British Parliament in the House of Commons. Among the trustees who supported the abolitionist cause and African-American education was Salmon P. Chase, previously Governor of Ohio, who was appointed in 1864 as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by 16th President Abraham Lincoln after serving as U S. Secretary of the Treasury in Lincoln's cabinet for 3 years during the early American Civil War, to succeed longtime Chief Justice Roger B. Taney who had died. The denominations jointly sponsored Wilberforce in 1856 to provide collegiate education to African Americans. It was the first historically black college in which African Americans were part of the founding. The town of Wilberforce was located at what had been a popular summer resort, called Tawawa Springs. It was patronized by people from Cincinnati further south on the Ohio River, including abolitionists, as well as many white planters from the South, who often brought their mistresses of color and "natural" (illegitimate) multi-racial children with them for extended stays. In one of the paradoxical results of slavery, by 1860 most of the college's more than 200 paying students were mixed-race offspring of wealthy southern planters, who gave their children the education in Ohio which they could not get in the South. The men were examples of white fathers who did not abandon their mixed-race children, but passed on important social capital in the form of education; they and others also provided money, property and apprenticeships. With the outbreak of Civil War in the Spring of 1861, the planters withdrew their sons from the college, and the Cincinnati Annual Conference of the M.E, Church (which was generally white-only) felt it needed to use its resources to support social efforts related to the war. The college had to close temporarily because of these financial difficulties. In 1863, Rev. Payne persuaded his fellow ministers and lay members of the AME Church to buy the debt and take over the college outright from the Methodist Episcopalians of Cincinnati. Payne was then selected as president, becoming the first African-American college president in the United States. The AME had to reinvest in the college two years later, when a southern sympathizer damaged buildings by an arson fire. Payne helped organize fundraising and rebuilding. White sympathizers gave large donations, including $10,000 donations each from founding board member Salmon P. Chase and another supporter from Pittsburgh, as well as $4200 from a white