CHAPTER XXXVI.

PERSECUTIONS OF ABOLITIONISTS.

Ecclesiastical persecutions-La Roy Sunderland-Lewis Tappan-E. W. GoodwinPresbyteries and Church Sessions "Friends"-Charles Marriot and Isaac T. Hopper-Other modes of persecution-Principal victims Benjamin LundyWilliam Lloyd Garrison-Miss Prudence Crandall-Dr. Reuben Crandall-George Storrs-Jonathan Walker-Elijah P. Lovejoy-John B. Mahan-Alanson Work -James E. Burr-George Thompson-Charles T. Torrey-William L. Chaplin― Messrs. Drayton and Sayres.

NEITHER northern legislative enactments, nor riots, nor personal assaults, could prove of much permanent service in the work of suppressing free discussion and punishing deeds of mercy to the poor, without other and more permanent instrumentalities. These were furnished by the ecclesiastical machinery of the sects at the North, and the sanguinary slave code of the South. Whenever active abolitionists fell into the hands of either of these, they expected no mercy, or expected only to discover their mistake.

No persecutions of abolitionists have been perhaps so vexatious, so annoying, so exhausting, or, on the whole, so effective, as those suffered by some of the more active among them, in their church or ecclesiastical relations. Not that their anti-slavery principles and measures were, in very many cases, charged directly against them as heresies or crimes. It was not commonly the policy of their persecutors to pursue precisely that course. It was always easy to harass them with unfounded charges of disorderly or disorganizing conduct, and thus cripple, and harass, and disgrace, and discour age them. The trials of La Roy Sunderland, of Lewis Tappan,

and of E. W. Goodwin, were but specimens of the persecutions of scores and hundreds, if not thousands, of less prominent, but equally faithful and abused men. The records of Presbyterian Church Sessions and Presbyteries, would alone furnish ample materials for a humiliating but instructive volume of such details, even in a very condensed form. Similar persecutions have been encountered all over the country in the walks of social and domestic life. The "gospel of deliverance to the captives" has "not brought peace upon the earth, but a sword"-" a man's foes have been those of his own household;" and if the "prophets" of emancipation are looking for "honor," it seems not likely to come from those of their "own country and kindred." Even those who are now preparing to "enter into their labors" have already learned the art and policy of disparaging them.

The vast powers wielded by clerical bodies, missionary boards, conventions, and managers and committees of benevolent societies, have been exerted to cripple and crush abolitionists who would persist in agitating the slave question.

These ecclesiastical annoyances and persecutions have not been confined to the sects whose general associated action has been found recorded on the side of slavery, or whose recognized leaders have labored to press the Bible into its support. Sects claiming the reputation of being decidedly anti-slavery -sects that do not allow slaveholding among their members, nor maintain any ecclesiastical connection with slaveholders, have opposed the agitation of the subject by anti-slavery societies, and have censured and even excommunicated their members for their activity in them. The Hicksite Friends, for example, in the City and State of New York, disowned two of their most estimable members, Charles Marriot of Athens, and Isaac T. Hopper of New York city, solely for that cause. The only excuse was the sanctimonious plea that "Friends" must not mingle with "the world," nor co-operate with other sects. The real fact was, that "Friends" in general had so "mingled with the world" in its commercial cupidity and its political servility, as to sympathize with

"other sects" in their hatred of active abolitionists. Their members can co-operate with their fellow-citizens of other sects, to elect slaveholding and slave-hunting Presidents of the United States, without fear of church censure. The "Friends" in New England are extensively and largely interested in the cotton manufacture, and like most of that class, are averse to an agitation which is offensive to the planters. And hence an earnest and active Quaker abolitionist loses caste with his

sect.

It would be strange if there were not many apostacies under such trials. Yet unremitting persecution has proved less effective than a brief season of it, alternated with patronage, and flattery, and favor. It has been by these adroit appliances that the ranks of reformers, especially among clergymen and leading laymen, have been corrupted and thinned. There are many who withstood manfully the tempest of popular fury, and even the prospect of imprisonment, who have since fainted under the sunshine of political or ecclesiastical favor, or been laid asleep by the fireside of domestic quiet. But others have taken their places. "The last have been first, and the first last, for many are called, but few are chosen."

We will now notice some other forms of persecution, and in doing this, will briefly recapitulate some of the prominent cases, with the names of the victims.

BENJAMIN LUNDY was repeatedly assaulted in the streets of Baltimore, and once brutally beaten by Austin Woolfolk, a slave-trader, before any of the modern Anti-slavery Societies were organized. Mr. Lundy was a feeble man, a quiet, unresisting Quaker, but the "peculiar institutions" of Southern Chivalry provided no protection for him.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON's imprisonment in Baltimore, and the violent assault upon his person, and his imprisonment in Boston, have been narrated already.-(See Chap. XXXII.)

MISS PRUDENCE CRANDALL, a pious and benevolent young lady, established and taught a school for colored pupils, at Canterbury, Conn. Through the influence of leading mem

bers of the Colonization Society, an Act of the State Legislature against such schools was procured, and was enforced by the imprisonment of Miss Crandall, in 1833. The school having been resumed, was finally broken up by lawless violence in September, 1834.

DR. REUBEN CRANDALL of Westchester county, (N. Y.) a brother of Miss Prudence Crandall, having located himself in Washington City to teach botany, was arrested and thrown into prison, Aug. 11, 1835, on charge of circulating incendiary publications, with intent to excite the slaves to insurrection. After lying in jail above eight months, till April 15, 1836, he was brought to trial before Judge Cranch. The evidence against him only proved that he had in his trunk some anti-slavery pamphlets and papers, that the latter were used by him in wrapping up. his botanical specimens, and that, on request, he had lent to a white citizen, one of the pamphlets. The "incendiary" matter read in court from these papers, were articles against slavery, and in favor of the right of the free colored people to reside in this country. The effort to prove Dr. Crandall a member of an Anti-slavery Society failed. Yet the District Attorney, Francis S. Key, Esq., a leading advocate and an officer of the Colonization Society, by whose vigilance Dr. Crandall had been indicted and arrested, (avowing, from the first, his determination to subject him to capital punishment,) persisted, vehemently, and in the use of the most inflammatory and approbrious language, to urge upon the jury a verdict of guilty. The counsel for the accused urged that the "incendiary" matter read in court did not exceed in severity the language used by Mr. Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and other Southern gentlemen, including even Mr. Key himself, when declaiming against slavery. He attributed this excitement and prosecution to the rivalry between the Colonization and Abolition Societies.

It was a constant ruse with the orators of Colonizationism, to declaim against slavery, in order to enlist and use up the energies and means of philanthropists, while, in almost the same breath, they would justify slaveholders, and denounce the "incendiary abolitionists."

The jury, after a short deliberation, returned a verdict of not guilty. But the murderous work of the prosecutors was effected. His damp dungeon and close confinement, while awaiting the trial, had fixed upon him a lingering consumption, of which he died at Kingston, Jamaica, about the first of February, 1838. He was a gentleman of high literary and scientific acquirements, captivating manners, and dignified deportment, a scholar, a devoted Christian, and one of the purest, most disinterested, and most amiable of men. Thus was a worthy citizen of a free state incarcerated and, in effect, murdered, though adjudged innocent, in the Federal District, on the national hearth-stone, under "exclusive jurisdiction of Congress," for no fault but having come under suspicion of having disseminated publications hostile to slavery and the Colonization Society!

AMOS DRESSER of Ohio, a young student in theology, travelling in Tennessee to distribute Bibles, was flogged twenty lashes on his bare back in the public square in Nashville, July 25, 1835. His crime was being a member of an Anti-slavery Society, and having some anti-slavery publications in his trunk. Some church members assisted in the outrage.

GEO. STORRS, a Methodist preacher, and agent of the Antislavery Society, having accepted an invitation to address an Anti-slavery Society in Northfield, (N. H.) assembled with them for that purpose, December 14, 1835, but was dragged from his knees, while at prayer, by the deputy sheriff, David Tilton, in virtue of a warrant issued by Nathan Wells, Esq., Justice, on complaint of Benjamin Rogers, charging Mr. Storrs with being an "idle and disorderly person”—“a common railer and brawler "--" going about the town and county and disturbing the public peace." On trial before Judge Atkinson, he was discharged. But on the 31st of March, 1836, after having lectured at Pittsfield, N. H., Mr. Storrs was

* Vide "Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D., &c., published in Washington City, 1886-a pamphlet of 48 pages.