Chapter II: Part 2

The call for succor which came to us from Greece was quickly heard and promptly answered in almost all parts of our country. And why? Not because the Greeks were a more virtuous or more intelligent people than their enemies. No; we had little reason to think them better than the Turks. But they were the _injured_ party, and therefore we roused ourselves to aid them. How much soever our orators and poets gathered up the hallowed associations which cluster around that classic land, they all were but the decorations, not the point, of their appeals. It was the story of the _wrongs_ of the Grecians which found the way to our hearts, and stirred us up to encourage and succor them in their conflict for _liberty_. Dr. Howe will tell you that it was not their admiration of Greece in her ancient glory, but their sympathy for Greece in her modern degradation, that impelled him and his chivalrous companions to fly thither, and peril their lives in her cause.

Coming to us from any other land, the cry for freedom sent through American bosoms a thrilling emotion. We stopped not to inquire who they were that would be free. If they were men, we knew they had a right to liberty. No matter how the yoke had been fastened on them,--whether by inheritance, or conquest, or political compromise,--we felt that it ought to be broken. And although to break it the whole social fabric of their oppressors must be overturned, still we said, _Let the yoke be broken_!

Thus we quickly felt, thus we reasoned and acted, in all cases of oppression excepting one,--the one _at home_, the one in which we were implicated with the oppressors. We were blind, we were deaf, we were dumb, to the wrongs and outrages inflicted upon one sixth part of the population of our own country. In the Southern States the colored people were held as property, chattels personal, liable to all the incidents of the estates of their owners, could be seized to pay their debts, or mortgaged, or given away, or bequeathed by them. To all intents and purposes, they were regarded by the laws of those States, and might be legally disposed of, and otherwise treated, just like domesticated brute animals. In most of the Northern States they were not admitted to the prerogatives of citizens. In none of them were they allowed to enjoy equal social, educational, or religious privileges; nor were they permitted to engage in any of the lucrative professions, trades, or handicrafts. They were condemned to all the menial offices. It was impossible not to respect and value many of them as servants and nurses, but they were not suffered to come nearer to white people in any domestic or social relations. Intermarriages with them were illegal, and punishable by heavy penalties. They were not allowed to travel (unless as servants) in any public conveyances. Their children were excluded from the schools which white children attended, and they were set apart in one corner of the places of public worship called the houses of God,--_the impartial Father_ of all men. A certain shade of complexion, though much lighter than some brunettes, consigned any one guilty of it to the grade of the blacks, which was de-gradation. We were educated to regard negroes as an inferior race of beings, not entitled to the distinctive rights and privileges of white men. Ignorance, poverty, and servitude came to be considered the birthright, the inheritance, of all Africans and their descendants; and therefore we did not feel the pressure of their bonds, nor the smart of the wounds that were continually given them.

Prejudice against color had become universal. The most elevated were not superior to it; the humblest white men were not below it. _Colorphobia_ was a disease that infected all white Americans. Let me give my readers one instance of its virulence.

In 1834, being on a visit to my father in Boston, I was requested to call upon one of his old friends, that he might dissuade me from co-operating any further with “that wrong-headed, fanatical Garrison.” The honorable gentleman was very prominent in the fashionable, professional, and political society of that city. He had always expressed a kind regard for me, and had shown his confidence by committing to my care the education of two of his sons.

I did not doubt that he had been moved to send for me by his sincere concern for what he deemed my welfare. He received me with elegant courtesy, as he was wont to do, but entered at once upon the subject of “Mr. Garrison’s misdirected, mischievous enterprise.” He insisted that, while the negroes ought to be treated humanely, the thought of their ever being elevated to an equality with white men was preposterous, and he wondered that a man of common sense should entertain the thought an hour. He said: “Why, they are evidently an inferior race of beings, intended to be the servants of those on whom the Creator has conferred a higher nature,” and adduced the arguments which were then becoming, and have since been, so common with those who would maintain this position. At length I said to him: “Sir, we Abolitionists are not so foolish as to require or wish that ignorant negroes should be considered wise men, or that vicious negroes should be considered virtuous men, or poor negroes be considered rich men. All we demand for them is that negroes shall be permitted, encouraged, assisted to become as wise, as virtuous, and as rich as they can, and be acknowledged to be just what they have become, and be treated accordingly.” He replied, with great emphasis: “Mr. M., if you should bring me negroes who had become the wisest of the wise, the best of the good, the richest of the rich, I would not acknowledge them to be my equals.” “Then,” said I, “you might be laughed at; for, if there be any meaning in your words, such men would be your superiors. Think, sir, a moment of your presuming to contemn the wisest of the wise, the best of the good, the richest of the rich, because of their complexion. This would be the insanity of prejudice. Why, sir,” I continued, “Rammohun Roy is soon coming to this country; and he is of a darker hue than many American persons who are prescribed and degraded because of their color.” “Well, sir,” he angrily replied, “I am not one who will show him any respect.” “What,” I cried, “not take pains to know and treat with respect Rammohun Roy?” “No,” he rejoined,--“no, not even Rammohun Roy!” “Then,” I retorted, “you will lose the honor of taking by the hand the most remarkable man of our age.” He was much offended, and, as I afterwards learnt, chose that our acquaintance should end with that interview.

Such was the prejudice that Mr. Garrison found confronting him everywhere, and it still is the greatest obstacle in our country to the progress of liberty and the establishment of peace.

“Truths would you teach to save a sinking land?
All fear, none aid you, and few understand.”

Never, since the days of our Saviour, have these lines of Pope been more fully verified than in the experience of Mr. Garrison. So soon as it was known that he opposed the Colonization plan, and demanded for the enslaved immediate emancipation, without expatriation, he was at once generally denounced as a very dangerous person. Very few of those who were convinced by his facts and his appeals that something should be done forthwith for the relief of our oppressed millions ventured, during the first twelve months of his labors, to help him. Even the excellent Deacon Grant would not trust him for paper on which to print his _Liberator_ a month. And most of those who assisted him to get audiences wherever he went, and who subscribed for the _Liberator_, and who expressed their best wishes, were intimidated by his boldness, frequently half acknowledged that he demanded too much for our bondmen, and could not be made to understand his fundamental doctrine of “immediate unconditional emancipation,” often and clearly as he expounded it.

In November, 1831, I happened again to be in Boston on a visit, when it was proposed to attempt the formation of an antislavery society. A meeting was called at the office of Samuel E. Sewall, Esq. Fifteen gentlemen assembled there. We agreed in the outset that, if the apostolic number of twelve should be found ready to unite upon the principles that should be thought vital, and in a plan of operations deemed wise and expedient, we would then and there organize an association. Mr. Garrison announced the doctrine of “immediate emancipation” as being essential to the great reform that was needed in our land, the extirpation of slavery, and the establishment of the human rights of the millions who were groaning under a worse than Egyptian bondage. We discussed the point two hours. But though we were the earliest and most earnest friends of the young reformer, only _nine_ of us were brought to see, eye to eye with him, as to the right of the slave and the duty of the master. Only nine of us were brought to see that a man was a man, let his complexion be what it might be; and that no other man, not the most exalted in the land, could regard and hold him a moment as his property, his chattel, _without sin_. Only nine of us were brought to understand that the first thing to be done for those men held in the condition of domesticated brutes, was to recognize, acknowledge their _humanity_, and secure to them their God-given rights,--those rights of all men set forth as inalienable in the immortal Declaration of American Independence. Only nine of us were brought to see that the _first_ thing to be done for the improvement of the condition of the slave is to break his yoke, to set him free, and that what needs to be done first ought to be done without delay, immediately. The rest of the company partook of the fear, common at that day, that it would be very dangerous to set millions of slaves free at once. Although liberty was announced to the world, in our American Declaration, as the _birthright_ of all the children of men, yet were the people of our country so blinded and besotted by the influence of our slave system, that it was almost universally pronounced unsafe to give liberty to adult men, who were slaves, until they should be prepared for freedom, and deemed qualified to exercise it aright. Mr. Garrison had had to meet and combat this senseless fear everywhere, from the commencement of his enterprise. He had shown to all who could see that slavery was not a school in which men could be educated for liberty; that they could no more be trained to feel and act as freemen should, so long as they were kept in bondage, than children could be taught to walk so long as they were held in the arms of nurses. Moreover, he argued, that if those only should be intrusted with liberty who knew how to use it, slaveholders were of all men the last that should be left free, seeing that they habitually outraged liberty,--indeed, had been educated to trample upon human rights. Still, his doctrine was generally misunderstood, egregiously misrepresented, and violently opposed. And, as I have stated, only nine out of fifteen of his elect followers, after he had been preaching and publishing the doctrine a year, fully believed or dared to unite with him in announcing it to the world as their faith. We therefore separated in November, 1831, without having organized. I returned disappointed to my home in Connecticut, eighty miles from Boston; too far at that day, ere railroads were lain, to come, in the depth of winter, to assist in the formation of the New England Antislavery Society, which took place in January, 1832. So I lost the honor of being one of the actual founders of the first society based upon the true principle,--_immediate emancipation_.

That there was point, vitality, power, in this doctrine was proved by the commotion which was everywhere caused by the promulgation of it. From one end of the country to the other the cry went forth against the editor of the _Liberator_, Fanatic! Incendiary! Madman! The slaveholders raved, and their Northern apologists confessed that they had too much cause to be offended. Grave statesmen and solemn divines pronounced the doctrines of the New England Abolitionists unwise, dangerous, false, unconstitutional, revolutionary. Encouraged by these responses, the slaveholding aristocrats grew so bold as to demand that “this fanatical assault upon one of their domestic institutions should be quelled at once,” that the publications of the Abolitionists should be suppressed, our meetings dispersed, our lecturers and agents arrested. And scarcely had the _Liberator_ entered upon its second year before a reward was offered by a Southern Legislature for the abduction of the person, or for the life of its editor. And no Northern Legislature expressed its alarm or surprise. No Northern paper, secular or religious, reproved these assaults upon the liberty of the press and the freedom of speech. Thus was the viper _cherished_ that has since stung so deeply the bosom of our Republic, has inflicted a wound that is still open and festering.

The grossest abuse was heaped upon Mr. Garrison; the vilest aspersions cast upon his character by those who knew nothing of his private life; the worst designs imputed to his great enterprise by those who were interested directly or indirectly in upholding the system of iniquity which he had resolved to overthrow.

One of the charges brought against him, the one which probably hindered his success more than any other, was that he was an enemy of religion, an infidel, and that his covert but real purpose was to subvert the institutions of Christianity.

Now Mr. Garrison is, and ever has been since I knew him, a profoundly religious man, one of the most so I have ever known. No one really acquainted with him will say the contrary, unless it be under the impulse of a sectarian prejudice, personal resentment, or a sinister purpose. True, his doctrinal opinions and his regard for rites and forms have come to differ from those of the popular religionists of our day, as much as did the opinions of Jesus Christ differ from those of the temple and synagogue worshippers of his day. It would have been _politic_ in him not to have incurred, as he did, the opposition and hatred of so many of the ministers and churches of our country. But Mr. Garrison knew not how to counsel with the wisdom of this world. He surely had as much cause and as frequent occasions to expose the inhumanity and hypocrisy of our country as Jesus had to denounce the scribes, Pharisees, and priests of Judea. He soon discovered, to his astonishment, that the American Church was the bulwark of American slaveholders. The truth of this accusation was afterwards elaborately proved by the Hon. J. G. Birney. It was emphatically acknowledged by the Rev. Dr. Albert Barnes, and has since been repeatedly declared by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and Rev. Dr. Cheever, all honorable, orthodox men. Now, pray, how ought a great captain, though his army be a small one,--how ought he to treat the _bulwark_ of the enemy he means to subdue? how but to assail and demolish it if he can? God be praised, Christianity and the American Church were not then, and are not now, identical. The religion of Jesus Christ is dearer to Mr. Garrison than his own life. It was only the hollow-hearted pretenders to piety whom he exposed, censured, ridiculed. He never uttered from his pen or his lips a word that I have read or heard, or that has been reported to me,--not a word but in reverence and love of the truth and the spirit, the doctrines and the precepts, of Jesus Christ.

Many of those who were interested in Mr. Garrison’s holy purpose, and wished him success, thought him too severe; many more thought him indiscreet. He was remonstrated with often earnestly. But he could not be persuaded that it was not right and wise to blame those persons _most_ for our national sin who had the most influence on the government, the policy, the prevailing sentiments, the customs, and, above all, the _religion_ of the nation. Mr. Garrison would sometimes argue, and argue powerfully, convincingly, with those who found fault with his words of fiery indignation, and show that tamer language would be inapt, unfelt. At other times he would say, “Do the poor, hunted, hounded, down-trodden slaves think my language too severe or misapplied? Do that wretched husband and wife who have just now been separated from each other forever by that respectable gentleman in Virginia,--the one sold to be taken to New Orleans, the other kept at home to pine in the hovel made desolate,--do that husband and wife think my denunciation of their master too severe, because he is a judge, or a governor, or a minister, or because he is a member of a Christian church, or even because he has been hitherto, and in other respects, a kind master to them? Until I hear such ones complain of my severity, I shall not doubt its propriety.” “If those who deserve the lash feel it and wince at it, I shall be assured I am striking the right persons in the right place.” “I will be,” are his memorable words that rung through the land,--“I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On the subject of slavery I do not wish to think or speak or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat an inch; and _I will be heard_.”

Mr. Garrison will perhaps remember that, a few months after he commenced the _Liberator_, when almost everybody was finding fault with him, or wishing that he would be more temperate, I was one of the friends that came to remonstrate and entreat. He and his faithful partner, Isaac Knapp, were at work in the little upper chamber, No. 6 Merchants’ Hall, where they lived, as well as they could, with their printing-press and types, all within an enclosure sixteen or eighteen feet square. I requested him to walk out with me, that we might confer on an important matter. He at once laid aside his pen, and we descended to the street. I informed him how much troubled I had become for fear he was damaging the cause he had so much at heart by the undue severity of his style. He listened to me patiently, tenderly. I told him what many of the wise and prudent, who professed an interest in his object, said about his manner of pursuing it. He replied somewhat in the way I have described above. “But,” said I, “some of the epithets you use, though not perhaps too severe, are not precisely applicable to the sin you denounce, and so may seem abusive.” “Ah!” he rejoined, “until the term ‘slaveholder’ sends as deep a feeling of horror to the hearts of those who hear it applied to any one as the terms ‘robber,’ ‘pirate,’ ‘murderer’ do, we must use and multiply epithets when condemning the sin of him who is guilty of the ‘_sum of all villanies_.’” “O,” cried I, “my friend, do try to moderate your indignation, and keep more cool; why, you are all on fire.” He stopped, laid his hand upon my shoulder with a kind but emphatic pressure, that I have felt ever since, and said slowly, with deep emotion, “Brother May, I have need to be _all on fire_, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt.” From that hour to this I have never said a word to Mr. Garrison, in complaint of his style. I am more than half satisfied now that he was right then, and we who objected were mistaken.

A year or two afterwards I was in the study of Dr. Channing, who, from the rise of the antislavery movement, watched it with deep and increasing emotion, and often sent for me, and oftener for the heroic Dr. Follen, to converse with us about it. I was in the Doctor’s study, and had been endeavoring to explain and reconcile him to some measures of the Abolitionists which I found had troubled him, when he said, with great gravity and earnestness, “But, Mr. May, your friend Garrison’s style is excessively severe. The epithets he uses are harsh, abusive, exasperating.” I replied, “Dr. Channing, I thought so once myself. But you have furnished me with a sufficient apology, if not justification, of Mr. Garrison’s severity.” And taking from his bookcase the octavo volume of the Doctor’s Discourses, Reviews, and Miscellanies, published in 1830, I read parts of the passage commencing on the twenty-second and closing on the twenty-fourth page, in which he replies to the charge, brought against the great Milton’s prose writings, of “party-spirit, coarse invective, and controversial asperity.” I wish there were room here for me to quote the whole of it, it is all so applicable to Mr. Garrison; but I will give only the close: “Men of natural softness and timidity, of a sincere but effeminate virtue, will be apt to look on these bolder, hardier spirits as violent, perturbed, uncharitable; and the charge will not be wholly groundless. But that deep feeling of evils, which is necessary to effectual conflict with them, and which marks God’s most powerful messengers to mankind, cannot breathe itself in soft and tender accents. The deeply moved soul will speak strongly, and ought to speak so as to move and shake nations. We must not mistake Christian benevolence as if it had but one voice,--that of soft entreaty. It can speak in piercing and awful tones. There is constantly going on in our world a conflict between good and evil. The cause of human nature has always to wrestle with foes. All improvement is a victory won by struggles. It is especially true of those great periods which have been distinguished by revolutions in government and religion, and from which we date the most rapid movements of the human mind, that they have been signalized by conflict. At such periods men gifted with great power of thought and loftiness of sentiment are especially summoned to the conflict with evil. They hear, as it were, in their own magnanimity and generous aspirations the voice of a divinity; and thus commissioned, and burning with a passionate devotion to truth and freedom, they must and will speak with an indignant energy, and they ought not to be measured by the standard of ordinary minds in ordinary times.

“Milton reverenced and loved human nature, and attached himself to its great interests with a fervor of which only such a mind was capable. He lived in one of those solemn periods which determine the character of ages to come. His spirit was stirred to its very centre by the presence of danger. He lived in the midst of battle. That the ardor of his spirit sometimes passed the bounds of wisdom and charity, and poured forth unwarrantable invective, we see and lament. But the purity and loftiness of his mind break forth amidst his bitterest invectives. We see a noble nature still. We see that no feigned love of truth and freedom was a covering for selfishness and malignity. He did indeed love and adore uncorrupted religion and intellectual liberty, and let his name be enrolled among their truest champions.”

The Doctor bowed and smiled blandly, saying, “I confess the quotation is not inapt nor unfairly made.”

MISS PRUDENCE CRANDALL AND THE CANTERBURY SCHOOL.

Often, during the last thirty, and more often during the last ten years, you must have seen in the newspapers, or heard from speakers in Antislavery and Republican meetings, high commendations of the _County of Windham_ in Connecticut, as bearing the banner of equal human and political rights far above all the rest of that State. In the great election of the year 1866 the people of that county gave a large majority of votes in favor of _negro suffrage_.

This moral and political elevation of the public sentiment there is undoubtedly owing to the distinct presentation and thorough discussion, throughout that region, of the most vital antislavery questions in 1833 and 1834, called out by the shameful, cruel persecution of Miss Prudence Crandall for attempting to establish in Canterbury a boarding-school for “colored young ladies and little misses.”

I was then living in Brooklyn, the shire town of the county, six miles from the immediate scene of the violent conflict, and so was fully drawn into it. I regret that, in the following account of it, allusions to myself and my acts must so often appear. But as Æneas said to Queen Dido, in telling his story of the Trojan War, so may I say, respecting the contest about the Canterbury school, “All of which I saw, and part of which I was.”

In the summer or fall of 1832 I heard that Miss Prudence Crandall, an excellent, well-educated Quaker young lady, who had gained considerable reputation as a teacher in the neighboring town of Plainfield, had been induced by a number of ladies and gentlemen of Canterbury to purchase a commodious, large house in their pretty village, and establish her boarding and day school there, that their daughters might receive instruction in several higher branches of education not taught in the public district schools, without being obliged to live far away from their homes.

For a while the school answered the expectations of its patrons, and enjoyed their favor; but early in the following year a trouble arose. It was in this wise. Not far from the village of Canterbury there lived a worthy colored man named Harris. He was the owner of a good farm, and was otherwise in comfortable circumstances. He had a daughter, Sarah, a bright girl about seventeen years of age. She had passed, with good repute as a scholar, through the school of the district in which she lived, and was hungering and thirsting for more education. This she desired not only for her own sake, but that she might go forth qualified to be a teacher of the colored people of our country, to whose wrongs and oppression she had become very sensitive. Her father encouraged her, and gladly offered to defray the expense of the advantages she might be able to obtain. Sarah applied for admission into this new Canterbury school. Miss Crandall confessed to me that at first she hesitated and almost refused, lest admitting her might offend the parents of her pupils, several of whom were Colonizationists, and none of them Abolitionists. But Sarah urged her request with no little force of argument and depth of feeling. Then she was a young lady of pleasing appearance and manners, well known to many of Miss Crandall’s pupils, having been their class-mate in the district school. Moreover, she was accounted a virtuous, pious girl, and had been for some time a member of the church of Canterbury. There could not, therefore, have been a more unexceptionable case. No objection could be made to her admission into the school, excepting only her dark (and not very dark) complexion. Miss Crandall soon saw that she was unexpectedly called to take some part (how important she could not foresee) in the great contest for impartial liberty that was then beginning to agitate violently our nation. She was called to act either in accordance with, or in opposition to, the unreasonable, cruel, wicked prejudice against the _color_ of their victims, by which the oppressors of millions in our land were everywhere extenuating, if not justifying, their tremendous system of iniquity. She bowed to the claim of humanity, and admitted Sarah Harris to her school.

Her pupils, I believe, made no objection. But in a few days the parents of some of them called and remonstrated. Miss Crandall pressed upon their consideration Sarah’s eager desire for more knowledge and culture, the good use she intended to make of her acquirements, her excellent character and lady-like deportment, and, more than all, that she was an accepted member of the same Christian church to which many of them belonged. Her arguments, her entreaties, however, were of no avail. Prejudice blinds the eyes, closes the ears, hardens the heart. “Sarah belonged to the proscribed, despised class, and therefore must not be admitted into a private school with their daughters.” This was the gist of all they had to say. Reasons were thrown away, appeals to their sense of right, to their compassion for injured fellow-beings, made no impression. “They would not have it said that their daughters went to school with a nigger girl.” Miss Crandall was assured that, if she did not dismiss Sarah Harris, her white pupils would be withdrawn from her.

She could not make up her mind to comply with such a demand, even to save the institution she had so recently established with such fond hopes, and in which she had invested all her property, and a debt of several hundred dollars more. It was, indeed, a severe trial, but she was strengthened to bear it. She determined to act right, and leave the event with God. Accordingly, she gave notice to her neighbors, and, on the 2d day of March, advertised in the _Liberator_, that at the commencement of her next term, on the first Monday of April, her school would be opened for “young ladies and little misses of color.”

Only a few days before, on the 27th of February, I was informed of her generous, disinterested determination, and heard that, in consequence, the whole town was in a flame of indignation, kindled and fanned by the influence of the prominent people of the village, her immediate neighbors and her late patrons. Without delay, therefore, although a stranger, I addressed a letter to her, assuring her of my sympathy, and of my readiness to help her all in my power. On the 4th of March her reply came, begging me to come to her so soon as my engagements would permit. Accompanied by my friend, Mr. George W. Benson, I went to Canterbury on the afternoon of that day. On entering the village we were warned that we should be in personal danger if we appeared there as Miss Crandall’s friends; and when arrived at her house we learnt that the excitement against her had become furious. She had been grossly insulted, and threatened with various kinds of violence, if she persisted in her purpose, and the most egregious falsehoods had been put in circulation respecting her intentions, the characters of her expected pupils, and of the future supporters of her school. Moreover, we were informed that a town-meeting was to be held on the 9th instant, to devise and adopt such measures as “would effectually avert the nuisance, or speedily abate it, if it should be brought into the village.”

Though beat upon by such a storm, we found Miss Crandall resolved and tranquil. The effect of her Quaker discipline appeared in every word she spoke, and in every expression of her countenance. But, as she said, it would not do for her to go into the town-meeting; and there was not a man in Canterbury who would dare, if he were disposed, to appear there in her behalf. “Will not you, Friend May, be my attorney?” “Certainly,” I replied, “come what will.” We then agreed that I should explain to the people how unexpectedly she had been led to take the step which had given so much offence, and show them how she could not have consented to the demand made by her former patrons without wounding deeply the feelings of an excellent girl, known to most of them, and adding to the mountain load of injuries and insults already heaped upon the colored people of our country. With this arrangement, we left her, to await the coming of the ominous meeting of the town.

On the 9th of March I repaired again to Miss Crandall’s house, accompanied by my faithful friend, Mr. Benson. There, to our surprise and joy, we found Friend Arnold Buffum, a most worthy man, an able speaker, and then the principal lecturing agent of the New England Antislavery Society. Miss Crandall gave to each of us a respectful letter of introduction to the Moderator of the meeting, in which she requested that we might be heard as her attorneys, and promised to be bound by any agreement we might see fit to make with the citizens of Canterbury. Miss Crandall concurred with us in the opinion that, as her house was one of the most conspicuous in the village, and not wholly paid for, if her opponents would take it off her hands, repaying what she had given for it, cease from molesting her, and allow her time to procure another house for her school, it would be better that she should move to some more retired part of the town or neighborhood.

Thus commissioned and instructed, Friend Buffum and I proceeded to the town-meeting. It was held in the “Meeting-House,” one of the old New England pattern,--galleries on three sides, with room below and above for a thousand persons, sitting and standing. We found it nearly filled to its utmost capacity; and, not without difficulty, we passed up the side aisle into the wall-pew next to the deacon’s seat, in which sat the Moderator. Very soon the business commenced. After the “Warning” had been read a series of Resolutions were laid before the meeting, in which were set forth the disgrace and damage that would be brought upon the town if a school for colored girls should be set up there, protesting emphatically against the impending evil, and appointing the civil authority and selectmen a committee to wait upon “the person contemplating the establishment of said school, ... point out to her the injurious effects, the incalculable evils, resulting from such an establishment within this town, and persuade her, if possible, to abandon the project.” The mover of the resolutions, Rufus Adams, Esq., labored to enforce them by a speech, in which he grossly misrepresented what Miss Crandall had done, her sentiments and purposes, and threw out several mean and low insinuations against the motives of those who were encouraging her enterprise.

As soon as he sat down the Hon. Andrew T. Judson rose. This gentleman was undoubtedly the chief of Miss Crandall’s persecutors. He was the great man of the town, a leading politician in the State, much talked of by the Democrats as soon to be governor, and a few years afterwards was appointed Judge of the United States District Court. His house on Canterbury Green stood next to Miss Crandall’s. The idea of having “a school of nigger girls so near him was insupportable.” He vented himself in a strain of reckless hostility to his neighbor, her benevolent, self-sacrificing undertaking, and its patrons, and declared his determination to thwart the enterprise. He twanged every chord that could stir the coarser passions of the human heart, and with such sad success that his hearers seemed to be filled with the apprehension that a dire calamity was impending over them, that Miss Crandall was the author or instrument of it, that there were powerful conspirators engaged with her in the plot, and that the people of Canterbury should be roused, by every consideration of self-preservation, as well as self-respect, to prevent the accomplishment of the design, defying the wealth and influence of all who were abetting it.

When he had ended his philippic Mr. Buffum and I silently presented to the Moderator Miss Crandall’s letters, requesting that we might be heard on her behalf. He handed them over to Mr. Judson, who instantly broke forth with greater violence than before; accused us of insulting the town by coming there to interfere with its local concerns. Other gentlemen sprang to their feet in hot displeasure; poured out their tirades upon Miss Crandall and her accomplices, and, with fists doubled in our faces, roughly admonished us that, if we opened our lips there, they would inflict upon us the utmost penalty of the law, if not a more immediate vengeance.

Thus forbidden to speak, we of course sat in silence, and let the waves of invective and abuse dash over us. But we sat thus only until we heard from the Moderator the words, “This meeting is adjourned!” Knowing that now we should violate no law by speaking, I sprang to the seat on which I had been sitting, and cried out, “Men of Canterbury, I have a word for you! Hear me!” More than half the crowd turned to listen. I went rapidly over my replies to the misstatements that had been made as to the purposes of Miss Crandall and her friends, the characters of her expected pupils, and the spirit in which the enterprise had been conceived and would be carried on. As soon as possible I gave place to Friend Buffum. But he had spoken in his impressive manner hardly five minutes, before the trustees of the church to which the house belonged came in and ordered all out, that the doors might be shut. Here again the hand of the law constrained us. So we obeyed with the rest, and having lingered awhile upon the Green to answer questions and explain to those who were willing “to understand the matter,” we departed to our homes, musing in our own hearts “what would come of this day’s uproar.”

Before my espousal of Miss Crandall’s cause I had had a pleasant acquaintance with Hon. Andrew T. Judson, which had led almost to a personal friendship. Unwilling, perhaps, to break our connection so abruptly, and conscious, no doubt, that he had treated me rudely, not to say abusively, at the town-meeting on the 9th, he called to see me two days afterwards. He assured me that he had not become unfriendly to me personally, and regretted that he had used some expressions and applied certain epithets to me, in the warmth of his feelings and the excitement of the public indignation of his neighbors and fellow-townsmen, roused as they were to the utmost in opposition to Miss Crandall’s project, which he thought I was inconsiderately and unjustly promoting. He went on enlarging upon the disastrous effects the establishment of “a school for nigger girls” in the centre of their village would have upon its desirableness as a place of residence, the value of real estate there, and the general prosperity of the town.

I replied: “If, sir, you had permitted Mr. Buffum and myself to speak at your town-meeting, you would have found that we had come there, not in a contentious spirit, but that we were ready, with Miss Crandall’s consent, to settle the difficulty with you and your neighbors peaceably. We should have agreed, if you would repay to Miss Crandall what you had advised her to give for her house, and allow her time quietly to find and purchase a suitable house for her school in some more retired part of the town or vicinity, that she should remove to that place.” The honorable gentleman hardly gave me time to finish my sentences ere he said, with great emphasis:--

“Mr. May, we are not merely opposed to the establishment of that school in Canterbury; we mean there shall not be such a school set up anywhere in our State. The colored people never can rise from their menial condition in our country; they ought not to be permitted to rise here. They are an inferior race of beings, and never can or ought to be recognized as the equals of the whites. Africa is the place for them. I am in favor of the Colonization scheme. Let the niggers and their descendants be sent back to their fatherland; and there improve themselves as much as they may, and civilize and Christianize the natives, if they can. I am a Colonizationist. You and your friend Garrison have undertaken what you cannot accomplish. The condition of the colored population of our country can never be essentially improved on this continent. You are fanatical about them. You are violating the Constitution of our Republic, which settled forever the status of the black men in this land. They belong to Africa. Let them be sent back there, or kept as they are here. The sooner you Abolitionists abandon your project the better for our country, for the niggers, and yourselves.”

I replied: “Mr. Judson, there never will be fewer colored people in this country than there are now. Of the vast majority of them this is the native land, as much as it is ours. It will be unjust, inhuman, in us to drive them out, or to make them willing to go by our cruel treatment of them. And, if they should all become willing to depart, it would not be practicable to transport across the Atlantic Ocean and settle properly on the shores of Africa, from year to year, half so many of them as would be born here in the same time, according to the known rate of their natural increase. No, sir, there will never be fewer colored people in our country than there are this day; and the only question is, whether we will recognize the rights which God gave them as men, and encourage and assist them to become all he has made them capable of being, or whether we will continue wickedly to deny them the privileges we enjoy, condemn them to degradation, enslave and imbrute them; and so bring upon ourselves the condemnation of the Almighty Impartial Father of all men, and the terrible visitation of the God of the oppressed. I trust, sir, you will erelong come to see that we must accord to these men their rights, or incur justly the loss of our own. Education is one of the primal, fundamental rights of all the children of men. Connecticut is the last place where this should be denied. But as, in the providence of God, that right has been denied in a place so near me, I feel that I am summoned to its defence. If you and your neighbors in Canterbury had quietly consented that Sarah Harris, whom you knew to be a bright, good girl, should enjoy the privilege she so eagerly sought, this momentous conflict would not have arisen in your village. But as it has arisen there, we may as well meet it there as elsewhere.”

“That nigger school,” he rejoined with great warmth, “shall never be allowed in Canterbury, nor in any town of this State.”

“How can you prevent it legally?” I inquired; “how but by Lynch law, by violence, which you surely will not countenance?”

“We can expel her pupils from abroad,” he replied, “under the provisions of our old pauper and vagrant laws.”

“But we will guard against them,” I said, “by giving your town ample bonds.”

“Then,” said he, “we will get a law passed by our Legislature, now in session, forbidding the institution of such a school as Miss Crandall proposes, in any part of Connecticut.”

“It would be an unconstitutional law, and I will contend against it as such to the last,” I rejoined. “If you, sir, pursue the course you have now indicated, I will dispute every step you take, from the lowest court in Canterbury up to the highest court of the United States.”

“You talk big,” he cried; “it will cost more than you are aware of to do all that you threaten. Where will you get the means to carry on such a contest at law?”

This defiant question inspired me to say, “Mr. Judson, I had not foreseen all that this conversation has opened to my view. True, I do not possess the pecuniary ability to do what you have made me promise. I have not consulted any one. But I am sure the lovers of impartial liberty, the friends of humanity in our land, the enemies of slavery, will so justly appreciate the importance of sustaining Miss Crandall in her benevolent, pious undertaking, that I shall receive from one quarter and another all the funds I may need to withstand your attempt to crush, by legal means, the Canterbury school.” The sequel of my story will show that I did not misjudge the significance of my case, nor put my confidence in those who were not worthy of it. Mr. Judson left me in high displeasure, and I never met him afterwards but as an opponent.

Undismayed by the opposition of her neighbors and the violence of their threats, Miss Crandall received early in April fifteen or twenty colored young ladies and misses from Philadelphia, New York, Providence, and Boston. At once her persecutors commenced operations. All accommodations at the stores in Canterbury were denied her; so that she was obliged to send to neighboring villages for her needful supplies. She and her pupils were insulted whenever they appeared in the streets. The doors and door-steps of her house were besmeared, and her well was filled with filth. Had it not been for the assistance of her father and another Quaker friend who lived in the town, she might have been compelled to abandon “her castle” for the want of water and food. But she was enabled to “hold out,” and Miss Crandall and her little band behaved somewhat like the besieged in the immortal Fort Sumter. The spirit that is in the children of men is usually roused by persecution. I visited them repeatedly, and always found teacher and pupils calm and resolute. They evidently felt that it was given them to maintain one of the fundamental, inalienable rights of man.

Before the close of the month, an attempt was made to frighten and drive away these innocent girls, by a process under the obsolete vagrant law, which provided that the selectmen of any town might warn any person, not an inhabitant of the State, to depart forthwith from said town; demand of him or her _one dollar and sixty-seven cents_ for every week he or she remained in said town after having received such warning, and in case such fine should not be paid, and the person so warned should not have departed before the expiration of ten days after being sentenced, then he or she should _be whipped on the naked body not exceeding ten stripes_.

A warrant to this effect was actually served upon Eliza Ann Hammond, a fine girl from Providence, aged seventeen years. Although I had protected Miss Crandall’s pupils against the operation of this old law, by giving to the treasurer of Canterbury a bond in the sum of $10,000, signed by responsible gentlemen of Brooklyn, to save the town from the vagrancy of any of these pupils, I feared they would be intimidated by the actual appearance of the constable, and the imposition of a writ. So, on hearing of the above transaction, I went down to Canterbury to explain the matter if necessary; to assure Miss Hammond that the persecutors would hardly dare proceed to such an extremity, and strengthen her to bear meekly the punishment, if they should in their madness inflict it; knowing that every blow they should strike her would resound throughout the land, if not over the whole civilized world, and call out an expression of indignation before which Mr. Judson and his associates would quail. But I found her ready for the emergency, animated by the spirit of a martyr.

Of course this process was abandoned. But another was resorted to, most disgraceful to the State as well as the town. That shall be the subject of my next.

THE BLACK LAW OF CONNECTICUT.

Foiled in their attempts to frighten away Miss Crandall’s pupils by their proceedings under the provisions of the obsolete “Pauper and Vagrant Law,” Mr. Judson and his fellow-persecutors urgently pressed upon the Legislature of Connecticut, then in session, a demand for the enactment of a law, by which they should be enabled to effect their purpose. To the lasting shame of the State, be it said, they succeeded. On the 24th of May, 1833, the _Black Law_ was enacted as follows:--

“SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of
Representatives, in General Assembly convened, that no person
shall set up or establish in this State any school, academy, or
literary institution for the instruction or education of colored
persons who are not inhabitants of this State; nor instruct or
teach in any school, or other literary institution whatsoever, in
this State; nor harbor or board, for the purpose of attending or
being taught or instructed in any such school, academy, or literary
institution, any colored person who is not an inhabitant of any
town in this State, without the consent in writing, first obtained,
of a majority of the civil authority, and also of the Selectmen of
the town, in which such school, academy, or literary institution is
situated,” &c.

I need not copy any more of this infamous Act. The penalties denounced against the violation of it, you may be sure, were severe enough. That the persecutors of Miss Crandall were determined to visit them upon her, if they might, the sequel of my story will show.

On the receipt of the tidings that the Legislature had passed the law, joy and exultation ran wild in Canterbury. The bells were rung and a cannon fired, until all the inhabitants for miles around were informed of the triumph. So soon as was practicable, on the 27th of June, Miss Crandall was arrested by the sheriff of the county, or the constable of the town, and arraigned before Justices Adams and Bacon, two of the leaders of the conspiracy against her and her humane enterprise. The trial of course was a brief one; the result was predetermined. Before noon of that day a messenger came to let me know that Miss Crandall had been “committed” by the above-named justices, to take her trial at the next session of the Superior Court at Brooklyn in August; that she was in the hands of the sheriff and would be put into jail, unless I or some of her friends would come and “give bonds” for her in the sum of $300 or $500, I forget which. I calmly told the messenger that there were gentlemen enough in Canterbury whose bond for that amount would be as good or better than mine; and I should leave it for them to do Miss Crandall that favor. “But,” said the young man, “are you not her friend?” “Certainly,” I replied, “too sincerely her friend to give relief to her enemies in their present embarrassment; and I trust you will not find any one of her friends, or the patrons of her school, who will step forward to help them any more than myself.” “But, sir,” he cried, “do you mean to allow her to be put into jail?” “Most certainly,” was my answer, “if her persecutors are unwise enough to let such an outrage be committed.” He turned from me in blank surprise, and hurried back to tell Mr. Judson and the justices of his ill success.

A few days before, when I first heard of the passage of the law, I had visited Miss Crandall with my friend Mr. George W. Benson, and advised with her as to the course she and her friends ought to pursue, when she should be brought to trial. She appreciated at once and fully the importance of leaving her persecutors to show to the world how base they were, and how atrocious was the law they had induced the Legislature to enact,--a law, by the force of which a woman might be fined and imprisoned as a felon, in the State of Connecticut, for giving instruction to colored girls. She agreed that it would be best for us to leave her in the hands of those with whom the law originated, hoping that, in their madness, they would show forth all its hideous features.

Mr. Benson and I therefore went diligently around to all whom we knew were friendly to Miss Crandall and her school, and counselled them by no means to give bonds to keep her from imprisonment, because nothing would expose so fully to the public the egregious wickedness of the law, and the virulence of her persecutors as the fact that they had thrust her into jail.