Right and wrong in Massachusetts

by Maria Weston Chapman

Once more they decided to mount the breach together, for the cause’s sake. Had it been only for themselves, they would have scorned to stand one instant, in the humiliating posture in which the conduct of the New York Committee had placed them. But it was for the slave—for their brethren throughout the State, who had confided in them; and they doubted not that those brethren would throng up to the rescue. This mutual confidence was not misplaced. The members of the Society came together in great numbers, with the determination of paying up all arrearages, and, if possible, staying the destructive collision of feeling which they saw going on.

The New York Committee were not absent. Thither came Birney, and Torrey, and Stanton, and Tappan, and St. Clair, and Phelps, and Scott; and face to face they met Garrison, and Loring, and Phillips, and Chapman, and Follen, and French, and Brimblecom, in the presence of all the people. Men from the counties were there, to tell how those who should be acting as financial agents, were laboring to complete the division which had, more than any thing else, occasioned the deficiency in the funds. Men from the towns were there, to hand over their purses with the declaration that to their delay the deficiency should, in part, be charged, and not to their Board of officers. The indignant members from New Bedford were there, who had forwarded eight hundred and fifty dollars for the slave, and had seen it used for the purpose of casting reproach on the Massachusetts Society. And there, too, was Lynn, and Andover, and Plymouth, and Reading, and Abington, and the representatives of fifty other towns, where the Anti-Slavery enterprize had first struck root and borne the most abundant fruits—all earnestly bent upon conciliation—upon healing the breach, and upon sustaining the Massachusetts Society.

In the course of discussion, many things before unknown appeared. The New York Committee excused themselves by the plea of necessity. They were dunned daily themselves, and they had been compelled to this course to get the money. “Had they got it?” asked Wendell Phillips, “had not all the sources been stopped by this proceeding, against which they had been warned? Why could they not have co-operated—why could they not still co-operate harmoniously with the State Board? why should their agents, Mr. Stanton, one of themselves, among the number, make terms with the County Boards, which they had denied to the State Board? Mr. Stanton could, it appeared, co-operate with Mr. Torrey, in Essex, raising funds for the county treasury, and receiving only a part of them again for the National Treasury—why could he not extend co-operation, on better terms, to us in Boston?” The fact appeared that money had been forwarded to New York by the hand of agents on account of the pledge, which had never been credited accordingly. Men saw that there had been no delay or hesitancy in “taking the Massachusetts Board by the throat, and crying, Pay what thou owest,” and they inquired why their own attempts to liquidate the debt, had not been noticed.[8] The live-long day the discussion went on, the perplexity in which men’s minds had been involved becoming clearer and clearer, till after as complete an investigation of the case as could be made, and the most determined opposition on the part of the New York Committee and those engaged in the new paper, the meeting sustained the course of the Massachusetts Society, by the passage of the following resolution: ayes 142—noes 23.

Resolved, That the course pursued by the Board of Managers of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, in relation to the difficulty now existing between that Board and the Executive Committee of the Parent Society, meets our hearty approval.

Wendell Phillips now renewed the offer of harmonious co-operation.

Resolved, That we are ready harmoniously to co-operate with the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society, in the collection of funds within this Commonwealth, provided they will act with us under the arrangement of June last.

Hereupon the long-denied and painfully-concealed hostility to the Massachusetts Society burst forth, and the attempts to cast out Mr. Garrison, or to sink the Society with him, were renewed. Mr. Tappan saw no reason why the Committee should expect to receive the money at all, unless by taking the matter entirely out of the hands of the Massachusetts Society. The Managers could offer no better guarantee than at first.

“We can—we do offer a better guarantee,” replied Wendell Phillips. “We are in a far better condition to meet this pledge, than before. The political campaign in the Fourth District is at an end, and will no longer absorb the funds, or the energies of the agents. We are stronger as a Board; we have a new General Agent; we are awake, throughout the State, to the emergency.”

Mr. Stanton seemed to suppose that membership in the Massachusetts Society implied an obligation never to change one’s views on other subjects; for he read extracts from the Liberator, proving that Mr. Garrison had changed his opinions as to the principles of civil government, since the first establishment of that paper. Rev. George Allen burst into vehement invective. “I am ready,” said he, pointing to Mr. Garrison, “to attack the wolf in his very den, with the bleeding relics of his mangled victims yet between his teeth.” Mr. Birney, to the utter astonishment of the meeting, descended to the proscriptive ground first assumed by Mr. Stanton, and intimated that no non-resistant could consistently or honorably remain a member of the Anti-Slavery Society.

Men’s minds went back to the days of the clerical appeal, when Birney, then an editor in Ohio, had been tried and found wanting. That deficiency, so long veiled with silent and brotherly care by those whom he yielded up to the enemy, now defied concealment. He proclaimed his sympathy and knowledge with that of the N. Y. Committee, in the recent plottings. “WE felt the need of this new paper in Massachusetts.”