Читать книгу Prudence Crandall’s Legacy - Donald E. Williams - Страница 12

3 : Education for All

Prudence Crandall told no one in Canterbury about her plans to teach black women at her school; she confided only in William Lloyd Garrison. “I do not dare tell any one of my neighbors anything about the contemplated change in my school,” she wrote to Garrison, “and I beg of you, sir, that you will not expose it to anyone; for if it was known, I have no reason to expect but it would ruin my present school.”¹ To emphasize the point she ended her letter by saying, “I must once more beg you not to expose this matter until we see how the case will be determined.”²

There is no evidence that Crandall seriously considered reversing her decision to admit Sarah Harris; however, she clearly did not want to lose her school. Crandall decided to travel to Boston to meet Garrison and discuss the feasibility of recruiting black students. She told local supporters, including her pastor, Levi Kneeland, that she planned to visit schools and purchase supplies, and she asked for letters of introduction to those who could assist her in Boston. She told no one of her meeting with Garrison or her idea to change the mission of her school. Eleven days later on January 29, 1833, she took the stagecoach from Canterbury to Boston.

The coach arrived at the Marlboro Hotel, a four-story building that served as the depot for many stagecoach routes.³ The Marlboro was the oldest hotel in Boston; Lafayette stayed there, as did John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster.⁴ James Barker, the manager of the hotel, received Prudence Crandall when she arrived. She gave Barker a note that he promptly delivered to Garrison: “The lady that wrote you a short time since would inform you that she is now in town, and should be very thankful if you would call at Mr. Barker’s Hotel and see her a few moments this evening at six o’clock.”⁵ Garrison was familiar with the Marlboro’s large hall for speeches and its several drawing rooms for smaller meetings.

Garrison did not wish to see Crandall’s idea of a school for black women meet the same fate as a recently defeated proposal for a black college in New Haven, Connecticut. In June 1831, Simeon S. Jocelyn—a white minister of a black church—told Garrison of his plans to create a black college. Arthur Tappan agreed to purchase the land and raise funds for the new school. Garrison visited New Haven and wrote that the laws of the city were “salutary and protecting to all, without regard to complexion.”⁶ Garrison made those observations before the Nat Turner insurrection in August, when Turner led the slave uprising that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of blacks and whites. One month later, with fears of black rebellion and violence fanning northward, city residents at a town meeting voted overwhelmingly against the creation of a black college in New Haven, much to the discouragement of Garrison.⁷

Prudence Crandall met with Garrison in one of the drawing rooms at the Marlboro that wintry Tuesday evening. Each was likely a surprise to the other. Garrison, the emphatic abolitionist in print, was reserved and polite in person. Crandall, who had come to Boston to explain why she wanted to risk her financial future for the benefit of black women, was an educator, not a political activist. They both were passionate about their work. Crandall described her plans for the new school. Garrison conveyed his concerns based on the events in New Haven. Garrison also came prepared to answer Crandall’s specific questions about recruiting students from cities in the Northeast. He said he could solicit support from those he knew in Boston, including Arnold Buffum, a Quaker abolitionist and one of the founders of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison also said he could provide information about black families in New York, New Haven, and Providence. Crandall offered to travel directly from Boston to Providence to meet with those whom Garrison knew in the black community and said she would pursue the other contacts as quickly as possible.

Crandall told Garrison that when she returned to Canterbury she would seek out local supporters, including Daniel Packer, the mill owner and person responsible for the creation of the Packerville Baptist Church. They agreed that if the initial meetings and student recruitment efforts went well, Garrison would place an ad for her school in the Liberator and extensively promote her school. At the end of this extraordinary meeting, any lingering doubts on the part of Crandall or Garrison were replaced with determination. They agreed to work together to make the idea of a school for black women a reality.⁸

With introductions to those in the black community in hand, Prudence Crandall took the stagecoach from Boston to Providence. She arrived on Friday night and sought out Elizabeth Hammond, a black woman whose husband had purchased a boarding house in the 1820s. After her husband died in 1826, Hammond managed the boarding house and the family’s financial affairs. Crandall visited Hammond at her home, where she met Hammond’s daughter, Ann Eliza. Mrs. Hammond invited some of her black friends and two white gentlemen, George W. Benson, a Providence wool merchant, and his younger brother, Henry E. Benson, the Providence agent for the Liberator, to meet with Crandall. Coincidentally, the Benson brothers were originally from Brooklyn, Connecticut, a town adjacent to Canterbury and a short horse ride from Prudence’s school. Crandall described the Bensons as “awake to the cause of humanity.” They promised to help her with her school.⁹

The following morning Crandall returned to see Mrs. Hammond, who took Crandall to meet three colored families. The meetings went well, and Crandall told Garrison, “They seemed to feel much for the education of their children, and I think I shall be able to obtain six scholars from Providence.”¹⁰ Henry Benson gave Garrison a positive report concerning Crandall’s visit. “The lady who was at your office last week to see about a school for colored females, passed through here Friday,” Benson wrote. “She is, I should think, exactly the one for that purpose, and I hope she may meet with perfect success.”¹¹

Crandall returned to Canterbury late in the evening on Saturday, February 9, 1833. On Monday she met with Daniel Packer. She told Packer about her trip to Boston and how she intended to transform her school—to change the “white scholars for colored ones.” If Packer had doubts about the wisdom of creating a school for black women, he did not say so directly. He called her idea “praiseworthy,” but also said it likely would ruin her financially. “He is fearful that I cannot be supplied with scholars at the close of one year,” Crandall wrote to Garrison, “and therefore he thinks I shall injure myself in the undertaking.”¹²

Crandall believed the parents of her students would soon start withdrawing their daughters from her school. She prepared to travel once again, to New York City. Garrison promised to write to his friends in New York and prepare them for her visit. As of February 12, she had not received word from Garrison and wrote to remind him, “If you have not yet sent on to New York the information you intend, I would thank you if you would do it immediately, for I am expecting to take the next boat for New York, and shall be in the city early on Friday morning.”¹³

Crandall spurred Garrison into action as she worked tirelessly to assemble the student enrollment necessary for success. She expected to make the final decision about her new school after her trip to New York City. “When I return from N.Y., I think I shall be able to lay the subject before the public,” she told Garrison.¹⁴ She arrived in New York on Friday, February 15, and met with a number of black ministers who supported Garrison, including Peter Williams, the pastor of the St. Phillips Episcopal Church in Harlem and the first black Episcopal minister in the United States.¹⁵ Williams spoke out often against slavery and discrimination. “We are natives of this country; we ask only to be treated as well as foreigners,” Williams said. “Not a few of our fathers suffered and bled to purchase its independence; we ask only to be treated as well as those who fought against it. We have toiled to cultivate it, and to raise it to its present prosperous condition; we ask only to share equal privileges with those who come from distant lands to enjoy the fruits of our labor.”¹⁶

Crandall met other ministers who supported Garrison. They included Samuel C. Cornish, who established the First Colored Presbyterian Church in 1822 and was “one of the leading Negro journalists of the period.”¹⁷ Cornish helped create Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper.¹⁸ Theodore Wright, the pastor who succeeded Cornish at the First Colored Presbyterian Church, James Hayborn, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church,¹⁹ Theodore Raymond, and George Bourne, the white minister credited with being the first to call for immediate emancipation,²⁰ all lived in New York City and knew Garrison. These ministers helped Crandall schedule introductions with potential students and their families; they all agreed to provide references for Crandall and have their names appear in advertisements as supporters of Crandall’s school.²¹

Garrison also provided Crandall with a letter of introduction to Arthur Tappan. Tappan was well known as one of the wealthiest merchants in America. An early supporter of William Lloyd Garrison—he paid his libel fines and bailed him out of jail in Baltimore—Tappan committed his time and fortune to the cause of abolition. Tappan’s brother Lewis described Arthur as the first man in the United States to “make use of money in large sums for benevolent objects. … the great lesson of his life was courage to do right whatever the consequences.”²² When asked by business associates to refrain from abolitionist activities so as not to offend customers, Tappan replied, “You demand that I shall cease my anti-slavery labors, give up my connection with the Anti-Slavery Society, or make some apology or recantation—I will be hung first!”²³ Prudence Crandall received encouragement from Tappan; he agreed to join the black ministers in support of her school. He also told her he hoped to accompany the black students from New York to her school in Canterbury.²⁴

The trip to New York reassured Crandall. She received help from key leaders of the black community and was confident of enrolling many students. She also believed that Arthur Tappan’s endorsement would alleviate the fears of her friends and neighbors in Canterbury. After meeting with Crandall, Tappan escorted her on a steamboat ride between New York and Crandall’s next stop, New Haven.

The failure of the proposed college for black men in New Haven had occurred one year and six months earlier, and it was fresh in the mind of Simeon S. Jocelyn when he and his wife met Prudence Crandall in New Haven in February 1833. Jocelyn, a founding member of New Haven’s Third Church, became the first pastor of a black church, known as the Temple Street Church, in 1829.²⁵ Jocelyn’s white skin did not prevent the black congregation from accepting him as their minister. Religion and social reform were his passions but not his full-time profession. Jocelyn and his brother Nathaniel were partners in a printing and engraving business between 1818 and 1843.²⁶ Simeon converted his brother’s oil paintings into engravings. When Nathaniel painted the portrait of William Lloyd Garrison in April 1833, Garrison wrote, “I think he has succeeded in making a very tolerable likeness.”²⁷ As to Simeon’s engraving of the portrait, Garrison said, “All who have seen it agree with me in the opinion that it is a total failure.”²⁸

The press reported extensively on Simeon S. Jocelyn’s unsuccessful attempt to create a black college in New Haven. Jocelyn told Crandall about the obstacles he encountered but did not discourage her. Instead, he pledged support and agreed to serve as a reference for her school. His optimism impressed Crandall, and she later turned to him for advice and help.

When Crandall returned to Canterbury on Friday, February 22, she knew she owed her family and friends an explanation about her extended travels. She had traveled to Boston supposedly for the purpose of observing other schools and buying supplies. Her subsequent journeys to three other cities—all at a time when controversy raged in Canterbury—demanded further explanation. The time had come for Prudence to reveal her bold ideas.

“I called my family together and laid before them the object of my journey and endeavored to convince them of the propriety of the pursuit,” Prudence later wrote. She told her family she intended to create a new school for black women. She hoped to make the change in the near future, perhaps as early as April. Her trip to Boston had been for the purpose of meeting with William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of the Liberator, to enlist his help in securing contacts in the black communities of the Northeast. In order to recruit students for her new school, she had made subsequent trips to Providence, New York, and New Haven.

Prudence’s family knew she had to make a decision regarding her school and the controversy surrounding Sarah Harris. Nevertheless, Crandall’s announcement that she intended to dismiss her white students and replace them with black students must have come as a shock to her family. When Prudence finished presenting her vision for the new school, she received a cautiously supportive response. “My views by them were pretty cordially received,” Crandall wrote.²⁹

Crandall decided to visit her neighbors the next day and tell them directly about her plans for the school: “Saturday morning I called on several of the neighbors and to my astonishment they exhibited but little opposition.”³⁰ On Monday, February 25, 1833, buoyed by the lack of hostility if not support from her family and neighbors, Crandall gathered her students together at the Canterbury Female Boarding School. Her pupils were well aware of the controversy regarding Sarah Harris; nonetheless, they were stunned when Crandall announced the closure of her school. The school was as busy as ever; parents had not yet begun to withdraw their daughters from the school, and it was full to capacity with twenty-four students.³¹ In subsequent accounts, writers often claimed that many or all of the white students had withdrawn from Crandall’s school. In 1833, however, Samuel May wrote that Prudence “informed her pupils, then twenty-four in number, that, at the commencement of the next term, her school would be open for the reception of colored girls; and that twenty had engaged to come to her at that time. This annunciation caused a great excitement.”³² Crandall’s announcement was met with confusion and sadness. Most if not all of the white students never objected to Sarah Harris joining their ranks. They could not continue as students at Crandall’s school because adults—in some cases their own parents—opposed the idea of a black student attending their classes.

As the students relayed the news to their families, the reality of Crandall’s plan took hold. The indifferent reaction she initially received when she told a few neighbors changed dramatically. One citizen of Canterbury called her idea to educate black women “reprehensible” and described the thought of young black women living in the center of town as “utterly intolerable.”³³ Another said her decision showed a reckless, “stiff necked” and stubborn streak.³⁴ Others viewed Crandall as ungrateful and vengeful. As one local historian later said, “The people of Canterbury saw to their supreme horror and consternation that this popular school in which they had taken so much pride, was to be superseded by something so anomalous and phenomenal that it could hardly be comprehended.”³⁵

9. Canterbury, Connecticut, in the 1830s. The Canterbury Congregational Church is in the foreground; Crandall’s school is on the far left.

Canterbury, Connecticut, in the 1830s. From John Warner Barber, Connecticut Historical Collections (New Haven, Conn.: B. L. Hamlen, 1836), 423. Collection of the Prudence Crandall Museum, Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, State of Connecticut.

Critics doubted the “philanthropy” of her decision and attributed it to financial self-interest.³⁶ Some claimed she stood to profit more from a school for black women. That assertion ignored the obvious fact that Crandall’s school was already thriving; dismissing Sarah Harris would have preserved a surer path to continued financial success. William Jay wrote, “Whatever may have been her motives, and pecuniary ones would not have been unlawful, she had a perfect right to open a school for pupils of any color whatever.”³⁷ Crandall summed up her decision with a question: “Shall I be inactive and permit prejudice … or shall I venture to enlist in the ranks of those who with the Sword of Truth dare hold combat with prevailing iniquity?”³⁸

On Monday night, February 25, 1833, a group of men who had supported Crandall’s original school gathered to discuss the new developments. The following morning, the day after Crandall told the white students of their dismissal, “four of the most powerful men of the town” called on Crandall at nine o’clock in the morning.³⁹ Attorney and justice of the peace Rufus Adams, attorney Daniel Frost Jr., Dr. Andrew Harris, and merchant Richard Fenner agreed to the task of “persuading her, if possible, to give up the project.”⁴⁰ One of Crandall’s opponents later wrote that the men made their case for Miss Crandall to reconsider her actions with great respect and decorum.⁴¹

Crandall did not view the men and their treatment of her as either respectful or polite. Immediately after they left her home, she wrote that they had focused on “what shall be done to destroy the school.”⁴² They told Crandall they would make sure her school failed if she did not reverse her decision.⁴³ She rejected their threats and brought the meeting to a close. Crandall managed to conceal her anxiety; the men conceded that their threats failed to “produce any visible effect.”⁴⁴ As they left, however, Crandall realized she faced powerful opponents. Her initial prediction from the previous week—that any opposition to her school would quickly fade away—now changed dramatically.

As soon as the men left, Crandall wrote to Garrison. She asked him to come quickly to Canterbury and bring Arnold Buffum to support her. She then wrote to Simeon Jocelyn and told him about the threats the men had made. They will “do everything in their power to destroy my undertaking,” Crandall said.⁴⁵ She asked Jocelyn to intercede with Arthur Tappan and persuade him to come to Canterbury. Tappan’s presence “would alleviate the feelings of many,” Crandall said.⁴⁶ She closed by asking Jocelyn for help and advice, and twice asked him to write to her “IMMEDIATELY.”⁴⁷

The following day, Wednesday, February 27, 1833, word of Crandall’s plan for her school and the opposition of local town fathers reached Samuel May in Brooklyn, Connecticut. “Although a stranger, I addressed a letter to her, assuring her of my sympathy,” May said, “and of my readiness to help her all in my power.”⁴⁸ May noted that the prominent location of her schoolhouse—in the center of the town at the intersection of two main roads—likely contributed to the controversy.

“Perhaps your removal to some more retired situation would at once allay the violence of your opponents,” May wrote, “and be more favorable to your pupils, who would not be so exposed to insult as they might be where you now are.”⁴⁹ He told Crandall that Canterbury officials had scheduled a town meeting regarding the school, and if she wished, he would attend on her behalf.⁵⁰ May’s offer was significant—as a woman Crandall could not speak at a town meeting or vote on any motions. May’s unsolicited letter encouraged Crandall, and she sent a quick response begging him to come to Canterbury.⁵¹

As Crandall worked furiously to assemble those who could defend her, William Lloyd Garrison prepared to leave on a trip to England in April. He had high expectations and hoped “the enterprise will give dignity to the abolition cause in this country … and secure the patronage and applause of abolitionists in Great Britain.”⁵² Garrison expected his journey to last for at least six months and inquired among his friends for someone to serve as guest editor for the Liberator.

In Boston, Maria Stewart continued writing and speaking out. On the evening of February 27, 1833, she delivered a “Lecture on African Rights and Liberty” to an audience of men and women at the African Masonic Hall in Boston. “Talk, without effort, is nothing,” Stewart said. “We have performed the labor, they have received the profits; we have planted the vines, they have eaten the fruits … They say that we are not capable of becoming like white men, and that we can never rise to respectability in this country. They would drive us to a strange land. But before I go, the bayonet shall pierce me through. African rights and liberty is a subject that ought to fire the breast of every free man of color in these United States. …”⁵³

Stewart asked black men and women, but especially black men, to fight harder for their rights. “Show me our fearless and brave, our noble and gallant ones,” she said. “You are abundantly capable, gentlemen, of making yourselves men of distinction; and this gross neglect, on your part, causes my blood to boil within me.”⁵⁴ Years later, William Cooper Nell remembered the obstacles she faced: “Maria W. Stewart—fired with a holy zeal to speak her sentiments on the improvement of colored Americans, encountered an opposition even from her Boston circle of friends, that would have dampened the ardor of most women.”⁵⁵

As the month of February ended, Prudence Crandall anxiously waited to hear from William Lloyd Garrison, Simeon S. Jocelyn, and Samuel May. She also wanted Arnold Buffum and Arthur Tappan to help defend her school. When the committee of town fathers decided to pay Crandall a second visit, however, she again faced her opponents alone.

On Friday, March 1, 1833, Rufus Adams, Daniel Frost, Dr. Andrew Harris, and Richard Fenner returned to Crandall’s schoolhouse. At this meeting, attorney Frost led the discussion with Crandall, and “every argumentative effort was made to convince her of the impropriety and injustice of her proposed measure.”⁵⁶ Frost tried new tactics to pressure her to abandon the proposed school for black women. He ignored Crandall’s statements regarding the importance of education and her desire to “benefit the people of color.” Instead, Frost stressed “the danger of the leveling principles.”⁵⁷ What Frost meant by “leveling principles” was not the idea of providing equal opportunity for blacks in education. Frost told Crandall that he meant to use a more sensational argument. “The danger” he meant to emphasize was “intermarriage between whites and blacks.”⁵⁸

The four men, who later recalled the “kind and affecting manner” in which Frost addressed Crandall, made it clear that they intended to argue to the public that her school promoted “the amalgamation of the whites and blacks.”⁵⁹ Crandall allegedly responded to Frost’s assertion by pointing out that “Moses had a black wife.”⁶⁰ The source of the “Moses” quote may well have been Crandall herself, but during the controversy it was cited only in accounts that were hostile to her and for the purpose of changing the subject from equality in education to “amalgamation” and interracial marriage. Many years later, historian Ellen D. Larned included the “Moses” quote in her account of Crandall’s school, after she had corresponded with Crandall.

Crandall likely delivered the thoughtful “Moses” retort—she never denied it—and Frost and his committee made sure it was widely publicized as it helped them in their goal of discrediting the school. Fanning the flames of racial fear and prejudice by promoting the specter of “amalgamation” and interracial marriage promised to transform an already divisive issue into a broader panic. As a local publication soon confirmed, the inference that Crandall’s opponents promoted through repeating the “Moses had a black wife” quote was irresistible for local newspapers.

“Her reply to the committee seems to have been made in justification of the course she adopted,” one published account noted. “The public must decide whether the amalgamation of the whites and blacks is a profitable or safe doctrine.”⁶¹ Another reference to the “Moses” quote appeared in the Norwich Republican, submitted by Andrew T. Judson. “When she justified her proceedings and principles on the ground that Moses married a ‘colored woman,’ it was suggested that she might as well advocate polygamy now, because it was lawful in the days of antiquity.”⁶² The controversy escalated to a point where Crandall replied publicly to deny that her school promoted interracial marriage.⁶³

After their second meeting, Frost and his companions left Crandall’s school believing they had made progress toward changing her mind and acknowledged that “she had gone on with a firmness of design, and a decision of action, worthy the holiest cause.”⁶⁴ Crandall did not, however, yield to the committee’s request that she abandon her idea of an academy for black women. On the next day, March 2nd, an issue of the Liberator appeared containing both an article and an advertisement promoting Crandall’s “High School for Young Colored Ladies and Misses.”⁶⁵ The advertisement contained Crandall’s thanks to those who had previously patronized her school and announced that the school would reopen for “young ladies and Misses of color” on Monday, April 1, 1833. Many courses would be offered, including reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, art, piano, and French.

References for Crandall’s school no longer included the local Board of Visitors, Canterbury men of good standing. Instead, her new list of supporters consisted of leading abolitionists from Boston, New York City, Providence, and Philadelphia. They included Arthur Tappan; George Bourne; Samuel Cornish and the other ministers she met in New York;⁶⁶ Joseph Cassey, a black banker from Philadelphia who was “the architect of his own fortune”;⁶⁷ James Forten, a black businessman who owned a sail-making factory in Philadelphia;⁶⁸ George W. Benson of Providence; Arnold Buffum of Boston; and William Lloyd Garrison. There were three men from Connecticut: Simeon S. Jocelyn; Jehiel C. Beman, a black minister of the Cross Street AME Zion Church in Middletown and an agent for the Liberator;⁶⁹ and Prudence’s new friend and ally, Samuel May of Brooklyn. The references included no one from Canterbury. Crandall submitted the advertisement on February 25, 1833, the same day she informed her students of their dismissal.

Garrison wrote a separate article about Prudence Crandall’s new school in the same issue of the Liberator. He told his readers that she “richly deserves the patronage and confidence of the people of color” and promoted her diverse curriculum and schoolhouse—“she has a large and commodious house.” Tuition was affordable, Garrison said, and “her terms are very low.”⁷⁰ He recommended the village of Canterbury as a “central and pleasant” location for a school.

Garrison acknowledged that Crandall’s new school faced challenges and opposition. “In making the alteration in her school, Miss C. runs a great risk; but let her manifest inflexible courage and perseverance, and she will be sustained triumphantly. Reproach and persecution may assail her at the commencement, but they will soon expire.”⁷¹ The Liberator carried the news to leading advocates of emancipation, both black and white, throughout the northeastern states and beyond. With Garrison’s promotion in the Liberator, Prudence Crandall’s school became a cause for the national abolitionist movement. The town fathers of Canterbury were stunned.

Andrew T. Judson was one of Prudence Crandall’s earliest supporters, a member of the school’s Board of Visitors, and her neighbor—he lived directly across the street from her schoolhouse. He was an early and strong supporter of the American Colonization Society, a well-known local attorney and public servant, and a director of both the Windham County Bank and the Windham County Mutual Fire Insurance Company.⁷² He also served as the state’s attorney for Windham County and had done so since 1819, prosecuting criminal cases on behalf of the state.

Judson had worked hard to become a leading citizen of Canterbury. He was born in the nearby town of Ashford on November 29, 1784. His father, also named Andrew, graduated from Dartmouth College in 1775—only the fifth graduating class for that institution—and served as a Congregational minister of a small church in Eastford, Connecticut. His father’s college degree and religious calling did not provide a guarantee of a comfortable life. When Andrew was only six weeks old his mother Elizabeth died, leaving Andrew, his father, and two older brothers. His father remarried and had four additional children, a girl and three boys. The family struggled through financial hard times and personal tragedy. One Judson child died in infancy, and a son, John, was described as an “invalid.”⁷³ Perhaps as a result of the personal and financial stress, Judson’s father was “afflicted with a hypochondriac melancholy that at times incapacitated him for public service.”⁷⁴

Andrew T. Judson received his education at the local Eastford Common School that met a few months per year and provided only the basics. Judson knew this minimal schooling would “limit in a great degree my prospects and hopes for the future.”⁷⁵ In 1802, when Judson was eighteen years old, his father’s Dartmouth connections helped put him on a life-changing path. He met attorney Sylvester Gilbert of Hebron—a Dartmouth classmate of his father’s—and Gilbert agreed to take Andrew under his wing and tutor him in the law. In addition to his law practice, Gilbert served as a state representative in the Connecticut Legislature and as the state’s attorney for Tolland County. Gilbert later served in the U.S. Congress, the Connecticut State Senate, and as a judge.⁷⁶

After four years of study and apprenticeship, Andrew Judson qualified to practice law in 1806.⁷⁷ His father did not live to see his son become a lawyer; he died one year earlier. Through his father’s Dartmouth connection, however, Judson’s life changed. In his career in politics and the law, Andrew Judson almost precisely followed in the footsteps of Sylvester Gilbert, including election to both houses in the state legislature and to the U.S. Congress. In addition to serving as a state’s attorney, Judson also became a judge. Judson, however, faced the challenges of different times that more than once placed him in the center of great controversy.

Initially, Judson declined to pursue a legal career in Connecticut and left his native state “to seek a new home, and a field for business.”⁷⁸ He went to Vermont to live among Judson family relatives and stayed for about one year; he returned to Connecticut “homesick and discontented.”⁷⁹ He decided to settle in Canterbury to begin a law practice and start a political career. He aligned himself with the Federalist Party, the dominant political party in Connecticut.

When the United States went to war with Great Britain in the War of 1812, Andrew Judson and the Federalists strongly opposed the war. The New England economy depended on trade with Great Britain, and the war threatened local jobs. Governors from New England withheld state militia support; some in the Federalist Party even discussed the possibility of secession from the Union.⁸⁰ Many Federalists believed the war would destroy the country. Instead, it destroyed the Federalists.⁸¹ In 1813, as U.S. ships attempted to leave the Connecticut harbor of New London in an effort to break through a British blockade, someone on shore reportedly alerted the British warships by signaling with blue lanterns. The American ships were forced to turn around and remain in the harbor. The press blamed the Federalists, and the phrase “blue light Federalist” was born, equating Federalists with treachery and treason.⁸² An investigation raised many questions as to whether a British or American spy gave the “blue light” signal, or whether there was any signal at all. The Republican Party, however, succeeded in portraying the Federalists—who opposed the war—as unpatriotic and responsible for “the blackest treason.”⁸³

Andrew Judson never served his country in the War of 1812. In hindsight he viewed his failure to enlist as a terrible mistake even though the Federalists opposed the war and many refused to serve. Public support for the war increased as it progressed. Judson later claimed that he tried to enlist and was rejected because he was not a political friend of the officials who processed new recruits.⁸⁴ His explanation did not make sense, however, as recruits were hard to come by and the national goal of fifty thousand volunteers was never met.⁸⁵ Judson realized he had miscalculated badly by siding with the Federalists in their opposition to the war. He found himself on the wrong side of public opinion and resolved not to make that mistake again.

With a newfound appreciation for the unpredictable nature of politics, Judson ran for office and won election to the State House of Representatives in 1813. The tradition in the House at that time, Judson wrote, was for new members to be seen and not heard. Judson behaved accordingly. “I made no speeches,” Judson wrote. “Once or twice an opportunity offered, but the idea alone gave me the palpitation to such a degree, that it was well my seat was retained.”⁸⁶

There were two significant changes in Judson’s life in 1816. On March 20, when he was thirty-one years old, he married Rebecca W. Warren of Windham. He said they “trudged along together, harmonizing in our views, and mode of life, as well and perhaps better than most others.”⁸⁷ Judson also changed political parties and no longer associated with the “blue light Federalists.” He joined the new Toleration Party.⁸⁸ The Toleration Party replaced the Federalist Party as the dominant force in Connecticut politics, and Judson’s switch came at an opportune time. The Toleration candidates for governor and lieutenant governor won the election of 1816, and the new party took control of the general assembly in 1817.⁸⁹

As a more seasoned politician, Judson became involved in the creation of the state constitution in 1818. He regarded drafting the Connecticut Constitution as the most important achievement of the Toleration Party. At the end of 1819, the state’s attorney for Windham County, William Perkins, died, and Judson secured the plum patronage position. “There is perhaps no point in my life to which I can turn with more propriety, and say this is the most important,” Judson later said.⁹⁰ The office of state’s attorney became an elected office with a two-year term in 1821; Judson served a total of twenty-five years in that post.

Andrew Judson had great political ambitions and sought numerous offices during the next two decades. While serving in the legislature in 1829, he competed with State Representative Thomas S. Williams for an appointment to a judgeship. “The Hon. Thomas S. Williams and myself were opposing candidates for a seat on the bench … and he was successful, which I did not much regret,” Judson later wrote, “and this session closed all in good humor.”⁹¹ Judson won election to the state senate in 1830 and lost in a bid for reelection in 1831. He expressed interest in the U.S. Senate seat in 1832—at that time senators were elected by a vote of the state legislature instead of the public. After three ballots, Judson—who had changed parties again and was affiliated with supporters of Andrew Jackson in the Jackson Party—lost to Republican Nathan Smith.⁹² Judson returned to the state legislature as a member of the house in 1833.⁹³

Andrew Judson and his wife Rebecca did not have any children. In 1822, however, they took in Charles Ames, a ten-year-old boy whose mother recently had died and whose sea captain father, Isaac, either was deceased or was forced to give up his son because of time away on merchant ships. Andrew and Rebecca cared for Charles until he turned eighteen in 1830, just one year before Prudence Crandall started her school across the street from Judson’s home. When Charles left Canterbury for New York and life on his own, Judson provided him with a “certificate of good moral character,” documenting his good behavior and fitness as a young man.⁹⁴ Charles Ames loved Andrew and Rebecca Judson and was grateful for their care. Ames married in 1837; when he celebrated the birth of his first child in 1838, he named his son Andrew Judson Ames.

As the controversy concerning Prudence Crandall’s school for “young ladies and Misses of color” intensified, Andrew Judson organized the opposition. Judson saw Crandall’s plan as an attack on all he and others had done to improve Canterbury and Windham County. Crandall had benefited from Judson’s good will and the help of other town leaders when she launched her school; now she turned away from her original supporters and embraced the abolitionists from Boston and New York. Judson called the abolitionists “dictators” and was offended by their opposition to the Colonization Society.⁹⁵ Judson believed Crandall’s new antislavery friends cared nothing for Canterbury.

23. Andrew T. Judson, initially a supporter of Crandall, became her chief antagonist and prosecutor after the admission of the black student Sarah Harris.

Andrew T. Judson. Collection of the Prudence Crandall Museum, Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development.

The two meetings between town leaders and Prudence Crandall failed to resolve the controversy, so Judson called for a formal town meeting. Word quickly circulated concerning a meeting at the Congregational Church, and George W. Benson read the news in the Liberator while in Providence. On Saturday, March 2, 1833, Benson decided to travel to Canterbury to offer his help. He arrived at Crandall’s schoolhouse on Sunday morning and found her “calm and undaunted” in the face of increasing opposition.⁹⁶ Crandall told him about the meetings with the town fathers.⁹⁷ Later that Sunday morning, and just before the start of services at the Congregational Church, Benson watched as Andrew Judson walked from the church to the town signpost across the street where official notices were displayed. As Judson posted a notice for the March 9 town meeting for the purpose of denouncing Crandall’s school, Benson thought it was hypocritical for Judson to take this official action on the Sabbath.⁹⁸

The letters that Prudence Crandall wrote at the end of February, pleading for help, were delivered in early March. On receiving Crandall’s letter, Samuel May contacted his friend George Benson, who was visiting his family in Brooklyn. When May learned that Benson had already met with Crandall the previous day, he convinced Benson to go with him to Canterbury again that afternoon so that he could meet Crandall and offer his help.⁹⁹ Arnold Buffum learned that Crandall had requested his help. Buffum told Garrison he could not go to Canterbury given the increasingly volatile situation. “I am informed that the excitement is so great that it would not be safe for me to appear there,” Buffum wrote.¹⁰⁰

On arriving in Canterbury, townspeople warned May and Benson that if they proceeded to Crandall’s school they might face physical attack because of the “furious” opposition to Crandall’s school.¹⁰¹ May and Benson learned that Crandall’s decision to teach black women surprised everyone in town, including her friends and supporters. A man who otherwise thought the town reaction to Crandall’s decision was a “dreadful outrage” said she had not acted “judiciously” in her decision to admit Sarah Harris.¹⁰² James Monroe, a Canterbury resident who years later taught political science at Oberlin College, complained about the “suddenness” of Crandall’s action.¹⁰³ Despite the warnings, May and Benson proceeded to the schoolhouse and met with Crandall. They found her “resolved and tranquil” in the midst of controversy.¹⁰⁴ Their discussion focused on the town meeting and Crandall’s dilemma—as a woman, she could not go to the meeting and speak for herself. Crandall turned to Samuel May, a man she had just met, and asked him to serve as her representative and defender at the town meeting. “Certainly, come what will,” May replied.¹⁰⁵

Crandall told May that he should explain why she chose to change her school. She did not wish to dismiss her white students, but did so only after parents threatened to withdraw their daughters. Crandall wanted May to explain that she could not expel Sarah Harris and deeply wound “the feelings of an excellent girl” and add “to the mountain load of injuries and insults already heaped upon the colored people.”¹⁰⁶ Crandall knew, however, that those explanations would not end the controversy. At May’s suggestion, Crandall agreed to offer to move the school to another location in Canterbury. As May recalled, “She seemed determined only upon this point—to maintain her right to teach colored pupils. … She claimed that she had a right to do this, on her own premises, in Canterbury.”¹⁰⁷ Crandall told May she did not wish to offend her neighbors and “was perfectly willing to accede to any fair proposals for a removal to some more retired situation.”¹⁰⁸ She told May he could extend this offer at the town meeting.¹⁰⁹

As the week progressed, Crandall learned that Arnold Buffum planned to deliver a lecture twenty miles south in Norwich, Connecticut. She left her sister Almira in charge of the school and traveled to meet Buffum and implore him to come to the Canterbury town meeting.¹¹⁰ George Benson invited his brother, Henry Benson, to attend the meeting and wrote to Garrison to inform him of the new developments. Garrison said Crandall’s school “must be sustained at all hazards.”¹¹¹ Keeping in mind the earlier failure to create a school for black men in New Haven, Garrison told Benson that Crandall’s school must succeed. “If we suffer the school to be put down in Canterbury, other places will partake of the panic, and also prevent its introduction in their vicinity,” Garrison wrote. “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.”¹¹²

Garrison knew that Benson’s trip to Canterbury to see Prudence Crandall on March 3 was physically costly to Benson; Benson suffered frostbite on all of his fingertips on both hands, causing him great pain and discomfort.¹¹³ “Ours is truly a great and arduous cause, my brother; but it is also a holy and benevolent cause, and it is one day to be a popular and triumphant cause,” Garrison wrote. “Be not downcast; glory in the name of an abolitionist; speak always confidently of success; remember that the heavier the cross, the brighter the crown. … A spirit like yours cannot droop.”¹¹⁴ Garrison reminded Benson of the importance of Crandall’s school to the abolitionist movement throughout New England. “In Boston,” Garrison wrote, “we are all excited at the Canterbury affair.”¹¹⁵

On Saturday, March 9, just hours prior to the town meeting, Samuel May and George Benson arrived at Prudence Crandall’s school in Canterbury. Garrison sent words of encouragement to May. “Our brother May deserves much credit,” Garrison wrote. “If anyone can make them ashamed of their conduct, he is the man.”¹¹⁶ May was apprehensive. Benson intended to stay with Crandall at the schoolhouse during the town meeting, leaving May to face a hostile crowd alone.¹¹⁷ When May and Benson arrived at the schoolhouse, they were surprised to find Arnold Buffum, the agent for the New England Anti-Slavery Society, already strategizing with Crandall and planning for the evening’s meeting.¹¹⁸ Crandall’s trip to Norwich to appeal to Buffum had succeeded. Together May and Buffum would defend Crandall’s school at the meeting.

15. Arnold Buffum, an abolitionist and ally of Crandall and Garrison.

Arnold Buffum. From Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, vol. 1 (New York: Century, 1885), 430.

Crandall prepared letters of introduction for May and Buffum, specifying that she authorized them to speak for her at the town meeting. She also entrusted them to negotiate on her behalf and agreed to be “bound by any agreement” they made regarding her school.¹¹⁹ Crandall told May that since her house was “one of the most conspicuous in the village, and not wholly paid for, if her opponents would take it off her hands, repaying what she had given for it, cease from molesting her, and allow her time to procure another house for her school, it would be better that she should move to some more retired part of the town or neighborhood.”¹²⁰ May believed this proposal would resolve the controversy.

The town meeting took place at the Congregational Church located just off the town center. The church was built in 1805 in a New England style, with balconies on three sides and room above and below for hundreds of people.¹²¹ May and Buffum made the short walk from Crandall’s home to the church as others arrived and took their seats. As they entered, they were struck at the turnout; the church was “nearly filled to its utmost capacity.”¹²² All the seats in the high-backed pews were taken, and many men stood in the aisles. May and Buffum squeezed their way down the side aisle and sat in a wall pew near the front of the church.¹²³

Henry Benson, from Providence, entered the church just as the meeting started and kept notes for an article he planned to write for the Liberator. Benson was relieved to see Samuel May and Arnold Buffum.¹²⁴ Townspeople quickly approved a motion for Asahel Bacon to serve as moderator of the meeting; Bacon was a friend of Andrew Judson and an opponent of Crandall’s school. Attorney Rufus Adams introduced a series of resolutions regarding the school, and Judson, as town clerk, read each one, including a statement which predicted that Crandall’s school would attract “large numbers of persons from other states whose characters and habits might be various and unknown.” The result, Judson said, would be to render “insecure the persons, property, and reputations of our own citizens.”¹²⁵

Rufus Adams rose to speak. He recounted how Crandall started her school with the support of the town and how she ungratefully disregarded those who helped her. He questioned why she dismissed students from local families in order to give her school over to abolitionists. Adams “threw out several mean and low insinuations against the motives of those who were encouraging her enterprise,” Samuel May later wrote.¹²⁶ When Adams finished, Andrew Judson spoke. He predicted the destruction of the town if Crandall’s school for colored children succeeded. The school would attract criminals and townspeople would fear to leave their homes, Judson said. Judson cited the example of New Haven, where citizens at a town meeting successfully blocked a proposed college for black men. “Shall it be said,” Judson asked, “that we cannot, that we dare not resist?”¹²⁷

Judson either had heard of the proposed compromise to move the school or he anticipated it, because he said he “was not willing, for the honor and welfare of the town, that even one corner of it should be appropriated to such a purpose.”¹²⁸ Judson could not stand the idea of a school for black women across the street from his home or anywhere in town. “He twanged every chord that could stir the coarser passions of the human heart,” Samuel May said, “and with such sad success that his hearers seemed to be filled with the apprehension that a dire calamity was impending over them, that Miss Crandall was the author or instrument of it, that there were powerful conspirators engaged with her in the plot, and that the people of Canterbury should be roused, by every consideration of self-preservation.”¹²⁹

Judson knew that Prudence Crandall had authorized Samuel May and Arnold Buffum to represent her at the meeting. He called attention to Crandall’s new abolitionist friends and her claim that she had the support of Arthur Tappan. “Are we to be frightened because Arthur Tappan of New York and some others are worth a few millions of dollars, and are going to use it in oppressing us? No, I know you will answer, No.”¹³⁰ Judson concluded by referencing an old vagrancy law that prohibited out-of-town persons from becoming a burden and saying that it prohibited Crandall from providing room and board to black women from other states.

Other speakers followed Judson; they all denounced the proposed school and raised questions about the character and motives of Prudence Crandall and her supporters. Henry Benson wrote that Crandall’s school was “basely misrepresented.”¹³¹ There was one speaker, however, who did not follow the script that Andrew Judson had crafted for the town meeting. George S. White unexpectedly challenged most of what Judson and others said about Prudence Crandall.¹³² White was no stranger to controversy. He had served as the Episcopal minister for the Trinity Church in Brooklyn, Connecticut, beginning in 1818, but did not stay long. Initially very popular, White encountered difficulties that included feuding with influential members of his parish, including Daniel Putnam, son of Revolutionary War hero Israel Putnam. After two years his tenure “ended in alienation and detriment.”¹³³ White moved to Canterbury, where he bought a house near the center of town and frequently performed the Episcopal service for the St. Thomas Parish.

The fate of Canterbury was not at stake in the Crandall school controversy, White told those at the town meeting. White specifically took issue with Andrew Judson’s claim that black children at Crandall’s school would ruin Canterbury, and he disagreed with Judson’s opinion that an old vagrancy statute prevented out-of-state students from coming to Canterbury. The law did not concern students attending a school, White said.¹³⁴

As White spoke, others tried to shout him down. Solomon Paine, an attorney and justice of the peace, appealed to the moderator to rule White out of order and cut off his comments, which Asahel Bacon did.¹³⁵ In the midst of the uproar, Arnold Buffum and Samuel May approached Bacon and presented their letters of introduction. They requested to speak on behalf of Prudence Crandall. Bacon handed the letters to Andrew Judson. May wrote that Judson “instantly broke forth with greater violence than before.”¹³⁶ Judson accused May and Buffum of insulting the town by interfering with its local concerns.¹³⁷ Since they were not residents of Canterbury, Judson noted, they had no right to speak. “Other gentlemen sprang to their feet in hot displeasure,” May said, “poured out their tirades upon Miss Crandall and her accomplices, and, with fists doubled in our faces, roughly admonished us that if we opened our lips there, they would inflict upon us the utmost penalty of the law, if not a more immediate vengeance.”¹³⁸

Given the increasing hostility at the town meeting, May and Buffum said nothing. No one spoke on behalf of Prudence Crandall. 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