PRUDENCE CRANDALL. On the 22d of March, 1833, there appeared in the "Liberator" the following advertisement: 66 PRUDENCE CRANDALL, Principal of the Canterbury (Connecticut) Female Boarding School, returns her most sincere thanks to those who have patronized her School, and would give information that, on the first Monday of April next, her School will be opened for the reception of young Ladies and little Misses of colour. The branches taught are as follows:-Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, English Grammar, &c." The advertisement closed with a long list of references to gentlemen of the highest char acter. . 9 holders have so many friends! I must be | Miss Crandall going to jail. She was bailed the friend of the slaves." out the next day, and her trial issued in noth. ing, as the jury could not agree. She was again prosecuted, and again; and at length convicted. She appealed to a higher Court, and struggled on through a long persecution till compelled to yield, from the lives of her pupils being in danger. Her neighbours pulled down her fences, and filled up her well. All the traders in the place refused to deal with her, and she was obliged to purchase provisions and clothing from a great distance. She and her pupils were refused admission to the churches; her windows were repeatedly broken during the night; and, at length, the attacks upon her house became so alarming, and the menaces to her pupils on their way to school so violent, that their The reason of this announcement was, parents were compelled to hide the children that Miss Crandall, a young lady of estab- in their own houses, and Miss Crandall relished reputation in her profession, had been tired from the place. Her conduct was to urgently requested to undertake the tuition the last degree meek and quiet; nothing need of a child of light colour, had admitted her be said about its courage. among the white pupils, had subsequently By this time the abolition cause was supadmited a second, thereby offending the pa-ported by twenty-six periodicals, circurents of her former pupils; and, on being lating from Maine to Virginia and Indiana. threatened on the one hand with the loss of Some excellent individuals had done the all her scholars, and urged on the other to brave deed of publishing books in aid of take more of a dark complexion, had nobly the same cause. Among these was Mrs. resolved to continue to take young ladies of Child, a lady of whom society was exceedcolour, letting the whites depart, if they so ingly proud before she published her Ap pleased. We relate the consequences, be- peal,' and to whom society has been excause this is, as far as we know, the first in-tremely contemptuous since. Her works stance in the struggle of a protracted persecution of a peaceable individual by the whole of the society of the district. were bought with avidity before, but fell into sudden oblivion as soon as she had done a greater deed than writing any or all of A town-meeting was called on the appear them. Her noble-minded husband lost his ance of the advertisement, and the school legal practice, sound and respected as were was denounced in violent terms. Miss Cran- his talents, from affording his counsel to dall silently prosecuted her plan. The le- citizens of colour; and he was maliciously gislature was petitioned, through the exertion arrested on the quays of New York, for a of a leading citizen of Canterbury, Mr. fictitious or extremely trifling old debt, Judson, and a law was obtained in the course when he was just putting his foot on board of the month of May, making it a penal of a vessel for England. The incident affected fence to establish any school for the instruc-him deeply; and his brave wife was, tion of coloured persons, not inhabitants of for once, seen to sit down to weep: but the State, or to instruct, board, or harbour she shook off her trouble, packed up a persons entering the State for educational bundle of clothes for him, and went to purposes. This law was clearly unconstitu- cheer him in his prison, whence, it is tional, as it violated that clause in the consti- needless to say, he was presently released, tution which gives to the citizens of each crowned in the eyes of his friends with fresh State all the privileges and immunities of honours. A circumstance which we hapthe citizens of the several States.* Per- pen to know respecting this gentleman and ceiving this, Miss Crandall took no notice, but went on with her school. She was accordingly arrested, and carried before a justice of the peace; and the next spectacle that the inhabitants of Canterbury saw was lady illustrates well the states of feeling on the great question in the different classes of minds at the time. Mr Child was professionally consulted by a gentleman of colour. The client and his lady visited Mr Child at his residence at Boston, one afternoon, and staid beyond the family tea-hour. Mrs Child at length ordered up tea; but before it could be poured out the visitors took their avoid errors about their history. Though their residence there. The sixty days exan extraordinary light is shed from their pired before the committee returned: the deeds upon their lives, it scarcely penetrates populace of Cincinnati rose upon the colourfar enough into the obscurity of the past to ed people, and compelled them to barricade obviate mistake on the part of a foreign themselves in their houses, in assailing which, observer. during three days and nights, several lives were lost. Sir James Colebrook, Governor of Upper Canada, charged the committee with the following message:-" Tell the Republicans on your side of the line that we do not know men by their colour. If you come to us, you will be entitled to all the Ten years ago there was external quiet on the subject of slavery in the United States. Jefferson and other great men had prophesied national peril from it: a few legislators had talked of doing something to meliorate the "condition of society" in their respective States; the institution had privileges of the rest of his Majesty's subbeen abolished in some of the northern jects.' In consequence of this welcome States, where the number of negroes was message, the greater part of the proscribed small, and the work of emancipation easy citizens removed to Canada, and formed the and obviously desirable: an insurrection Wilberforce settlement. The few who rebroke out occasionally, in one place or an- mained behind were oppressed to the utmost other; and certain sections of society were degree that the iniquitous laws against them in a state of perplexity or alarm at the could be made to sanction. This was not talents, or the demeanour, or the increase a transaction which could be kept a secret. of numbers of the free blacks. But no such Meetings were held by the free blacks of all thing had been heard of as a comprehensive the principal towns north of the Carolinas, and strenuously active objection to the whole and resolutions passed expressive of their system, wherever established. The surface abhorrence of the Colonization Society. The of society was heaving; but no one surge resolutions passed at the Philadelphia meethad broken into voice, prophetic of that cho. ing are a fair sample of the opinions of the rus of many waters in which the doom of class :the institution may now be heard. Yet clear-sighted persons saw that some great change must take place ere long; for a scheme was under trial for removing the obnoxious part of the negro population to Africa. Those of the dusky race who were too clever, and those who were too stupid, to be safe or useful at home, were to be exported; and slave-owners who had scruples about holding man as property might, by sending their slaves away over the sea, relieve their consciences without annoying their neighbours. Such was the state of affairs previous to 1829. The Colonization Society originated abolitionism. It acted in two ways. It exasperated the free blacks by the prospect of exile, and it engaged the attention of those who hated slavery, though the excitement it afforded to their hopes was illusory. Its action in both ways became manifest in the year 1829. In the spring of this year the stir began at Cincinnati, where a strenuous effort was made to induce the white inhabi. tants to drive away the free coloured people, by putting in force against them the atrocious state laws, which placed them in a condition of civil disability, and providing at the same time the means of transportation to Africa. The coloured people held a meeting, petitioned the authorities for leave to remain in their present condition for sixty days, and despatched a committee to Canada, to see whether provision could be made for "Resolved, That we view with deep abhorrence the unmerited stigma attempted to be cast upon the reputation of the free people of colour by the promoters of this measure, that they are a dangerous and useless part of the community,' when, in the state of disfranchisement in which they live, in the hour of danger they ceased to remember their wrongs, and rallied round the standard of their country. 66 Resolved, That we never will separate ourselves voluntarily from the slave population in this country they are our brethren by the ties of consanguinity, of suffering, and of wrong: and we feel that there is more virtue in suffering privations with them than in fancied advantages for a season." Such was one mode of operation of the Colonization Society. The other was upon the minds of individuals of the privileged colour who had the spirit of abolitionism in them, without having yet learned how to direct it. Of these the chief, the heroic printer's lad, the master mind of this great revolution, was then lying in prison, undergoing his baptism into the cause. William Lloyd Garrison is one of God's nobility-the head of the moral aristocracy whose prerogatives we are contemplating. It is not only that he is invulnerable to injury-that he early got the world under his feet in a way which it would have made Zeno stroke his beard in complacency to witness, but that in his meekness, his sym pathies, his self-forgetfulness, he appears " covered all over with the stars and orders" Or recreant prove when peril rears its crest, Garrison's lectures were now upon aboli. tion, not colonization. He was listened to with much interest in New York; but at Boston he could obtain no place to lecture in; and it was not till it was clear that he intended to collect an audience on the Com of the spiritual realm whence he derives his dignities and his powers. At present he is a marked man wherever he turns. The faces of his friends brighten when his step is heard the people of colour almost kneel The imprisonment of an honest man for to him; and the rest of society jeer, pelt, such a cause was an occasion for the outand execrate him. Amidst all this, his glad-break of discontent with slavery on all hands. some life rolls on, "too busy to be anxious,"I was in danger," says Garrison, "of being and too loving to be sad." He springs from lifted up beyond measure, even in prison, by his bed singing at suurise; and if, during the excessive panegyric and extraordinary symday, tears should cloud his serenity, they are pathy." He was freed by the generosity of never shed for himself. His countenance of an entire stranger, Mr. Arthur Tappan, a steady compassion gives hope to the op- wealthy merchant of New York, whose enpressed, who look to him as the Jews looked tire conduct on the question has been in acto Moses. It was this serene countenance, cordance with the act of paying Garrison's saint-like in its earnestness and purity, that fine. a man bought at a print-shop, where it was exposed without a name, and hung up as the most apostolic face he ever saw. It does not alter the case that the man took it out of the frame and hid it when he found that it was Garrison who had been adorning his parlour. As for his own persecutors, Gar-mon, in the midst of the city, that a door was rison sees in them the creatures of unfavour opened to him. He obtained a few coadjuable circumstances. He early satisfied him- tors,--for one, a simple-minded clergyman, self that "a rotten egg cannot hit truth;" Mr. May, who on the next Sunday prayed and then the whole matter was settled. Such for slaves, among other distressed persons, is his case now. In 1829 it was very dif. and was asked, on coming down from the ferent. He was an obscure lad, gaining pulpit, whether he was mad? Another of some superficial improvement in a country these coadjutors, William Goodell, said, in college, when tidings of the Colonization 1836, "My mind runs back to nearly seven scheme reached him, and filled him with years ago, when I used to walk with Garri. hope for the coloured race. He resolved son across yonder Common, and to converse to devote himself to the cause, and went on the great enterprise for which we are now down to Baltimore to learn such facts as met. The work then was all future. It exwould enable him to lecture on the subject. isted only in the ardent prayer and the fixed The fallacies of the plan melted before his resolves." It was wrought out by prompt gaze, while the true principle became so ap- and strenuous action. Garrison and his parent as to decide his mission. While this friend Knapp, a printer, were ere long living process was going on, he got into his first in a garret, on bread and water, expending trouble. A Mr. Todd, a New England all their spare earnings and time on the pubmerchant, freighted a vessel with slaves for lication of the "Liberator," now a handsome the New Orleans market, in the interval of his and flourishing newspaper; then a small, annual thanksgivings to God that the soil of shabby sheet, printed with old types. "When his State was untrodden by the foot of a it sold particularly well," says Knapp, slave. Garrison said what he thought of the treated ourselves with a bowl of milk." The transaction in a newspaper; was tried for venerable first number, dated January 1st, libel, and committed to prison till he could 1831, lies before us in its primitive shabbi. pay the imposed fine of a thousand dollars-ness; and on its first page, in Garrison's a sum which might as well have been a mil-"Address to the Public," we see proof that lion for any ability he had to pay it. Some the vehemence of language, which has often record of what was his state of mind at this been ascribed to personal resentment (but time was left on his prison wall: "I boast no courage on the battle-field, Where hostile troops immix in horrid fray; 66 we by none who know him), has been from the 66 beginning a matter of conscience with him. "I am aware," he says, "that many object to the severity of my language, but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest-1 will not equivocate-I will not excuse-I will not retreat a single inch-AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the re- less atmosphere-nothing, subtracted from surrection of the dead. It is pretended that infinite fulness. Should you succeed in deI am retarding the cause of emancipation stroying them, the mighty difficulty still reby the coarseness of my invective, and the mains." As a noble woman has since said, precipitancy of my measures. The charge in defence of the individuality of action of is not true. On this question my influence, the leaders of the cause, "It is idle to talk humble as it is, is felt at this moment to a of leaders.' In the contest of morals with considerable extent, and shall be felt in abuses, men are but types of principles. coming years-not perniciously, but bene- Does any one seriously believe that if Mr. ficially; not as a curse, but as a blessing; Garrison should take an appealing, protestand posterity will bear testimony that I was ing, backward step, abolitionists would fall right. I desire to thank God that he en- back with him?" The "mighty difficulty ables me to disregard the fear of man, and would still remain,--and remain as surely to speak his truth in its simplicity and doomed as ever, were Garrison to turn repower." creant or die. The time was ripe for Garrison's exer. One more dreadful event was to happen tions. A pamphlet appeared in the autumn before the peace-man" could make his of 1829, at Boston, from the pen of a man reprobation of violence heard over the Union. of colour, named Walker, which alarmed The insurrection of slaves in Southampton society not a little. It was an appeal to his county, Virginia, in which eighty persons coloured brethren, to drown their injuries in were slain-parents with their five, seven or the blood of their oppressors. Its language ten children, being massacred in the nightis perfectly appalling. It ran through seve- happened in 1832. The affair is wrapped ral editions, though no bookseller would pub- in mystery, as are most slave insurrections, lish it. Not long after, the author was found both from policy on the part of the masters, murdered near his own door; but whether and from the whites being too impatient to he had been assassinated for his book, or wait the regular course of justice, and sacrihad been fatally wounded in a fray, is not ficing their foes as they could catch them. known. If the slave-owners could but have In the present case many Negroes were seen it, Garrison was this man's antagonist, slaughtered, with every refinement of cruelnot his coadjutor. Garrison is as strenuous ty, on the roads, or in their masters' yards, a. peace-man as any broad-brimmed without appeal to judge, jury, or evidence. Friend in Philadelphia; and this fact, in This kind of management precludes any clear conjunction with his unlimited influence over knowledge of the causes of the insurrection; the Negro population, is the chief reason but it is now supposed near the spot to have why no blood has been shed,-why no in- been occasioned by the fanaticism of a madsurrectionary movement has taken place in man, a Negro, who assured the blacks who the United States, from the time when his came to him for religious sympathy that they voice began to be heard over the broad land were to run the course of the ancient Jews till now. Every evil, however, which hap--slaying and sparing not. We mention pened, every shiver of the master, every this rising because it is the last on the part growl of the slave, was henceforth to be of the people of colour. Free or enslaved, 66 charged upon Garrison. Some of the they have since been peaceable; while all Southern States offered rewards for the ap. succeeding violences have been perpetrated prehension of any person who might be de- by "gentlemen of property and standing." tected circulating the "Liberator," or "Walk-It was natural that those who had suffered er's Appeal;" and one legislature demanded by this slaughter or its consequences, those of the Governor of Massachusetts that Gar- who mourned large families of relations thus rison should be delivered up to them. The cut off, those who for the sake of their crops fate of Walker was before his eyes; and it feared the amendment of the system as a came to his ears, that gentlemen in stage result of this exhibition of its tendencies, coaches said that it was everywhere thought those who for the sake of their children that "he would not be permitted to live long;" nightly trembled in their beds, should cast that he would be taken away, and no one about for an object on whom to vent their be the wiser for it." His answer, on this painful feelings; and Garrison was that oband many subsequent occasions, was the ject. The imputation of the insurrection to same in spirit. "Will you aim at no higher him was too absurd to be long sustained; victims than Arthur Tappan, Geo. Thomp. but those who could not urge this against him son, and W. L. Garrison? And who and what are they? Three drops from a bound. less ocean-three rays from a noon day sun -three particles of dust floating in a limit still remonstrated against his "disturbing the harmony and peace of society." "Disturbing the slave-holders!" replied he. "I am sorry to disturb anybody. But the slave PRUDENCE CRANDALL. Miss Crandall going to jail. She was bailed The reason of this announcement was, that Miss Crandall, a young lady of established reputation in her profession, had been urgently requested to undertake the tuition of a child of light colour, had admitted her among the white pupils, had subsequently By this time the abolition cause was supadmited a second, thereby offending the pa-ported by twenty-six periodicals, circurents of her former pupils; and, on being lating from Maine to Virginia and Indiana. threatened on the one hand with the loss of Some excellent individuals had done the all her scholars, and urged on the other to brave deed of publishing books in aid of take more of a dark complexion, had nobly the same cause. Among these was Mrs. resolved to continue to take young ladies of Child, a lady of whom society was exceed. colour, letting the whites depart, if they so ingly proud before she published her Ap. pleased. We relate the consequences, be- peal, and to whom society has been excause this is, as far as we know, the first in-tremely contemptuous since. Her works stance in the struggle of a protracted perse- were bought with avidity before, but fell cution of a peaceable individual by the whole into sudden oblivion as soon as she had done of the society of the district. a greater deed than writing any or all of Her noble-minded husband lost his A town-meeting was called on the appear-them. ance of the advertisement, and the school legal practice, sound and respected as were was denounced in violent terms. Miss Cran- his talents, from affording his counsel to dall silently prosecuted her plan. The le- citizens of colour; and he was maliciously gislature was petitioned, through the exertion arrested on the quays of New York, for a of a leading citizen of Canterbury, Mr. fictitious or extremely trifling old debt, Judson, and a law was obtained in the course when he was just putting his foot on board of the month of May, making it a penal of a vessel for England. The incident affected fence to establish any school for the instruc. him deeply; and his brave wife was, tion of coloured persons, not inhabitants of for once, seen to sit down to weep: but the State, or to instruct, board, or harbour she shook off her trouble, packed up a persons entering the State for educational bundle of clothes for him, and went to purposes. This law was clearly unconstitu- cheer him in his prison, whence, it is tional, as it violated that clause in the consti- needless to say, he was presently released, tution which gives to the citizens of each crowned in the eyes of his friends with fresh State all the privileges and immunities of honours. A circumstance which we hapthe citizens of the several States.* Per- pen to know respecting this gentleman and ceiving this, Miss Crandall took no notice, but went on with her school. She was accordingly arrested, and carried before a justice of the peace; and the next spectacle that the inhabitants of Canterbury saw was lady illustrates well the states of feeling on Mrs |