JOHN WESLEY POWELL. 301 
hoped to gain funds sufficient to enable him to pursue his 
studies at college. 
He began to teach at Jefferson Prairie, Illinois, studying 
meanwhile during all his spare hours and lecturing once a 
week to an audience of scholars and neighbors. In 1853 
the family removed to Wheaton, Illinois, where Joseph 
Powell became one of the trustees of the Wesleyan Univer¬ 
sity, situated at that place, and John entered the prepara¬ 
tory department. In 1855 he entered one of the preparatory 
classes at Illinois College, at Jacksonville, but, after a year’s 
experience there, went to the college at Oberlin, Ohio. 
Here he undertook a course which included branches of 
natural science, especially botany, and soon became an en¬ 
thusiastic student and collector. 
He now began to realize his true bent, and decided to 
make the study of geology his life work. His interest in 
geology and natural history constantly growing, he gave 
most of his summers to collecting trips, which his election in 
1858 as secretary of the State Natural History Society of 
Illinois much facilitated. In the spring of 1860 during a 
lecture tour he visited some of the Southern States and be¬ 
came convinced that nothing short of war would make an 
end of slavery, and that a crisis was approaching. In prepa¬ 
ration for the inevitable he gave part of the winter of 
1860-1861 to the study of military tactics and engineering. 
When the war actually broke out he was teaching at Henne¬ 
pin. When Lincoln called for 75,000 men to put down the 
rebellion he was the first man in his district to enroll, and 
devoted his efforts toward raising a company in Putnam 
county, the members of which proceeded to Granville, and, 
uniting with others from that town, were mustered in as 
Company IL of the Twentieth Regiment of Illinois Volunteer 
Infantry. To one born and bred an abolitionist and who 
had felt in youth the pressure of pro-slavery intolerance it 
was not merely the love of adventure ©r the stir of patriotism 
which led him to take up arms, but also largely the hope of 
aiding to eradicate from our social system the evil of slavery, 
42—Bull. Phil. Soc., Wash., Vol. 14. 
