the Reverend Samuel J. May of Brooklyn, Connecticut, and the Reverend Simeon S. Jocelyn. Their reasons for enlisting in the cause of immediate, complete emancipation were well phrased by May:
Often it was roughly demanded of us Abolitionists “Why we espoused so zealously the cause of the enslaved? Why we meddled so with the civil and domestic institutions of the Southern States?” Our first answer always was, in the memorable words of old Terence, “Because we are men, and therefore, cannot be indifferent to anything that concerns humanity!” Liberty cannot be enjoyed nor long preserved at the North, if slavery be tolerated at the South.3
In the South, indeed, slavery was not merely tolerated; it was encouraged and was growing apace. The cotton gin, invented as far back as 1793, was by now in widespread use; and with it, cotton production became increasingly profitable, so that more and more land was brought under cultivation and more and more slaves were demanded to work it. Moreover, the trans-Appalachian region of Alabama and the Mississippi Delta had become safe for full-scale settlement and exploitation only comparatively recently, with Andrew Jackson’s victory over the Creeks in 1814. After that came a rush of settlers to the newly opened areas—hard-driving men, intent on carving a cotton empire out of the forests and canebrakes, and more than willing to burn up any amount of slave labor in the process. Where once the buckskin-clad hunter had roamed, it was now the overseer and the slave coffle, the endless rows of cotton growing through the long hot season, the back-breaking tasks of chopping and picking, and the human beasts, ill fed, ill clothed, and ill treated, on whose driven labors the master might wax fat. Even the planters of the upper South, whose eighteenth-century forebears may in fact have treated their slaves with a certain patriarchal concern, could not fail to realize that the auction block now offered them high profits in human flesh sold down the river—especially since the importation of slaves from overseas had been banned in 1807. Everywhere, the lot of the slaves grew steadily worse, while the Southern slaveowners—never more than a small percentage of the white population in the slave states themselves—grew steadily more powerful and more arrogant.4
As reports of these conditions filtered back to the North, more and more persons of conscience came to see that slavery could no longer be regarded as a local matter but was becoming a national concern. This conviction fed the rolls of the antislavery societies, which by 1837 numbered twenty-nine in Connecticut, with memberships ranging from twelve to three hundred.5 They set about their work with resolute purpose, often against determined opposition.
Part of that work had to do with providing better conditions for free Negroes. Two cases in Connecticut, both arising in 1831, showed how difficult was the fight that lay ahead.
In June of that year, at a United States convention of colored people in Philadelphia, the Reverend Simeon S. Jocelyn proposed the establishment, at New Haven, of “a Collegiate school on the manual labor system” where Negro students would “cultivate habits of industry” and “obtain a useful Mechanical or agricultural profession.” The school would be “established on the self supporting system,” but preliminary backing was essential to its founding. The proposal was ratified by the convention, and a committee with the Reverend S. E. Cornish as “agent” was appointed to solicit funds. Forthwith there was issued an “appeal to the benevolent,” setting forth the difficulties met by colored youths in gaining admission to ordinary institutions, their need f6r adequate preparation, and the purpose of the proposed school to supply it.
Opposition to the plan among citizens of New Haven was immediate. The mayor, as soon as he heard of the idea, summoned first his Council, then a town meeting. Here, it is reported, the “air ran hot and foul” as the plan was heatedly discussed. Despite all the proponents could do, the town meeting adopted resolutions fatal to the reformers’ hopes:
1. That it is expedient that the sentiments of our Citizens should be expressed on these subjects, and that the calling of this Meeting by the Mayor and Aldermen is warmly approved by the citizens of this place.
2. That inasmuch as slavery does not exist in Connecticut, and whenever permitted in other States depends on the Municipal Laws of the State which allows it, and over which, neither any other State, nor the Congress of the United States has any control, that the propagation of sentiments favorable to the immediate emancipation of slaves, in disregard of the civil institutions of the States in which they belong, and as auxiliary thereto, the contemporaneous founding of Colleges for educating Colored People, is an unwarrantable and dangerous interference with the internal concerns of other States and ought to be discouraged.
3. And Whereas in the opinion of this Meeting, Yale College, the institutions for the education of females, and the other schools, already existing in this City, are important to the community and the general interests of science, and as such have been deservedly patronized by the public, and the establishment of a College in the same place to educate the Colored population is incompatible with the prosperity, if not the existence of the present institutions of learning, and will be destructive of the best interests of the City: and believing as we do, that if the establishment of such a College in any part of the Country were deemed expedient, it should never be imposed on any community without their consent,—Therefore; Resolved—by the Mayor, Aldermen, Common Council, and Freemen of the City of New Haven in City meeting assembled, that we will resist the establishment of the proposed College in this place, by every lawful means.
In face of this attitude, Jocelyn’s plan was dropped. The citizens of New Haven had plainly recorded their indifference to the slavery issue; their awareness that Negro education must lead, however slowly and indirectly, to emancipation and racial equality; and their wish to avoid any offense to Southern slaveholders whose sons attended Yale or with whom, as merchants, they had had business dealings.6
Starting in that same year, the people of the little village of Canterbury became involved in a somewhat similar case that grew to command nation-wide attention. It began in an atmosphere of general approval when Prudence Crandall, a Quaker from nearby Plainfield, opened a “young ladies boarding school” whose pupils included an impressive number of daughters of “the best families in town.”7 Everyone admired Miss Crandall; she was a lady of all the classical virtues, her pupils became devoted to her, parents recognized her as a teacher of great ability, and ministers and public officials in surrounding towns recommended her school to public patronage. All was going smoothly when Sarah Harris applied for admission to the school.
Sarah was a pious girl of seventeen, daughter of “a respectable man who owned a small farm” in the vicinity, and she was sincerely anxious to “get a little more learning.” Everything was in Sarah’s favor—except the fact that she was a Negress.
Miss Crandall was perfectly aware of the problem she thus had to face, and for a time she hesitated. But she had all the sense of justice and the moral courage of her Quaker persuasion. Her sympathies, she said later, “were greatly aroused”; she admitted Sarah as a day scholar. As soon as her action was known, protests arose on every side—mutterings, threats of withdrawal from her pupils’ parents, the direct warning from a prominent minister’s wife that, if she did not dismiss Sarah, her school would fail. Let it fail then, returned Miss Crandall, “for I should not turn her out.” She went further than that; she resolved to remake her school into one exclusively for colored girls.
Local reaction was immediate. The citizens of Canterbury swung into action, under the leadership of Andrew T. Judson, state senator, proslavery spokesman, and advocate of colonization. First a town meeting was called to “avert the impending calamity”—for, as Judson and his followers saw it, “should the school go into operation, their sons and daughters would be forever ruined, and property no longer safe.” Most of those present accepted this specious view, and when Arnold Buffum and Samuel J. May attempted to speak in Miss Crandall’s behalf, they were shouted down before they could deliver their message—which was, essentially, that Miss Crandall was prepared to move her school elsewhere if given time to do so and a fair
