XXIIITHE AMERICAN ABOLITIONISTSPRUDENCE CRANDALL AND LUCRETIA MOTT

Everybodyis an Abolitionist now. There is not, probably, in any part of Europe or the United States a single human being who would now defend slavery as an institution, or who thinks that for man to own property in his fellow-man, to be able to buy and sell him and dispose of his whole life, is not a sin and an outrage against all feelings of humanity.

Slavery was put an end to in the British Dominions nearly seventy years ago, but it is only twenty-six years since it was abolished in the United States of America. The time is well within the memory of many persons now living when to be an Abolitionist, even in the New England States, was to be hated and reviled, to render one’s self the object of the bitterest persecution, to risk comfort, happiness, and even life. In England the Abolitionist party was headed by men like Wilberforce, Clarkson, Macaulay, and Buxton, who all enjoyed the advantages belonging to education, good social position, and comparative wealth. It was always “respectable” in England to be an Abolitionist, and it was not necessary to possess the courage and devotion of a martyr to declare one’s hatred of slavery. But in the United States it was quite otherwise. Great and influential people of all parties there were for many years vehemently opposed to the emancipation of the slaves. Even as late as 1841 Miss Martineau describes the great sensation made among “theéliteof intellectual Boston” when they found that Lord Morpeth (afterwards the Earl of Carlisle), who was then on a visit to the United States of America, had openly expressed his sympathy with the principles of the Abolitionists.

In 1835 the Boston mob dragged William Lloyd Garrison, the leader of the American Abolitionists, through the streets with a rope round his neck; and his life was only saved from their fury through the stratagem of the Mayor, who committed him to gaol as a disturber of the peace. In 1841 the feeling against the Abolitionists was a little less violent; but “anti-slavery opinions were at that time in deep disrepute in the United States; they were ‘vulgar,’ and those who held them were not noticed in society, and were insulted and injured as often as possible by genteeler people and more complaisant republicans.” It was a matter of great astonishment to the polite world of Boston that the English aristocrat made no secret of the fact that he shared the opinions of the despised and hated Abolitionists.

In 1828 Garrison was a poor lad, working for his living as a printer; he determined to devote himself to the gigantic task of freeing his country from the curse of slavery. He began to print with his own hands and publish an anti-slavery paper called theLiberator. He wandered up and down the United States as an anti-slavery lecturer; by and by a few friends began to gather round him, and those who shared his principles and his enthusiasm gradually made themselves known to him. In 1833, being then twenty-eight years old, he received a letter from a young Quaker lady, Miss Prudence Crandall, who asked his advice under the following circumstances: Two years previously she had bought a large house at Canterbury, in the State of Connecticut, and had started there a boarding-school for girls. She had flourished beyond her expectations, and had every prospect of forming a highly successful school. She wrote to Garrison and asked his advice about changing her white scholars for coloured ones. She says in her letter, very simply, not giving herself any airs of martyrdom, “I have been for some months past determined, if possible, during the remainder of my life to benefit the people of colour.” Under these quiet words lay a firmness of purpose that would have supported her to the stake if need were. She did not, on that occasion, tell Garrison that she had already admitted to her classes, not as a boarder, but as a day scholar, a very respectable young negro woman, whose family she knew well as members of the church which she herself attended. By this action she had given great offence to the “genteel” inhabitants of Canterbury. The wife of an Episcopal clergyman who lived in the town told her that if she retained “that coloured girl” the school would be ruined. Prudence replied, that though the school might be ruined she would not turn her scholar out. She soon discovered that many of her pupils would leave, not to return, if the coloured girl were retained, but this did not shake her resolution. She began to consider whether it would not be possible to have a school for coloured girls only; and upon this point, not saying anything of her own sacrifices, she wrote, as before mentioned, to consult Garrison. Very soon after the date of this letter theLiberatornewspaper contained an advertisement, stating that “Miss P. Crandall (a white lady), of Canterbury, Conn.” had opened a “High School for young coloured ladies and misses.”

By this time the town of Canterbury had put itself into the greatest state of excitement about Miss Crandall’s project. She might have reasonably thought when she had converted her school into one for “young coloured ladies and misses” only, that so long as she and her pupils and their parents were satisfied no one else had any concern in the matter. But this was not the view taken by the inhabitants of Canterbury. Three town’s meetings were summoned in one week to consider what measures could be taken to stop and thwart her project. At first it seems to have been thought desirable to try the fair means of persuasion, and Miss Crandall was waited on by a deputation of leading gentlemen of the place, who professed to feel “a real regard for the coloured people, and perfect willingness that they should be educated,provided it could be effected in some other place.” Miss Crandall’s scheme of educating them in her own house in Canterbury would, they assured her, bring disgrace and ruin on the whole town. Miss Crandall heard them out, and then announced her determination to carry out her plan. There was an immovable firmness under the tranquillity of the young Quakeress’s demeanour. Another town’s meeting was called, and Miss Crandall was allowed to be represented by counsel, but the gentlemen who took up her cause were not granted a hearing, on the ground that they were outsiders, not natives of the town, and the whole of Canterbury, in public meeting assembled, then proceeded to vote their unanimous disapprobation of the school, and their fixed determination to oppose it at all hazards. They certainly opposed it with great vigour, but the hazard was not so much to the town of Canterbury as to the young woman, who was the object for two years of the most relentless persecution. She all the while maintained her quiet dignity, causing Garrison to exclaim in a letter to a friend, “Wonderful woman! as undaunted as if she had the whole world on her side! She has opened her school and is resolved to persevere.” One of her friends wrote to Garrison: “We shall have a rough time, probably, before the year is out. The struggle will be great, no doubt, but God will redeem the captives.... We are all determined to sustain Miss Crandall if there is law in the land enough to protect her. She is a noble soul!”

The fight between the heroic little Quaker woman and the town of Canterbury soon waxed very hot. Almost directly after the school was opened in 1833, her enemies procured the passing of an Act by the State Legislature of Connecticut, prohibiting private schools for non-resident coloured persons, and providing for the expulsion of such scholars. The fact is a warning of the way in which small local parliaments may be carried away by local passions. Such an Act would probably, even then, never have passed the Legislature of the United States. As it was, its originators must have been ashamed of it as soon as their rage against Miss Crandall had had time to cool, for it was repealed in 1838; but in the five years during which it was in operation it gave Miss Crandall’s enemies great power over her. Under this Act she was twice arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned. She appealed to the Supreme Court, and had the satisfaction in the superior tribunal of defeating her persecutors, though only on a technical point of law. But in the interval she was subjected to the most extraordinary and inhuman persecution. There was not a shopkeeper in the town who would sell her, or any member of her household, a morsel of food; she and her scholars were not admitted to take part in public worship; no public conveyance would take them as passengers; doctors would not attend them. Miss Crandall’s own relations and friends were warned that if they valued their own safety they must not visit her or have anything to do with her. “Her well was filled with manure, and water from other sources was refused; the house itself was smeared with filth, assailed with rotten eggs and stones, and finally set on fire.” (SeeLife of William Lloyd Garrison, vol. i. p. 321). But the little “school-marm” held her own. Unlike that Frenchman of whom we are told that he consecrated a long life to coming invariably to the assistance of the strongest side, she was emphatically the friend of the oppressed, and one of that band “who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.”

The existence of a group of such women is one of the most precious national possessions of the American people. Miss Crandall, now Mrs. Philleo, is still (1889) alive and in full vigour of mind and body. The revenge which the whirligig of time has brought to her is the triumph of her cause. She now enjoys a small pension granted to her by the Government of the United States in recognition of her services to the anti-slavery cause.

Another of the famous anti-slavery women of the United States was Lucretia Mott. She, too, was a Quakeress, as were a very considerable proportion of the women who first took up the Abolitionist movement. At one time the Puritan inhabitants of New England, who had fled from their homes in Europe to escape persecution, instituted the most cruel persecution against the Quakers and all sects who differed from the Puritan creed. The persecuted are often only too ready to become persecutors in their turn. Lucretia Mott’s ancestors, the Coffins, descended from the ancient Devonshire family of that name, had fled before this Puritan persecution to the island of Nantucket to the east of Massachusetts. Here Lucretia was born in 1793, and here her childhood was passed till she was eleven, when her father removed to Boston, Massachusetts. Lucretia and her younger sister, spoken of in her father’s letters as “the desirable little Elizabeth,” had opportunities of education at Boston that would have been quite out of the question in the primitive island of their birth. At the age of eighteen Lucretia married James Mott, and her home henceforward was at Philadelphia. Partly for the sake of educating her own children, and partly with the view of helping her mother, who had been left a widow with five children to support, Lucretia Mott opened a school. When she was about thirty years of age she began gradually to be drawn into work of a more public kind, through her deep interest in many moral movements of her time. Foremost among these stood the anti-slavery agitation; she travelled many thousands of miles, speaking and lecturing for the anti-slavery cause. It was then, even in America, quite a novelty for women to take an active part in public movements, and some of the more old-fashioned of the Abolitionists did not approve of the participation of Lucretia Mott and other women in the work. But Garrison was always, from the first, as eager for the equality of women as he was for the emancipation of the slaves; and he felt too deeply what the anti-slavery cause in England and America owed to women to tolerate their being set on one side without any recognition of their work. However, at first only a minority held this view, and the difficulty which some men felt in working with women caused Lucretia Mott to form the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. At the first meeting of this society, none of the ladies felt competent themselves to take the chair, so they elected a negro gentleman to that position, a choice which Mrs. Mott explained a few years later in the following words: “Negroes, idiots, and women were in legal documents classed together; so that we were very glad to get one of our own class to come and aid us in forming that society.”

In 1840 Lucretia Mott was one of the delegates chosen to represent American societies at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in that year. It is well known that she and all other lady delegates were refused recognition because they were women. Sir John Bowring, Mr. Ashurst, and Daniel O’Connell were among those who protested against this arbitrary act of exclusion; but the protest was in vain. Garrison had not been present when the question of refusing to allow the lady delegates to take part in the Convention was discussed. He arrived in England five days after the question had been settled. With characteristic generosity, he refused to sit as a delegate where the ladies had been excluded. They had been relegated as spectators to a side gallery, and he insisted on taking his seat there also. The absurdity of holding a World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in which the chief workers against slavery were present as spectators, not as participators, caused a great deal of discussion at the time; and the general movement in England towards the social, educational, and political equality of women may be said to date from that period.

For thirty years Lucretia Mott hardly ever let a day pass without doing something to weaken the fabric of slavery, which she felt to be the greatest curse of her native land. Her manner and voice were sweet, solemn, and tranquil; her small and fragile figure, her exquisite womanliness of demeanour, made it difficult to believe that she could become the object of violent hatred and persecution. Yet she had often known what it was to stand on a platform in the midst of a shower of stones and vitriol, and to endure in silence the unmanly insults of the pro-slavery press. The simple and direct sincerity of her mind, her forgetfulness of self, and her tranquil courage, carried conviction to the minds of thousands that she had a message worth listening to. But at first many even of her own religious community thought it necessary to show their disapprobation of her conduct, by refusing to recognise her when they met. She owned that this “had caused her considerable pain,” but it never caused her to swerve for a moment from the course she felt to be that of duty. She usually took a share of the seat behind the door in railway cars, because that place was ordinarily assigned to negroes, and would converse kindly with her fellow-passengers there.

At the celebrated trial in 1859 of Daniel Dangerfield, a fugitive slave, Lucretia Mott remained all through the long hours of suspense by the side of the prisoner. The trial and the courthouse were watched by two crowds, both in the greatest anxiety and suspense, one hoping for the release, the other, and by far the larger and more dangerous, hoping for the condemnation of the man. At last the long trial ended in victory for the right. Daniel Dangerfield was declared a free man; but the authorities of the court thought it would be impossible to get him away in safety through the angry pro-slavery crowd, without an escort of police. Their fears were found to be groundless, for when the doors of the court were thrown open, and the slave walked out, a free man, Lucretia Mott, the aged Quaker lady, was by his side; her hand on his arm was a sufficient protection, and he passed through the angry crowd in safety.

Very soon after this came the War of Secession. The Abolitionists knew, though the politicians did not, that this war would decide the question of slavery. As all the world knows now, they were right. The American people were enabled to prevent the secession of the slave states; and in 1863 a proclamation of President Lincoln announced the Abolition of Slavery in the United States. Lucretia Mott lived for seventeen years after this crowning victory of her life’s labours. She died on 11th November 1880, universally respected, and loved by those who knew her.

THE END

Printed byR. & R. Clark,Edinburgh.

Transcriber’s Note:Some corrections have been made to the original text. In particular, punctuation errors have been corrected. Additional corrections are listed below:p.67Feats in the Fiord->Feats on the Fiordp.96sent in in one day -> sent in one dayp.129relf-reliance -> self-reliancep.220They are are as ignorant -> They are as ignorant

Transcriber’s Note:

Some corrections have been made to the original text. In particular, punctuation errors have been corrected. Additional corrections are listed below:

p.67Feats in the Fiord->Feats on the Fiordp.96sent in in one day -> sent in one dayp.129relf-reliance -> self-reliancep.220They are are as ignorant -> They are as ignorant

p.67Feats in the Fiord->Feats on the Fiord

p.96sent in in one day -> sent in one day

p.129relf-reliance -> self-reliance

p.220They are are as ignorant -> They are as ignorant

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