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Chapter 8: 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 bQne 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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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 manuallabor 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
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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
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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 Marlboroa 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.
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“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
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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 brotherin-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
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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 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.
