COLORPHOBIA
Garrison's Abolitionism was of the most radical character. It went the
whole length of the humanity of the colored race, and all that that
implied. They were, the meanest members, whether bond or free, his
brothers and his sisters. From the first he regarded them as bone of his
bone and blood of his blood, as children with him of a common father.
Poor and enslaved and despised to be sure, wronged by all men, and
contemned by all men, but for that very reason they were deserving of
his most devoted love and labor. He never looked down upon them as
wanting in any essential respect the manhood which was his. They were
men and as such entitled to immediate emancipation. They were besides
entitled to equality of civil and political rights in the republic,
entitled to equality and fraternity in the church, equality and
fraternity at the North, equality and fraternity always and everywhere.
This is what he preached, this is what he practiced. In not a single
particular was he ever found separating himself from his brother in
black, saying to him "thus far but no farther." He never drew the line
in public or private between him and the people whose cause was his
cause--not even socially. He went into their homes and was in all things
one with them. He forgot that he was white, forgot that they were black,
forgot the pride of race, forgot the stigma of race too in the tie of
human kinship which bound him to them. If he had what they did not
possess, the rights of a man, the civil and political position of a man
in the State, the equality of a brother in the church, it could not make
him feel better than they, it filled him instead with a righteous sense
of wrong, a passionate sympathy, a supreme desire and determination to
make his own rights the measure of theirs.
"I lose sight of your present situation," he said in his address before
Free People of Color, "and look at it only in futurity. I imagine myself
surrounded by educated men of color, the Websters, and Clays, and
Hamiltons, and Dwights, and Edwardses of the day. I listen to their
voice as judges and representatives, and rulers of the people--the whole
people." This glowing vision was not the handiwork of a rhetorician
writing with an eye to its effect upon his hearers. The ardent hope of
the reformer was rather the father of the golden dream.
This practical recognition of the negro as a man and a brother was the
exact opposite of the treatment which was his terrible lot in the
country. Never in all history was there a race more shamefully oppressed
by a dominant race than were the blacks by the whites of America. Held
as slaves in the South, they were stamped as social outcasts at the
North. There was no one, however mean or vicious, who if he possessed a
white skin, was not treated more humanely than were they. In the most
enlightened of the free States they were discriminated against by public
laws and proscribed by public opinion. They were in a word pariahs of
the republic. They were shut out from all the common rights, and
privileges and opportunities enjoyed by the lowest of the favored race.
They were denied equality in the public school. The principle of popular
education had no application to a class which was not of the people, a
class which the common sentiment of a Christian nation had placed at the
zero point of political values, and meant to keep forever at that point.
Entrance to the trades were barred to the blacks. What did they want
with such things where there was no white trash so forgetful of his
superiority as to consent to work by their side. Nowhere were they
allowed the same traveling accommodations as white men, and they were
everywhere excluded from public inns. Neither wealth nor refinement was
able to procure them admission into other than "Jim Crow cars." If
heart-sick at the outrages by every one heaped upon them they turned for
consolation to the house of God, even there the spirit of proscription
and caste prejudice met them, and pointed to the "negro pew" where they
sat corraled from the congregation as if they had no equal share in the
salvation which the pulpit preached. Everywhere the white man had the
right of way, even on the highway to heaven! And in no place was the
negro made to feel the prejudice against his color more gallingly than
in churches arrogating the name of Christian. He had no rights on earth,
he had none in trying to get into the bosom of the founder of
Christianity, which the white sinners or saints were bound to respect.
Even the liberty-loving Quakers of Philadelphia were not above the use
of the "negro seat" in their meetings. Somehow they discerned that there
was a great gulf separating in this life at least the white from the
black believer. That God had made of one blood all nations of men, St.
Paul had taught, but the American church had with one accord in practice
drawn the line at the poor despised colored man. He was excluded from
ecclesiastical equality, for he was different from other men for whom
Christ died. The Bible declared that man was made but a little lower
than the angels; the American people in their State and Church
supplemented this sentiment by acts which plainly said that the negro
was made but a little above the brute creation.
Here are instances of the length to which the prejudice against color
carried the churches in those early years of the anti-slavery movement:
In 1830, a colored man, through a business transaction with a lessee of
one of the pews in Park Street Church, came into possession of it.
Thinking to make the best use of his opportunity to obtain religious
instruction for himself and family from this fountain of orthodoxy, the
black pew-holder betook him, one Sunday, to "Brimstone Corner." But he
was never permitted to repeat the visit. "Brimstone Corner" could not
stand him another Lord's day, and thereupon promptly expelled him and
his family out of its midst. The good deacons displayed their capacity
for shielding their flock from consorting with "niggers," by availing
themselves of a technicality to relet the pew to a member who was not
cursed with a dark skin. On another Lord's day, in another stronghold of
Boston Christianity, Oliver Johnson ran the battery of "indignant frowns
of a large number of the congregation" for daring to take a
fellow-Christian with a skin not colored like his own into his pew, to
listen to Dr. Beecher. The good people of the old Baptist meeting-house,
at Hartford, Conn., had evidently no intention of disturbing the
heavenly calm of their religious devotions by so much as a thought of
believers with black faces; for by boarding up the "negro pews" in front
and leaving only peep-holes for their occupants, they secured themselves
from a sight of the obnoxious creatures, while Jehovah, who is no
respecter of persons, was in His holy place. Incredible as it may seem,
a church in the town of Stoughton, Mass., to rid itself of even a
semblance of Christian fellowship and equality with a colored member,
did actually cut the floor from under the colored member's pew!
These cruel and anti-Christian distinctions in the churches affected
Garrison in the most painful manner. He says:
"I never can look up to these wretched retreats for my colored brethren
without feeling my soul overwhelmed with emotions of shame, indignation,
and sorrow."
He had such an intimate acquaintance with members of this despised caste
in Boston and Philadelphia, and other cities, and appreciated so deeply
their intrinsic worth and excellence, as men and brethren, that he felt
their insults and injuries as if they were done to himself. He knew that
beneath many a dark skin he had found real ladies and gentlemen, and he
knew how sharper than a serpent's tooth to them was the American
prejudice against their color. In 1832, just after a visit to
Philadelphia, where he was the guest of Robert Purvis, and had seen much
of the Fortens, he wrote a friend:
"I wish you had been with me in Philadelphia to see what I saw, to hear
what I heard, and to experience what I felt in associating with many
colored families. There are colored men and women, young men and young
ladies, in that city, who have few superiors in refinement, in moral
worth, and in all that makes the human character worthy of admiration
and praise."
Strange to say, notwithstanding all their merits and advancement, the
free people of color received nothing but disparagement and contempt
from eminent divines like Dr. Leonard W. Bacon and the emissaries of the
Colonization Society. They were "the most abandoned wretches on the face
of the earth"; they were "all that is vile, loathsome, and dangerous";
they were "more degraded and miserable than the slaves," and _ad
infinitum_ through the whole gamut of falsehood and traduction. It was
human for the American people to hate a class whom they had so deeply
wronged, and altogether human for them to justify their atrocious
treatment by blackening before the world the reputation of the said
class. That this was actually done is the best of all proofs of the
moral depravity of the nation which slavery had wrought.
Garrison's vindication of the free people of color in Exeter Hall,
London, on July 13, 1833, from this sort of detraction and villification
is of historic value:
"Sir," said he, addressing the chair, "it is not possible for the mind
to coin, or the tongue to utter baser libels against an injured people.
Their condition is as much superior to that of the slaves as the light
of heaven is more cheering than the darkness of the pit. Many of their
number are in the most affluent circumstances, and distinguished for
their refinement, enterprise, and talents. They have flourishing
churches, supplied by pastors of their own color, in various parts of
the land, embracing a large body of the truly excellent of the earth.
They have public and private libraries. They have their temperance
societies, their debating societies, their moral societies, their
literary societies, their benevolent societies, their saving societies,
and a multitude of kindred associations. They have their infant schools,
their primary and high schools, their sabbath schools, and their Bible
classes. They contribute to the support of foreign and domestic missions
to Bible and tract societies, etc. In the city of Philadelphia alone
they have more than fifty associations for moral and intellectual
improvement. In fact, they are rising up, even with mountains of
prejudice piled upon them, with more than Titanic strength, and
trampling beneath their feet the slanders of their enemies. A spirit of
virtuous emulation is pervading their ranks, from the young child to the
gray head. Among them is taken a large number of daily and weekly
newspapers, and of literary and scientific periodicals, from the popular
monthlies up to the grave and erudite _North American_ and _American
Quarterly Reviews_. I have at this moment, to my own paper, the
_Liberator_, one thousand subscribers among this people; and, from an
occupancy of the editorial chair for more than seven years, I can
testify that they are more punctual in their payments than any five
hundred white subscribers whose names I ever placed indiscriminately in
my subscription book."
There was an earnest desire on the part of the free people of color to
raise the level of their class in the Union. At a convention held by
them in Philadelphia, in 1831, they resolved upon a measure calculated
to make up, to some extent, the deprivations which their children were
suffering by being excluded from the higher schools of learning in the
land. So they determined to establish a college on the manual-labor
system for the education of colored youth. They appealed for aid to
their benevolent friends, and fixed upon New Haven as the place to build
their institution. Arthur Tappan, with customary beneficence, "purchased
several acres of land, in the southerly part of the city, and made
arrangements for the erection of a suitable building, and furnishing it
with needful supplies, in a way to do honor to the city and country."
The school, however, was never established owing to the violent
hostility of the citizens, who with the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common
Council resolved in public meeting to "_resist_ the establishment of the
proposed college in this place by every lawful means."
The free people of color were derided because of their ignorance by
their persecutors, but when they and their friends proposed a plan to
reduce that ignorance, their persecutors bitterly opposed its execution.
New Haven piety and philanthropy, as embodied in the Colonization
Society, were not bent on the education of this class but on its
emigration to the coast of Africa solely. In such sorry contradictions
and cruelties did American prejudice against color involve American
Christianity and humanity.
This outrage was perpetrated in 1831. Two years afterward Connecticut
enacted altogether the most shameful crime in her history. There lived
in the year 1833, in the town of Canterbury, in that State, an
accomplished young Quaker woman, named Prudence Crandall. Besides a
superior education, she possessed the highest character. And this was
well; for she was the principal of the Female Boarding School located in
that town. The institution was, in 1833, at the beginning of its third
year, and in a flourishing condition. While pursuing her vocation of a
teacher, Miss Crandall made the acquaintance of the _Liberator_ through
a "nice colored girl," who was at service in the school. Abhorring
slavery from childhood, it is no wonder that the earnestness of the
_Liberator_ exerted an immediate and lasting influence upon the
sympathies of the young principal. The more she read and the more she
thought upon the subject the more aroused she became to the wrongs of
which her race was guilty to the colored people. She, too, would lend
them a helping hand in their need. Presently there came to her a colored
girl who was thirsting for an education such as the Canterbury Boarding
School for young ladies was dispensing to white girls. This was Miss
Crandall's opportunity to do something for the colored people, and she
admitted the girl to her classes. But she had no sooner done so than
there were angry objections to the girl's remaining.
"The wife of an Episcopal clergyman who lived in the village," Miss
Crandall records, "told me that if I continued that colored girl in my
school it would not be sustained."
She heroically refused to turn the colored pupil out of the school, and
thereby caused a most extraordinary exhibition of Connecticut chivalry
and Christianity.
Seeing how matters stood with her in these circumstances, Prudence
Crandall conceived the remarkable purpose of devoting her school to the
education of colored girls exclusively. She did not know whether her
idea was practicable, and so in her perplexity she turned for counsel to
the editor of the _Liberator_. She went to Boston for this purpose, and
there, at the old Marlboro' Hotel, on Washington street, on the evening
of January 29, 1833, she discussed this business with Mr. Garrison. This
visit and interview confirmed the brave soul in her desire to change her
school into one for the higher education of colored girls. It was
expected that a sufficient number of such pupils could be obtained from
well-to-do colored families in cities like Boston, Providence, and New
York to assure the financial success of the enterprise. When Miss
Crandall had fully matured her plans in the premises she announced them
to the Canterbury public. But if she had announced that she contemplated
opening a college for the spread of contagious diseases among her
townspeople, Canterbury could not possibly have been more agitated and
horrified. Every door in the village was slammed in her face. She was
denounced in town meetings, and there was not chivalry enough to cause a
single neighbor to speak in her defence. Samuel J. May had to come from
an adjoining town for this purpose. "But," says Mr. May, "they would not
hear me. They shut their ears and rushed upon me with threats of
personal violence."
As there was nothing in the statutes of Connecticut which made the
holding of such a school as that of Miss Crandall's illegal, the good
Canterbury folk procured the passage of a hasty act through the
Legislature, which was then in session, "making it a penal offence,
punishable by fine and imprisonment, for any one in that State keeping a
school to take as his or her pupils the children of colored people of
other States." But the heart of the young Quaker woman was the heart of
a heroine. She dared to disregard the wicked law, was arrested, bound
over for trial, and sent to jail like a common malefactor. It was no
use, persecution could not cow the noble prisoner into submission to the
infamous statute. In her emergency truth raised up friends who rallied
about her in the unparalleled contest which raged around her person and
her school. There was no meanness or maliciousness to which her enemies
did not stoop to crush and ruin her and her cause. "The newspapers of
the county and of the adjoining counties teemed with the grossest
misrepresentations, and the vilest insinuations," says Mr. May, "against
Miss Crandall, her pupils, and her patrons; but for the most part,
peremptorily refused us any room in their columns to explain our
principles and purposes, or to refute the slanders they were
circulating." Four or five times within two years she was forced into
court to defend her acts against the determined malignity of men who
stood high in the Connecticut Church and State. The shops in the town
boycotted her, the churches closed their doors to her and her pupils.
Public conveyances refused to receive them, and physicians to prescribe
for them. It is said that the heroic soul was cut off from intercourse
with her own family, in the hope doubtless that she would the sooner
capitulate to the negro-hating sentiment of her neighbors. But firm in
her resolve the fair Castellan never thought of surrendering the citadel
of her conscience at the bidding of iniquitous power. Then, like
savages, her foes defiled with the excrement of cattle the well whence
the school drew its supply of water, attacked the house with rotten eggs
and stones, and daubed it with filth. This drama of diabolism was fitly
ended by the introduction of the fire fiend, and the burning of the
detestable building devoted to the higher education of "niggers."
Heathenism was, indeed, outdone by Canterbury Christianity.
The circumstances of this outrage kindled Garrison's indignation to the
highest pitch. Words were inadequate to express his emotions and agony
of soul. In the temper of bold and clear-eyed leadership he wrote George
W. Benson, his future brother-in-law, "we may as well, first as last,
meet this proscriptive spirit, _and conquer it_. We--_i.e._, all the
friends of the cause--must make this a common concern. The New Haven
excitement has furnished a bad precedent--a second must not be given or
I know not what we can do to raise up the colored population in a manner
which their intellectual and moral necessities demand. In Boston we are
all excited at the Canterbury affair. Colonizationists are rejoicing and
Abolitionists looking sternly." Like a true general Garrison took in
from his _Liberator_ outlook the entire field of the struggle. No friend
of the slave, however distant, escaped his quick sympathy or ready
reinforcements. To him the free people of color turned for championship,
and to the _Liberator_ as a mouthpiece. The battle for their rights and
for the freedom of their brethren in the South advanced apace.
Everywhere the army of their friends and the army of their foes were in
motion, and the rising storm winds of justice and iniquity were
beginning "to bellow through the vast and boundless deep" of a nation's
soul.