Part 15 (1/2)

[Footnote 3: Jay, _An Inquiry, etc_, p 33; and _Special Report of the US Com of Ed_, pp 328 _et seq_]

[Footnote 4: Jay, _An Inquiry_, etc, p 33]

Miss Crandall and her pupils were threatened with violence

Accommodation at the local stores was denied her The pupils were insulted The house was besed An effort was ht warn any person not an inhabitant of the State to depart under penalty of paying 167 for every week he re such notice[1] This failed, but Judson and his folloere still deterer school” should never be allowed in Canterbury nor any town of the State They appealed to the legislature Setting forth in its preamble that the evil to be obviated was the increase of the black population of the co that no person should establish a school for the instruction of colored people ere not inhabitants of the State of Connecticut, nor should any one harbor or board students brought to the State for this purpose without first obtaining, in writing, the consent of a majority of the civil authority and of the selectmen of the town[2]

[Footnote 1: _Special Report of the US Com of Ed_, 1871, p 331; and May, _Letters to AT Judson, Esq, and Others_, p 5]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_, p 5]

The enacto ith joy Miss Crandall was arrested on the 27th of June, and committed to await her trial at the next session of the Supreive bond that the officialsher Miss Crandall was placed in a murderer's cell Mr

May, who had stood by her, said when he saw the door locked and the key taken out, ”The deed is done, completely done It cannot be recalled It has passed into the history of our nation and age” Miss Crandall was tried the 23d of August, 1833, at Brooklyn, the county seat of the county of Windharee upon a verdict, doubtless because Joseph Eaton, who presided, had given it as his opinion that the laas probably unconstitutional At the second trial before Judge Dagget of the Supreme Court, as an advocate of the law, Miss Crandall was convicted Her counsel, however, filed a bill of exceptions and took an appeal to the Court of Errors The case came up on the 22d of July, 1834 The nature of the laas ably discussed by WW Ellsworth and Calvin Goddard, who maintained that it was unconstitutional, and by AT Judson and CF Cleveland, who undertook to prove its constitutionality The court reserved its decision, which was never given Finding that there were defects in the information prepared by the attorney for the State, the indictment was quashed Because of subsequent atte, Mr May and Miss Crandall decided to abandon the school[1]

[Footnote 1: Jay, _An Inquiry, etc_, p 26]

It resulted then that even in those States to which free blacks had long looked for syitives from the more reactionary commonwealths had caused northerners so to yield to the prejudices of the South that they opposed insuperable obstacles to the education of Negroes for service in the United States The colored people, as we shall see elsewhere, were not allowed to locate their e at New Haven[1] and the principal of the Noyes Academy at Canaan, New Hampshi+re, saw his institution destroyed because he decided to admit colored students[2] These fastidious persons, however, raised no objection to the establishroes to expatriate themselves under the direction of the American Colonization Society[3]

[Footnote 1: _Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color_, p 14]

[Footnote 2: _Fourth Annual Report of the American Antislavery Society_, p 34]

[Footnote 3: Alexander, _A History of Colonization on the Western Continent_, p 348]

Observing these conditions the friends of the colored people could not be silent The abolitionists led by Caruthers, May, and Garrison hurled their weapons at the reactionaries, branding theument of the mental inferiority of the colored race they had adopted the policy of educating Negroes on the condition that they be re education one of the rights of man, the abolitionists persistently rebuked the North and South for their inhuman policy On every opportune occasion they appealed to the world in behalf of the oppressed race, which the hostile laws had re influences, reduced to the plane of beasts, and made to die in heathenism

[Footnote 1: Jay,_An Inquiry_, etc, p 26; Johns Hopkins University Studies, Series xvi, p 319; and _Proceedings of the New York State Colonization Society_, 1831, p 6]

In reply to the abolitionists the protagonists of the reactionaries said that but for the ”intrusive and intriguing interference of pragmatical fanatics”[1] such precautionary enactments would never have been necessary There was some truth in this statement; for in certain districts these measures operated not to prevent the aristocratic people of the South froroes, but to keep away from them what they considered undesirable instructors

The southerners regarded the abolitionists as foes in the field, industriously scattering the seeds of insurrection which could then be prevented only by blocking every avenue through which they could operate upon the minds of the slaves A writer of this period expressed it thus: ”It became necessary to check or turn aside the strearo is polluted and poisoned by the abolitionists and rendered the source of discontent and excitement”[2] He believed that education thus perverted would becoerous to the master and the slave, and that while fanaticism continued its war upon the South the measures of necessary precaution and defense had to be continued He asserted, however, that education would not only unfit the Negro for his station in life and prepare him for insurrection, but would prove wholly impracticable in the performance of the duties of a laborer[3]

The South has not yet learned that an educated norant one

[Footnote 1: Hodgkin, _An Inquiry into the Merits of the Am Col

Soc_, p 31; and _The South Vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of the Abolitionists_, p 68]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_, p 69]

[Footnote 3: _The South Vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of the Abolitionists_, p 69]

CHAPTER VIII

RELIGION WITHOUT LETTERS

Stung by the effective charge of the abolitionists that the reactionary legislation of the South consigned the Negroes to heathenis theious instruction of these degraded people should be devised It was difficult, however, to figure out exactly how the teaching of religion to slaves could be made successful and at the same time square with the prohibitory measures of the South For this reason many masters made no effort to find a way out of the predicaht forward a scheion without letters The word instruction thereafter signified a the southerners a procedure quite different frohteenth centuries, when Negroes were taught to read and write that theyaristocratic in its bearing, the Episcopal Church in the South early receded fro the minds of the colored people As the richest slaveholders were Episcopalians, the clergy of that denoht prove prejudicial to the interests of their parishi+oners

Moreover, in their propaganda there was then nothing which required the training of Negroes to instruct themselves As the qualifications of Episcopal h even for the education of the whites of that time, the blacks could not hope to be active church the Negroes of the South to the ed to the local parishes Furtherly row rapidly In most parts it suffered from the rise of the more popular Methodists and Baptists into the folds of which slaves followed their hteenth century