Right and wrong in Massachusetts

by Maria Weston Chapman

To this communication, Mr. Stanton, in behalf of the committee, replied, that they had still two agents in the field, (Mr. St. Clair and Mr. Wise,) and he inquired whether any objection would be made to their remaining in that capacity!!!

The New England Convention followed quickly upon the tread of the National Meeting. This occasion had ever been, among abolitionists, a hallowed festival, to which each came to receive from all the rest whatever they might be able to give of comfort, and of knowledge, and of cheer, and to bid them all be sharers in his own full jubilee of heart.

Here they had enjoyed their last earthly communion with the early-called and tenderly-beloved, who had been caught up out of the thick of the battle into heaven; and, therefore, the returns and the memories of this day,

——“Like spots of earth where angels’ feet had stepped,

Were holy.”——

A shadow marred the customary brightness of the day, to those who had witnessed those workings of the spirit of treachery and intolerance, which have been traced in the preceding pages.

Their forebodings were justified. This spirit made one more attempt to rend them as it departed; but, failing in its purpose, it deserted the foundation it had been unable to destroy. The intention of forming a hostile Society had frequently been charged home upon the members of the publishing committee of the new paper, and as often strenously denied. Yet, here it stood, at length, a new organization in Massachusetts, giving, as its reason for coming into existence, the recreancy, i.e. the tolerance of the old. That it differed from the old Society, in not seeing that every real interest of mankind must be universal, and necessarily gather up all men in the prosecution of its march, was narrow, short-sighted, unfortunate. That its founders had not openly announced themselves at the time when Dr. Hawes consulted with leading abolitionists nearly a year before, and that they had ever since been carrying on a concealed warfare upon the old Society, in the mask of friendship and brotherhood, must be very differently characterized.

Elizur Wright, Jr., so well known and loved of abolitionists, in days that were past, was carried away in the toils—another layman, in the clutches of the power that constitutes in New England the strongest obstacle to emancipation. He became a Secretary of the new organization, and the editor of the Massachusetts Abolitionist, and immediately strove to justify his course by asserting the recreancy of the Massachusetts Society. He was like the child drifting from the shore, after having un-moored his little bark, who cried out that the land was rushing backward, as the treacherous waves bore him swiftly away. In the New England Convention of 1836, he had deprecated division, in a church so corrupted by slavery, that nothing but division could save it from destruction. In 1839, he was wrought upon by the circumstances with which the corrupt leaders of that same corrupt body had surrounded him, to labor on their behalf, for a division in the anti-slavery ranks. Those who recollected his course then, possessed a key to his present proceedings.

Some of the leaders of the new movement appeared in the N. England Convention, after their secession, and gave reasons for their conduct. The reason of the Rev. John Le Bosquet was, that they felt conscientiously obliged to impede the free and conscientious action of women in the anti-slavery cause. The Rev. Mr. Trask said that they wished to afford an opportunity for men of name and influence, in church and state, to come and take the conduct of the anti-slavery enterprise;—men who now took no interest in it, and never would do so, unless they were made officers. Elizur Wright thought the new organization needed, because the old Society had refused to pronounce the act of voting at the polls a fundamental principle—a test of membership—Christian duty. That ninety-nine hundredths of the Society actually and conscientiously went to the polls, was nothing so long as those remained members, in as good standing as himself, who conscientiously refused to go. The Rev. Mr. Torrey’s reasons were all these, with “others which had never yet been given by any one.” Mr. Garrison, deeply pained by the wounds inflicted on the cause, had said, with much feeling, “I could weep tears of blood over this division, if it would avail to stay its evils.” Mr. Torrey, ridiculing his emotion, remarked that, “to see the gentleman weep tears of blood, would indeed be a curious physiological fact.”

Disconcerted as the exclusive councils of the framers of the new organization had frequently been by the intrusive “common people,” they took, from that experience, a hint in modelling their new constitution. Not every one who signed it was to be permitted to vote in their Society, however strictly his vote might be required of him at the polls. Only one gentleman for every twenty-five members was to have the privilege of uniting with the officers and agents of the Society in the transaction of business.