Handbook of Home Rule: Being Articles on the Irish Question
History
Handbook of Home Rule: Being Articles on the Irish Question
Home rule -- Ireland; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901; Irish question
"The story of this remarkable case cannot be pursued here except in
brief.... It will be enough to say that the struggle between the modest
and heroic young Quaker woman and the town lasted for nearly two years;
that the school was opened in April; that attempts were immediately made
under the law to frighten the pupils away and to fine Miss Crandall for
harbouring them; that in May an Act prohibiting private schools for
non-resident coloured persons, and providing for the expulsion of the
latter, was procured from the legislature, amid the greatest rejoicing
in Canterbury (even to the ringing of church bells); that, under this
Act, Miss Crandall was in June arrested and temporarily imprisoned in
the county jail, twice tried (August and October) and convicted; that
her case was carried up to the Supreme Court of Errors, and her
persecutors defeated on a technicality (July, 1834), and that pending
this litigation the most vindictive and inhuman measures were taken to
isolate the school from the countenance and even the physical support of
the townspeople. The shops and the meeting-house were closed against
teacher and pupils, carriage in the public conveyances was denied them,
physicians would not wait upon them, Miss Crandall's own family and
friends were forbidden, under penalty of heavy fines, to visit her, the
well was filled with manure and water from other sources refused, the
house itself was smeared with filth, assailed with rotten eggs and
stones, and finally set on fire" (vol. i. p. 321).
Miss Crandall is still living in the West, in extreme old age, and the
Connecticut legislature voted her a small pension two years ago, as a
slight expiation of the ignominy and injustice from which she had
suffered at the hands of a past generation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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