Right and wrong in Massachusetts

by Maria Weston Chapman

They were sustained by the abolitionists of the State, and they rejoiced at it; not for themselves, but as a proof of the fidelity of their brethren to the cause. They had been sustained against the most determined hostility. A statement of the case, in the form best calculated to injure the Society, had, previous to the meeting, been scattered broad-cast over the State, under the direction of Mr. Stanton. It was matter of astonishment that so much effort to do injury should not have produced a greater effect. Truth was mighty, and had prevailed, to strip the difficulty of one of its disguises—the cloak of the mere dun, and show it in the attitude of the assassin.

The effect of the meeting was magical. The friends, in all parts of the State, rallied together and mulcted themselves afresh. How prompt were their donations, how fervent and brotherly their expressions of confidence, how painful their solicitude at the developments made by the New York Committee, how forbearing their course with regard to its doings, the resolutions and correspondence of that period, testify. The Committee returned to New York, still keeping in the field, at the public expense, the agents who had been creating a division. The work went vigorously on, notwithstanding the drawback this occasioned. All this imbroglio had been caused, in the first instance, by men of the orthodox Congregational sect, and it was fitting that the honor of that sect should be vindicated by the laborious fidelity of others of its members. That the money was raised,—five or six thousand dollars in the space of two months, for the most part in very small sums, so that the State Treasurer was enabled to authorize the draft of the N. York Committee before the final payment became due, was owing mainly to the self-devoting labors of orthodox Congregational licentiates, of the Theological Seminary at Andover. From that sect came the bane—from that sect came also the antidote.

At that moment of general and anxious effort for the payment of the pledge, private circulars were issued by Mr. Phelps, in behalf of the publishing committee of the new paper, in which he urged men to devote all their funds to its establishment, for this, among other reasons, that they would then know what became of their money. This showed the origin of the rumors which had been circulated, that the Massachusetts Society fraudulently permitted its funds to be used to sustain the Liberator; and that it paid an editorial stipend—(“a fat salary” as the term was,) to Mr. Garrison. These reports, false as they were, came with an ill grace from those who, it is to be hoped unknowingly, received from Mr. James Boutelle, one of their agents, money entrusted to him for the payment of the pledge, but who appropriated it to the “Massachusetts Abolitionist.”

All these labors were in vain.—The pledge was redeemed, against all opposition.

Next came the Annual Meeting of the National Society, where men from all the States met to consult for the good of the cause.

In full National Assembly, they resisted the idea that a difference of mind respecting forms of government was a disqualification for membership in the Society. They preserved inviolate the ancient broad foundation. They resisted, as the Massachusetts Society had done, any attempt to deprive women of their constitutional and inalienable right “to know, and utter, and to argue freely,” in this National Council. A resolution was also reported by the financial committee of the Society, that thirty-five thousand dollars was as large a sum as could be advantageously placed at the disposal of the Executive Committee during the year; as they deemed that more could be effected for the cause by a local than by a central expenditure.

The Society also earnestly requested the Executive Committee to send no agents into the States, except with the advice of the State Societies. This salutary measure was strenuously opposed by those connected with the new paper in Massachusetts. Previous to the meeting, they labored personally and by correspondence, to secure the attendance of such as would co-operate with them for the exclusion of women, and of the non-resisting members. The Executive Committee, too, were, some of them, no less active to the same effect. Mr. Birney issued an article in the Emancipator, the organ of the whole Society, and sustained from its treasury, in which he asserted not only that a part of the members were unfitted, by their religious principles, for a place in the Society, but argued the merits of their principles per se, representing them as identical with those of the bloody and licentious Anabaptists of the sixteenth century.

These labors all fell short of their aim. Still, as at first, the Society continued odious by the presence of its founder:—he, into whose heart God had put strength not to deny his individual principles, though their sacrifice was demanded by those whose love and approbation had heretofore been so dear, and who, through four dangerous and toilsome years, had stood with him, shoulder to shoulder, in the forefront of the battle against slavery. Oh that evil tongues and times had not been too mighty for their integrity! May every one of them yet be enabled to see that any infringement of the principles of Freedom, is a hindrance to the emancipation of the slave, not to be removed by thousands of gold and silver, or the mightiest physical array. May God of his infinite mercy grant us, as a National Association of Americans, for the redemption of our country from slavery, the grace to see, that, as we can never give what we cease to possess, so our labors for the emancipation of the slave must be in vain, after the insulted angel of freedom has departed.

The Massachusetts Board of Officers met immediately after this meeting, and decided to raise five thousand dollars, for the year 1839-40, as the proportion which ought to be borne by their State, of the thirty-five thousand dollars specified by the Financial Committee, as the proper appropriation to the central treasury. They notified the Executive Committee of this pledge, upon the understanding that all money raised in Massachusetts should be credited to its redemption, and that no agents of the New York Committee should labor in the State without the concurrence of the State Board.