Chapter 3: the Clerical appeal.—1837.
The Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society ensures the financial support of the Liberator, without touching the editor's independence. An orthodox Pastoral letter against the lecturing of the Grimkes, as women, in Massachusetts, is followed by a disingenuous Clerical Appeal against the conduct of the Liberator as respects the clergy. This is redoubled on the manifestation of Perfectionist doctrines by Garrison, under the influence of J. H. Noyes. The New York A. S. Managers rebuke him privately, and refuse to condemn the Appeal in their organ. Garrison maintains himself in Massachusetts, but the nucleus of a New organization is formed under Clerical auspices. The murder of Lovejoy intervenes.Henry Benson followed his father to the grave1 in less than a month, in the first half of his twentythird year; so young, and yet already a veteran in the cause. ‘At the age of sixteen his mind had the maturity2 of manhood.’ He was only nineteen when he threw3 himself ardently into the defence of Prudence Crandall against her persecutors. He took a leading part in organizing the Providence Anti-Slavery Society and in revolutionizing the public sentiment of Rhode Island. He was the last abolitionist to bid good-bye to George Thompson, whose travelling associate and secretary he had been. His services to the Liberator, as its editor4 testified, contributed largely to its permanent support. Elected in July, 1835, Secretary and General Agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, he proved the most valuable business man who had ever filled that post. ‘The adjoining room witnessed his incessant toil,’ said5 Mr. May, at the first meeting of the Society after its loss;6 ‘there he labored with an assiduity which spared not himself—and there, I hesitate not to say, he sacrificed his life. We saw his health failing—we remonstrated— but he saw the cause suffering for just such labors as his—he went on—he lingered a little while——and died.’ The speaker could not proceed for his emotion. ‘Nearly all present were in tears.’ At this meeting, not unfittingly, the perennial subject7 of the financial condition of the Liberator was brought
