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CHAPTER X.

CANTERBURY GREEN IN 1831-1834.

T this place let us read an editorial, taken from "Scribner's Magazine" for December, 1880. It is presumably from the pen of Dr. J. G. Holland. I reproduce it here simply because it is, at this time, useful reading for both sides. Let Northern people take counsel of recent history in one of their best States, and learn— several things. Let Southern people read this ugly chapter, and consider that the conduct of the people of Canterbury Green would be just as infamous if perpetrated in a Southern village. Sometimes observant persons break off ridiculous or offensive habits when they see them in other people. If any of us have, at any time or in any way, been unjust, even in our opinions, to those who were trying to do the negro good—and some of us, I for one, have been unjust at times and to some-let this Connecticut case open our eyes. Never did the maltreatment of a negro, or of a negro teacher, appear more hideous to me than in reading this case-Connecticut case I might say, since the Legislature rallied to the help of the town meeting. And this occurred

only twenty-seven years before the struggle began that was to drench this land in the blood of brothers. The Canterbury trouble involved, alas! the Congregational Church in the little village. Only twenty-seven years! No doubt there are men and women now living about Canterbury Green who took part in the persecution of brave Miss Crandall. Possibly some of the boys who behaved so unchivalrously toward her helped right manfully to conquer us of the South into the views. they now entertain.

When our Northern friends read this history, and others like it, then, before they pronounce judgment upon their Southern brethren, let them first read what St. Paul says in his Epistle to the Galatians: "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.

May this Canterbury Green history help Northern critics of the South to be more moderate and charitable. May it also lead both sides to repent

ance.

The December. "Scribner," in "Topics of the Time," says:

"We have a lesson at hand which may perhaps give our Northern people a charitable view of the Southern sentiment, and inspire them with hope of a great and radical change. We draw this from a

work recently issued by the author, Miss Ellen D. Larned, which seems to be a careful, candid, and competent history of Windham County, Connecticut. It appears that, in 1831, Miss Prudence Crandall, a spirited, well known, and popular resident of the county, started a school for girls at Canterbury Green. The school was popular and was attended not only by girls from the best families in the immediate region, but by others from other counties and other States. Among these pupils she received a colored girl. She was at once told by the parents of the white children that the colored girl must be dismissed, or that their girls would be withdrawn. from her establishment. Miss Crandall must have been a delightfully plucky woman, for she defied her patrons, sent all their children back to them, and advertised her school as a boarding-school for 'young ladies and little misses of color.' Of course the people felt themselves to be insulted, and they organized resistance. They appointed a committee of gentlemen to hold an interview with Miss Crandall and to remonstrate with her. But that sturdy person justified her course and stood by her scheme, as well she might. It was her business and it was none of theirs. The excitement in the town was without bounds. A town-meeting was hastily summoned 'to devise and adopt such measures as would effectually avert the nuisance, or speedily abate it, if it should be brought into the village.'

"In 1833 Miss Crandall opened her school, against the protest of an indignant populace, who, after the usual habit of a Yankee town, called and held another town-meeting, at which it was resolved: 'That the establishment or rendezvous falsely denominated a school, was designed by its projectors as the theater . . . to promulgate their disgusting doctrines of amalgamation and their pernicious sentiments of subverting the Union. These pupils were to have been congregated here from all quarters, under the false pretense of educating them, but really to scatter fire-brands, arrows, and death among brethren of our own blood.'

Let us remember that all this ridiculous disturbance was made about a dozen little darky girls, incapable of any seditious design, and impotent to do any sort of mischief. Against one of these little girls the people leveled an old vagrant law, requiring her to return to her home in Providence, or give security for her maintenance, on penalty of being 'whipped on the naked body.' At this time, as the author says,

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Canterbury did its best to make scholars and teachers uncomfortable. Non-intercourse and embargo acts were put in successful operation. Dealers in all sorts of wares and produce agreed to sell nothing to Miss Crandall, the stage-driver declined to carry her pupils, and neighbors refused a pail of fresh water, even though they knew that their own

sons had filled her well with stable refuse. Boys and rowdies were allowed unchecked-if not openly encouraged to exercise their utmost ingenuity in mischievous annoyance, throwing real stones and rotten eggs at the windows, and following the school with hoots and horns if it ventured to appear in the

street.

"Miss Crandall's Quaker father was threatened with mob violence, and was so terrified that he begged his daughter to yield to the demands of popular sentiment: but she was braver than he, and stood by herself and her school. Then Canterbury appealed to the Legislature, and did not appeal in vain. A statute, designed to meet the case, was enacted, which the inhabitants received with pealing bells and booming cannon, and 'every demonstration of popular delight and triumph.' This law was brought to bear upon Miss Crandall's father and mother, in the following choice note from two of their fellow-citizens:

Mrs.

"MR. CRANDALL: If you go to your daughter's, you are to be fined $100 for the first offense, $200 for the second, and double it every time. Crandall, if you go there you will be fined, and your daughter Almira will be fined, and Mr. May, and those gentlemen from Providence, [Messrs. George and Henry Benson,] if they come here, will be fined at the same rate. And your daughter, the one that has established the school for colored