that director Prudence Crandall was forced to close it out of concern for the students' safety. New-York Central College was forced to close in part because of local hostility to education of African Americans, and even more so to African-American professors. A month before Green's arrival in August 1832, 35 students formed an antislavery society on immediatist principles, the first in New York State. 34 students formed a colonization society; colonization was not in favor of full emancipation, and thought the best place for free blacks was "back to Africa", e.g. Liberia. In his inaugural address, Green called for "immediate, unconditional, and uncompensated emancipation". Compensated emancipation meant that owners of released slaves would be compensated for the loss of their "property", as they were, in part, when the District of Columbia's slaves were emancipated in 1862. In this environment Oneida admitted African-American students, the first college in the country to admit them without restrictions. According to alumnus Alexander Crummell, there was "perfect equality" between the black and white students. There were generally 10–14 "colored students". In 1840, "including Indian blood", there were 20. Finances When Green became president, the institute was in debt. American abolitionists, including Gerrit Smith, pledged $65,000 () towards the support of the institute, although because of the Panic of 1837 not all were able to fulfill their pledges. The Panic left the institute $9,000 in debt. In 1839 Green and the other faculty published in The Colored American an appeal for donations. Enrollment Before 1840, there was an average of 100 students. After incurring the large debt (Charles Stuart called it, "embarrassments"), "in 1841 the instructors relinquished nearly all of their salaries", and enrollment was cut to 25; the following year, 50–75. Just before closure, counting the president there were four professors, "and an able financier". The school's transformation into a "hotbed of abolition" was not well received by authorities. Milton Sernett called it, under Green, "far too radical for its time". "[T]he education societies withdrew their aid from its students, because its course of study substituted Hebrew for Latin, and it was called an Institute, not an Academy, College, or Theological School. And the charges that have been sung among the pro-slavery influences of church and state around it, on the 'nigger school' cannot well be numbered." According to Sernett, the Presbyterian Education Society and the American Education Society "struck Oneida Institute from its list