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Miss Crandall had had time to cool, for it was repealed in 1838; but in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.” (See _Life 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 by_ R. & 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. 67 _Feats in the Fiord_ -> _Feats on the Fiord_
p. 96 sent in in one day -> sent in one day
p. 129 relf-reliance -> self-reliance
p. 220 They are are as ignorant -> They are as ignorant