Right and wrong in Massachusetts

by Maria Weston Chapman

It was not for Francis Jackson, whose house had, in 1835, been placed at the disposal of the women, under threats of its destruction, after the mercantile world had decided that they were out of their sphere in the anti-slavery cause—it was not for him to shrink from a just decision because the religious world had taken up the cry. Now, as then, the women had judged for themselves. Here, also, was a responsibility which they did not choose to delegate; and leaving ministers on one side and merchants on the other, they came, according to their wont, each to serve the cause as conscience and judgment should dictate. They came with their husbands and their brethren, from the cities and from the villages. The anti-slavery halls had been ever to them as an altar before which to dedicate their young children to righteousness and freedom. They came with the joyful consciousness that whatever subjects might be adjudged foreign, they, at least, were at home.

“The Chair rules that it is in order for women to vote.”

Not a voice was raised in appeal. The Massachusetts Society dared not, for the slave’s sake—it would not for its own, exile any of its members from its councils.

The report of the Board of Managers was next taken up, and again the friends of the new paper rallied to the attack. Preparatory to action upon it, and as a step towards its condemnation, Mr. St. Clair presented a resolution, affirming it to be the imperious duty of every abolitionist who could conscientiously do so, to go to the polls. The design of this resolution evidently was, to convict the few non-resistants present, of inconsistency as non-resistants or of guilt as abolitionists; and as such the meeting received it. At any other time the resolution would doubtless have passed—the great majority of the Society being voters. But, aroused to vigilant watchfulness of all who were attempting to drive them blindfold into absurdity and intolerance, they refused to make the slightest change on the resolutions of former years. They had never said more, during their whole eight years’ existence as a Society, than that they would not vote for slavery; and they saw too plainly the motives of this novel demand for a resolution worded affirmatively. Neither had they been so bitterly reproached with the introduction of foreign subjects, without learning that the word “duty” or the word “ought,” in relation to forms of civil or church government, on which abolitionists so widely differ, must necessarily open the discussion of the whole vast subject of human society in all its aspects. It would have been impossible, at this moment, to have procured the passage of any resolution whatever, on which the opposition might build enginery by which to cast reproach upon any faithful abolitionist. So plainly had they exhibited their hearts, even while professing the greatest regard for the Society and all its members, that men’s common sense forbade them to afford any facilities for such a purpose.

Mr. Garrison substituted the following resolution, which, being in agreement with the uniform practice of the Society, and in strict conformity to its principles and constitution, was almost unanimously adopted.

“Resolved, That those abolitionists who feel themselves called upon, by a sense of duty, to go to the polls, and yet purposely absent themselves from the polls whenever an opportunity is presented to vote for a friend of the slave—or who, when there, follow their party predilections to the abandonment of their abolition principles—are recreant to their high professions, and unworthy of the name they assume.”

The Society thus refused to turn its attention from its original object—to make every slave a freeman, to the new and inferior one, of making every freeman a voter. The members felt that this latter was their more appropriate business, as citizens of Massachusetts.

After the passage of this resolution, the previous arguments of the “four,” for a new paper, were reiterated against the report, by the Rev. Orange Scott, the Rev. Daniel Wise, and the Rev. Hiram Cummings, of the Methodist Church.

There appeared evidences, however, that the Methodist laity were not so easily won into the toils of the clerical Congregationalists. However much they might love their clergy and their sect, they loved the universal cause of liberty and humanity more. The venerable Seth Sprague expressed this, with feeling and noble simplicity, in answer to Mr. Cummings, of whose church he was a member.

“I love to hear my young brother preach the gospel; but when he talks of politics, it will hardly be considered vanity in me to say I know more about that than he. For forty years I have been in the political harness; and many a day, in that time, have I been out to rouse men up to the polls. Sir, I never found any difficulty in it—they are always ready enough to go; but to make them vote right, after they get there—that’s the rub. And who can do that like my brother Garrison? His paper converted me, politically.