Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 2

If the mob element in Boston had learned nothing in three years, the city authorities had. Mayor Eliot found¹ all the law he wanted for calling out the militia and furnishing them with ball cartridges, though, as we are told, there was ‘no statute authority . . . to issue² orders directly to the militia until the year 1840.’ Thanks to his prompt action on May 24, the New England Anti-Slavery Convention met without disturbance at the Marlboroa Chapel on May 30, with the venerable Seth³ Sprague, of Duxbury (the father of Peleg Sprague), in the chair, and a remarkable attendance on the part of the clergy. We must pass over its doings, except the unanimous adoption of a resolution, moved at the beginning by Oliver Johnson, that women as well as men be invited to become members and participate in the proceedings. Amos A. Phelps, who had restrained himself so long in the case of the Grimkes, could endure no longer. He moved the rescinding of this resolution, and, failing in that, together with five other Orthodox clergymen and one Orthodox layman (including the Rev. Charles Fitch, the Rev. Charles T. Torrey, of Salem,⁴ and the Rev. George Trask), asked to have his name expunged from the rolls and his protest printed. They regarded the innovation as ‘injurious to the cause of the slave by connecting with it a subject foreign to it; injurious as a precedent for connecting with it other irrelevant topics.’ None the less the Convention put Abby Kelley on a committee with Oliver Johnson and Alanson St. Clair, instructing them to memorialize the New England ecclesiastical bodies to bear their testimony against slavery; and accepted their memorial as reported, against the opposition of the clerical members, chiefly Orthodox,⁵ who made various pretexts to cover up their main objection, namely, to the sex of one of the committee.⁶