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
I rejoined: “She knows we have not deserted her, and do not intend
to desert her. The law which her persecutors have persuaded our
legislators to enact is an infamous one, worthy of the Dark Ages. It
would be just as bad as it is, whether we should give bonds for her or
not. But the people generally will not so soon realize how bad, how
wicked, how cruel a law it is, unless we suffer her persecutors to
inflict upon her all the penalties it prescribes. She is willing to
bear them for the sake of the cause she has so nobly espoused. And it
is easy to foresee that Miss Crandall will be glorified, as much as her
persecutors and our State will be disgraced, by the transactions of
this day and this hour. If you see fit to keep her from imprisonment
in the cell of a murderer for having proffered the blessing of a good
education to those who, in our country, need it most, you may do so;
_we shall not_.”
They turned from us in great wrath, words falling from their lips which
I shall not repeat.
The sun had descended nearly to the horizon; the shadows of night were
beginning to fall around us. The sheriff could defer the dark deed no
longer. With no little emotion, and with words of earnest deprecation,
he gave that excellent, heroic, Christian young lady into the hands
of the jailer, and she was led into the cell of Watkins. So soon as
I had heard the bolts of her prison-door turned in the lock, and saw
the key taken out, I bowed and said, “The deed is done, completely
done. It cannot be recalled. It has passed into the history of our
nation and our age.” I went away with my steadfast friend, George W.
Benson, assured that the legislators of the State had been guilty of
a most unrighteous act; and that Miss Crandall’s persecutors had also
committed a great blunder; that they all would have much more reason to
be ashamed of her imprisonment than she or her friends could ever have.
The next day we gave the required bonds. Miss Crandall was released
from the cell of the murderer, returned home, and quietly resumed the
duties of her school, until she should be summoned as a culprit into
court, there to be tried by the infamous “Black Law of Connecticut.”
And, as we expected, so soon as the evil tidings could be carried in
that day, before Professor Morse had given to Rumor her telegraphic
wings, it was known all over the country and the civilized world that
an excellent young lady had been imprisoned as a criminal,--yes, put
into a murderer’s cell,--in the State of Connecticut, for opening a
school for the instruction of colored girls. The comments that were
made upon the deed in almost all the newspapers were far from grateful
to the feelings of her persecutors. Even many who, under the same
circumstances, would probably have acted as badly as Messrs. A. T.
Judson and Company, denounced their procedure as unchristian, inhuman,
anti-democratic, base, mean.
ARTHUR TAPPAN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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