Henry Benson noted, “One thing was allowed—one thing was admitted—that the lady had borne an irreproachable character up to the time she first contemplated a school for colored females. Her unpardonable sin lay altogether in her wish to elevate the moral and intellectual condition of the blacks.”139
The resolutions passed unanimously, and Asahel Bacon proclaimed the meeting adjourned.140 Judson approached May and told him he should go home and stay out of the matter. Instead, May shouted to those still in the church to stay so that they might hear Miss Crandall’s point of view.141 Since the meeting had ended, anyone from any town could speak.
“Men of Canterbury, I have a word for you!” May said. “Hear me!”142 About one-third of those who attended the meeting stayed to listen. May quickly answered the false charges against Crandall and her school and defended the character of black students. When Arnold Buffum began to speak, six trustees of the church came forward and demanded that May and Buffum cease their discussion and leave the church immediately.143
11. Canterbury Congregational Church, the location of the town meetings regarding Crandall’s school.
Canterbury Congregational Church. Collection of the Prudence Crandall Museum, Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, State of Connecticut.
Outside on the church lawn, May continued to answer questions for the few who remained. When May returned home to Brooklyn, he wondered what would come of “the day’s uproar.”144 Henry Benson was appalled. “Such disgraceful proceedings I never witnessed before.”145
Benson speculated that the views of Crandall’s opponents, while popular at the moment, would not stand the test of time. “The present generation may hail them as just, but the very next will execrate them,” Benson wrote, three days after the town meeting. “The names of those who have been the most active in attempting the suppression of this school may be honored now, but future ages will consign them to ignominy and shame.”146
4 : A Mountain of Prejudice
Andrew Judson immediately launched a campaign to publicize the outcome of the Canterbury town meeting and to attack Crandall’s school. In letters to the local newspapers he praised the civility of Crandall’s opponents and criticized Crandall’s “foreign” supporters, who Judson said tried to intimidate the citizens of Canterbury. By Judson’s own count there were just five supporters of Prudence Crandall at the Canterbury meeting.1 While there were many hundreds of citizens in attendance—and no one voted against the resolutions—Judson wrote that Crandall’s five supporters presented “an array of foreign power, bringing with it boasted foreign influence.”2 Their presence was “imposing” according to Judson, and they “took conspicuous posts” within the church.3 “Their talking, language, and note-taking became offensive, and necessarily disturbed the progress of the meeting.”4
Judson promoted the idea that outsiders had disrupted the town meeting. Another account, signed “A Friend of the Colonization Cause” and likely written by Judson, noted that foreigners, having “thrust themselves into (the) assembly of the freemen of Canterbury … soon began to disturb the meeting by whispering, laughing, and … taking notes, etc.”5 The odd objection to “taking notes” caught the attention of Samuel May, who replied in a published letter addressed to Judson. “Permit me to say sir, if you or some of your coadjutors had adopted the precaution of ‘taking notes’ at the time (for which precaution you seem to be offended at one of the Providence young men) you probably would have given as correct an account of the meeting as he has done in the Liberator, and not committed so many mistakes in your communications to the Norwich papers …”6
Judson also criticized the brief speeches by May and Buffum following the meeting. “Their language was so highly charged with threats,” Judson said, and their “conduct so reprehensible” that the trustees of the church had no choice but to demand that they cease and desist.7 Local newspapers printed Judson’s false characterization of the meeting and its aftermath.
On Monday, March 11, 1833, two days after the town meeting, Judson traveled to Brooklyn to see Samuel May. Judson told May he did not have any personal dislike for him and apologized for “certain epithets” Judson delivered in “the excitement of the public indignation of his neighbors.”8 May later wrote an extensive and verbatim account of his exchange with Judson.
May told Judson that that he was “ready, with Miss Crandall’s consent, to settle the difficulty” with Judson and the people of Canterbury peaceably.9 May said that Crandall would agree to move her school to another location in Canterbury if she could recover what she paid for the house. Judson rejected any such compromise.
“Mr. May, we are not merely opposed to the establishment of that school in Canterbury,” Judson said. “We mean there shall not be such a school set up anywhere in our state. The colored people never can rise from their menial condition in our country … They are an inferior race of beings, and never can or ought to be recognized as the equals of the whites. Africa is the place for them. … The sooner you Abolitionists abandon your project the better for our country, for the niggers, and yourselves.”10
May told Judson that the United States must recognize the rights God gave to all men. “Education is one of the primal, fundamental rights of all the children of men,” May said. “If you and your neighbors in Canterbury had quietly consented that Sarah Harris, whom you knew to be a bright, good girl, should enjoy the privilege she so eagerly sought, this momentous conflict would not have arisen in your village.”11
They continued their private debate. Judson said if the old vagrancy law was insufficient to block students from coming into the town, “then we will get a law passed by our Legislature, now in session, forbidding the institution of such a school as Miss Crandall proposes, in any part of Connecticut.”12 May said Crandall’s supporters would challenge such a law “up to the highest court of the United States.”13
Judson’s visit with May did not result in a reconciling of their respective views. “Mr. Judson left me in high displeasure,” May wrote. “I never met him afterwards but as an opponent.”14 Three days later on Thursday, March 14, 1833, eleven men arrived at Prudence Crandall’s home to present her with the resolutions passed at the town meeting. This time, Crandall did not face the committee alone—her father Pardon and sister Almira were with her when the men arrived.15 Samuel Hough, the owner of an axe factory and the man who had loaned Crandall some of the money she needed to purchase the schoolhouse, read the resolutions to Crandall and her family.16 The visit was an anticlimax to the hostility at the town meeting. The resolutions stated what was already well known; many in town were fearful of the proposed school and hoped Crandall would abandon her plan. There was no requirement for her to do or refrain from doing anything. Crandall resumed preparing the schoolhouse for the new students.
The war of words continued. The next issue of the Liberator appeared on March 16 and included Henry Benson’s account of the Canterbury town meeting. William Lloyd Garrison set the names of five prominent opponents to Crandall’s school—Andrew Judson, Rufus Adams, Solomon Paine, Richard Fenner, and Andrew Harris—in large, bold letters below the banner headline, “Heathenism Outdone.” Garrison called them “shameless enemies of their species” and said their disgraceful behavior “will attach to them as long as there exists any recollection of the wrongs of the colored race.”17 Six days later, on Friday, March 22, Judson and his supporters released a lengthy attack on Crandall’s school titled “Appeal to the American Colonization
