While the decision of the Court of Errors was pending, Prudence Crandall and her pupils were the victims of other fiendish acts of the townspeople. Having failed in their attempt to burn down her school, a number of them, with heavy clubs and iron bars, crept stealthily upon her house at midnight on the 9th of September, and simultaneously smashed in the windows with such force and suddenness that all the occupants were terror stricken. Even Prudence Crandall, for the first time, trembled with fear. Realizing that she and her pupils would ever be the object of insult and injury, she decided, upon the advice of Mr. May and other friends, to give up the school and send her girls back to their homes. Samuel May said that when he stood before Prudence Crandall and her pupils and advised them to leave, the words blistered his lips and his bosom glowed with indignation. "I felt ashamed of Connecticut," said he, "ashamed of my state, ashamed of my country, ashamed of my color."
The burden of these terrible ordeals was somewhat alleviated by the fidelity of her friends, the love and faith of her pupils and the devotion of her sister, father and husband. Having recently married the Rev. Calvin Philleo, a Baptist clergyman of Ithaca, New York, Prudence Crandall upon solicitation left Windham County never to return again. Tis true she had but little opportunity to teach the young women of color, nevertheless through sacrifice and service she taught the people of Connecticut a lesson of philanthropy and sacrifice.
G. Smith Wormley.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Garrison's Garrison, I, Chap. X, p. 315; B. C. Steiner's History of Slavery in Connecticut (Johns Hopkins University Studies, XI, 415-422).
[2] May's Antislavery Conflict.
[3] Johns Hopkins University, Studies in Historical and Political Science, XI, p. 417. Larned's Windham County, p. 493.
[4] May's Antislavery Conflict, p. 47.
[5] Garrison's Garrison, I, p. 341.