[TO BE CONTINUED.]
FOOTNOTES:
[E] Copyright, 1884, by Frances C. Sparhawk.
EDITOR'S TABLE.
Brutal and inhuman deeds are not changed in character or color by differences in latitude or longitude. The people of Quitman, Ga., committed a deed of this character when they put the torch of the incendiary to a school-house where ignorant colored children, in charity's sweet name, were being nurtured into nobler manhood and womanhood. This act of inhumanity, clearly inspired if not wholly sanctioned by a majority sentiment in the community, is not a solecism in history. In 1832-3, Prudence Crandall taught a successful school for girls in Canterbury, Conn., to which she admitted a colored girl, an intelligent church member, who desired to prepare herself to teach children of her own color. All Canterbury was thrown into a state of intense excitement and indignation by this act, and Miss Crandall had to choose between the expulsion of her colored pupil and the loss of her white ones. She pluckily faced the tumult, refused to sacrifice what she regarded as a principle, and her fashionable school opened its doors as an institution for colored girls only.
Increased excitement followed. A local politician, afterward a member of Congress, became the leader in a bitter and disgraceful prosecution of the brave woman, and, when they found it impossible to drive her from her position by ordinary measures, secured the passage of a law making it a crime to open a school for colored children without the consent of the selectmen of the town. The power of the State of Connecticut was thus invoked, and used for the crushing of one brave little Quakeress. Miss Crandall was arrested, and imprisoned in a cell from which a murderer had just gone to the gallows. Her case was tried in August, 1833. One jury failed to agree. Another found her guilty. The case was appealed, and proceedings quashed on the ground of an informality, the higher court thus evading the question raised as to the constitutionality of the law. An attempt to burn Miss Crandall's house followed, and on the night of Sept. 9, 1834, it was made untenantable under the assaults of a mob.
The subject of this bitter and relentless persecution, Mrs. Prudence (Crandall) Philleo, is still living, and tardy justice comes forward to recognize the wrong of a half century ago. The children of her persecutors unite with others in a petition to the lawmaking power which was induced to brand her as a criminal, to atone for past wrongs by present relief.
It is safe to say that the Canterbury of to-day would gladly blot from history this story of the Canterbury of a half century ago.