+-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber’s note: | | | |Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ RIGHT AND WRONG IN MASSACHUSETTS. BY MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN. There is a history in all men’s lives, Figuring the nature of the time deceased; The which observed, a man may prophesy, With a clear aim at the main chance of things As not yet come to life. _Shakespeare._ BOSTON: DOW & JACKSON’S ANTI-SLAVERY PRESS. 14 Devonshire Street. 1839. RIGHT AND WRONG. CHAPTER I. RETROSPECTION. Before bringing forward upon the stage the characters who figure in the drama, I have endeavored to make the reader acquainted with the ground on which the different scenes were to be acted. THIERRY. The position of New England in 1829, was a most cheerless one for Freedom. All the great interests of the country were nearly or remotely involved in slaveholding, through all their various arrangements, civil, ecclesiastical, mercantile and matrimonial; yet all disclaimed its alliance. Every body was, in some way or other, actively or passively, sustaining slavery; yet every body disclaimed all responsibility for its existence, opposed all efforts for its extinction, and was ‘as much anti-slavery as any body else.’ Even the natural and kindly tide of human sympathy for suffering, was turned away from the service of Freedom by the Colonization Society. The moving principles of Northern and Southern life, had become inseparably mingled below the surface of events, like the roots of giant trees beneath the soil.