[5] At age fifteen, Potter passed the entrance examination and enrolled in Union College in Schenectady, New York.

This action foreshadowed his later concern as a bishop for "equal rights and opportunities in Church and State to all sorts and conditions of men.

"[10] In 1821, after his time with his brother in Philadelphia, Potter returned to Union College as a Tutor and soon became "Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy.

[16] On March 16, 1839, Sarah Nott Potter died about four hours after giving birth to her seventh child and only daughter.

[34] On May 12, 1829, Potter preached a sermon on "behalf of missions" before the Board of Directors of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Episcopal Church.

He began to suffer from a "partial loss of voice" and "impaired health," so, in 1831, he resigned and went back to Union College to teach.

"[51][52] Besides preparing and delivering Lowell Lectures in Boston, Potter began working on philanthropic projects, which he believed the Episcopal Church should undertake, within a year after his consecration.

In the winter of 1846, Potter, in co-operation with the Trustees, reopened the Academy of the Protestant Episcopal Church, located in Philadelphia, in the spring of 1846.

When Potter moved to Philadelphia, he was shocked by the many lawless and violent young men, drinking and fighting in the streets at night.

The Institute provided night-schools with libraries and reading rooms for young men more than sixteen years of age.

To more adequately meet the need for training Candidates for Holy Orders, Potter founded the Philadelphia Divinity School in 1861.

For the future, he said that he would "not feel authorized to apply for an Assistant unless in my own judgment and that of my medical advisers such a measure is urgently required."

[66] Potter's care for blacks "had been manifested in his boyhood, at his brother's house in Philadelphia, and again in his ministry to the colored people while a Professor at Schenectady.

At the same time, it asked for "as much freedom in opinion, discipline, and worship as is compatible with the essential faith and order of the Gospel."

[82] Potter was an opponent of slavery and published a reply to the pro-slavery arguments of Bishop John Henry Hopkins (1792-1868) of Vermont.

[83] In January 1861, Hopkins gave several men who had asked for his opinions regarding "the Biblical argument on the subject of Negro slavery in the Southern States."

Hopkins sent them a pamphlet he had written on the Bible View of Slavery in which he argued that "there was a clear biblical sanction for the practice."

[84] In May 1863, after President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation Bishop Hopkins authorized the publication of his paper entitled "Bible View of Slavery,"[85] In the paper, Hopkins argued that "there was a clear biblical sanction for slavery that it "should be gradually abolished with respect for the rights of southern states, but that abolition had no biblical or theological warrant.

Potter and some two hundred of his clergy issued a response, wherein they said,[87]This attempt not only to apologize for Slavery in the abstract, but to advocate it as it exists in the cotton States, and in the States which sell men and women in the open market as their staple product, is, in their judgment, unworthy of any servant of Jesus Christ, as an effort to sustain, on Bible principles, the States in rebellion against the Government, in the wicked attempt to establish, by force of arms, a tyranny under the name of a Republic, whose corner-stone shall be the perpetual bondage of the African, it challenges their indignant reprobation.In 1864, Hopkins published a response to A Scriptural, Ecclesiastical, and Historical View of Slavery: From the Days of the Patriarch Abraham, to the Nineteenth Century.

Therefore, he wrote to the diocesan clergy "urging them to remember that as Ministers of the Prince of Peace" and that "it is our duty as far as possible to avoid all unseemly exhibitions of feeling and to bear with serene patience any seeming provocation that may be presented.

"[102] In 1852, Potter gave an address in Pittsburgh on Drinking Usages of Society which became a national temperance influence in pamphlet form."

Alonzo told "those earlier Pittsburghers, "Our simple duty is to prevent drunkenness"; or when he declares, "To arrest an evil effectually we must know its nature and its cause."

In his preface to a volume of Discourses published in 1851, he claims that his general purpose is to deal with "topics connected with the interests of the clerical profession, i.e., the extension of the Christian church and the welfare of society.

He held office in the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, in the New York House of Refuge, and in the Prison Discipline Society.

[10] As a bishop, he continued his concern for "equal rights and opportunities in Church and State to all sorts and conditions of men," including the "colored race.

[106] After the war began, Potter's address to the next Diocesan Convention about the situation included these words: "Let us implore in behalf of all who are in civil or military authority the heavenly wisdom and longsuffering which they so much need."

After President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Potter saw the need to provide the Freedmen with food, education, and the Christian religion.

Along the way, when the ship stopped at major ports, Potter went ashore and engaged in activities such as sightseeing, conducting worship services, and meeting local people.

When the ship arrived in San Francisco on July 1, 1865, Potters was too sick to leave his cabin, The physician diagnosed the disease as the malignant Panama Fever.

[117] A 1933 biography of Potter said that as bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, he left "a record of twenty years in that office probably never surpassed."