USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Littleton > History of Littleton, New Hampshire, Vol. I > Part 38
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The contribution of John Farr to this phase of our political liis- tory was largely an expression of personal opinion in regard to the question, and a protest against the methods adopted by the Abolitionists rather than an attempt to discuss its social, ethi- cal, or political bearings. His communication was addressed to N. P. Rogers, editor of the " Herald of Freedom," who, for some reason, declined its publication. It was then printed in the " Christian Panoply," January 17, 1840. In the outset he de- clares that -
" It was not agreeable to his feelings to complain of the indiscretion, or what may seem errors in principle or action, of those who are ell- gaged in the great and righteous cause of Anti-Slavery, in endeavoring to break the yoke of the oppressor and letting the oppressed go free, in raising from all the misery and degradation to which they have been reduced by the accursed system of American slavery, three millions of our fellow-countrymen, to all the privileges which we enjoy - social, civil, literary, and religious - or do what may seem to put back or thwart in any measure the immediate abolition of slavery. . . .
" It was from such feelings and motives that he liad hitherto refrained from condemning, as it to him seemed to deserve, the course adopted by many of the accredited organs of Anti-Slavery societies, agents, lecturers, and others, in regard to those ministers of the Gospel who do not see eye to eye with them, or place their names to the constitu-
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tion of an abolition society, and endorse all their (to them at least) wild schemes for the improvement of the African race.
" Very far would it be from him to sustain a pro-slavery pulpit, or the advocate of slavery in any form ; for he could not believe that minister to be influenced by the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and by his command to do unto others as we would that others should do unto us, that could in this age of the world exert his influence knowingly and purposely to sustain so gross a violation of the whole tenor and spirit of the Gospel as the whole structure of slavery pre- sents. So far as his acquaintance extended . . . he had no more reason to doubt the piety of heart, purity of purpose, and philanthropy of those ministers who have not yet seen it to be their duty to unite with us, than the most zealous in the ranks of Abolition ; and it was with extreme pain that he heard such men sneered at, as a time-serving and hypocritical priesthood, and comparing them to the Pharisees of our Saviour's time ; in seeing the organ of our State society endeavoring to make them appear odious and as the ministers of Satan rather than the ministers of God; thereby destroying their usefulness, and in effect (though not in purpose) destroying the great bulwark of our civil and religious liberty, and the strong lever whereby we may hope to remove this gross stain upon our national character.
" He had been led to these remarks at that time by reading in the last number of the . Herald of Freedomn' a Resolution, presented by John R. French, at an Anti-Slavery meeting in Concord, and the remarks of the ' Herald of Freedom ' upon the same, - which it seemed to him, how- ever it may appear at first, amounts to no more nor less than saying that every man who sustains by his money or presence any minister who does not agree with us (the Abolitionists) as to the best mode of abolishing slavery, was guilty of the daring crime of slaveholding ; against such an un-Christian and injudicious policy he entered his solemn protest, and declared that he should, both by precept and ex- ample do what he could to condemn it : and, in conclusion, earnestly entreated his Christian friends to beware, lest in their zeal to destroy the hydra-monster, slavery, they destroy the CHURCH, and with it the last hope of the down-trodden slave."
Such were the respective positions of the radical and conserva- tive factions in the Congregational denomination, as stated by leading participants in the controversy, in regard to the all- absorbing question of slavery. The issue between them was one of method rather than aim.
"There are two other facts in Littleton Anti-Slavery history," writes Mr. Pillsbury, " worthy of consideration. Not much work appears to have been done there until the next autumn (1842).1 Then I went
1 Mr. Pillsbury was in error. The members of the society had been constantly active in the prosecution of their work. They had increased the local subscription
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there accompanied by my wife, she to visit our friends there, I to give a short course of Anti-Slavery lectures.
" We arrived on Saturday night. The only meeting house in town at that time was the Congregational. Two or three Unitarians of some wealth aided in building of the house with pledge given that they should have use of it an occasional Sunday, at the shortest notice given. Mountain travel was then little to what it is now ; but some- times Saturday afternoon did, at wide intervals, bring a Unitarian clergyman into the village. And such were the opportunities the holders of that faith wished especially to secure.
" I had not at that time abandoned the pulpit. So it was proposed that I should preach a part of the day, and lecture in the evening on slavery, with consent of Mr. Worcester. It so chanced that we could not see Mr. Worcester till Sunday morning. Meantime, my friend Allen saw the Unitarians, and they were desirous to have the house all day for my use. I am very certain they had not had it for a whole year. On Sunday morning Mr. Allen and myself called on Mr. Worcester. I was introduced, but Mr. Allen proposed the business, by asking in most respectful manner if Mr. Worcester would be willing to accept my services a part of the day as preacher, and then allow me to deliver an Anti- Slavery address in the evening. To which peremptory nega- tive was given, in tone and temper as unlike the question as possible. No argument, no persuasion, availed anything. I spoke a word in behalf of my mission and cause. Which perhaps made things worse. The father of Mr. Worcester, an aged minister of the same faitli, was present, and pleaded against me. Which was not needed, as the son was determined, and had already so declared as his finality, No.
" Mr. Allen rose as if to leave, but turning to Mr. Worcester he very gently said, 'I am very sorry for your decision, as it compels me to say that I am instructed by the Unitarian Trustees to say to you that they shall ask the house to-day, for the day and evening.' I need not speak of what followed. Only this, when the conversation between the others ceased, I told Mr. Worcester I was truly sorry for his dis- appointment, reaching as it must to his people as well, who had already begun to assemble for morning service. But, I said, you shall have the morning as though I were not in town. I shall attend, but only as one of your congregation ; and all I ask is, that you will be so kind as to give notice that I shall occupy the desk in the afternoon and evening, and then your people can remain, or return to their homes.
" From that time Anti-Slavery found footing in Littleton beyond any other town in all the mountain district of the Granite State. The ' Herald of Freedom ' had more subscribers there than Conway, Haverhill, or Lancaster. And I am very sure more than they all three together.
list to both the " Liberator " and " Herald of Freedom," and kept up the agitation in every way possible, considering their limited means. The controversial statements on pp. 368-375 are sufficient to establish the fact that the contest was increasing rather than abating in earnestness.
WILLIAM B. DENISON.
NAT. ALLEN.
HON. NATHANIEL RIX.
GUY S. RIX.
ERASTUS BROWN.
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" Littleton had its martyrs, too. And that will one day be more to its praise than now. Even now, almost everybody wishes to be known as having been a radical Abolitionist, or at least a son, or grandson of the best of us.
" The names of Allen and Brown are so identified with Littleton Anti-Slavery history, as to deserve farther notice. The clergy every- where, with very few exceptions, closed every door, over which they had control, against all radical, effective Anti-Slavery truth. Some could rebuke slavery in words ; but to break sacramental fellowship with slaveholders and their Northern accomplices, was not in all their thought. A thousand times they denounce slavery as ' the sum of all villainies.' But to declare persistent slave-breeders and slaveholders the sum of all villains, they dared not, or did not do. They opposed and often instigated others to oppose our most earnest and eloquent lectures from being heard in their parishes or towns. Many, many times mobs were traced to ministerial influence.
" When such wrong had been long suffered, a few brave spirits, women and men, adopted the plan of entering religious meetings, on Sundays, as well as at other times, and respectfully and solemnly at- tempting to speak some words in behalf of the enslaved. As might have been expected, they were generally put down ; and in numerous instances were dragged violently out, arrested, tried, and imprisoned ' for disturbing religious worship.' Among these offenders were Nat Allen and Erastus Brown. Allen was native of Littleton, born in 1807, married in 1834, and died in Lowell, Mass., in 1873. Both men were well known and much respected by everybody in town ; plain, honest, industrious, temperate ; as husbands, fathers, neighbors, towns- men, in every way above reproach, and both were practical Non-resist- ants in their opinions of peace and war, and all they asked of a church and minister that could close their eyes and ears against what seemed to them the most reasonable demand of Mr. Carleton was, that they might speak a few words to a religions assembly in behalf of our million of slaves. But, instead of hearing them, the minister and some prominent church members had them dragged to court as criminals and sentenced and sent to the county jail. Mr. Carleton tendered his professional ser- vices in their behalf, and the sympathies of the people were deeply awakened for them and their families. How could it have been other- wise? They were well known and highly respected. They had done, were always glad and ready to do, neighborly kindnesses, and not one could say they had ever done a neighbor wrong ; and none doubted the sincerity of their Anti-Slavery convictions ; and they only endeavored to ' remember them that were in bonds as bound with them.'
" A few short excerpts from their letters written from the jail will show tlie temper and spirit with which they suffered persecution. In my first letter from Allen he wrote thus : ' We were brought to jail at the instigation of the Congregational minister, Mr. Worcester, and his
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church, he having publicly admonished his people that " this speaking must be stopped." But I do not complain. I am far better off than the slaves for whom we plead. I am happy here, and think I may be in whatever situation my persecutors may place me. We were arrested on the 16th of August. Our trial was truly interesting ; some of our citizens spoke very feelingly in our behalf. The Littleton people, out- side the church, even a portion of the aristocracy, think it was the most disgraceful prosecution ever enacted in the town. My wife and chil- dren feel badly to have me here, but the church probably believe it will be " for the glory of God." I trust it will result in good. And I for- give and pray God to forgive the church and all who sent me here. . . . If we even had but some clean straw and a block of wood for our heads it would add very much to our comfort. But I will find no fault. I was never more happy in mind than at present. Tell our friends, especially those whom our absence most affects, that our situation here is rather pleasant than otherwise.'
" To Mrs. Allen he wrote : 'True, our situation, filthy and overrun with vermin as we are, is more tolerable than I expected. So give yourself no uneasiness nor anxiety on my account. I am comfortable and contented. More than that, I am unusually happy, and believe I shall so continue, however long I may remain here.'
"One letter of Mr. Brown, of considerable lengthi, published at the time and read with profound interest, treated of the jail and other prisoners more than of himself and companion, Allen. There has been great reform in prisons since, bad as many of them are to-day. He said : ' We are now in a cell with a young man who tells us he has been confined more than a year charged with theft. He declares he is innocent, and I believe him. He has been in this cell four months, and, bad as it is, he says it is heaven compared with the loathsome den underneath, where he lingered eight months, and was only removed on account of his declining health. It is sad to hear the low murmuring sound of human voices . . . coming up through a hole in the huge barred door, or grated window as if in supplication from the lower world. ... I regret our confinement here, not so much for ourselves as on account of the inconvenience, anxiety, and privation it causes our families who need our presence and assistance, and the remorse it must yet cause our accusers and those who stood by when they sent us here. . . . Walking my cell in silence, I am led to exclaim : Is this, then, the religion of Jesus Christ? Is this the doctrine of Him who came to teach forgiveness and the love of enemies? Is this what He meant by undoing the heavy burden, opening the prison doors and letting the opprest go free? . .. Each morning I rise from my pallet of straw, or rather of chaff and vermin, with the very kindest feelings towards my persecutors and unabated zeal in behalf of the slaves. . . . - ERASTU'S BROWN.'
" But, gentlemen, my communication may have grown too long.
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And yet I have studied brevity and conciseness as well as plain, simple truth in every utterance. And these short extracts of voices from the prison will surely be pardoned both for the sake of the writers and for what they wrote. Here good was done for the sake of good and not for any earthly reward. Here was patient endurance, silent suffering, cruel persecution, only for righteousness' sake. No bounty was pre- viously proffered, no salary nor wages given, nor asked, no pension promised nor ever paid. And all was done, all suffered in silence, unattended with any ' of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war,' as the world counts glory on ' battle fields of confused noise, and garments rolled in blood.'
" What Littleton did politically for Anti-Slavery I do not know. Of its war record I am not informed. None who know its present people will doubt that it achieved honorable distinction.
" My own testimony is to what I saw and knew, and part of which I was."
The Allen-Brown episode has been a matter of controversy from the time of its occurrence to the present. It was one of those incidents, seemingly of little importance in themselves, but so unusual and so connected with great events, and casting such a powerful light on the temper of the times in which they are enacted as to become household tales to be transmitted from gener- ation to generation. The facts in this case are simple and easily understood, but have been so perverted by friend or foe that they are buried under a mass of conjecture and imputed motives until the real is hardly discernible amid the mass of fiction.
An effort was made a few years since by Judge Batchellor to ascertain the facts in the Allen- Brown affair from living witnesses of the scene, and the result was stated by him in a communication to a local paper.1 His findings were that : -
" Allen and Brown claimed the right to interject their own discourses on the subject of slavery and non-resistance at any point in the regular church service when the minister was not actually speaking or some part of the oral exercises was not in actual progress. Such occasions would be the usual panse after the reading of scripture, the reading or rendering of hymns or the offering of prayer. The minister in charge of the service, Rev. Isaac R. Worcester, requested them to desist from this conduct and they refused to regard his authority, the rights of the congregation or the proprieties of the place. No amount of persuasion or prohibition availed with them. They were persistent in this line of procedure and forced those who desired to have the privileges of an orderly and uninterrupted service to protect themselves. Upon request of Rev. Drury Fairbank, the former pastor, who was then a member of
1 " Littleton Courier " of May 22, 1895.
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the congregation, that these men should be ejected from the church unless they would desist from their disorderly conduct, and when it be- came apparent that nothing else would prevail, several persons -- one of them, at least, a deacon - removed them, Mr. Allen first and then Mr. Brown, one of the twain having taken the floor and continued the discourse as the other was being ejected. No violence or indignity was offered them, and no unnecessary force was employed. In accord- ance with their doctrines of non-resistance each fell limp upon the floor, as he was taken in charge by the ' bearers,' and in that condition was carried out."
Subsequently, complaint was made against them for disturbing a religious meeting, a warrant was issued, they were arrested and arraigned before a justice of the peace. After an impartial hear- ing, at which they were defended by an able counsellor who was in full sympathy with their cause, and who presumably availed him- self of every defence known to the law, they were adjudged guilty and sentenced to pay a fine or to be imprisoned in the county jail. They preferred the latter alternative and were duly committed.
Some recent writers, notably Parker Pillsbury, have undertaken a defence of Allen and Brown upon legal as well as altruistic and ethical grounds. Whatever may be said in their behalf in the last- named respects, they certainly cannot successfully plead the law of the land in their behalf. The Congregationalists were in legal possession of the meeting-house, and were conducting religious services according to their established formulary. The Bill of Rights and statute law of the State guaranteed that they should enjoy this privilege without molestation.1
1 Article 5 of the Bill of Rights is as follows : -
" Every individual has a natural and unalienable right to worship God accord- ing to the dictates of his own conscience and reason ; and no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his person or estate, for worshiping God in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience, or for his religious profession, sentiments, persuasion, provided he doth not disturbe the public peace or disturbe others in their religious worship." Public Statutes, p. 21.
The statute, at that time, was as follows : -
" And be it further enacted, That if any person or persons shall wilfully inter- rupt or disturbe any meeting assembled for the purpose of religious worship, by making a noise, or by rude or indecent behaviour . . . he or they, on conviction thereof before any justice of the peace, shall pay a fine not exceeding ten dollars nor less than one dollar." N. II. Laws, edition of 1830, p. 380, sec. 3."
In the edition of 1842 this law was made more specific, probably on account of the disturbance bere and in some other towns, and was recast as follows : -
" If any person shall disturbe any religious meeting by speaking in the same, so as to interrupt or prevent the stated and orderly proceedings and exercises of such meeting, or shall make such disturbance while the people are assembling or leaving their place of worship, and shall not desist therefrom when requested, he may be removed from such meeting, or place of worship, by any individual." Revised Statutes, chap. 118.
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The proceedings against these men had little effect on the cur- rent of events. There were no renewals of attempts to force their views upon an unwilling audience, but a vigorous agitation of the slavery question was continued. In the summer of 1844, notice was given in the " Herald of Freedom " that Frederick Douglass and the Hutchinson family would hold a meeting of speech and song in this village on Sunday, August 11. It seems that Douglass failed to appear, but the Hutchinsons held a meeting, such as they alone could conduct, of eloquent, forceful speech and inspiring song. This was probably the last of the public meetings held here under the auspices of the State Anti-Slavery Society. The Hutchinson family came several times subsequently, but while their entertainments contained much in the way of anti-slavery teaching, they consisted of songs, and a small admission fee was charged. The local society in these years was not increasing its membership. It sustained a severe loss in the removal from town of Allen and Brown, - one leaving in 1844, the other the following year.
Every great movement for the advancement of mankind, espe- cially that of the poor and lowly, has had its Allens and Browns to sound an alarm, to awaken dormant consciences, to quicken in the masses that latent sense of justice which slumbers under the soothing influences of prosperity, but when aroused to action levels the artificial barriers of society, destroys parties and dynasties, and clears the stifling, selfish political atmosphere just as the hurri- cane sweeps down mighty forests, and leaves time and nature to heal the wounds it has inflicted and hide the scars that disfigure its pathway. It is seldom that any cause has received a more unselfish support than these men gave to anti-slavery. They were mechanics, dependent upon their daily labor for the main- tenance of their families. Yet they gave time and money and sacrificed the good opinion, friendship, and patronage of their neighbors, to advocate the emancipation of thousands of human beings they had never seen, of whom they only cared to know that they wore the chains of slavery. Their conception of life and duty may have been narrow, and the methods they adopted to ac- complish their object chimerical, yet few men have more closely lived up to Carlyle's first essential of duty to " Do the duty which lies nearest to thee, which thou knowest to be a duty " than did these men who left our town discouraged, perhaps, but not broken, for they cherished an unfaltering trust that in the end the cause for which they contended would be triumphant.
An important feature of those days, in its practical aspects, was VOL. I .- 25
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the underground railroad for conveying passengers from slavery to freedom. It was a large system threading the natural routes as well as many byways between Mason and Dixon's line, and the land beyond the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. Edmund Carleton was the local agent and his dwelling-house at Apthorp the station. The regular route was from Plymouth through the Franconia Notch. Another line was up the Connecticut River to Derby Line and Canada, but many a person came this way from Haverhill in order to more effectually avoid pursuit. Travel was by night only and on moonless nights at that. Often the fright- ened runaway was required to remain for days at Mr. Carleton's before it was considered prudent to continue the journey. Near as they were to a haven of safety, they were not regarded as be- yond the danger line until the last station was reached and only a night's ride to Canada remained. Could the walls of the old house on the hill by the river speak, what tales they might tell of hairbreadth escapes, romantic situations, and midnight arrivals and departures of fugitives who were nearing the promised land.
The Mexican war, the annexation of Texas, and the various schemes contrived or projected for the acquisition of Cuba, all, it was claimed, in the interest of the slave power, alarmed many con- servative people at the North and led to the formation of the Free Soil party. ' The new party drew its members from both the older ones, and absorbed all but the ultra-radical element among the Abolitionists. The passage of the Compromise measure of 1850 stayed the storm for a brief period, but the Kansas-Nebraska legis- lation of 1854 let the winds loose with redoubled fury, and the sin of slavery was swept away before the storm abated.
CARLETON HOUSE, APTHORP. A Station on the Underground Railroad.
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XXIII. POLITICAL ANNALS. 1840-1860.
W THILE the small abolition element had been active and had gained its secondary object in calling the attention of the people to the cause they advocated, both great parties were pursu- ing the even tenor of their way. The continuous twelve years of power possessed by the Democrats were at last ended, and the Whigs, triumphant under Harrison, were in full enjoyment of the fruits of their signal victory.
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