William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist

by Archibald Henry Grimké

"The wife of an Episcopal clergyman who lived in the village," Miss Crandall records, "told me that if I continued that colored girl in my school it would not be sustained."

She heroically refused to turn the colored pupil out of the school, and thereby caused a most extraordinary exhibition of Connecticut chivalry and Christianity.

Seeing how matters stood with her in these circumstances, Prudence Crandall conceived the remarkable purpose of devoting her school to the education of colored girls exclusively. She did not know whether her idea was practicable, and so in her perplexity she turned for counsel to the editor of the Liberator. She went to Boston for this purpose, and there, at the old Marlboro' Hotel, on Washington street, on the evening of January 29, 1833, she discussed this business with Mr. Garrison. This visit and interview confirmed the brave soul in her desire to change her school into one for the higher education of colored girls. It was expected that a sufficient number of such pupils could be obtained from well-to-do colored families in cities like Boston, Providence, and New York to assure the financial success of the enterprise. When Miss Crandall had fully matured her plans in the premises she announced them to the Canterbury public. But if she had announced that she contemplated opening a college for the spread of contagious diseases among her townspeople, Canterbury could not possibly have been more agitated and horrified. Every door in the village was slammed in her face. She was denounced in town meetings, and there was not chivalry enough to cause a single neighbor to speak in her defence. Samuel J. May had to come from an adjoining town for this purpose. "But," says Mr. May, "they would not hear me. They shut their ears and rushed upon me with threats of personal violence."

As there was nothing in the statutes of Connecticut which made the holding of such a school as that of Miss Crandall's illegal, the good Canterbury folk procured the passage of a hasty act through the Legislature, which was then in session, "making it a penal offence, punishable by fine and imprisonment, for any one in that State keeping a school to take as his or her pupils the children of colored people of other States." But the heart of the young Quaker woman was the heart of a heroine. She dared to disregard the wicked law, was arrested, bound over for trial, and sent to jail like a common malefactor. It was no use, persecution could not cow the noble prisoner into submission to the infamous statute. In her emergency truth raised up friends who rallied about her in the unparalleled contest which raged around her person and her school. There was no meanness or maliciousness to which her enemies did not stoop to crush and ruin her and her cause. "The newspapers of the county and of the adjoining counties teemed with the grossest misrepresentations, and the vilest insinuations," says Mr. May, "against Miss Crandall, her pupils, and her patrons; but for the most part, peremptorily refused us any room in their columns to explain our principles and purposes, or to refute the slanders they were circulating." Four or five times within two years she was forced into court to defend her acts against the determined malignity of men who stood high in the Connecticut Church and State. The shops in the town boycotted her, the churches closed their doors to her and her pupils. Public conveyances refused to receive them, and physicians to prescribe for them. It is said that the heroic soul was cut off from intercourse with her own family, in the hope doubtless that she would the sooner capitulate to the negro-hating sentiment of her neighbors. But firm in her resolve the fair Castellan never thought of surrendering the citadel of her conscience at the bidding of iniquitous power. Then, like savages, her foes defiled with the excrement of cattle the well whence the school drew its supply of water, attacked the house with rotten eggs and stones, and daubed it with filth. This drama of diabolism was fitly ended by the introduction of the fire fiend, and the burning of the detestable building devoted to the higher education of "niggers." Heathenism was, indeed, outdone by Canterbury Christianity.

The circumstances of this outrage kindled Garrison's indignation to the highest pitch. Words were inadequate to express his emotions and agony of soul. In the temper of bold and clear-eyed leadership he wrote George W. Benson, his future brother-in-law, "we may as well, first as last, meet this proscriptive spirit, and conquer it. We—i.e., all the friends of the cause—must make this a common concern. The New Haven excitement has furnished a bad precedent—a second must not be given or I know not what we can do to raise up the colored population in a manner which their intellectual and moral necessities demand. In Boston we are all excited at the Canterbury affair. Colonizationists are rejoicing and Abolitionists looking sternly." Like a true general Garrison took in from his Liberator outlook the entire field of the struggle. No friend of the slave, however distant, escaped his quick sympathy or ready reinforcements. To him the free people of color turned for championship, and to the Liberator as a mouthpiece. The battle for their rights and for the freedom of their brethren in the South advanced apace. Everywhere the army of their friends and the army of their foes were in motion, and the rising storm winds of justice and iniquity were beginning "to bellow through the vast and boundless deep" of a nation's soul.

CHAPTER IX.
AGITATION AND REPRESSION.

William Lloyd Garrison's return from his English mission was signalized by two closely related events, viz., the formation of the New York City Anti-Slavery Society, and the appearance of the first of a succession of anti-slavery mobs in the North. The news of his British successes had preceded him, and prepared for him a warm reception on the part of his pro-slavery countrymen. For had he not with malice prepense put down the "most glorious of Christian enterprises," and rebuked his own country in the house of strangers as recreant to freedom? And when O'Connell in Exeter Hall pointed the finger of scorn at America and made her a by-word and a hissing in the ears of Englishmen, was it not at a meeting got up to further the designs of this "misguided young gentlemen who has just returned from England whither he has recently been for the sole purpose as it would seem [to the Commercial Advertiser] of traducing the people and institutions of his own country." Had he not caught up and echoed back the hissing thunder of the great Irish orator:—"Shame on the American Slaveholders! Base wretches should we shout in chorus—base wretches, how dare you profane the temple of national freedom, the sacred fane of Republican rites, with the presence and the sufferings of human beings in chains and slavery!"

The noise of these treasons on a foreign shore, "deafening the sound of the westerly wave, and riding against the blast as thunder goes," to borrow O'Connell's graphic and grandiose phrases, had reached the country in advance of Mr. Garrison. The national sensitiveness was naturally enough stung to the quick. Here is a pestilent fellow who is not content with disturbing the peace of the Union with his new fanaticism, but must needs presume to make the dear Union odious before the world as well. And his return, what is it to be but the signal for increased agitation on the slavery question. The conquering hero comes and his fanatical followers salute him forthwith with a new anti-slavery society, which means a fresh instrument in his hands to stir up strife between the North and the South. "Are we tamely to look on, and see this most dangerous species of fanaticism extending itself through society?" shrieked on the morning of Mr. Garrison's arrival in New York Harbor, the malignant editor of the Courier and Enquirer.

The pro-slavery and lawless elements of the city were not slow to take the cue given by metropolitan papers, and to do the duty of patriots upon their country's enemies. Arthur Tappen and his anti-slavery associates outwitted these patriotic gentlemen, who attended in a body at Clinton Hall on the evening of October 2, 1833, to perform the aforesaid duty of patriots, while the objects of their attention were convened at Chatham Street Chapel and organizing their new fanaticism. The mob flew wide of its mark a second time, for when later in the evening it began a serenade more expressive than musical before the entrance to the little chapel on Chatham street the members of the society "folded their tents like the Arabs and as silently stole away." The Abolitionists accomplished their design and eluded their enemies at the same time. But the significance of the riotous demonstration went not unobserved by them and their newly arrived leader. It was plain from that night that if the spirit of Abolitionism had risen, the spirit of persecution had risen also.

A somewhat similar reception saluted the reformer in Boston. An inflammatory handbill announced to his townsmen his arrival. "The true American has returned, alias William Lloyd Garrison, the 'Negro Champion,' from his disgraceful mission to the British metropolis," etc., etc., and wound up its artful list of lies with the malignant suggestion that "He is now in your power—do not let him escape you, but go this evening, armed with plenty of tar and feathers and administer to him justice at his abode at No. 9 Merchant's Hall, Congress street." In obedience to this summons, a reception committee in the shape of "a dense mob, breathing threatenings which forboded a storm," did pay their respects to the "true American" in front of his abode at the Liberator office. Fortunately the storm passed over without breaking that evening on the devoted head of the "Negro Champion." But the meaning of the riotous demonstration it was impossible to miss. Like the mob in New York it clearly indicated that the country was on the outer edge of an area of violent disturbances on the subject of slavery.