USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, Vol. III > Part 52
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Early in August, 1835, fifteen hundred prominent citizens of Boston appended their names to a call for a public meeting in Faneuil Hall, to denounce the agitation of slavery as putting in peril the existence of the Union. At this meeting men of influence charged the Abolitionists with being disturbers of the public peace, and endangering the safety of the country. The newspapers, with hardly an exception, took the same tone. The Abolitionists had sent a large number of tracts and papers to the South, - not intended for the slaves, few of whom could read them, but for the masters, whom they wished to convert. They were, however, ac- cused both at the North and South of seeking to stir up the slaves to in- surrection, and wishing them to cut their masters' throats. The community in Boston was excited against Mr. Garrison and his friends. The language of the Abolitionists was no doubt severe, and could not be otherwise. They were determined to arouse the conscience of the people. They did not strike in order to strike, but in order to hit. Their object was to rouse a sleeping nation, and woe was laid on them if they did their work negli- gently. At the same time let us do justice to those who then resisted the Abolitionists. The fear of losing Southern trade, and having Southern customers driven from Boston to New York, no doubt had its influence ; but with this was joined an honest sympathy with the difficulties and dangers of those living in Southern States, an honest fear that the violent
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
speech of the Abolitionists would endanger the peace of the land, and that it would postpone the gradual emancipation which many were then expecting. The Abolitionists were commonly regarded as wild and reck- less fanatics, who were ready to stir up strife between North and South, and excite the slaves to insurrection and murder. This was the prevailing pub- lic opinion in Boston during the first years of the Antislavery movement. It was shared by all · classes, - lawyers, legislators, the clergy, the press, and the people generally. The conversation in the parlors of the fashionable, the coarse profanity of the drinking saloons, the speeches in the Legisla- ture, and the leaders in the newspapers were in full sympathy on this sub- ject. Every man who was willing to identify himself with Mr. Garrison and his movement did it at the risk of alienating his friends, losing his business, hurting the feclings of those dearest to him, and encountering the scorn and ill-will of the community. The worst of these trials was that of being condemned by really good men, - men justly respected in Church and State. It seemed, also, a hopeless struggle, " a warfare," as Bryant said, which would " only end with life; a friendless warfare, lingering through weary day and weary ycar, in which the timid good stood aloof, the sage frowned, and the hissing bolt of scorn would too surely reach its aim." Well-meaning men went so far as to be willing to give up the sacred guar- antees of freedom in order to stop the press and shut the mouths of Aboli- tionists. Mr. William Sullivan, an excellent lawyer and worthy gentleman of Boston, printed a pamphlet, in which was expressed the hope "that Massachusetts will enact laws declaring the printing, publishing, and cir- culating pamphlets on slavery, and also holding meetings to discuss slav - ery and abolition, to be public, indictable offences, and to provide for the punishment thereof in such a manner as will more effectually prevent suclı offences." Leonard Woods, Jr., declared in the Literary and Theological Review, edited by him, that Abolitionists " were justly liable to the highest civil penalties and ecclesiastical censures." And Governor Everett, in his message to the Massachusetts Legislature in January, 1836, expressed the: opinion that the Antislavery movement would injure the condition of the slave and endanger the Union; and that any publication calculated " to excite an insurrection among the slaves had been held by highly respec- table legal authority an offence against the peace of the Commonwealth, which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law." Such being the general state of opinion among all classes of society, it is no wonder that these views soon resulted, in some of the Northern States, in acts of violence and outrage against the property and persons of the Abolitionists. Such was. the violent suppression of Miss Crandall's school for colored girls in Canterbury, Conn .; such were the mobs in New York which sacked the house of Lewis Tappan ; the mobs which destroyed Mr. Birney's press in Cincinnati, and broke up the meeting in Utica. Samuel J. May was mobbed five times in Vermont in one month. A hall in Philadelphia, built at an expense of $40,000 by the friends of free speech, was burned to the ground
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THE ANTISLAVERY MOVEMENT IN BOSTON.
by a mob, in the presence of the mayor and his police; and the public meeting held in Faneuil Hall, to denounce the Abolitionists, was followed, in two months, by the mob of " well-dressed gentlemen," which dispersed a meeting of women, destroyed an Antislavery sign, and threatened the life of Mr. Garrison. A lasting discredit rested on Boston from this transaction. It is another instance of the mischief which results when the reckless and turbulent few take the lead, and the more numerous timidly-good remain passive.
The facts in regard to this mob were thesc.1 Great offence had been taken because George Thompson, an eminent and eloquent English Anti- slavery orator, had delivered public addresses in the United States against American slavery. This was thought to be a matter with which foreigners had nothing to do. The people of Boston forgot the assistance they had rendered to the Greeks in their insurrection against the Turkish tyranny, and how they had delighted in the eloquence of Webster, Clay, and Everett exerted in behalf of an oppressed people in a foreign land. It was right apparently for Americans, though foreigners, to speak in behalf of Greek slaves, but wrong for English foreigners to speak in behalf of American slaves. Mr. Thompson, before he came to this country, had done such service for the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies that in 1833. when the Act of Emancipation was passed, Lord Brougham said in the House of Lords: " I rise to take the crown of this most glorious victory from every other head, and place it upon George Thompson's. He has done more than any other man to achieve it." Having accomplished this work at home, Mr. Thompson accepted an invitation from the Abolition- ists of America to come and speak in behalf of freedom here. He was immediately grected with the title of " a British emissary," hired by " Brit- ish gold," to destroy the American Union. He was denounced in Fan- euil Hall by Harrison Gray Otis, Peleg Sprague, and Richard Fletcher. It is difficult to understand the degree of excitement and blind prejudice which then prevailed. The Boston Centinel called Thompson " a foreign vagrant," who would never be allowed to address another meeting in this country. The Boston Courier called him " a scoundrel," and "a vaga- bond." The Commercial Gazette was astonished that " he should dare to browbeat public opinion," and suggested that he and Garrison should be " thrown overboard " if they ventured to speak again.
While the feeling thus excited was at its height, a meeting was an- nounced of the Boston Female Antislavery Society, to be held Oct. 21, 1835, in the building, 46 Washington Street, where the Liberator was printed. An incendiary placard was issued the same day, at 12 o'clock, from the office of the Commercial Gazette, announcing that " the infamous foreign scoundrel, Thompson, will hold forth this afternoon at the Liberator
I Liberator (see the Nos. for October and No- Mob of Oct. 21, 1855. The Garrison Mob. Pa- vember, 1835). Proceedings of the Antislavery pers relating to the Mob, edited by Theodore meeting, held on the Twentieth Anniversary of the Lyman, 3rd.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
office, No. 46 Washington Street. The present is a fair opportunity for the friends of the Union to snake Thompson out." It added that one hundred dollars had been raised to be paid to the man who should " first lay violent hands on Thompson, that he might be brought to the tar-kettle before dark." George Thompson, however, was not at the meeting, nor in the city; nor had he been invited to speak. The crowd, however, early collected, and prevented all but about thirty women from entering. Some of the mob crowded into the room. Amid this tumult the ladies calmly proceeded with their business, Miss Mary Parker offering prayer in a clear and serene voice. Meantime the mayor, Theodore Lyman, who before had sent some officers to protect the building and keep out the mob, arrived himself, cleared the building of the rioters, and urged the ladies to retire, as it might not be in his power, with his small force, to protect them long. This they did, the police making a passage for them through the mob. But though the mayor assured the crowd that Mr. Thompson was not in the building, it did not disperse, but became larger and more noisy. The mayor and his officers continued to defend the entrance of the building; but finding that the mob now clamored for Garrison, he went upstairs and advised Mr. Garrison to leave the house by a private way which led into Wilson's Lane behind. This Mr. Garrison did, but with calmness, as he continued to do all things during the whole affair. Then the mayor went down again to the door, and fearing that the Antislavery sign might induce the mob to throw stones at it, and so be led on to further violence, directed it to be taken into the house. Instead of this, however, it was put into the hands of the mob, and destroyed. Meantime, Mr. Garrison had been intercepted by some of the mob, a rope was coiled round his body, " probably," as he says in his account written at the time, "to drag me through the streets." He adds: " I fortunately extricated myself from the rope, and was seized by two or three powerful men, to whose firmness, policy, and muscular energy I am probably indebted for my preservation. They led me through the streets bare-headed ; through a mighty crowd, ever and anon shouting : ' He sha'n't be hurt ! You sha'n't hurt him! Don't hurt him! He is an American !' This seemed to excite sympathy among many of the crowd, and they reiterated the cry, 'He sha'n't be hurt !'" As Garrison and those who held him approached the City Hall, then in the Old State House, the mayor and peace officers, together with his sturdy protectors, suc- ceeded in getting him into the City Hall. Thence he was sent in a car- riage to the jail for temporary security ; and shortly returned to his office and his work.1
1 These facts are taken from Mr. Garrison's statements made in the Liberator, just after these events; from Samuel E. Sewall's state- ment written at the same time'; from the mayor's account, afterward published ; and from a com- parison of the accounts of eye-witnesses. Yet eye-witnesses are sometimes mistaken. The story of the rope round Garrison's neck, which
the Liberator at the time positively contradict- ed, came from a man who professed to be an eye-witness. In Mr. Garrison's statement at the time, quoted in the text, he describes those who held him as his protectors. This does not appear in his aecount given twenty years after, which runs thus : " The most active of the rioters found me in the second story of
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THE ANTISLAVERY MOVEMENT IN BOSTON.
As soon as it was known that the Antislavery women had been ex- pelled from their room by the mob, Francis Jackson invited them to con- tinue and conclude their meeting at his own house; and they did so. He well knew the danger. It was not improbable that the mob might attack and destroy his house, and endanger the safety of its inmates ; but he was determined that there should be freedom of speech in Boston, if he had the power of securing it, at whatever peril. A calm, unpretending, silent man, - in common times never putting himself forward, - he was one of those who show the temper of heroes in the hour which tries men's souls.
The next event of much importance was in the following year, 1836. That part of Governor Everett's message which related to the Abolitionists had been referred to a joint legislative committee of five, of which George Lunt, of Newburyport, was chairman. To the same committee were also referred the communications from the Legislatures of slaveholding States, making it penal for citizens of non-slaveholding States to speak or write against slavery. Samuel J. May, Ellis Gray Loring, Mr. Garrison, William Goodell, and Professor Charles Follen addressed the committee in opposi- tion to any action against Abolitionists on the part of the Legislature. Dr. Follen was interrupted by Mr. Lunt, and was told that he and his associates were there to exculpate themselves, and not to instruct the committee. Mr. May denied that they were there as culprits. They complained to the Legislature of the treatment they had received, and had another hearing, at which the same gentlemen spoke again, together with Samuel E. Sewall. Mr. Lunt, as before, repeatedly interrupted the speakers in a threatening manner. He was, however, rebuked for this, not only by Mr. Moseley, one of his associates, but also by Mr. George Bond, a merchant of high standing, who declared that in his opinion the committee was too fastidious. It was on this occasion that the incident took place which Miss Martineau described in a picturesque way in her article on "The Martyr-age of America."
" While the committee were, with ostentatious negligence, keeping the Abolitionists waiting, they, to whom this business was a prelude to life or death, were earnestly con- sulting in groups. At the further end of the chamber, Garrison and another ; somewhat nearer, Dr. Follen, looking German all over, and a deeper earnestness than usual over- spreading his serene and meditative countenance. In consultation with him was Ellis Gray Loring, only too frail -in form, but with a face radiant with inward light. There were May and Goodell and Sewall and several more, and many an anxious wife, sister, or friend looking down from the gallery. During the suspense the door opened and Dr. Channing entered, - one of the last people who could on that wintry afternoon have been expected. He stood a few moments, muffled in his cloak and shawl-hand- kerchief, and then walked the whole length of the room, and was immediately seen
the carpenter's shop alluded to, and, coiling a rope round my body, let me down to the crowd below. I was dragged, bare-headed, through the streets, when my clothes were nearly all torn from my body, etc." After reading all the ac- counts, it seems evident that the mayor did all
he could do, with the small means at his disposal. [Compare the statements in Mr. Bugbce's chap- ter on "Boston Under the Mayors." There is a circumstantial account of this mob, by Ellis Ames, who was an eye-witness, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 18St. - ED.]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
shaking hands with Garrison. A murmur ran through the gallery, and a smile went round the chamber. Mrs. Chapman whispered to her next neighbor, 'Righteousness and peace have kissed each other !' Garrison, the dauntless Garrison, turned pale as ashes, and sank down on a seat. Dr. Channing had censured the Abolitionists in his pamphlet on Slavery ; Garrison had, in the Liberator, rejected the censure ; and here they were shaking hands in the Senate chamber. Dr. Channing sat behind the speakers, handing them notes, and most obviously affording them his countenance, so as to be from that day considered by the world as an accession to their principles, though not to their organized body."
The result was that Mr. Lunt in his report strongly condemned the Abo- litionists, and added some resolutions wholly disapproving their doctrines and measures; but the Legislature laid report and resolutions on the table, and there they remained, and were never acted on.
In the next year, 1837, occurred some of the memorable debates in Con- gress on the right of petition, in which John Quincy Adams held a position hardly ever equalled by any speaker in a deliberative body. Maintaining the right of petition, against the solid South and a large part of the North- ern representatives, he stood like a rock in mid-ocean, against which a thousand storms beat in vain. Though not a representative from Boston, yet through the grandeur of his position, his immovable purpose, his vast resources of knowledge, his keen intellect, he triumphantly defended the rights of the whole North against the assumptions of slavery, -and the hearts of Antislavery men in Boston were strengthened by that triumph.
In November of the same year Elijah P. Lovejoy was killed in Alton, while defending his press which a mob was seeking to destroy. A petition for the use of Faneuil Hall for a meeting to protest against this violation of the principles of liberty, signed by Dr. Channing and others, was rejected by the Boston authorities. With fearless promptitude Dr. Channing issued an appeal to the citizens of Boston, calling on them to reverse this action of the city government. A meeting at the Supreme Court room, presided over by George Bond, passed resolutions prepared by Benjamin F. Hallett, demanding of the mayor and aldermen to change their course and give the hall. They did so, and the meeting was held. Jonathan Phillips presided. Dr. Channing made an impressive address in favor of the right of free dis- cussion, violated by the murder of Lovejoy. He was followed, in the same sense, by Benjamin F. Hallett and George S. Hillard, a young lawyer, not then known to fame. Wendell Phillips was to have followed, but the floor was taken by the Attorney-general of the State, James Trécothic Austin, who declared that Lovejoy " died as the fool dieth," and that the men who killed him were as great patriots as those who threw the tea into Boston harbor. He was loudly cheered by a large part of the meeting, and Wen- dell Phillips, who then ascended the platform, was hooted at by the crowd ; but in spite of their opposition and outcries he held his ground, and sternly rebuked the speech of Austin. "When I heard," said he, " the gentleman lay down principles which placed the murderers of Alton side by side with
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THE ANTISLAVERY MOVEMENT IN BOSTON.
_ Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips," pointing to their portraits, "would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American, the slanderer of the dead." From that hour Wendell Phillips took his place among the great orators of the land.
The combination of interests, beliefs, and habits which supported slavery in the United States was so powerful that it seemed madness in the Aboli- tionists to hope for success against them. First, there was the pecuniary value of the slaves to the South, amounting even then, as was computed, to one thousand millions of dollars. But if that vast sum had been voted by Congress as compensation for the slaves, it would have been refused on account of the difficulties and dangers of emancipation. More than that, slavery had become an ingrained part of the system of life in the Southern States; and it was believed that the whole fabric of society would be rent asunder by emancipation. Nor would any Southern community have con- sented, for any amount that could be offered, to allow the negroes when emancipated to remain among them; and if they were bought by the North, and all sent out of the country, where would laborers and servants be found to take their place? As against emancipation, then, the South was a unit, though some of the border States were not opposed to emancipation if it could be connected with deportation of the colored people. The slave- holders, being united, controlled the politics of the South; and the South, being united, controlled the politics of the nation. They held great major- ities in Congress ; they elected pro-slavery presidents ; they took possession of the Federal courts; the Federal power in its three branches - legisla- tive, executive, and judicial - was held firmly in their hands. They con- trolled the merchants of the North by their trade, the newspapers of the North through their business; both the fashion of the North and the mobs were on their side. Not satisfied with this, the slave-power proceeded to strengthen its position by a series of successful aggressions. In 1845 it annexed Texas, then a Free State belonging to Mexico, with the avowed purpose of cutting it into four slave States, and so to add eight slaveholders to the United States Senate. It obtained a new and stringent Fugitive- Slave Law, by which to seize fugitives at the North. It repealed the Missouri Compromise, which prohibited the extension of slavery into Ter- ritories north of a certain parallel, so as to allow the slaveholders to carry their slaves where they would. It obtained the opinion of the U. S. Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, to the same effect. It took possession of Kansas by violence, murdering men whose only crime it was to wish to make it a free State ; and struck down Charles Sumner on the floor of Congress. Such was the great and constantly increasing strength of the slave-power.
And what had the Abolitionists to oppose to it? They had no political, social, or fashionable influence. They were mostly poor, and all were un- popular. They had nothing on their side but Truth, Justice, and God. Re- lying on these they were strong, eloquent, brave, untiring. Their methods VOL. 111. - 49.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
were simple and few. They formed Antislavery societies, held public meet- ings, published newspapers, tracts, and books. They took advantage of every new act and aggression of the slave-power to appeal to the popular indignation against wrong. They had on their side poets like Whittier, Low- ell, Longfellow, Pierpont, and Bryant; orators like Phillips, Fred. Douglass, Theodore D. Weld, Stephen Foster, Parker Pillsbury, and a multitude of others. They had noble women working for them in their societies, speaking on the platform, writing books and pamphlets; such women as Maria Weston Chapman, Lucretia Mott, Louisa Loring, Lydia Maria Child, Lucy Stone, Abby Kelley, Sarah and Angelina Grimké. At their meetings were to be seen fugitive slaves, telling with their lips what they had known of the barbarities of slavery, - like William and Ellen Craft, Henry Box Brown, and Father Henson. They welcomed to their platform the defen- ders of slavery, and any slaveholder who chanced to be in Boston was sure to have every opportunity for the freest speech, - sure, also, of being answered as he had never been answered before. Every outrage on free- dom brought new converts to their side; every triumph of the slave-power was the text for more convincing arguments against the system which could only live by such encroachments on the rights of all. The best thought of the North, like that of Ralph Waldo Emerson, came to their side. The " enraged eloquence " of their meetings drew crowds to listen. Men were there who struck and spared not, -men like Stephen S. Foster, Parker Pills- bury, and Henry C. Wright, to whom there was nothing sacred in Church or State when allied with slavery. They denounced the church as "a brotherhood of thieves ; " they cursed the Constitution of the United States, which called on them to surrender fugitives. The higher the position of a man, if he was on the wrong side, the better they liked to strike him. Stormy and tumultuous were these debates, often interrupted, sometimes broken up by the mob, but never commonplace or tame. The attacks of the Abolitionists on the churches were excused, if not justified, by the hos- tile attitude assumed by many of the religious newspapers and influential ministers. While some of these came to their side, the majority of the leading clergymen in all denominations stood aloof. These had in their churches men allied to the South by business interests, or men who were bitterly prejudiced against abolition. They belonged to the great de- nominations, containing numerous Southern churches, and they foresaw disruption if they admitted this uncompromising element. Hence many clergymen of high standing were led to excuse or defend slavery. Most prominent among these were Dr. Nehemiah Adams of Boston, President Lord of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and Bishop Hopkins of Ver- mont, -all of whom defended slavery as right in itself, good for masters and slaves, and having the authority of the Bible in its favor. The President of Dartmouth College maintained, in two pamphlets published in Boston,1 that .
1 A Letter of Inquiry, etc., by a Northern Second Letter, etc., by Nathan Lord, President of Presbyter, Boston, 1854. A Northern Presbyter's Dartmouth College, Boston, 1855.
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