of any idea depends on the adequacy of the vocabulary of the speaker with which to make an entirely complete statement, and upon the sensitivity to the idea of the one receiving the impression. Last summer while walking through the cathedral of Chartres, I suddenly experienced the interesting sensation of feeling that I had been there before, though I was well aware that I had not. After some puzzled study I realized that I was standing in the exact spot from which an etching which hangs over my desk had been made, The etching is the one upon which I look from time to time when studying the daily problems of Antioch. Thus the cathedral of Chartres has become intertwined with Antioch in my mind.

No words of mine, or of any vocabulary, are sufficient to convey to you fully what I got from that scene. If I described every detail of the cathedral and every etched line of the picture you would not see what I just saw. If you were a student of cathedrals or of etchings, you would get an impression based on your own training. If you have seen the etching or the cathedral you would get still another impression. If you have pondered upon the course of the good ship Antioch you would have a partial basis of understanding. But probably only one who has lived in daily association with this beautiful etching of a most noble subject with his thoughts fixed upon the ideals of Antioch has the sensitivity for the particular impression I received.

The Antioch ideals can no more be expressed with complete adequacy than can a fine etching be described in words. Sensitivity to impression depends upon the background of the individual, his thought, study, previous environment and experiences. The ability to appreciate the Antioch ideals varies with the sensitivity to them. My understanding of them will differ from each of yours.

Though I can make no pretense of stating with full justice the Antioch ideals, I can make certain observations about some of their characteristics. I could do the same for an etching by distinguishing the etched line from the dry-point and the aquatint, and by describing the tone, form and subject matter.

First, these ideals represent a striving for the attainment of the maximum powers of self-expression. This implies the acquisition of knowledge, skills, refinement, methods, and health, overcoming limits of personality, and seeking a more complete adjustment of one’s efforts to his natural abilities. 

In the second place, the ideals seek a conservation of human resources to the end that they may be utilized for the most worthwhile purposes. This assumes temperance in living and activities and searching for freedom from waste, disease, vice, social disorders, and war.

Next, the ideals seek a maximum of control over man’s natural environment. This can be effected through promoting scientific research, developing an understanding and appreciation of natural forces, and utilizing such explorations, inventions and devices as tend to free man’s physical energies for better uses.

And finally, the ideals represent a yearning for a higher type of human relations. This implies straightforwardness and candor in dealings, and assumption of good intentions and honest methods, a willingness to see a full measure of justice for others, and working for social reforms which will give the best adjustment of the individual in his relations with the group.

From time to time the statement is made that the Antioch ideals are being compromised and dissipated. Each year several upperclassmen have expressed this opinion to me. From such statements I get one satisfaction—I know that those individuals have become more sensitive to the ideals. 

Though I cannot be sure at any moment of the trends affecting the Antioch ideals, I can make certain observations:

1. Ideals cannot be merely conserved. They must constantly be the subject of dilution or of strengthening.
2. The College faculty are the main reservoir of strength and source of refreshment. They must have adequate opportunity for self-expression. They must also have a willingness to define and redefine those ideals to achieve refinement, just as with great patience, skill, and effort they might sand and polish an antique chest.
3. The students must take a large measure of responsibility for the ideals, and be permitted to assume it. The new students each year constitute a great dilution. With the passage of time they become sensitive to the Antioch ideals. The older students have the greatest opportunity to contribute to that growth, because of the closeness of their association.
4. The alumni must continue to grow individually and to seek group strength. The first type of Antioch port is not a place to anchor. One must not think of our ship as having only three dimensions. It has more, and can carry those who have disembarked at the first port right along toward the second one. Part of the dilution of the Antioch ideals may come through lack of sufficiently concerted effort by all Antiochians.
5. There must from time to time be new inspiration, such as that which may come from this Alumni dinner.

I have just made five observations. They could have been stated in this way:

Ideals are never perfectly expressed but need constant expansion and refinement; the process of definition is the essence of education; education is a life-long occupation; the life we lead is the expression of the real ideals we hold; this expression always lags behind the ultimate ideals, but should be ever approaching them.

To strive constantly for the attainment of these ideals means an ever widening and intensifying of one’s interests and activities, an increasingly richer fuller life. That is the Antioch Port.

It took just a century and a half for Antioch College to finally make up its historic rainout with the Cincinnati Red Stockings. Though Antioch lost the game 14-7, it was an exciting back-and-forth affair tied at 7 after seven innings. Originally scheduled for 31 May 1869, the game was to be a launching pad for the first professional baseball team’s grand tour of Eastern States, designed to demonstrate to more established coastal cities that Cincinnati was equal to them by any measure. Because the president of that team was an Antiochian, the tour would begin in Yellow Springs where he had gone to school. So significant was this tour that a newspaper reporter, Harry Millar, was assigned to travel with the team; the first of his articles from the trip is reprinted below.

The commemorative game held on campus 31 May 2019 was played by mid-nineteenth century rules, the most notable of which demonstrates that the baseball glove is one of the greatest inventions in the history of sport. It was played by enthusiasts that keep the vintage game alive under the auspices of the Vintage Base Ball Association. Established in 1996, the VBBA dedicates itself to “representing the game of base ball as it was actually played in accordance with the rules, equipment, uniforms, field specifications, customs, practices, language, and behavioral norms of the period.” The 1869 Red Stockings club formed in 2000 and had been eyeing this date at Antioch College for some time. Since the College hasn’t played an intercollegiate baseball game in about 90 years, the Champion City Reapers of Springfield played the part of the Antioch Nine. For added authenticity, the Reapers buttoned old English “A”s to their uniforms based on the famous team photograph taken by James Landy of Cincinnati in 1869.

From The Cincinnati Commercial, Thursday, June 3, 1869

BASE BALL

Correspondence Cincinnati Commercial

The Cincinnati Base Ball Club—Their Voyage Eastward

Mansfield, O June 1.

     When the Cincinnati Base Ball Club left the Gibson House, on Monday morning, in good spirits, the air was bracing, and “old Sol” was endeavoring to peep from the corner of an eastern cloud. Breakfasting, and then proceeding to our special car on the Little Miami Railroad, they began singing the club songs, and passing the time in pleasant manner to Yellow Springs. But the predictions of the “oldest inhabitant,” whoever he may be, are not always correct, neither were ours, for as we reached Milford “black double-banked clouds promised twenty-four hours moist misery,” and as for the sun, it had entirely disappeared. Falling at first in drizzling showers, and steadily increasing, it was falling in bucketfuls by the time we reached Yellow Springs. Notwithstanding this unexpected drawback, the members of the Antioch Club gave us a hearty welcome, but were sorry to inform us that the grounds would not be fit to play upon in case it should cease raining.

     The President of the club, after expressing his regrets to the Antiochs, informed them that they would try to meet them soon, and hoped under more favorable auspices. They then telegraphed to Xenia to Mr. CS Rodgers, of the Little Miami Railroad, stationed at Xenia, who promptly dispatched a special train to the Springs, and after hastily partaking of a lunch, spread by EP Johnson Esq., of the Yellow Springs House, we returned to Xenia; and taking the Columbus accommodation, were soon at Columbus, where we were obliged to change cars, and from there to Crestline had gay times. The boys, weary after riding so many miles, with the dampness of the moisty atmosphere coming in at the open windows, and at intervals almost suffocating, and again obliged to turn up coat collars and bind handkerchiefs around the throat to prevent catching a cold, determined to keep warm by hustling about and playing jokes on the members of the Nine. Several of the latter, having traveled a great distance, were enjoying a peaceful “snooze,” and one of the members who plays at “short stop,” and wears a handsome gold medal, presented him for best playing in the season of 1868, provided himself with a hideous Yankee contrivance, in the shape of a large bug with long legs made of wire, attached to a string. Passing along the car he would gently drop it upon the face of the individual, who would manifest the unpleasant feeling of the “critter” by slapping at it with his hand.

     Then ballads would be sung, the whole of our party, numbering thirteen persons, joining in the chorus. In the midst of a drenching rain we once more changed cars, at Crestline, for this place, having but twelve miles to go before we would reach our journey’s end for the time being. The cars on the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne, and Chicago road, on which we were placed, were small and dingy—in fact, the meanest road, as far as accommodations are concerned, in the country. This beautiful city we entered about 7 o’clock, and were quickly “bussed” to the Wiler House, where everything is done for our comfort. The hotel is conducted on the country plan, fresh milk and sweet butter being placed on the table in abundance. When nearing this place, the prettiest rainbow we ever saw extended over the heavens, and the sun shone brilliantly.

     Last night one of our members distinguished himself by defeating the champion billiardist of Mansfield some hundred odd points in a friendly game. The boys retired early last evening, and this morning are looking splendidly.

     The Independent Club of this city have a very strong Nine, and will give the boys all the work to do that they can in the game this afternoon. This is a beautiful day, and a large crowd is expected to be on the grounds at the match.

H.M.M.

Antiochiana has old-timey baseball on its mind more than usual. Unmitigated love of the game has had this space devoted to the topic of Antioch baseball more than once as dedicated readers have surely noticed. The Antioch connection to the early history of the game has been one of the College’s more cherished legends ever since May 1869 when it hosted what amounts to the first professional rainout. A century-and-a-half later, that cancelled game will finally be played by two vintage baseball clubs on May 31, with the Red Stockings of Cincinnati playing themselves and the Champion City Reapers of Springfield representing the Antioch Nine.

Antioch’s contributions to the game would not be possible without the energy, influence, and vision of one of its many highly accomplished dropouts, Aaron B. Champion, who attended 1856-1860. A thrice-removed first cousin of Champion’s, Steve Moseley, visited campus recently to see the place that helped mold AB into the great man he was. Steve presented Olive Kettering Library with a memoir of his esteemed ancestor and was a guest of honor at commemorative events held in Cincinnati on May 4th.

Champion was much more than the founder of the first-ever professional baseball team, a feat he accomplished at the age of 26. He was an an able attorney whose practice flourished in the city he adopted as his own. He was active in Democratic politics as a candidate for Hamilton County Prosecutor and delegate to the party’s National Convention that nominated Horace Greeley to run for president in the election of 1872. Having already demonstrated a knack for organizing sports clubs, in the 1880s Champion put together several successful annual exhibitions of local art, culture, and industry. As a result, he was consultant for the even more successful exposition Cincinnati put on to celebrate its Centennial in 1888.

As one of its more effective Trustees, he was also considerably more to the College than a distinguished and loyal Antiochian. The Board minutes from his tenure clearly indicate the substantial effort he put toward keeping Antioch on something like a sound financial footing.

Following the Board meeting in the summer of 1895, in which he presented a long, detailed Treasurer’s report, Champion left for Europe. Sources say he headed to Germany on the recommendation of his physician seeking a cure for an illness, possibly throat cancer. The minutes give no clue to his declining health, and the next thing anyone at Antioch knew, the seemingly indefatigable Aaron B. Champion was dead at age 53. The stunned and saddened Antioch College community published the following resolution in the September 1895 issue of The Antiochian.

One hundred and fifty years to the day that they launched the first professional baseball season, Champion and his historic team were honored by the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame with a memorial pavilion, its columns made to resemble 19th century baseball bats. Go Reds.

     All friends of Antioch are grieved to hear of the death of her faithful and zealous friend, A. B. Champion. He died September 1, at London, Eng., of heart disease, while seeking the restoration of his health. Aaron Burt Champion was born at Columbus, O., Feb. 9, 1842. He was the telegraph operator at Benwood, O., at the age of 13. He was a student at Antioch under Horace Mann’s presidency and graduated in 1860. For many years he has been a trustee and the treasurer of this institution. He was admitted to the bar in 1863, and a year later began practice in Cincinnati, where he has been prominent in benevolent and public institutions, and active in the promotion of athletic organizations.

     The following resolutions we adopted by the faculty and students of Antioch college:

     We, the committee for the students and faculty of Antioch college, wish to express our sense of the almost irreparable loss we have met in the death of Hon. A. B. Champion, so long associated with this institution as student, trustee and friend. He was to her a friend indeed, faithful and true, standing firm in the darkest hours and without hope of reward laboring unceasingly for her welfare. He has left us with his work well done, and we gather comfort from the thought that no worthy cause claimed help from him in vain. To his bereaved family and friends we extend our deepest sympathies, trusting that the All-Father will comfort them.

F.H., TUFTS,
P. MILLER,
J. HANCOCK,
ELEANOR LEWIS,
G.A. HUBBELL,
Committee.