One of the so-called Lane Seminary Rebels, Edward Weed withdrew from the Cincinnati seminary in protest over the school's attempt to silence abolitionists on its campus. Soon thereafter he became a traveling agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society and visited the Scioto Valley in the summer of 1836 with the aim of organizing new local abolition societies. His efforts, however, were thwarted by a mob in Waverly and followed up by a public meeting in Piketon, wherein residents adopted a series of anti-abolition resolutions.