Prudence Crandall’s Legacy. Donald E. Williams
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Crandall from providing room and board to black women from other states.
Other speakers followed Judson; they all denounced the proposed school and raised questions about the character and motives of Prudence Crandall and her supporters. Henry Benson wrote that Crandall’s school was “basely misrepresented.”131 There was one speaker, however, who did not follow the script that Andrew Judson had crafted for the town meeting. George S. White unexpectedly challenged most of what Judson and others said about Prudence Crandall.132 White was no stranger to controversy. He had served as the Episcopal minister for the Trinity Church in Brooklyn, Connecticut, beginning in 1818, but did not stay long. Initially very popular, White encountered difficulties that included feuding with influential members of his parish, including Daniel Putnam, son of Revolutionary War hero Israel Putnam. After two years his tenure “ended in alienation and detriment.”133 White moved to Canterbury, where he bought a house near the center of town and frequently performed the Episcopal service for the St. Thomas Parish.
The fate of Canterbury was not at stake in the Crandall school controversy, White told those at the town meeting. White specifically took issue with Andrew Judson’s claim that black children at Crandall’s school would ruin Canterbury, and he disagreed with Judson’s opinion that an old vagrancy statute prevented out-of-state students from coming to Canterbury. The law did not concern students attending a school, White said.134
As White spoke, others tried to shout him down. Solomon Paine, an attorney and justice of the peace, appealed to the moderator to rule White out of order and cut off his comments, which Asahel Bacon did.135 In the midst of the uproar, Arnold Buffum and Samuel May approached Bacon and presented their letters of introduction. They requested to speak on behalf of Prudence Crandall. Bacon handed the letters to Andrew Judson. May wrote that Judson “instantly broke forth with greater violence than before.”136 Judson accused May and Buffum of insulting the town by interfering with its local concerns.137 Since they were not residents of Canterbury, Judson noted, they had no right to speak. “Other gentlemen sprang to their feet in hot displeasure,” May said, “poured out their tirades upon Miss Crandall and her accomplices, and, with fists doubled in our faces, roughly admonished us that if we opened our lips there, they would inflict upon us the utmost penalty of the law, if not a more immediate vengeance.”138
Given the increasing hostility at the town meeting, May and Buffum said nothing. No one spoke on behalf of Prudence Crandall. Henry Benson noted, “One thing was allowed—one thing was admitted—that the lady had borne an irreproachable character up to the time she first contemplated a school for colored females. Her unpardonable sin lay altogether in her wish to elevate the moral and intellectual condition of the blacks.”139
The resolutions passed unanimously, and Asahel Bacon proclaimed the meeting adjourned.140 Judson approached May and told him he should go home and stay out of the matter. Instead, May shouted to those still in the church to stay so that they might hear Miss Crandall’s point of view.141 Since the meeting had ended, anyone from any town could speak.
“Men of Canterbury, I have a word for you!” May said. “Hear me!”142 About one-third of those who attended the meeting stayed to listen. May quickly answered the false charges against Crandall and her school and defended the character of black students. When Arnold Buffum began to speak, six trustees of the church came forward and demanded that May and Buffum cease their discussion and leave the church immediately.143
11. Canterbury Congregational Church, the location of the town meetings regarding Crandall’s school.
Canterbury Congregational Church. Collection of the Prudence Crandall Museum, Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, State of Connecticut.
Outside on the church lawn, May continued to answer questions for the few who remained. When May returned home to Brooklyn, he wondered what would come of “the day’s uproar.”144 Henry Benson was appalled. “Such disgraceful proceedings I never witnessed before.”145
Benson speculated that the views of Crandall’s opponents, while popular at the moment, would not stand the test of time. “The present generation may hail them as just, but the very next will execrate them,” Benson wrote, three days after the town meeting. “The names of those who have been the most active in attempting the suppression of this school may be honored now, but future ages will consign them to ignominy and shame.”146
4 : A Mountain of Prejudice
Andrew Judson immediately launched a campaign to publicize the outcome of the Canterbury town meeting and to attack Crandall’s school. In letters to the local newspapers he praised the civility of Crandall’s opponents and criticized Crandall’s “foreign” supporters, who Judson said tried to intimidate the citizens of Canterbury. By Judson’s own count there were just five supporters of Prudence Crandall at the Canterbury meeting.1 While there were many hundreds of citizens in attendance—and no one voted against the resolutions—Judson wrote that Crandall’s five supporters presented “an array of foreign power, bringing with it boasted foreign influence.”2 Their presence was “imposing” according to Judson, and they “took conspicuous posts” within the church.3 “Their talking, language, and note-taking became offensive, and necessarily disturbed the progress of the meeting.”4
Judson promoted the idea that outsiders had disrupted the town meeting. Another account, signed “A Friend of the Colonization Cause” and likely written by Judson, noted that foreigners, having “thrust themselves into (the) assembly of the freemen of Canterbury … soon began to disturb the meeting by whispering, laughing, and … taking notes, etc.”5 The odd objection to “taking notes” caught the attention of Samuel May, who replied in a published letter addressed to Judson. “Permit me to say sir, if you or some of your coadjutors had adopted the precaution of ‘taking notes’ at the time (for which precaution you seem to be offended at one of the Providence young men) you probably would have given as correct an account of the meeting as he has done in the Liberator, and not committed so many mistakes in your communications to the Norwich papers …”6
Judson also criticized the brief speeches by May and Buffum following the meeting. “Their language was so highly charged with threats,” Judson said, and their “conduct so reprehensible” that the trustees of the church had no choice but to demand that they cease and desist.7 Local newspapers printed Judson’s false characterization of the meeting and its aftermath.
On Monday, March 11, 1833, two days after the town meeting, Judson traveled to Brooklyn to see Samuel May. Judson told May he did not have any personal dislike for him and apologized for “certain epithets” Judson delivered in “the excitement of the public indignation of his neighbors.”8 May later wrote an extensive and verbatim account of his exchange with Judson.
May told Judson that that he was “ready, with Miss Crandall’s consent, to settle the difficulty” with Judson and the people of Canterbury peaceably.9 May said that Crandall would agree to move her school to another location in Canterbury if she could recover what she paid for the house. Judson rejected any such compromise.
“Mr. May, we are not merely opposed to the establishment of that school in Canterbury,” Judson said. “We mean there shall not be such a school set up anywhere in our state. The colored people never can rise from their menial condition in our country … They are an inferior race of beings, and never can or ought to be recognized as the equals of the whites. Africa is the place for them. … The sooner you Abolitionists abandon your project the better for our country, for the niggers, and yourselves.”10
May told Judson that the United States must recognize the rights God gave to all men. “Education is one of the primal, fundamental rights of all the children of men,” May said. “If you and your neighbors in Canterbury had quietly consented that Sarah Harris, whom you knew to be