Alma Academy, one of Ohio's earliest colleges, was founded in 1818, became Franklin College in 1825, and was established by primarily Scots-Irish Presbyterian settlers from western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Many nineteenth-century national and international leaders attended the school, including 8 U.S. Senators, 9 U.S. Representatives, 32 State Legislators, and 2 Governors. Among its notable alumni were John Bingham, author of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and chief prosecutor of President Abraham Lincoln's assassins; Civil War General George W. McCook; Ohio Supreme Court Justice John Welch; and Joseph Ray, publisher of Ray's Arithmetic. The slavery question bitterly divided the school, and enrollment declined in the years following the Civil War. Franklin College closed in 1921, and its charter was later transferred to Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio. John Bingham, a member of Franklin College's class of 1837, was the primary author of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which protects the privileges and immunities of American citizens and guarantees due process of law and equal protection. Bingham later wrote to his Franklin College classmate and friend, Reverend Titus Basfield, a former slave, that in the Fourteenth Amendment he sought to obtain for all human beings, including the long oppressed members of Basfield's race, the precious rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.