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Other documents randomly have
different content
slaveholders were alarmed by symptoms of discontent among the
free colored people, imagined that they were promoting
insubordination amongst the slaves, and so conceived the project of
colonizing them in Africa. To insure the accomplishment of so mighty
an undertaking, it was obviously necessary to obtain the aid of the
general government. In order to sustain that government in making
such a large appropriation of the public money as would be needed,
the people of the North, as well as of the South, were to be
conciliated to the plan; and to conciliate them it was necessary to
make it appear to be a philanthropic enterprise, conferring great
benefits immediately upon the free colored people, and tending
certainly, though indirectly, to the entire abolition of slavery.
Accordingly, agents, eloquent and cunning men, were sent into all
the free States, especially into Pennsylvania, New York, and New
England, to press the claims of the oppressed people of the South
upon the compassion and generosity of the Northern philanthropists.
Never did agents do their work better. Never were more exciting
appeals made to the humane than were pressed home upon us by
such men as Mr. Gurley, Mr. Cresson, and their fellow-laborers. They
kept out of sight the real design, the primal object, the animus of
the founders and Southern patrons of the American Colonization
Society. They presented to us views of the debasing, dehumanizing
effects of slavery upon its victims; the need of a far-distant removal
from its overshadowing presence of those who had been blighted by
it, that they might revive, unfold their humanity, exhibit their
capacities, command the respect of those who had known them only
in degradation, and, by their new-born activities, not only secure
comfort and plenty for themselves on the shores of their fatherland,
but prepare homes there for the reception of millions still pining in
slavery, who, we were assured, would be gladly released whenever it
should be known that the bestowment of freedom would be a
blessing and not a curse to them. Such appeals were not made to
our hearts in vain. Suffice it to say that Mr. Garrison, Gerrit Smith,
Arthur Tappan, William Goodell, and all the early Abolitionists, were
induced to espouse the cause of our oppressed and enslaved
countrymen, by the speeches and tracts of Southern
Colonizationists.
If I were intending to write a complete history of the conflict
with slavery in our country, gratitude would impel me to give some
account of a number of philanthropists who, in different parts of the
Union, some of them in the midst of slaveholding communities,
before Mr. Garrison’s day, had fully exposed and faithfully denounced
“the great iniquity,” I should make especial mention of

REV. JOHN RANKIN AND REV. JOHN D.

PAXTON.
The former was a Presbyterian minister in Kentucky, where, in
1825, having heard that his brother, Mr. Thomas Rankin, of Virginia,
had become a slaveholder, he addressed to him a series of very
earnest and impressive letters in remonstrance. They were published
first in a periodical called the Castigator, and afterwards went
through several editions in pamphlet form. He denounced “slavery as
a never-failing fountain of the grossest immoralities, and one of the
deepest sources of human misery.” He insisted that “the safety of
our government and the happiness of its subjects depended upon
the extermination of this evil.” We New England Abolitionists, in the
early days of our warfare, made great use of Mr. Rankin’s volume as
a depository of well-attested facts, justifying the strongest
condemnation, we could utter, of the system of oppression that had
become established in our country and sanctioned by our
government.
Mr. Paxton was the pastor of a Presbyterian church in
Cumberland, Virginia. He was a member of the Presbyterian General
Assembly, which in 1818 denounced “the voluntary enslaving of one
part of the human race as a gross violation of the most precious and
sacred rights of human nature,—utterly inconsistent with the law of
God.” Believing what that grave body had declared, he set about
endeavoring to convince the church to which he ministered of the
exceeding sinfulness of slaveholding; and that “they ought to set
their bondmen free so soon as it could be done with advantage to
them.” His preaching to this effect gave offence to many of his
parishioners, and led to his dismission. In justice to himself, and to
the cause of humanity, for espousing which he had been persecuted,
Mr. Paxton also published a volume of letters, which were of great
service to us. In these letters he faithfully exposed the abject,
debased, suffering condition of our American slaves,—incomparably
worse than that which was permitted under the Mosaic dispensation,
—and pretty effectually demolished the Bible argument in support of
the abomination. However, the labors of these good men, and of
those whom they roused, were erelong diverted into the seductive
channel of the Colonization scheme.
But there was another of the early antislavery reformers, of
whom I may write much more fully in accordance with my plan,
which is to give, for the most part, only my personal recollections of
the prominent actors, and the most significant incidents, in our
conflict with the giant wrong of our nation and age.

BENJAMIN LUNDY.
In the month of June, 1828, there came to the town of Brooklyn,
Connecticut, where I then resided, and to the house of my friend,
the venerable philanthropist, George Benson, a man of small stature,
of feeble health, partially deaf, asking for a public hearing upon the
subject of American slavery. It was Benjamin Lundy. We gathered
for him a large congregation, and his address made a deep
impression on many of his hearers. He exhibited the wrong of
slavery and the sufferings of its victims in a graphic, affecting
manner. But the relief which he proposed was to be found in
removing them to some of the unoccupied territory of Texas or
Mexico, rather than in recognizing their rights as men here, in the
country where so many of them had been born; and in making all
the amends possible for the injuries so long inflicted upon them by
giving them here the blessings of education, and every opportunity
and assistance to become all that God has made them capable of
being. Nevertheless, Mr. Lundy had done then, and he continued
afterwards, until his death in 1839, to do excellent service in the
cause of the enslaved. Indeed, his labors were so abundant, his
sacrifices so many, and his trials so severe, that no one will stand
before the God of the oppressed with a better record than he.
Benjamin Lundy was born in New Jersey, of Quaker parents, in
1789, and was educated in the sentiments and under the influence
of the society of Friends. He was, therefore, from his earliest days,
taught to regard slaveholding as a great iniquity. At the age of
nineteen he went to reside in Wheeling, Virginia, and there learnt
the saddler’s trade. This he afterwards carried on, with great success
for a number of years, in the village of St. Clairville, Ohio, about ten
miles from Wheeling. But he could not banish from his memory the
sights he had seen at Wheeling, which was the great thoroughfare
of the slave-trade between Virginia and the Southern and
Southwestern States; nor efface from his heart the impression that
he ought “to attempt to do something for the relief of that most
injured portion of the human race.”
As early as 1815, when twenty-six years of age, he formed an
antislavery society, which at first consisted of only six members, but
in a few months increased to nearly five hundred, among whom
were many of the influential ministers, lawyers, and other prominent
citizens of several of the counties in that part of Ohio. Although
unused to composition, he wrote an appeal to the philanthropists of
the United States, which was published and extensively circulated,
and led to the formation, in different parts of the State, of societies
similar in spirit and purpose to the one he had instituted. He then
engaged in the publication of an antislavery paper; and to promote
its circulation, and to gather materials for its columns, he
commenced his travels in the slave States. These were performed
for the most part on foot. Thus he journeyed thousands of miles,
through Virginia, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
In most places where he lectured publicly, or privately, he obtained
subscribers to his paper. In some places he succeeded in forming
associations similar to his own. Not unfrequently he met with angry
rebuffs and violent threats of personal injury. But he was a man of
the most quiet courage, as well as indomitable perseverance. He
disconcerted his assailants by letting them see that they could not
frighten him; that the threat of assassination would not deter him
from prosecuting his object. Several slaveholders were so much
affected by his exposition of their iniquity that they manumitted their
bondmen, on condition that he would take them to a place where
they would be free. Twice or thrice he went to Hayti, conducting
such freed ones thither, and finding homes for others whom he
hoped to send there. Afterwards he explored large portions of
Mexico and Texas; and made strenuous endeavors to obtain by grant
or purchase sections of lands, upon which he might found colonies
of emancipated people from this country. In this attempt he was
unsuccessful; but while prosecuting it he gathered much valuable
information respecting the state of that country, of which afterwards
important use was made by the Hon. J. Q. Adams, in his strenuous
opposition in 1836 to the audacious plot by which Texas was
annexed to our Republic.
Mr. Lundy was indefatigable in laboring for whatever he
undertook to accomplish. He learnt the printer’s art, that he might
communicate to the public whatever he discovered by his diligent
inquiries of the condition of the enslaved, and enkindle in others that
sympathy for them which glowed in his own bosom. He was not
stationary for a long while in any one place. His paper, The Genius of
Universal Emancipation, was published successively in Ohio,
Missouri, Tennessee, and in Philadelphia, Washington, and
Baltimore. For a considerable time his lecturing excursions were so
frequent, diverse, and distant, that it was most convenient to him to
get his paper printed, wherever he happened to be, from month to
month. So he earned along with him the type, “heading,” the
“column-rules,” and his “direction-book,” and issued “the Genius,”
&c., from any office that was accessible to him. He often had to pay
for the publication of it by working as a journeyman printer, and at
other times had to support himself by working at his saddler’s trade.
Nothing discouraged, nothing daunted Benjamin Lundy. He
possessed, in an eminent degree, the faith, patience, self-denial,
courage, and endurance necessary to a pioneer. He was frequently
threatened, repeatedly assaulted, and once brutally beaten. But he
could not be deterred from prosecuting the work to which he was
called. He was a rare specimen of perfect fidelity to duty, a
conscientious, meek, but fearless, determined man, a soldier of the
cross, a moral hero.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.

William Lloyd Garrison commenced his literary and philanthropic
labors when a young journeyman printer, in his native place,
Newburyport, Mass. In 1825 he removed to Boston, and labored for
a while in the office of the Recorder. In 1827 he united with Rev.
William Collier in editing and publishing the National Philanthropist,
the only paper then devoted to the Temperance cause. And soon
after he engaged in conducting The Journal of the Times, at
Bennington, Vt. In each of these papers, especially the last, he took
strong ground against slavery. Believing the plan of the Colonization
Society to be intended to remove the great evil from our country, he
espoused it with ardor, and advocated it with such signal ability, that
he was recalled to Boston to deliver, in Park Street church, the
annual address to the Massachusetts Colonization Society, on the 4th
of July, 1828.
Mr. Garrison’s writings attracted the attention of that devoted,
self-sacrificing friend of the enslaved, Benjamin Lundy, of whom I
have just now given some account. He urged him in 1828, and
persuaded him in the autumn of 1829, to remove to Baltimore, and
assist in editing The Genius of Universal Emancipation. There Mr. G.
soon saw, with his own eyes, the atrocities of slavery and the inter-
state slave-trade; there he discovered the real design and spirit of
the Colonization scheme; there the radical doctrine of immediate,
unconditional emancipation was revealed to him. He soon made
himself obnoxious to slaveholders by his faithful exposure of their
cruelties; and his unsparing condemnation of their atrocious system
of oppression.
After he had been in Baltimore a few months, a Northern captain
came there in a ship owned and freighted by a gentleman of
Newburyport, Mr. Garrison’s birthplace. Failing to obtain another
cargo, said captain, with the consent of his owner, took on board a
load of slaves to be transported to New Orleans. Such an outrage on
humanity, perpetrated by Massachusetts men, enkindled Mr. G.’s
hottest indignation, and drew from his pen a scathing rebuke. He
was forthwith arrested as both a civil and criminal offender. He was
prosecuted for a libel upon the captain and owner of the ship
“Francis,” and for disturbing the peace by attempting to excite the
slaves to insurrection.
It would be needless to spend time in proving that, in the
presence of a slaveholding judge, before a slaveholding jury,
surrounded by a community of incensed slaveholders, the young
reformer did not have a fair trial. He was found guilty under both
indictments. He was fined and sentenced to imprisonment a certain
time, as the punishment for his alleged crime, and afterward, until
the fine imposed for “the libel” should be paid. It was then and there
that his free, undaunted spirit inscribed upon the walls of his cell
that joyous, jubilant sonnet, which could have been written only by
one conscious of innocence in the sight of the Holy God, of a great
purpose and a sacred mission yet to be accomplished.
 “High walls and huge the body may confine,
And iron grates obstruct the prisoner’s gaze,
And massive bolts may baffle his design,
And watchful keepers eye his devious ways;
Yet scorns the immortal mind this base control!
No chain can bind it, and no cell enclose.
Swifter than light it flies from pole to pole,
And in a flash from earth to heaven it goes.
It leaps from mount to mount. From vale to vale
It wanders, plucking honeyed fruits and flowers.
It visits home to hoar the fireside tale,
Or in sweet converse pass the joyous hours.
’Tis up before the sun, roaming afar,
And in its watches, wearies every star.”

After seven weeks of close confinement Mr. Garrison was

liberated by the noble, discriminating generosity of the late Arthur
Tappan, then in the height of his affluence, who, so long as he had
wealth, felt that he was an almoner of God’s bounty, and gave his
money gladly, in many ways, to the relief of suffering humanity. The
spirit of freedom,—the true American eagle,—thus uncaged, flew
back to his native New England, and thence sent forth that cry which
disturbed the repose of every slaveholder in the land, and has
resounded throughout the world.
It so happened, in the good Providence “which shapes our
ends,” that I was on a visit in Boston at that time,—October, 1830.
An advertisement appeared in the newspapers, that during the
following week W. Lloyd Garrison would deliver to the public three
lectures, in which he would exhibit the awful sinfulness of
slaveholding; expose the duplicity of the Colonization Society,
revealing its true character; and, in opposition to it, would announce
and maintain the doctrine, that immediate, unconditional
emancipation is the right of every slave and the duty of every
master. The advertisement announced that his lectures would be
delivered on the Common, unless some church or commodious hall
should be proffered to him gratuitously. If I remember correctly, it
was intimated in the newspapers, or currently reported at the time,
that Mr. G. had applied for several of the Boston churches, and been
refused, because it was known that he had become an opponent of
the Colonization Society. A day or two after the first I saw a second
advertisement, informing the public that the free use of “Julien Hall,”
occupied by Rev. Abner Kneeland’s church, having been generously
tendered to Mr. Garrison, he would deliver his lectures there instead
of the Common. I had not then seen this resolute young man. I had
been much impressed by some of his writings, knew of his
connection with Mr. Lundy, and had heard of his imprisonment. Of
course I was eager to see and hear him, and went to Julien Hall in
due season on the appointed evening. My brother-in-law, A. Bronson
Alcott, and my cousin, Samuel E. Sewall, accompanied me. Truer
men could not easily have been found.
The hall was pretty well filled. Among some persons whom I did,
and many whom I did not know, I saw there Rev. Dr. Beecher, Rev.
Mr. (now Dr.) Gannett, Deacon Moses Grant, and John Tappan, Esq.
Presently the young man arose, modestly, but with an air of
calm determination, and delivered such a lecture as he only, I
believe, at that time, could have written; for he only had had his
eyes so anointed that he could see that outrages perpetrated upon
Africans were wrongs done to our common humanity; he only, I
believe, had had his ears so completely unstopped of “prejudice
against color” that the cries of enslaved black men and black women
sounded to him as if they came from brothers and sisters.
He began with expressing deep regret and shame for the zeal he
had lately manifested in the Colonization cause. It was, he
confessed, a zeal without knowledge. He had been deceived by the
misrepresentations so diligently given, throughout the free States by
Southern agents, of the design and tendency of the Colonization
scheme. During his few months’ residence in Maryland he had been
completely undeceived. He had there found out that the design of
those who originated, and the especial intentions of those in the
Southern States that engaged in the plan, were to remove from the
country, as “a disturbing element” in slaveholding communities, all
the free colored people, so that the bondmen might the more easily
be held in subjection. He exhibited in graphic sketches and glowing
colors the suffering of the enslaved, and denounced the plan of
Colonization as devised and adapted to perpetuate the system, and
intensify the wrongs of American slavery, and therefore utterly
undeserving of the patronage of lovers of liberty and friends of
humanity.
Never before was I so affected by the speech of man. When he
had ceased speaking I said to those around me: “That is a
providential man; he is a prophet; he will shake our nation to its
centre, but he will shake slavery out of it. We ought to know him, we
ought to help him. Come, let us go and give him our hands.” Mr.
Sewall and Mr. Alcott went up with me, and we introduced each
other. I said to him: “Mr. Garrison, I am not sure that I can indorse
all you have said this evening. Much of it requires careful
consideration. But I am prepared to embrace you. I am sure you are
called to a great work, and I mean to help you.” Mr. Sewall cordially
assured him of his readiness also to co-operate with him. Mr. Alcott
invited him to his home. He went, and we sat with him until twelve
that night, listening to his discourse, in which he showed plainly that
immediate, unconditional emancipation, without expatriation, was
the right of every slave, and could not be withheld by his master an
hour without sin. That night my soul was baptized in his spirit, and
ever since I have been a disciple and fellow-laborer of William Lloyd
Garrison.
The next morning, immediately after breakfast, I went to his
boarding-house and stayed until two P. M. I learned that he was
poor, dependent upon his daily labor for his daily bread, and
intending to return to the printing business. But, before he could
devote himself to his own support, he felt that he must deliver his
message, must communicate to persons of prominent influence what
he had learned of the sad condition of the enslaved, and the
institutions and spirit of the slaveholders; trusting that all true and
good men would discharge the obligation pressing upon them to
espouse the cause of the poor, the oppressed, the down-trodden. He
read to me letters he had addressed to Dr. Channing, Dr. Beecher,
Dr. Edwards, the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, and Hon. Daniel Webster,
holding up to their view the tremendous iniquity of the land, and
begging them, ere it should be too late, to interpose their great
power in the Church and State to save our country from the terrible
calamities which the sin of slavery was bringing upon us. Those
letters were eloquent, solemn, impressive. I wonder they did not
produce a greater effect. It was because none to whom he
appealed, in public or private, would espouse the cause, that Mr.
Garrison found himself left and impelled to become the leader of the
great antislavery reform, which must be thoroughly accomplished
before our Republic can stand upon a sure foundation.
The hearing of Mr. Garrison’s lectures was a great epoch in my
own life. The impression which they made upon my soul has never
been effaced; indeed, they moulded it anew. They gave a new
direction to my thoughts, a new purpose to my ministry. I had
become a convert to the doctrine of “immediate, unconditional
emancipation,—liberation from slavery without expatriation.”
I was engaged to preach on the following Sunday for Brother
Young, in Summer Street Church. Of course I could not again speak
to a congregation, as a Christian minister, and be silent respecting
the great iniquity of our nation. The only sermon I had brought from
my home in Connecticut, that could be made to bear on the subject,
was one on Prejudice,—the sermon about to be published as one of
the Tracts of the American Unitarian Association. So I touched it up
as well as I could, interlining here and there words and sentences
which pointed in the new direction to which my thoughts and
feelings so strongly tended, and writing at its close what used to be
called an improvement. Thus: “The subject of my discourse bears
most pertinently upon a matter of the greatest national as well as
personal importance. There are more than two millions of our fellow-
beings, children of the Heavenly Father, who are held in our country
in the most abject slavery,—regarded and treated like domesticated
animals, their rights as men trampled under foot, their conjugal,
parental, fraternal relations and affections utterly set at naught. It is
our prejudice against the color of these poor people that makes us
consent to the tremendous wrongs they are suffering. If they were
white,—ay, if only two thousand or two hundred white men, women,
and children in the Southern States were treated as these millions of
colored ones are, we of the North should make such a stir of
indignation, we should so agitate the country, with our appeals and
remonstrances, that the oppressors would be compelled to set their
bondmen free. But will our prejudice be accepted by the Almighty,
the impartial Judge of all, as a valid excuse for our indifference to
the wrongs and outrages inflicted upon these millions of our
countrymen? O no! O no! He will say, “Inasmuch as ye did not what
ye could for the relief of these, the least of the brethren, ye did it
not to me.” Tell me not that we are forbidden by the Constitution of
our country to interfere in behalf of the enslaved. No compact our
fathers may have made for us, no agreement we could ourselves
make, would annul our obligations to suffering fellow-men. “Yes,
yes,” I said, with an emphasis that seemed to startle everybody in
the house, “if need be, the very foundations of our Republic must be
broken up; and if this stone of stumbling, this rock of offence,
cannot be removed from under it, the proud superstructure must
fall. It cannot stand, it ought not to stand, it will not stand, on the
necks of millions of men.” For “God is just, and his justice will not
sleep forever.” I then offered such a prayer as my kindled spirit
moved me to, and gave out the hymn commencing,
“Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve;
And press with vigor on.”

When I rose to pronounce the benediction I said: “Every one

present must be conscious that the closing remarks of my sermon
have caused an unusual emotion throughout the church. I am glad.
Would to God that a deeper emotion could be sent throughout our
land, until all the people thereof shall be roused from their wicked
insensibility to the most tremendous sin of which any nation was
ever guilty, and be impelled to do that righteousness which alone
can avert the just displeasure of God. I have been prompted to
speak thus by the words I have heard during the past week from a
young man hitherto unknown, but who is, I believe, called of God to
do a greater work for the good of our country than has been done
by any one since the Revolution. I mean William Lloyd Garrison. He
is going to repeat his lectures the coming week. I advise, I exhort, I
entreat—would that I could compel!—you to go and hear him.”
On turning to Brother Young after the benediction I found that
he was very much displeased. He sharply reproved me, and gave me
to understand that I should never have an opportunity so to violate
the propriety of his pulpit again. And never since then have I lifted
up my voice within that beautiful church, which has lately been
taken down.
The excited audience gathered in clusters, evidently talking
about what had happened. I found the porch full of persons
conversing in very earnest tones. Presently a lady of fine person, her
countenance suffused with emotion, tears coursing down her
cheeks, pressed through the crowd, seized my hand, and said
audibly, with deep feeling: “Mr. May, I thank you. What a shame it is
that I, who have been a constant attendant from my childhood in
this or some other Christian church, am obliged to confess that to-
day, for the first time, I have heard from the pulpit a plea for the
oppressed, the enslaved millions in our land!” All within hearing of
her voice were evidently moved in sympathy with her, or were awed
by her emotion. For myself I could only acknowledge in a word my
gratitude for her generous testimony.
The next day I perceived, on his return from his place of
business in State Street, that my revered father was much disturbed
by the reports he had heard of my preaching. Some of the
“gentlemen of property and standing” who had been my auditors
said it was fanatical, others that it was incendiary, others that it was
treasonable, and begged him to “arrest me in my mad career.” The
only one, as he soon afterwards informed me, who had spoken in
any other than terms of censure was the great and good Dr.
Bowditch, who said, “Depend upon it, the young man is more than
half right.” My father tried to dissuade me from engaging in the
attempt to overthrow the system of slavery which Mr. Garrison
proposed. He had come, with most others, to regard it as an
unavoidable evil, one that the fathers of our Republic had not
ventured to suppress, but had rather given to its protection
something like a guaranty. He thought, with most others at that day,
that slavery must be left to be gradually removed by the progress of
civilization, the growth of higher ideas of human nature, and the
manifest superiority and hotter economy of free labor. He
admonished me that, in assailing the institution of American slavery,
I should only be “kicking against the pricks,” that I should lose my
standing in the ministry and my usefulness in the church. I need not
add that he failed to convince me that “the foolishness of preaching”
would not yet be “mighty to the pulling down of the stronghold of
Satan.” In less than ten years he was reconciled to my course.
A few days afterwards I gave my sermon on Prejudice to my
most excellent friend, Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., who was then the
purveyor of tracts for the American Unitarian Association. He
accepted the discourse as originally written, but insisted that the
interlineations and the additions respecting slavery should be
omitted. He would not have done this, nor should I have consented
to it, a few years later. But we were all in bondage then.
Unconsciously to ourselves, the hand of the slaveholding power lay
heavily upon the mind and heart of the people in our Northern as
well as Southern States.
What a pity that my words in that sermon, respecting slavery,
were not published in the tract! They might have helped a little to
commit our Unitarian denomination much earlier to the cause of
impartial liberty, in earnest protest against the great oppression, the
unparalleled iniquity of our land. Of whom should opposition to
slavery of every kind have been expected so soon as from Unitarian
Christians?
 The insensibility of the people of our country to the wrongs, the
outrages, we were directly and indirectly inflicting upon our colored
brethren, when Mr. Garrison commenced the antislavery reform,—
the insensibility of the Northern people, scarcely less than that of the
Southern,—of New England as well as of the Carolinas and Georgia,
of the professing Christians, almost as much as of the political
partisans,—that insensibility, not yet wholly overpast, even in
Massachusetts, is a moral phenomenon. A more glaring
inconsistency does not appear in the whole history of mankind.
The love of liberty was an American passion. We gloried in our
Revolution. We thought our fathers were to be honored above all
men for throwing off the British yoke. Taxation without
representation was not to be submitted to. “Resistance to tyrants
was obedience to God.” We regarded the “Declaration of
Independence” as the most momentous document ever penned by
mortal man, the herald note of deliverance to the race. The first
sentence of the second paragraph of it was as familiar to everybody
as the Lord’s Prayer; and almost as sacred as that prayer did we
hold the words “All men were created equal, endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.” And yet few had given a thought to
the fact that there were millions of men, women, and children in our
land who were held under a heavier bondage than that to which the
Israelites were subjected in the land of Egypt, were denied all the
rights of humanity, were herded together like brutes,—bought, sold,
worked, whipped like cattle.
All in our country who were descendants from the Puritans,
especially those of us who claimed descent from the fathers of New
England, were imbued with the spirit of religious liberty, had much to
say about the rights of conscience; but we gave no heed to the
awful fact that there were millions in the land who were not allowed
to exercise any of those rights, were not permitted to read the Bible
or any other book, and were taught little else about God, but that He
was an invisible, ever-present, almighty overseer of the plantations
upon which they were worked like cattle, standing ready at all times,
everywhere, to inflict upon them, if they neglected their unrequited
tasks, a thousand-fold more dreadful punishment than their earthly
tormentors were able even to conceive.
We Americans, especially we New-Englanders, were, or thought
we were, all alive to the cause of human freedom. We were quick to
hear the cry of the oppressed, that came to us from distant lands.
We stopped not to ask the language, character, or complexion of the
sufferers. It was enough for us to know that they were human
beings, and that they were deprived of liberty. We hesitated not to
denounce their tyrants.
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
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