Asa Mahan (1799–1889) accepted the position of first president of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute in 1835, simultaneously serving as the chair of intellectual and moral philosophy and a professor of theology. Mahan's liberal views towards abolition—immediatism, the immediate and complete freeing of all slaves—greatly influenced the philosophy of the newly founded college; likewise, only two years after its founding, the school began admitting African Americans, becoming the second college in the United States to do so, and the oldest still existing. The college had some difficult beginnings, and Rev. John Keep and William Dawes were sent to England to raise funds for the college in 1839–40. A nondenominational seminary, Oberlin's Graduate School of Theology (first called the undergraduate Theological Department), was established alongside the college in 1833. In 1965, the board of trustees voted to discontinue graduate instruction in theology at Oberlin, and in September 1966, six faculty members and 22 students merged with the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University. Oberlin's role as an educator of African-American students prior to the Civil War and thereafter is historically significant. In 1844, Oberlin Collegiate Institute graduated its first black student, George Boyer Vashon, who became one of the founding professors at Howard University and the first black lawyer admitted to the Bar in New York State.