Prudence Crandall’s Legacy. Donald E. Williams
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political science at Oberlin College, complained about the “suddenness” of Crandall’s action.103 Despite the warnings, May and Benson proceeded to the schoolhouse and met with Crandall. They found her “resolved and tranquil” in the midst of controversy.104 Their discussion focused on the town meeting and Crandall’s dilemma—as a woman, she could not go to the meeting and speak for herself. Crandall turned to Samuel May, a man she had just met, and asked him to serve as her representative and defender at the town meeting. “Certainly, come what will,” May replied.105
Crandall told May that he should explain why she chose to change her school. She did not wish to dismiss her white students, but did so only after parents threatened to withdraw their daughters. Crandall wanted May to explain that she could not expel Sarah Harris and deeply wound “the feelings of an excellent girl” and add “to the mountain load of injuries and insults already heaped upon the colored people.”106 Crandall knew, however, that those explanations would not end the controversy. At May’s suggestion, Crandall agreed to offer to move the school to another location in Canterbury. As May recalled, “She seemed determined only upon this point—to maintain her right to teach colored pupils. … She claimed that she had a right to do this, on her own premises, in Canterbury.”107 Crandall told May she did not wish to offend her neighbors and “was perfectly willing to accede to any fair proposals for a removal to some more retired situation.”108 She told May he could extend this offer at the town meeting.109
As the week progressed, Crandall learned that Arnold Buffum planned to deliver a lecture twenty miles south in Norwich, Connecticut. She left her sister Almira in charge of the school and traveled to meet Buffum and implore him to come to the Canterbury town meeting.110 George Benson invited his brother, Henry Benson, to attend the meeting and wrote to Garrison to inform him of the new developments. Garrison said Crandall’s school “must be sustained at all hazards.”111 Keeping in mind the earlier failure to create a school for black men in New Haven, Garrison told Benson that Crandall’s school must succeed. “If we suffer the school to be put down in Canterbury, other places will partake of the panic, and also prevent its introduction in their vicinity,” Garrison wrote. “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.”112
Garrison knew that Benson’s trip to Canterbury to see Prudence Crandall on March 3 was physically costly to Benson; Benson suffered frostbite on all of his fingertips on both hands, causing him great pain and discomfort.113 “Ours is truly a great and arduous cause, my brother; but it is also a holy and benevolent cause, and it is one day to be a popular and triumphant cause,” Garrison wrote. “Be not downcast; glory in the name of an abolitionist; speak always confidently of success; remember that the heavier the cross, the brighter the crown. … A spirit like yours cannot droop.”114 Garrison reminded Benson of the importance of Crandall’s school to the abolitionist movement throughout New England. “In Boston,” Garrison wrote, “we are all excited at the Canterbury affair.”115
On Saturday, March 9, just hours prior to the town meeting, Samuel May and George Benson arrived at Prudence Crandall’s school in Canterbury. Garrison sent words of encouragement to May. “Our brother May deserves much credit,” Garrison wrote. “If anyone can make them ashamed of their conduct, he is the man.”116 May was apprehensive. Benson intended to stay with Crandall at the schoolhouse during the town meeting, leaving May to face a hostile crowd alone.117 When May and Benson arrived at the schoolhouse, they were surprised to find Arnold Buffum, the agent for the New England Anti-Slavery Society, already strategizing with Crandall and planning for the evening’s meeting.118 Crandall’s trip to Norwich to appeal to Buffum had succeeded. Together May and Buffum would defend Crandall’s school at the meeting.
15. Arnold Buffum, an abolitionist and ally of Crandall and Garrison.
Arnold Buffum. From Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, vol. 1 (New York: Century, 1885), 430.
Crandall prepared letters of introduction for May and Buffum, specifying that she authorized them to speak for her at the town meeting. She also entrusted them to negotiate on her behalf and agreed to be “bound by any agreement” they made regarding her school.119 Crandall told May that since her house was “one of the most conspicuous in the village, and not wholly paid for, if her opponents would take it off her hands, repaying what she had given for it, cease from molesting her, and allow her time to procure another house for her school, it would be better that she should move to some more retired part of the town or neighborhood.”120 May believed this proposal would resolve the controversy.
The town meeting took place at the Congregational Church located just off the town center. The church was built in 1805 in a New England style, with balconies on three sides and room above and below for hundreds of people.121 May and Buffum made the short walk from Crandall’s home to the church as others arrived and took their seats. As they entered, they were struck at the turnout; the church was “nearly filled to its utmost capacity.”122 All the seats in the high-backed pews were taken, and many men stood in the aisles. May and Buffum squeezed their way down the side aisle and sat in a wall pew near the front of the church.123
Henry Benson, from Providence, entered the church just as the meeting started and kept notes for an article he planned to write for the Liberator. Benson was relieved to see Samuel May and Arnold Buffum.124 Townspeople quickly approved a motion for Asahel Bacon to serve as moderator of the meeting; Bacon was a friend of Andrew Judson and an opponent of Crandall’s school. Attorney Rufus Adams introduced a series of resolutions regarding the school, and Judson, as town clerk, read each one, including a statement which predicted that Crandall’s school would attract “large numbers of persons from other states whose characters and habits might be various and unknown.” The result, Judson said, would be to render “insecure the persons, property, and reputations of our own citizens.”125
Rufus Adams rose to speak. He recounted how Crandall started her school with the support of the town and how she ungratefully disregarded those who helped her. He questioned why she dismissed students from local families in order to give her school over to abolitionists. Adams “threw out several mean and low insinuations against the motives of those who were encouraging her enterprise,” Samuel May later wrote.126 When Adams finished, Andrew Judson spoke. He predicted the destruction of the town if Crandall’s school for colored children succeeded. The school would attract criminals and townspeople would fear to leave their homes, Judson said. Judson cited the example of New Haven, where citizens at a town meeting successfully blocked a proposed college for black men. “Shall it be said,” Judson asked, “that we cannot, that we dare not resist?”127
Judson either had heard of the proposed compromise to move the school or he anticipated it, because he said he “was not willing, for the honor and welfare of the town, that even one corner of it should be appropriated to such a purpose.”128 Judson could not stand the idea of a school for black women across the street from his home or anywhere in town. “He twanged every chord that could stir the coarser passions of the human heart,” Samuel May said, “and with such sad success that his hearers seemed to be filled with the apprehension that a dire calamity was impending over them, that Miss Crandall was the author or instrument of it, that there were powerful conspirators engaged with her in the plot, and that the people of Canterbury should be roused, by every consideration of self-preservation.”129
Judson knew that Prudence Crandall had authorized Samuel May and Arnold Buffum to represent her at the meeting. He called attention to Crandall’s new abolitionist friends and her claim that she had the support of Arthur Tappan. “Are we to be frightened because Arthur Tappan of New York and some others are worth a few millions of dollars, and are going to use it in oppressing us? No, I know you will answer,