Prudence Crandall’s Legacy. Donald E. Williams
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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,”