Mahan, who had often been in conflict with faculty, resigned his position as president in 1850. In his place, famed abolitionist and preacher Charles Grandison Finney (already a professor at the college since its founding) was made president, serving until 1866. At the same time, the school was renamed Oberlin College, and in 1851 received a charter with that name. Under Finney's leadership, Oberlin's faculty and students increased their activity in the abolitionist movement. They participated together with people of the town in biracial efforts to help fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad (where Oberlin was a key stop), as well as to resist the Fugitive Slave Act. One historian called Oberlin "the town that started the Civil War" due to its reputation as a hotbed of abolitionism. In 1858, both students and faculty were involved in the controversial Oberlin-Wellington Rescue of a fugitive slave, which received national press coverage. Two participants in this raid, Lewis Sheridan Leary and John Anthony Copeland, along with another Oberlin resident, Shields Green, also participated in John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry. This heritage was commemorated on campus by the 1977 installation of sculptor Cameron Armstrong's "Underground Railroad Monument" (a railroad track rising from the ground toward the sky) and monuments to the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue and the Harper's Ferry Raid. This follows a lesser-known 1841 incident in which a group of "fanatical abolition anarchists" from Oberlin, using saws and axes, freed two captured fugitive slaves from the Lorain County jail.