During 1832 to 1833, the faculty and trustees of Western Reserve College in Hudson, Ohio, were embroiled in a controversy over immediate abolition. The faculty advocated immediate abolition and the establishment of biracial equality in the United States; the trustees urged gradual abolition and the colonization of freed slaves in Liberia. The controversy at Western Reserve College raises the question of why some people adopted immediate abolitionism while others of similar background remained colonizationists? Although the case of Western Reserve College provides no Rosetta Stone to unravel the mystery of motivation, there were notable differences in age, in relationship to the community, and in enthusiasm for the evangelical doctrine of the immediate repentance of sin that distinguished the main protagonists among the faculty and the trustees from one another.