Right and wrong in Massachusetts

by Maria Weston Chapman

The town and parish societies, in various parts of the State, began to meet for the consideration of this matter, which was felt to be one involving more than a single glance could unriddle.

Those members of the Boston Female Society, who had the interests of the slave most at heart, communicated with their officers, for the purpose of calling a meeting. Their request was not complied with. Again they applied, to the number of forty-five, which number was deemed a sufficient assurance that a meeting was seriously required by the members. Notwithstanding the remonstrances of two of the counsellors, the President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer, the identical individuals who, in 1837, refused to sustain the cause against the incursions of spiritual wickedness, still refused to notify a meeting.

Every moment stands at the juncture of two eternities, and is therefore of solemn consequence; but the importance of making use of this, was more than ordinarily apparent.

The women of Lynn were standing alone and unsupported at the post of danger;—the Massachusetts Society in peril, never more needed or better deserved support;—a hope existed that George Thompson might again be induced to visit America by a timely and earnest effort to second the invitation of the Young Men’s Convention, with the necessary funds;—Henry Clay, from his place in the Senate, was calling upon his fair countrywomen “to desist from anti-slavery efforts;”—this was the moment taken by the officers of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society to labor harder to make it desist, than they had ever before done to induce it to go forward. They visited the members personally, assuring them that it was unconstitutional to call a special meeting[7]—that the board saw no necessity for one, and finally entreated them to take their names from the requisition. As one among other reasons why they should do so, the President said that she apprehended there was a design on the part of some, to recall George Thompson, and, as he left the country in debt, his return would, from that circumstance, be a prejudice to the cause, and she was therefore anxious to prevent a meeting!!

By labors like this, a meeting was hindered at the time; but as one wrong step ever demands another to sustain it, preparation was made for the Society’s impending quarterly meeting, which could not be prevented, by the use of a sectarian gathering-word, which did not fail to rally all the unworthy members:—“Come and help us to put down the Unitarians.” Not one in fifty of the members were of that denomination, and the few who were, had ever been remarkable for the joy and good faith with which they met all who differed from them in opinion, and the heartiness with which they condemned the sins against freedom committed by their own sect. Mr. Phelps, now the pastor of the Free Church, was also affording his aid to unjustifiable sectarism, and, by a meeting thus drawn together, was a majority obtained who left undone all that the interests of the slave most loudly demanded should be done. A majority, in behalf of whom the President declared at that meeting that “as to the difficulty between the Massachusetts Society and the Executive Committee, the ladies did not understand it—they had not come prepared to go into it,—it would take too much time—why should we enter into the quarrels that were going on?” Yet, after that very meeting, the President, and Secretary, as a committee on the fair for raising funds, issued an address, without the knowledge but in the name of the whole Society, in which they argued the necessity that existed that all the women of Massachusetts should send their funds to New-York, because the Massachusetts Society had failed to meet its stated payments!! This circular was committed to one of the agents of the new paper, to be distributed in the country, with instructions to keep it private in the city from those in whose name it was issued.

The minority of the Society, who were neither ignorant nor unprepared, and who neither grudged their time nor themselves wholly, when the Anti-Slavery cause called for the sacrifice, were much pained to find that into this little sluice, opened at the time of the clerical appeal, had rushed the cold and bitter waters of indifference, and sectarism and chicanery, in a flood that threatened to sink the little vessel that had, in earlier days, done good service to the cause. But they knew their place as a minority, and prepared to fulfil that duty in another capacity, that they were prevented from discharging in this. The Massachusetts Society,—the parent and pioneer of all the rest, must not suffer for its fidelity, because the officers of the Boston Female Society had done wrong.

They were, besides, a very large and efficient minority, numbering among them the women who had first originated and mainly sustained, for four successive years, the plan of raising funds by means of an annual fair, and they did not permit themselves to be hindered on this occasion, any more than in former years, by the smallness of the pivot on which the duty of the moment turned. They knew that, for a season, it would appear trifling;—they also knew that it really was the type and representative of a principle,—one of the many indications now observable of that stage in the progress of reform, when minds a little enlarged by its principles, begin to resist, in alarm, the philosophical necessity of a further widening process, and, to avoid it, return to their original state.

But to resume the Chronological order of events.

The tenth wave seemed about to break upon the Massachusetts Society. The Board of Managers looked around them upon the circumstances of their case, for indications of the will of Providence. They were ready and desirous to cast down the painful staff of office. Better men, they wished, might be found to sustain it—but each looked on the other and said, “Where can his fellow be found, for clear-sighted devotion and faithfulness.”