Some Recollections of Our Antislavery ConflictMay, Samuel J. (Samuel Joseph)
History
Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict
May, Samuel J. (Samuel Joseph)
Antislavery movements -- United States
Well said Mrs. Maria W. Chapman, who was usually the first to give the
most pertinent expression to the best thought of every occasion,--well
said Mrs. Chapman, “Ten such men would have saved our city and country
from the indelible disgrace which has been inflicted upon them by the
outrageous proceedings of the 21st and 24th of October. Mr. Jackson
has by this act done all that _one_ man can do to redeem the character
of Boston.” And were there not nine other men in the metropolis of New
England, where dwelt descendants of Samuel Adams and Josiah Quincy,
and relatives of Joseph Warren and James Otis and John Hancock, and
other men of Revolutionary fame; were there not nine other men there to
spring to the rescue of the ark of civil liberty? Alas! they did not
appear. The abettors of slavery were in the ascendant. “The gentlemen
of property and standing” thought it good policy, both politically and
pecuniarily considered, to trample the Declaration of Independence
under foot. And the people generally seemed willing to perpetrate
wrongs far greater than Great Britain ever inflicted on their fathers.
RIOT AT UTICA, N. Y.--GERRIT SMITH.
The resort to mobocratic violence in so many parts of the Middle,
Northern, and Eastern States showed how general had become the
determination of the “gentlemen of property and standing” (as the
leaders everywhere claimed or were reported to be) to put down the
Abolitionists by _foul means_, having found it impossible to do so by
_fair_ discussion. This had been peremptorily demanded of them by their
Southern masters; and they had evidently come to the conclusion that
no other means would be effectual to stay the progress of universal,
impartial liberty. No one fact showed us how almost universally this
plan of operations was adopted, so plainly as the fact that, at the
very same time, October 21, 1835, antislavery meetings were broken up
and violently dispersed in Boston, Mass., Utica, N. Y., and Montpelier,
Vt.
Societies for the abolition of slavery had been formed in the city of
New York, and in many towns and several counties of the State. And it
had come to be obvious that their efficiency would be greatly increased
if they should be united in a State organization. Accordingly,
invitations were sent everywhere to all known associations, and to
individuals where there were no associations, calling them to meet on
the 21st of October in Utica, then the most central and convenient
place, for the purpose of forming a New York State Antislavery Society.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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