Prudence Crandall’s Legacy. Donald E. Williams
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Harris, as a student, and the adverse reaction in the community. Crandall provided no other clue as to why she was considering such a dramatic change in the mission of her school other than to say, “I have for some months past determined if possible during the remaining part of my life to benefit the people of color.”77 She described the necessary number of students and the amount of tuition they needed to pay in order to meet the expenses of the school, and she also laid out a strategy to recruit students from Boston and cities throughout the Northeast.
Months and years later, opponents of her school claimed the idea for Crandall’s school for black women came from Garrison and that Crandall was merely a pawn of radical abolitionists. There is, however, no evidence that anyone other than Crandall originated the idea of transforming her school. When Crandall thought of the idea in response to the outcry after she admitted Sarah Harris, she broached the idea with Garrison in order to enlist his assistance—he did not know her or contact her; she reached out to him.78
“Will you be so kind as to write by the next mail, and give me your opinion on the subject,” Crandall asked Garrison. “If you consider it possible to obtain twenty or twenty-five young ladies of color to enter the school for the term of one year at the rate of $25 per quarter, including board, washing, and tuition, I will come to Boston in a few days and make some arrangements about it. I do not suppose that number can be obtained in Boston alone; but from all the large cities in the several States I thought that perhaps they might be gathered.”79
Crandall realized the Liberator had the potential to link allies together, facilitate a network of financial support, and provide the means for achieving specific goals. Crandall’s letter impressed Garrison, and he agreed to a meeting in Boston. Crandall discovered a unique ally in Garrison.
William Lloyd Garrison lived a life filled with uncertainty and risk. Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on December 12, 1805, Garrison had an older brother and sister, James and Caroline, and a younger sister, Maria Elizabeth. His parents, Abijah and Maria Garrison, had moved from Nova Scotia to Newburyport before Garrison was born. Abijah was a sailor, and the economy in Nova Scotia had collapsed. “The scarcity of bread and all kinds of vegetables was too well known in this part of Nova Scotia,” Abijah wrote.80 He could not find work. Newburyport, a seaside town with a busy harbor, had a thriving economy. In Massachusetts, Abijah found work sailing as far south as Guadeloupe to pick up shipments of sugar, oranges, and other tropical cargo.81
By the time Garrison was three years old, Portland, Maine, surpassed Newburyport as the center for shipping and shipbuilding. In 1807 a federal embargo forbidding the export of American cargo, combined with declining prices for fish, quickly wrecked the economy of Newburyport.82 Garrison’s father could not find work, and the family struggled to survive. Garrison and his siblings often were desperate with hunger. Garrison’s five-year-old sister Caroline ate a poisonous plant, and the family watched helplessly as she convulsed and died. Shortly thereafter Abijah left and never returned.83 Garrison’s family survived on income his mother Maria earned caring for infants of families connected with the Baptist church they attended. The two boys, James and William Lloyd, known to his family as Lloyd, sold homemade candy on the street, and the family ate leftover food from relief kitchens.84 With help from friends and the church, they stayed together as a family.
On the evening of May 13, 1811, a fire began in a stable near the Newburyport harbor. Winds quickly carried it to the commercial buildings, docks, and wharves of Newburyport. As residents fled, they carried their belongings to buildings they thought were safe, such as the Baptist meetinghouse. A shift in the wind, however, put the entire town at risk. For the rest of his life, Garrison remembered when as a five-year-old boy he heard the roar of the fire sweep through the city and was held aloft in the night to see flames shooting out of windows and through the roofs of nearby homes. Garrison and his family joined those in the streets who had lost everything; they tried to make their way to safety in the midst of “the incessant crash of falling buildings, the roaring of chimneys like distant thunder, the flames ascending in curling volumes from a vast extent of ruins,” and air filled with a shower of fire and ash.85 It was a horrifying disaster that devastated Newburyport and the Garrison family. In all, the fire destroyed 250 buildings, including all of the structures along the harbor, the Baptist church, and all homes in the sixteen-acre heart of the town. Hundreds of residents, including Garrison’s family, were homeless.86
Without a roof over their heads and without the support from the Baptist church, Garrison’s mother left Newburyport with her son James to live with friends in Lynn, Massachusetts. Lloyd and his younger sister Elizabeth stayed in Newburyport in the care of a neighbor. Mrs. Garrison promised to send money to help support Lloyd and his sister, but the money was never sent, even after his mother secured a job. This arrangement continued until Garrison’s eighth birthday, when an elderly couple, Ezekiel and Salome Bartlett, agreed to provide for the boy.87 The Bartletts were poor; caring for Garrison was an act of Christian charity that placed additional stress on their already meager family budget. Garrison attended school in the fall of 1814 when he was nine, but soon left to take whatever odd jobs he could find to help them all survive.88 He ran away once, traveling twenty miles on foot until a mailman picked him up and returned him home by wagon.89
His mother invited Lloyd to come live near her in Lynn with the family of Gamaliel Oliver, a shoemaker.90 Lloyd’s brother, James—who was only four years older than Lloyd—lived on his own and spent what little money he earned on alcohol. In the next four years Lloyd moved south to Baltimore and then back to Newburyport. He was shipped off to a cabinetmaker in Haverhill. All the moving around took a toll on Garrison. At thirteen years old, he ran away from the cabinetmaker and returned to Newburyport without a plan for his future.91
The Newburyport Herald had a sign in the office window, “Boy Wanted,” and Garrison walked through the door. In the fall of 1818 he began a career in publishing that lasted the rest of his life. It did not begin well. He was hired for the position of “printer’s devil.” The primitive technology of the time required printers to light a fire underneath a pot of varnish and lampblack until it became a boiling, sticky cauldron of black ink. The printer’s devil then applied the ink by hand to the metal type with sheepskin made pliable by soaking it in pails of urine. It was Garrison’s job to make the ink and soak the sheepskin.92 He thought of running away yet again, but stayed on hoping to advance from this bottom level of the newspaper business.
Garrison focused on learning his job and doing it well, and his superiors rewarded him for his hard work. He quickly advanced through the ranks of newspaper production and became an expert typesetter. He impressed the publisher of the Newburyport Herald, Ephraim Allen, with his talent and work ethic. Allen saw in Garrison some of the same ambition and determination that Allen possessed when he began his own career. Allen had purchased the Herald in 1801 when he was twenty-two years old; the newspaper went to press two days per week and had a small circulation. Allen served as the printer, editor, reporter, and carrier of the paper.93 Allen’s news-gathering technique consisted of traveling by stagecoach to Boston, purchasing all the newspapers he could find, and copying articles from other newspapers.94 Twenty years later the Herald was the leading newspaper in Newburyport with dozens of employees.
Allen promoted Garrison to the position of apprentice and invited him to board at Allen’s home. Ephraim Allen had six children, including a boy Garrison’s age. Garrison discovered a world beyond the reach of poverty. Parents and children all lived together. No one went hungry. Garrison took advantage of the family’s library and began an intense effort to educate himself; he read Shakespeare, Milton, and contemporary literature.95
By the beginning of 1823, Garrison supervised the production of the Herald. In 1826 he pursued an opportunity to purchase the Northern Chronicler, a rival newspaper in Newburyport. Ephraim Allen loaned Garrison the money needed for the purchase. Garrison was twenty years old. Allen and the staff of the Herald gave Garrison a congratulatory send-off on March 17, 1826. Garrison renamed his newspaper the Free Press and immediately plunged into local politics.96
The race for the