ACTS 



OF THE 



ANTI- SLAVERY APOSTLES. 



BY 



PARKER PILLSBURY. 
\ \ 



AND THEY WENT EVERYWHERE PREACHING THE 

WORD." Acts, viii : 4. 



CONCORD, N. H. 

1883 



CLAGUE, WEGMAN, SCHLICHT, & Co. 

Printers, 

ROCHESTER, N. Y. 



INTRODUCTION. 

Some books, judged by their titles, are more remark 
able for what they do not contain, than for what they 
do. This work is only Acts, not the Acts of the Anti- 
Slavery Apostles. It is only a small portion of a very 
small part of those apostles. 

There were many in the great west, as well as not a 
few in the east, whose labors, sacrifices and sufferings 
entitle them to volumes of well-written biography, 
who can scarcely be mentioned here, even by name. 

At this time of my life of nearly three score and 
fourteen years, more than forty of which have been 
spent in the field of moral, peaceful and religious agi 
tation for the rights of humanity, it seemed presump 
tion in me to attempt a labor of even this magnitude. 
And it was only earnest, continued importunity on the 
part of my very few surviving associates in the con 
flict, and their friends, that finally determined my 
course. Truth only has been sought. Not the whole 
truth ; for that were impossible. But strict truth and 
exact justice, to the full extent of my time and space. 

The present generation knows little of the terrible 
mysteries and meanings of slavery or anti-slavery ; 
the outrages and horrors of the former, or the desper 
ate and deadly encounters with the monster by the 
latter, long before the cannonade of Fort Summer, or 
the dreadful war chorus of the subsequent rebellion. 
And all which is now attempted is some disclosure of 
those mysteries. 

By anti-slavery apostles are meant those only whose 
work was in the lecturing field ; who literally " went 
everywhere preaching the word ; " often as with their 

M15785 



IV. INTRODUCTION. 

lives in their hands. Nor will only few of them, how 
ever worthy and deserving, be mentioned even by 
name. This work will be rather pictures and sketches 
than history. It will hardly enter more than two 
states, New Hampshire and Massachusetts ; never go 
beyond New England. But in New England every 
type and phase of anti-slavery experience, doing, 
suffering and triumphing was represented to the 
fullest possible extent. What was true there was true 
everywhere in the country. And the truth on slavery 
and anti-slavery can be presented on so small space, 
and in time equally limited, as well as if the whole 
country were included, and all the thirty years of the 
moral and peaceful, and so, truly religious, agitation 
of the mighty problem were covered and all the heroes 
and martyrs named. The whole, as originally in 
tended, would have comprised acts and experiences 
of some of those heroes, with brief personal sketches 
of them, together with short biographical notices of 
William Lloyd Garrison, of The Liberator, and Na 
thaniel Peabody Rogers, of the Herald of Freedom. 

But, as the work of writing went on, articles began 
to appear from our old opponents or their children, 
not only declaring that they or their fathers abolished 
the evil, but that it could have been sooner and more 
easily done, " had Garrison and his small, but motley 
following " been out of their way ! So some chapters 
of acts of the /r^-slavery^apostles, became necessary* 
at cost of both extending the volume, and also ex 
cluding some worthy names and noble deeds that had 
earned good right to grace these pages. These mis 
representations came mainly from the clergy, as did 
most of our bitterest opposition while prosecuting our 
anti-slavery labors, as will be hereafter shown beyond 
all question or contradiction. 



INTRODUCTION. V. 

So now the order of the book will be : A chapter 
on Mr. Garrison ; a second, on Mr. Rogers ; a third 
on slavery as it was ; then one on anti-slavery, what 
it was not, and what it was ; and then follow the acts 
of the anti-slavery apostles ; with acts of the pro-sla 
very apostles subjoined ; the latter generally telling 
their own story in their own words, works and ways, 
no cross-questioning ever entering into their truly 
judgment-day assizes, as will be made fully to appear 
to a surrounding world. And it scarcely need be 
added that the abundant testimony adduced, is only a 
small part of what the churches and their ministers 
have treasured up against themselves, to be hereafter 
unfolded from their own archives, should occasion for 
it ever arise. 

CONCORD, N. H., 1883. P. P. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION, 3 

CHAPTER I. 
William Lloyd Garrison, - - 9 

CHAPTER II. 
Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, - - - - - - 28 

CHAPTER III. 
Slavery As it Was, 47 

CHAPTER IV. 
Anti-Slavery What it Was Not, and What it Was, - 72 

CHAPTER V. 
Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles, with some Personal 

Sketches and Experiences, - - - - - 85 

CHAPTER VI. 
Conventions and Meetings with Rogers and Foster 

Digression or New Organization, - 102 

CHAPTER VII. 
Acts of the Apostles Continued, with Personal Sketches 

of Stephen Symonds Foster, 123 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Acts of the Apostles Continued Letter of Concord 
Women Clerical Usurpation More Revelations of 
New Organization Riotous Proceedings at Dover 
By the Editor of the Herald of Freedom, - - 156 

CHAPTER IX. 

Meetings in \Vest Chester Riotous and Shameful Conduct 
Ride to Derry, and what came of it Franklin Mob 
Described in a Letter by Mr. Foster, * - - - 182 



CONTENTS. VII 

CHAPTER X. 

Dartmouth College Riotous Behavior of the Students 
Strafford County Anniversary Eastern Railroad and 
its Jim Crow Cars Outrage on Colored Passengers, - 204 

CHAPTER XI. 

Discussion on Church Organization by Rev. Mr. Putnam 
and Rev. Mr. Sargent Hillsborough County Con 
vention at Hancock and Meeting at Nashua, by Mr. 
Foster, and what came of it, 241 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Martyr Period Imprisonment or Allen, Brown, 

Beach, Harriman and Foster, - - 283 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Conventions at Nantucket and New Bedford Frederick 
Douglass Discovered Letter from Mr. Garrison 
Meetings and Mob Demonstrations in Salem Opera 
tions in Maine Mobs in Portland and Harwich, - 324 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Some Acts of the Pro-Slavery Apostles Personal Encounter 
with the Hennicker, N. H., Church and Suffolk, Mass.. 
Association of Ministers Rev. Dr. Bacon and Son on 
Slavery and Who Abolished it the Church and Clergy 
in the Mexican War, , - - - - 364 

CHAPTER XV. 

Acts of Pro-Slavery Apostles General Assembly of the 
Presbyterian Church American Board of Commis 
sioners for Foreign Missions the Baptist Church 
Methodist-Episcopal Church Protestant Episcopal 
Church Campbellities American Bible and Tract 
Societies Fugitive Slave Law, - 386 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Some Personal Sketches and Reminiscences a Last Speech 

in an Anti-Slavery Anniversary Gathering, - 479 



ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 



CHAPTER I. 

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

The Acts of the twelve apostles are not the history 
of Christianity. Nor will the Acts of the Anti-Slavery 
Apostles be a history of the anti-slavery movement in 
the United States. My own beginning in that sublime 
enterprise was in the year 1840, when, dating from the 
establishment of The Liberator, in Boston, by William 
Lloyd Garrison, it was about ten years old. At that 
time, so far as can be shown, was first announced the 
doctrine of immediate unconditional emancipation to 
every slave, without compensation to master or expa 
triation to the slave. 

Most of my anti-slavery work was of the missionary 
character, as was that of the first Christian apostles, 
who "went everywhere preaching the word." And 
the purpose of this Scripture is to present a true 
record, as far as practicable, of what passed under my 
own immediate observation, and in which it was my 
honor to bear some .humble part. My earliest asso 
ciates, editors as well as lecturers, are mostly now no 
more, and some personal account of a part of them 
is also in my present contemplation. My first anti- 
slavery newspapers were The Liberator, The Eman 
cipator, published in New York, organ and property 
of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and Herald of 



10 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

Freedom, of Concord. New Hampshire. Through 
some changes occurring in 1840, The Emancipator 
passed out of the society s hands, but was immedi 
ately succeeded by the National Anti- Slavery Standard, 
which continued with unswerving integrity till slavery 
was abolished in the country by presidential proclama 
tion, and the male slave at least was made secure in 
hi;S rfght;of suffrage and citizenship. The first issue 
of his Liberator by Mr. Garrison was on January i, 
1831. It was a most humble, unpretentious little sheet 
of four pages, about fourteen inches by nine in 
size, but charged with the destiny of a race of human 
beings whose redemption from chattel, brutal bondage, 
was one day to shake to its foundations the mightiest 
republic ever yet existing on the globe. My first 
introduction to Mr. Garrison was in the early spring 
of 1839. I had just concluded to undertake a short 
lecturing and financial agency for the Massachu 
setts Anti-Slavery Society, and was invited to a 
meeting of its executive committee, to mature my 
arrangements. It was an evening business session, in 
West street, Boston, and at the close Mr. Garrison 
invited me to his home, then of unassuming preten 
sions, in Seaver Place, to pass the night. The next 
day was Saturday, and I went by stage to Fitchburg, 
about fifty miles, and on Sunday evening delivered my 
first address on slavery, as agent of my association. 
And though I did in the course of that year, and the 
beginning of 1840, accept and occupy the position of 
a minister for a very small Congregational church and 
society in an obscure New Hampshire town, it seems 
on the whole more pertinent, proper and desirable, to 
date the beginning of my life mission and labor from 
that anti-slavery committee meeting in Boston and 
introduction to Mr. Garrison, and first work as an anti- 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. II 

slavery agent in Fitchburg and through the county of 
Worcester in the spring of 1839. 

Of the boyhood history of Mr. Garrison this may 
not be the place to speak. Like many men of high 
eminence, he commenced life among the lowly. Nor 
was his native town, Newburyport, Massachusetts, 
ever distinguished for any but most conservative ideas 
in government, religion or social policy. His excellent 
mother, a devout member of the Baptist church, early 
sent him to learn the trade of a shoemaker. Fortu 
nately too early, for his knees could not support the 
lap-stone, the anvil of the shoemaker of that day, and 
he was soon discharged, and entered as an apprentice 
to a cabinet maker. But neither was this a success. Nor 
did he even approach nor tend to his future high call 
ing, until, while still a youth, he entered a printing office. 
That, as has been truly said, was to him high school, 
college and university, from which he graduated with 
honors, after long and faithful apprenticeship. 

His first business enterprise was to establish a little 
newspaper in his native town, which he characteristic 
ally named the Free Press. He soon learned, how 
ever, that the time for a Free Press was not yet. But 
the voice of his genius still said, Cry ! and he re 
sponded next in Boston, with the National PJiilan- 
thropist, devoted doctrinally and practically to entire 
abstinence from all intoxicating drinks. His motto 
was, " Moderate drinking, the down-hill road to 
drunkenness." This undertaking was in the year 
1827, when he was twenty-two years old. But the 
Philanthropist, like the Free Press, proved a prema 
ture birth. In 1828, his powers of mind and heart 
coming to be better appreciated, he had and accepted 
a proposition to go to Bennington, Vermont, and 
establish a political paper to be known as The Journal 



12 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

of the Times, and to advocate the claims of John 
Quincy Adams to the Presidency of the United States. 
Here, again, was a failure, and this journal soon slept 
with its predecessors. However, the valiant, perse 
vering young editor was still full of courage and hope, 
and held on his way. He soon made acquaintance 
with Benjamin Lundy, an early, brave and true- 
hearted Quaker anti-slavery man, though hardly yet a 
pronounced abolitionist. Of kindred spirit, in the 
main, the two men formed a partnership in the 
autumn of 1829, and together published the Genius of 
Universal Emancipation . 

But though of one spirit, there was in methods 
between the two men a difference wide as earth and 
heaven. Mr. Lundy, in common with the highest 
humanities of the time, only demanded a gradual 
removal of slavery. Mr. Garrison, instead of grad 
ual, almost stunned the nation with the new and 
more excellent evangel: "IMMEDIATE AND UNCON 
DITIONAL EMANCIPATION !" 

Here, then, was a new problem to be solved, or 
reconciled. An organized existence with one heart, 
but two voices : one serene, quiet, such as men might 
hear but not fear ; the other the seven unloosed 
Apocalyptic thunders that men should hear, and hear 
ing, tremble, as had Thomas Jefferson already, even in 
anticipation, almost half a century before the terrible 
utterance was heard by mortal ear ! But Friend 
Lundy s persuasion prevailed for the present. After 
long, honest consideration and discussion, he finally 
said to Mr. Garrison: "Well, thee may put thy 
initials to thy editorial articles and I will put my 
initials to mine." 

But the stern logic of events soon showed that iron 
and clay could never be so welded together. This 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 13 

was in Baltimore, a slave-breeding, slave-trading, 
slave-holding city ; indeed, had already become a 
great shipping emporium of the domestic slave trade 
of the United States ! where, as has been said, slave 
pens flaunted their signs in open day on the principal 
streets, their rich owners the best city society and 
most devout worshippers in Christian churches. The 
wonder was that the gradualism of Lundy could be 
tolerated. And he soon learned who had struck at 
the great tap root qf the deadly upas. Mr. Garrison 
wrote : u My demand for immediate emancipation so 
alarmed and excited the people everywhere, that 
where Friend Lundy would get one new subscriber I 
would knock off a dozen " And so the Genius of 
Universal Emancipation would undoubtedly have soon 
been buried in the tomb of its three predecessors who 
owed their paternity to Mr. Garrison. But his intre 
pidity and fidelity in denouncing the domestic slave 
trade and exposure of its great cruelty, in the action 
of a ship captain engaged in it from his own native 
town of Newburyport, led to his arrest on a charge of 
libel, and conviction, fine, and imprisonment in a 
Baltimore jail. Nor had he one friend in the city to 
prevent it, if even to deplore his fate. 

Released from prison, his fine and court expenses 
being paid by Mr. Arthur Tappan of New York, and 
his partnership with Friend Lundy dissolved by 
mutual consent and in most cordial spirit, Mr. Garri 
son conceived the thought of establishing a paper at 
Washington, where the slave power and the domestic 
slave trade, in all their terrors, had established them 
selves under the sheltering wing and by direct 
authority of the Federal Government. Having in 
August, 1830, issued his prospectus, he visited the 
principal cities between Baltimore and Boston to test 



14 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

the tone of the public feeling for such an enterprise, 
But though he found Boston scarcely more friendly to 
his doctrines and determinations against slavery than 
even Baltimore itself, he finally concluded that it, 
rather than Washington, was the ground whereon 
The Liberator should be set up. 
Writing, after his tour of observation, he said : 
During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting 
the minds of the people by a series of discourses on 
the subject of slavery, every place I visited gave fresh 
evidence of the fact that a greater revolution in pub 
lic sentiment was to be effected in the Free States, and 
particularly in New England, than at the South. I 
found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, 
detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn, 
and apathy more frozen than among slave owners 
themselves. Of course there were individual excep 
tions to the contrary. This state of things afflicted 
but did not dishearten me. I determined at every 
hazard to lift up the standard of emancipation in the 
eyes of the nation within sight of Bunker Hill and in 
the birth-place of liberty. That standard is now 
unfurled, and long may it float, unhurt by the spolia 
tions of time or the missiles of a desperate foe, till 
every chain be broken and every bondman set free ! 
Let Southern oppressors tremble. Let all the ene 
mies of the persecuted blacks tremble ! Assenting to 
the self-evident truth maintained in the Declaration 
of Independence, that "all men are created equal and 
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 
rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness," I shall strenuously contend for the 
immediate enfranchisement of our slave population. 
In Park Street Church, on the fourth of July, 1829, in 
an address on slavery, I unsuspectingly assented to 
the popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual aboli 
tion. I seize this opportunity to make a full and une 
quivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon 
of my God, of my country, and of the poor slaves, 
for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, 
injustice and absurdity. A similar recantation from 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 15 

my pen was published in the Genius of Universal 
Emancipation, at Baltimore, in September, 1829. My 
conscience is now satisfied. I am aware that many 
object to the severity of my language. But is there 
not cause for severity ? I will be as harsh as truth, 
and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject 
I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moder 
ation. No ! No ! Tell a man whose house is on fire 
to give a moderate alarm ; tell him to moderately res 
cue his wife from the hands of the ravisher ; tell the 
mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire 
into which it has fallen ; but urge me not to use mod 
eration in a cause like the present ! I am in earnest 
I will not equivocate I will not excuse I will not 
retreat a single inch. And I WILL BE HEARD. The 
apathy of the people is enough to make every statue 
leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection 
of the dead !* 

Thus, at last, had come the hour and the man. 
The great clock of the eternities struck the hour. 
And out of the dread silences came the prophetic 
word which was to finish the work of Washington and 
the Revolution, proclaiming " LIBERTY throughout all 
the land, to all the inhabitants thereof." In a Balti 
more prison he had learned to u remember them that 
are in bonds, as bound with them ;" and this was his 
self-consecration, in the earnest strains of Thomas 
Pringle : 

" Oppression ! I have seen thee face to face, 
And met thy cruel eye and cloudy brow ; 
But thy soul-withering- glance I fear not now 
For dread to prouder feelings doth give place 
Of deep abhorrence ! Scorning the disgrace 
Of slavish knees that at thy footstool bow, 
I also kneel ; but with far other vow 
Do hail thee and thy herd of hirelings base ; 
I swear, while life-blood warms my throbbing: veins, 
Still to oppose and thwart, with heart and hand, 
Thy brutalizing sway till Afric s chains 
Are burst, and Freedom rules the rescued land 
Trampling Oppression and his iron rod : 
Such is the vow I take : So HELP ME GOD !" 

* The Liberator, Vol. i, No. i : Saturday, January i, 1831. 



l6 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

This was the man in his sixth and twentieth yean 
His work and word, if not his name, was The Libera 
tor. And to the end this was his motto : " My coun 
try is the world ; my countrymen are all mankind." 

Of the philosophy and method of Mr. Garrison as 
the acknowledged leader of the anti-slavery move 
ment, a few words cannot here be out of place. In 
scripture phrase it might be sufficient to say, "the 
weapons of his warfare were not carnal." He was 
ever pre-eminently a man of peace. At this time he 
was a devout believer in the truest, best interpretation 
of the New Testament, especially of the Sermon on 
the Mount and the story of the Good Samaritan. He 
held his mission to be a completion of the work begun 
in the Revolutionary War ; but in magnitude, sublim 
ity and solemnity, as well as in probable results on the 
destiny of the world, as far transcending that, as 
moral truth and right transcend physical force. All 
war, he held to be inherently, intrinsically wrong. 
And so he early declared all carnal weapons, even for 
deliverance from bondage, contrary to the spirit of 
Christ as well as of His teachings ; and even coun 
selled the slaves earnestly against any resort to them 
in achieving their liberty. And the Constitution of 
the American Anti-Slavery Society, work of his hand, 
contained such a provision. 

In a " Declaration of Principles adopted by a con 
vention assembled in Philadelphia to organize a 
national anti - slavery association," are words like 
these from the same brain, heart and hand : 

The right to enjoy liberty is inalienable ; to invade 
it is to usurp the prerogative of Jehovah. Every man 
has a right to his own body, to the products of his 
labor, to the protection of law, and to the common 
advantages of society. It is piracy by our laws to 
buy or steal a native African and subject him to servi- 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. IJ 

tilde : surely the sin is as great to enslave an American. 
Every American citizen who detains a human being in 
involuntary bondage is (according to Exodus 21:16,) 
a man stealer. The slaves ought instantly to be set 
free, and brought under the protection of law. 

After much more in similar strain, follows this : 

These are our views and principles these our 
designs and measures. With entire confidence in the 
over-ruling justice of God, we plant ourselves upon 
the Declaration of our Independence and the truths of 
Divine Revelation as upon the Everlasting Rock. We 
shall send forth agents to "lift up everywhere the voice- 
of remonstrance, of warning, of entreaty and of rebuke. 

We shall circulate unsparingly and extensively, 
anti-slavery tracts and periodicals. 

We shall enlist the pulpit and the press in the cause 
of the suffering and the dumb. 

We shall aim at a purification of the churches from 
all participation in the guilt of slavery. 

We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring the 
whole nation to speedy repentance. 

Our trust for victory is solely in God. We may be 
personally defeated, but our principles, never ! Truth, 
jnstice, reason, humanity, must and will gloriously 
triumph ! 

In youth, Garrison had been a pronounced politi 
cian of the conservative party, as were most of the 
leading men of his native town. It _was_,the sound of 
the Greek revolution against Turkish despotism which 
first filled his ear, and fired his young soul with the 
spirit of freedom. The powerful appeals of Daniel 
Webster and Henry Clay in the American Senate fed 
the flame. Webster became to him the divinity of 
the forum. He even contemplated at one time a 
brief term at the W T est Point military school that he 
might take the field in person in the cause of the 
struggling Greeks. John Randolph had not yet told 
him and Webster and Clay that "the Greeks were at 
their own doors." 



l8 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

But as Mr. Garrison increased in wisdom and 
spiritual stature, and it became evident that he was to 
be the divinely constituted leader in the sublimest 
movement in behalf of liberty and humanity of many 
generations, his vision was so anointed that he saw 
clearly that, though he was indeed to wrestle with 
principalities and powers, and with spiritual wicked 
ness in high places also, his weapons were to be drawn 
from no earthly magazines. The sword of the spirit 
of Truth only, was to be made mighty in his hands, to 
an extent such as had not been beheld before, from the 
day when an apostate Christianity in the person of 
Constantine the Great, mounted the throne of the 
Cresars and most ingloriously proclaimed herself 
mistress of the world ! 

When the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed 
in Philadelphia, in 1833, Garrison was a New Testa 
ment Christian, as he understood the word, in all the 
word can rightly be made to mean. And most of all, 
did he reverence the doctrines of freedom and peace. 
Peace on earth, liberty and good- will to men, to all 
men, and all women, were then his proclamation and 
song. Human life he came to regard as sacred above 
all other things. And so capital punishment and 
war, as well as slavery, were to him an abhorrence. 
Hence, logically, he renounced all allegiance to human 
governments founded in military force, and openly 
proclaimed himself disciple of the Prince of Peace, in 
these memorable words : 

O Jesus ! noblest of patriots, greatest of heroes, 
most glorious of martyrs ! Thine is the spirit of 
universal liberty and love, of uncompromising hostility 
to every form of injustice and wrong. But not with 
weapons of death dost thou assail thy enemies, that 
they may be vanquished or destroyed. For thou dost 
not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against prin- 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 19 

cipalities and powers, against the rulers of the dark 
ness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in 
high places. Therefore hast thou put on the whole 
armor of God ; having thy loins girt about with truth, 
and having on the breast-plate of righteousness, and 
thy feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of 
peace ; going for\h to battle with the shield of faith, 
the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit ! 
Worthy of all imitation art thou, in overcoming the 
evil that is in the world. For, by the shedding of thy 
own blood, but not the blood of thy bitterest foes 
even, shalt thou at last obtain a universal victory. 

The Christian s victory alone 

Hostility forever ends ; 
Erects an undisputed throne 

And turns his foes to friends. 

Ye great, ye mighty of the earth ! 

Ye conquerers, learn this secret true ! 
A secret of celestial birth 

By suffering to subdue! 

LETTER TO KOSSUTH. 

The New England Non-Resistance Society was 
organized in 1838, and Mr. Garrison was elected cor 
responding secretary and member of the executive 
committee ; and many of its first official papers and 
records, besides breathing his spirit, bear unmistak 
able imprint of his brain and hand. A portion of the 
preamble to its constitution reads thus : 

Whereas, The penal code of the first covenant 
has been abrogated by Jesus Christ ; and whereas 
our Savior has left man example that we should fol 
low his steps in forbearance, submission to injury and 
non-resistance, even when life itself is at stake ; and 
whereas the weapons of a true Christian are not car 
nal but spiritual, and therefore mighty through God 
to the pulling down of strongholds ; and whereas we 
profess to belong to a kingdom not of this world, 
which is without local or geographical boundaries, in 
which there is no division of caste, nor inequality of 
sex ; therefore, we, the undersigned, etc., etc. 



20 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

A part of Article II of the constitution reads : 
The members of this society agree in the opinion 
that no man nor body of men, however constituted 
or by whatever name called, have right to take the 
life of man as penalty for transgression ; that no one 
who professes to have the spirit of Christ can consist 
ently sue a man at law for redress of injuries, of 
thrust any evil-doer into prison ; or hold any office in 
which he would come under obligation to execute any 
penal enactments, or take any part in the military 
service ; or acknowledge allegiance to any human 
government. * * * 

At this time it cannot be doubted that the belief of 
Mr. Garrison in both the inspiration and authority of 
the Bible, the Trinity and Atonement, but especially 
in all the teachings and precepts of Christ, was 
almost precisely such as was then, and still is pro 
fessed, by the whole Evangelical church. Among his- 
many devout poetical effusions this will be found : 

SONNET TO THE BIBLE. 

O Book of books ! Though skepticism flout 

Thy sacred origin, thy worth decry ; 

Though tranceadental folly give the lie 

To what thou teachest : though the critic doubt 

This fact ; that miracle ; and raise a shout 

Of triumph o er each incongruity 

He in thy pages may perchance espy ; 

As in his strength, the effulgent sun shines out, 

Hiding innumerous stars, so dost thou shine, 

With heavenly light all human works excelling. 

Thy oracles are holy and divine, 

Of free salvation through a Savior telling. 

All truth, all excellence dost thou enshrine ; 

The mists of sin and ignorance expelling. 

Such was Mr. Garrison as a Christian, as a follower 
of the Christ of the New Testament. And won- 
drously consistent with his faith were his spirit, his 
life, and his whole character. 

At home or abroad ; in private or in public ; as 
writer or as speaker ; as husband, father, friend,. 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 21 

neighbor, or in whatever relation ; after long, wide, 
and intimate acquaintance with men in pulpit, church, 
politics, and the world at large ; for the constant 
exercise of what we call the Christian virtues and 
graces, I surely have seen few the peer, none the 
luperior of William Lloyd Garrison. 

And yet he was called an infidel by almost all the 
universal church of the nation, from the university 
and theological seminary down to the humblest village 
pastors, churches, and Sunday-schools. With a life 
pure and spotless as the white plumage of angels, his 
whole character and conduct unsullied by the slight 
est breath of reproach, blessing many temporally and 
spiritually with whom he had intercourse, gentle and 
patient with ignorance, forbearing and long-suffering 
with prejudice and perverseness, and yet bold and 
brave, unconcealing and uncompromising where op 
pression and iniquity, injustice and cruelty were to be 
exposed and rebuked, no matter in what high places 
entrenched yet was he branded, blasted as infidel, 
even atheist, when those words were made to stand 
for, were presumed to stand for all that is to be 
dreaded, shunned, execrated and exterminated at 
whatever cost ! 

Revering the New Testament as law divine, he 
studied and respected its teachings. Did he read 
" Resist Not Evil ?" He observed the sacred require 
ment, preached it in his journal, The Liberator, and 
practiced it everywhere. Hence arose the Non-Re 
sistance Society, as well as a great national anti- 
slavery movement, which, without proscription, rested 
substantially and was largely sustained on a similar 
foundation. 

With him " love your enemies " never meant shoot 
them in war, nor hang nor imprison them in peace. 



22 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

And so The Liberator, which was his own property 
from first to last, was not only a proclamation of 
peace, liberty and love on earth, but of general, uni 
versal unfolding, progressing and perfecting to all 
man and womankind. 

But, joining himself to no religious sect nor party, 
chained down to no narrow, dogmatic ringbolt, he 
had ever eye and ear, as well as heart and hospitality, 
for whatever new truth might appear in whatever 
book, science or religion it might be found. And 
what wonder if years of violent opposition and per 
secution from almost the whole American church and 
clergy on account of his fidelity to the Christian doc 
trines of peace, purity and liberty as they were taught 
in the sermon on the mount, and the unswerving 
example of its great Author, should have clarified and 
quickened his vision mentally and spiritually ! At 
any rate, he subsequently re-examined the faiths and 
formulas of the professedly evangelical sects in reli 
gion, including their avowed belief in plenary inspira 
tion of Holy Scripture. 

As one result of his farther investigations, he 
attended a convention at Hartford, Connecticut, in 
1853, called especially to consider the claim and char 
acter of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. The 
meeting was very large, having representatives, men 
and women, from east and west, continuing four days, 
with three long sessions each. In one of them Mr. 
Garrison offered and ably defended a series of reso 
lutions, the first of which was to this purport : 

Resolved, That the doctrines of the American 
church and priesthood, that the Bible is the word of 
God ; that whatever it contains was given by divine 
inspiration, and that it is the only rule of faith and 
practice, is self-evidently absurd ; is exceedingly inju 
rious both to the intellect and the soul ; is highly per- 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 23 

nicious in its application, and a stumbling block in 
the way of human redemption. 

And yet, to the end of life, no man more venerated 
or made wiser use of the Bible than did Mr. Garrison. 
A late testimonial of his reads thus : 

I have lost my traditional and educational notions 
of the holiness of the Bible, but I have gained greatly, 
I think, in my estimation of it. * * * I am fully 
aware how grievously the priesthood have perverted 
it and wielded it as an instrument of spiritual despot 
ism and in opposition to the sacred cause of human 
ity ; still to no other volume do I turn with so much 
interest ; no other do I consult or turn to so fre 
quently ; to no other am I so indebted for light and 
strength ; no other is so identified with the growth of 
human freedom and progress. To no other have I 
appealed so effectively in aid of the various reforma 
tory movements which I have espoused. And it 
embodies an amount of excellence so great as to 
make it, in my estimation, THE BOOK OF BOOKS. 

Garrison early learned to doubt nothing only 
because it was new, and he accepted nothing unless 
he saw on it more than the mold and moss of age and 
time. He found the world, even its most enlightened 
people, dead in the trespasses and sins of intemper 
ance, slavery, war, capital punishment, and woman s 
enslavement. He lived to set on foot, or largely and 
liberally co-operate in enterprises and instrumentali 
ties for correcting all these abuses, for righting all 
these fearful wrongs. 

But at last there came another stranger to his door. 
With characteristic hospitality that door was again 
opened. Francis Jackson, one of the noblest, bravest, 
most steadfast supporters of Mr. Garrison and his life 
work, once said with respect to sheltering and protect 
ing the fugitive slave : "When I unfeelingly shut my 
door against a hunted, fleeing slave, may the God of 
compassion close the door of his mercy against me !" 



24 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

So no slave, nor even stranger, ever appealed in 
vain to Garrison. The new guest was Spiritualism. 
That was a " sect everywhere spoken against " as fast 
as it grew in numbers as anti-slavery had been in the 
generation preceding it. Even many of the best 
abolitionists, men and women who had bravely suf 
fered persecution for and with the slave, treated it 
with contempt and scorn. Not so, never so, with Mr. 
Garrison. Many of his truest friends, some of them 
Quakers, as well as of other religious denominations, 
became early and devoted spiritualists, and that alone 
would have forever prevented him from dismissing, 
still less condemning, any stranger or defendant 
uncondemned, or even unheard. 

And in finally giving the new and mysterious idea 
recognition, he found, and to the end of his life 
believed, that he had literally entertained angels, and 
angels not unawares. 

Nor did he hesitate to make proclamation of the 
new and sublime Evangel. In The Liberator of 
March 3d, 1854, is an article from his pen, of which 
the following are but the opening paragraphs, giving 
a detailed account of a highly demonstrative seance 
he had just attended in New York, where writing, 
rapping, drumming, " drumming in admirable time 
and most spiritual manner," and other wondrous phe 
nomena were witnessed. He wrote : 

We are often privately asked what we think of the 
" spiritual manifestations," so called, and whether we 
have had any opportunities to investigate them. 

When we first heard of the " Rochester knock- 
ings" we supposed (not personally knowing the per 
sons implicated) that there might be some collusion in 
that particular case, or if not, that the phenomena 
would, ere long, elicit a satisfactory solution, indepen 
dent of any spiritual agency. As the manifestations 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 25 

have spread from house to house, from city to city, 
from one part of the country to the other, across the 
Atlantic into Europe, till now the civilized world is 
compelled to acknowledge their reality, however 
diverse in accounting for them; as these manifestations- 
continue to increase in variety and power, so that all 
suspicion of trick or imposture becomes simply absurd 
and preposterous ; and as every attempt to find a 
solution for them in some physical theory relating to- 
electricity, the odic force, clairvoyance, and the like,, 
has thus far proved abortive it becomes every intelli 
gent mind to enter into an investigation of them with 
candor and fairness, as opportunity may offer, and to 
bear such testimony in regard to them as the facts 
may warrant ; no matter what ridicule it may excite 
on the part of the uninformed or sceptical. 

As for ourselves, most assuredly we have been in no 
haste to jump to a conclusion ih regard to phenomena 
so universally diffused, and of so extraordinary a 
character. For the last three years, we have kept 
pace with nearly all that has been published on the 
subject ; and we have witnessed, at various times, 
many surprising "manifestations;" and our con 
viction is that they cannot be accounted for on any 
other theory than that of spiritual agency. This 
theory, however is not unattended with discrepancies, 
difficulties, and trials. It is certain that, if it be true, 
there are many deceptive spirits, and that the apostolic 
injunction to "believe not every spirit," but to try 
them in every possible way, is specially to be regarded, 
or the consequences may prove very disastrous. We 
might write a long essay on what we have seen and 
heard touching the matter, but this we reserve for 
some other occasion. 

At the burial of his friend Henry C. Wright, who 
died on the i6th of August, 1870, he made one of 
the most eloquent and impressive addresses of his 
whole life. Mr. Wright had been for several years a 
pronounced and active spiritualist, and this is the 



26 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

tribute, or a portion of it, which Mr. Garrison paid to 
that part of his life work : 

I see it reproachfully stated in one newspaper at 
least, that he was a spiritualist. What if he was ? 
That is simply a question of evidence. What has 
been possible in any age of the world as to spiritual 
phenomena, is possible in ours. And if we cannot 
believe what transpires in our days, before our own 
eyes, we certainly do not and cannot believe what is 
merely reported to have taken place ages ago. W T hat 
shall be said of the intelligence or sincerity of those 
who say they implicitly accept all the marvels and 
miracles recorded as having taken place thousands of 
years ago, with not a living witness to attest to any 
one of them ; while they scout as arrant imposture 
perfectly analogous wonders and revelations, though 
these are confirmed by multitudes of living witnesses 
whose faithfulness cannot be questioned, and whose 
critical judgment and profound caution refute every 
imputation of folly or ignorance. 

When spiritualism was on trial at the bar of the 
judgment of this world, some of Mr. Garrison s friends 
saw with deep regret his hospitality and charity 
towards it. There were those who even denied posi 
tively that he was, or was in any danger of becoming, 
a spiritualist. So doutbtless his early political and 
religious associates felt and reasoned, when they saw 
his heart warmed, and his hand and voice were lifted 
in behalf of the imbruted slave and his few devoted, 
but despised and persecuted friends. With his shin 
ing talents and deep devotion to his then sincerely 
cherished political and religious principles, both of 
respectable and popular character, how could he ever 
become an Abolitionist ? 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 27 

But there s a Divinity that shapes our ends ; and 
Garrison was a young man when he wrote : 

44 I am an Abolitionist, 

Oppression s deadly foe ; 
In God s great name will I resist 

And lay the monster low. 
In God s great name do I demand 

To all be Freedom given, 
That peace and joy may fill the earth 

And songs go up to heaven." 

And spiritualism he yoked to his chariot of salvation 
so soon as he espoused it in its fullness and conscious 
truth, as had already his friend Henry C. Wright, a 
few years before, and doubtless in the full faith and 
hope of Lord Brougham, when he wrote : "Even in 
the most cloudless skies of Skepticism, I see a rain-cloud, 
if it be no bigger than a man s hand, and its name is 
Spiritualism," 



CHAPTER II. 

NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 

When some discerning Romans saw how many 
statues were reared in their city to persons of only 
indifferent merit, while Cato, one of their wisest and 
best, had none, they wondered. But the great man 
had answered the question beforehand : " Better that 
posterity should ask why Cato has not a monument, 
than why he has." 

In the cemeteries of Concord, New Hampshire, are 
many memorial stones. Some of great beauty and 
cost, with proportionally elaborate and, perhaps, appro 
priate inscriptions. But situated among them is one 
lot of the ordinary family size, protected by no iron 
railing, no granite embankment, and whose dead level 
surface would seem never to have been invaded for 
burial, agricultural or any other human purpose. 

And yet to that hallowed spot I have conducted 
many devout pilgrims from east and west, both women 
and men. For there, since Sunday, the i8th day of 
October, 1846, exactly thirty-six years ago this very 
day, and almost hour, have slumbered the mortal 
remains of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, surely one of 
the brightest, noblest, truest and every way most gifted 
sons, not only of the Granite state, but of any state 
of this union of states, departing at the early age of 
only fifty-two years. 

And no visitor from near or remote, ever fails to 
ask, sometimes with almost stunning emphasis : 
" Why has Rogers no monument ?" 



NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 29 

Should that sacred spot speak out from its silence 
of six and thirty years, doubtless its answer to the 
eminently pertinent inquiry would be, as \vas that of 
Cato, so well remembered, so much admired, so often 
repeated now, after more than two thousand years. 

Such as was Rogers, never die. They need no 
monuments reared by other hands than their own. 
Time mows down all marble and granite, tramples out 
all inscriptions in bronze or brass. And. so such reg 
isters are soon lost for evermore. It has been said of 
the immortal Senator Sumner and his humble tomb 
stone at Mount Auburn, and lowly indeed it is : 

" The grass may grow o er the lowly bed 
Where the noblest Roman hath laid his head ; 
But mind and thought, a nation s mind 
Embalm the lover of mankind." 

And scarcely of any man departed or still visible to 
mortal sight, could this be sung more appropriately 
than of the subject of this chapter ; and for some 
seven years editor of the Herald of Freedom, published 
in Concord, New Hampshire, ten or twelve years. 

Mr. Rogers was born at Plymouth, on the 3d of 
June, 1794, and was one of the tenth generation from 
him who is so well, widely and honorably known as 
" Rev. John Rogers," the first in that blessed com 
pany of martyrs who suffered in the reign of the 
bigoted and bloody Mary, in the year 1555. And 
surely the blood of the martyr, literally and spiritually, 
flowed in the veins of his remote descendant, answer 
ing "heart to heart," as well as " face to face." For 
those who have been privileged to see both our 
departed editor in the flesh and form, and a singularly 
well preserved portrait of the martyr in the American 
Antiquarian Society hall at Worcester, Massachusetts, 
have wondered at the remarkable resemblance in the 



30 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 

shape of head and face, in complexion, color of eye 
and hair, and the whole general expression of the two 
memorable men. He graduated with honors at Dart 
mouth college, in the year 1816. He studied law with 
the distinguished Richard Fletcher, and then settled 
down to its practice in his native town, marrying a 
daughter of Hon. Daniel Farrand, of Burlington, Ver 
mont. He conducted a flourishing and successful law 
practice in Plymouth for about twenty years before 
moving to Concord to take charge of the Herald of 
Freedom. 

As student in general literature, especially in his 
tory and poetry, none of his day were before him. 
Few ever heard Shakespeare, Scott, Byron and Burns 
read more beautifully, more thrillingly, than at his 
fireside, surrounded by his estimable wife and seven 
children, with sometimes a few invited friends. But 
general reading and home delights never detracted 
from the duties of his profession. When he died, an 
intimate friend, who had known him long and well, 
wrote that so accurate was his knowledge of law, and 
so industrious was he in business, that the success of 
a client was always confidently expected from the 
moment his assistance was secured. His life mission, 
however, was neither literature nor law. He was in 
due time ordained, consecrated as a high priest in 
the great fellowship of humanity, and wondrously, 
divinely did he magnify his office in the ten or twelve 
last years of his earthly life. 

In the year 1835, he made acquaintance with 
Garrison, and soon placed himself at his side as the 
hated, hunted, persecuted champion of the American 
slave, as b> this time Garrison was known to be. And 
from that time, too, Rogers was ever found the firm, 
unshaken, uncompromising friend and advocate of not 



NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 31 

only the anti-slavery enterprise, but of the causes of 
temperance, peace, rights of woman, abolition of the 
gallows and halter, and other social and moral reforms. 

Here may be the place to say what certainly should 
be said at some time and place, a few words on the 
early religious character of Mr. Rogers. For it is 
neither known to this generation nor presumed what 
manner of men and women were most of those who 
early espoused the cause of the American slave ; espe 
cially in their relations to the popular and prevailing 
religion of their time. Both Mr. and Mrs. Rogers were 
active and honored members in the Congregational 
church at Plymouth, when they espoused the cause of 
the slave. And they naturally looked, as did other 
anti-slavery Christians, to the church and pulpit as 
the divinely appointed instrumentality for emancipat 
ing the bondmen, especially of their own country, 
enslaved, too, by laws of their own enactment and 
religious sanction and approval. 

Perhaps a few excerpts from an early editorial in the 
Herald of Freedom will illustrate the quality of the 
religious sentiment and opinion of the editor, as well 
as the tone and temper of his heart and spirit. The 
whole article is in the Herald of August n, 1838, and 
is a review of a contribution to the Christian Exam 
iner, entitled " The Presence of God." The Examiner 
was a Unitarian journal, the sect at that time quite 
alien to the more evangelical views of Mr. Rogers : 

We wander a moment from our technical anti- 
slavery sphere, to say, with permission of our readers, 
a word or two on a beautiful article in the Christian 
Examiner. It is from the pen of one of our gifted 
fellow citizens, to whom the unhappy subjects of 
insanity in this state owe so much fo. ..the public 
charity now contemplated in their behalf. It is writ 
ten with great eloquence, perspicuity and force of 



32 . NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 

style ; and what is more, it seems scarcely to want 
that spirit of heart-broken Christianity so apt to be 
missing in the peaceful speculation of reviews, and 
may we not say in the speculations of the elegant 
corps among whom the writer of the article is here 
found. We will find briefly what fault we can with 
the article. Its beauties need not be pointed out. 
They lie scattered profusely over its face. It is an 
article on " The Presence of God/ and treats of our 
relations to Him. But does it set forth that relation 
as involving our need of the Lord Jesus Christ, in 
order that we may be able to stand in it ? For our 
selves we cannot contemplate God, and dare not look 
towards Him unconnected with Christ. Our writer 
seems boldly to look upon Him as the strong-eyed 
eagle gazes into the sun. God is of purer eyes than to 
behold iniquity. He cannot look upon sin but with 
abhorrence. We have sinned ; therefore we fear to 
behold him! In Christ alone is He our Father in 
heaven, and we His reconciled children. In Christ we 
dare take hold of His hand, and of the skirts of His 
almighty garments. The Lord Jesus Christ and Him 
crucified is the medium through whom alone we dare 
look upon God, in His works, His providence, or His 
grace. Sinless man might, without this medium. 
Fallen man may not. * * * The writer con 
templated God in His works but he seems, though 
awed, elevated and delighted at their grandeur, beauty 
and wisdom, to feel still baffled of the great end in their 
contemplation. Does he not, we would ask him, feel 
the absence of some link in the chain of communica 
tion with this ineffable being, which might, if not inter 
rupted, anchor his soul securely within the veil, which 
after all continues to shroud him from communion and 
sight ? Can he, in sight of the works of God, speak 
out and sing in the strains of the Singer of Israel ? 
The writer speaks of the communion of 
God with our minds. This he seems to regard with 
chief interest. He speaks of " the need of having 
attention," meaning intellectual attention, " waked up 
to these old truths." " Listlessness of mind," he con 
tinues, " an inveterate habit of inattention to the exis- 



NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 33 

tence of the Eternal Spirit, needs to be broken in 
upon. We need to help each other to escape a fatuity 
of mind on this subject that we may feel that God s 
ark still rides o er the world s waves, and that the 
burning bush has not gone out." There is an "inat 
tention," it is true, but it is of the heart, not merely of 
the mind, of the nature and not of "habit" merely ; a 
spiritual inattention, or rather alienation from God, 
which must be broken in upon. It is not the creature 
of habit. Adam felt it in all its force on the very day 
of his first transgression. He heard the voice of God, 
which, in his innocency, he had hailed with joy, beyond 
all he felt at the beauties of Paradise ; heard it walk 
ing in the garden in the cool of the day, and he hid 
himself from the presence of the Lord God among the 
trees of the garden. His wife also hid herself, for 
she, too, had transgressed, and we, their moral heirs, 
hide ourselves so to this day. They could walk in the 
garden in sight of the beautiful works of God, per 
haps admire the splendors of Eden, but when they 
heard His voice, they hid themselves. Not from habit 
surely, that not being the creature of a day. There 
was "inveteracy," not of habit, but of fallen nature. It 
is that which must be "broken in upon" before we shall 
incline to come out from among the trees to welcome 
the presence of God. It may be there is a figurative 
meaning in this hiding among the trees from the pres 
ence of Him who made those trees. And may we 
not deceive ourselves in supposing we contemplate 
God in His works, when, in truth, we are seeking to 
hide ourselves from His presence among the glorious 
trees of this earth s garden ? We 

have revolted from God. We are born universally in 
a state of alienation from Him. The Scriptures and 
all experience teach this. We do not more certainly 
inherit the transmitted form of our fallen first-parents, 
than their descended nature. We are born with the 
need of being "born again." Of this we are sure. 
We cannot evade it. It is our fate in the wisdom of 
God. We cannot escape it any more than the Old 
World could the deluge. We have 

an ark of safety, to be sure, capacious enough to save 



34 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 

the entire race of man. It will save only those who 
will enter it. And the time of entering, as it was at 
the flood, is before the sky of probation is overcast. 
The door is that now, as then, before the falling of 
the first great drops of the eternal thunder shower. 
The ark of safety, we need not say, is Christ. He is 
the Way, the Truth and the Life. No man can come 
to the Father but by Him. Whoever hath seen Him 
hath seen the Father. And by Him is the only mani 
festation of the presence of God. The presence of 
His power may be seen in all objects around us. But 
His strong love to the children of men, cannot be seen 
but through Christ. 

But we are forgetting that our Herald 
is a small sheet. We have not space to notice the 
exquisite beauties of our writer s production as a 
composition merely ; or the argument it draws of 
God s presence from his works ; and as it purports to 
notice merely this evidence of his presence, we will 
not here express our regret that the name of Christ is 
not mentioned in the article. May the gifted writer, 
if he be out of the ark of safety, not delay to enter in. 
Let him not tarry without to gaze with the eye of 
elegant curiosity on the scenery of this Sodom world 
but bow his neck, "and enter while there s room." 
And as we bespeak his immediate heed to "the one 
thing needful, " so we demand his pen, voice, influ 
ence, prayer and action and open cooperation in the 
deliverance of his fellow countrymen from the CHAIN 
OF SLAVERY. 

Thus loyal was the editor of the Herald to the 
religious doctrine and teaching of his time in the 
church of his choice. The church of his fathers 
through nine generations. Thus diligently had he 
studied and considered them; and thus eloquently and 
faithfully, though tenderly and affectionately, did he 
present, recommend and enforce them, whenever and 
wherever he had opportunity. 

In 1838 he removed from Plymouth to Concord, 
and became sole editor of the Herald of Freedom. 



NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 35 

He had, from its establishment in 1834, furnished 
many most brilliant and trenchant articles for its 
columns. To the readers of the paper, now alas ! 
the most of them, with its editor, no more, nothing 
need be said of his power with his pen. Only a 
single duodecimo volume of three hundred and eighty 
pages of his editorial writings has been reprinted and 
preserved, and that long ago disappeared from the 
market. Ten dollars, it is said, have been offered for 
a single copy ; though that perhaps might have been 
before most of the early readers had passed away. 
Some of its descriptive articles have been pronounced 
as unsurpassed in life and vigor, brilliancy and beauty, 
as were their rebukes of slave holders and their 
abettors and accomplices, scathing, withering, but 
always eminently just. 

His " Jaunt to the White Mountains " with Garrison 
in the year 1841, was copied from the Herald columns 
into a neat tract and was a capital contribution to 
the tourist literature of that period. Its length pre 
cludes possibility of insertion here ; but one of less 
volume and of scarcely less power entitled Ailsa 
Craig, may not so reasonably be rejected. For the 
world never knew the sublimely gifted writer as it 
should have known him, and doubtless would, but for 
his too early removal to higher spheres. Young 
readers will surely pardon a page or two when they 
have read them, introduced here for their profit as 
well as pleasure, showing not only the power of the 
writer, but also giving them a description of one of 
the most remarkable as well as interesting spots in 
the British realm. It is from the Herald of Freedom 
of April 30, 1841: 

AILSA CRAIG. 

This famous rock in the Irish Sea, we meant to 
have said something about when we saw it, long 



36 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 

before this time. But anti-slavery makes us omit 
and forget the wonders of the Old World. We passed 
it on a trip from Scotland to Ireland. We left Glas 
gow on the twenty-eighth of July, 1840, at ten in the 
morning, for Dublin. William Lloyd Garrison in 
company, our fellow passenger to the Irish Capital. 
We went on board a steamer and 
rode down the ship-thronged Clyde. Nothing can 
exceed its beauty below the great city of Glasgow. 
To be sure, they have robbed it of its native banks, 
and commerce has substituted for the green slope, a 
sloping wall of neat and firm stone masonry on each 
side, and straightened its once indented shores. But 
the utility of the metamorphosis is so mighty, and so 
palpable, making this narrow stream, far away 
inland, the highway for the commerce of one of the 
great ports of Britain ; of a city as large as New York 
or Liverpool, where the largest ships may ride as 
freely as in the ocean for depth of water, that it gives 
it a most imposing, singular, and interesting appear 
ance. It is hardly broader than some of the widest 
streets of London. Our little steamer elbowed its 
way among the keels that thronged it like u the full 
tide of human existence," along the slippery pave 
ments and broad side-walks of Cheapside, or Glas 
gow s Broadway, the swarming Irongate. It was 
amusing to see the ploughed up water roll along the 
stone banks, half way up their slopes, in waves that 
coiled and convolved like the folds of the sea serpent. 
The walls were a good deal higher than the natural 
shores, which were w T et and low. They had filled in 
behind them with earth, and made high, wide and 
level land on either side which was now covered with 
old verdure, and planted with stately trees : and the 
promenader might take his rural walk there, side by 
side with the winged commerce of every quarter of 
the globe : the "white sail gliding by the tree," and 
the smoky plumage of the steamers streaming off over 
among the glorious woodlands. We made our way 
steadily, though not rapidly down the widening chan 
nel, and came to where the "bonnie" Vale of Leven, 
came upon the Clyde from Loch Lomond and its 



NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 37 

enclosing mountains which we could descry in the 
misty distance, up the Vale. 

All abolitionists have heard of the Vale of Leven, 
and remember its Remonstrance to the Women of 
America, sent over here some four years ago, and 
unfurled over the heads of thousands in Broadway 
Tabernacle at an anti-slavery anniversary. The 
four thousand Scottish women who signed it, dwelt in 
the Vale of Leven. We saw John Summerville, the 
minister who obtained their signatures. What would 
induce one of our clergy, with any " weight of influ 
ence " to be seen going about for women s signatures 
to an abolition petition ? Where Leven Vale meets 
the Clyde rises a tremendous rock, in the clefts of 
which lodges the grim old fortress of Dumbarton 
Castle, famous in the history of Sir William Wallace. 

The river soon broadened into a frith, as the 
Scotch call their bays. The mountains retreated from 
each other, and sails were to be seen here and there at 
anchor in the coves and harbors of the wide waters 
near their bases. W T e met a naval horse race on the 
frith of eight beautiful little vessels at the very top of 
their speed. They were running the heats, in a wide 
circle, and leaning down hard to the sea close on 
each other s heels ; all sail crowded they made the 
water foam white about their prows. It was quite an 
animating sight, with none of the painful sensations 
at seeing poor quadruped horses scourged and pressed 
beyond their powers. There was no distress, nor 
faltering of wind, in these graceful little racers, as 
they swept the frith of Clyde. 

A Mr. McTear had come aboard the steamer at 
Greenock for Dublin. He was a Greenock merchant. 
We were talking with him on the deck when we spied 
a conical rock, as it seemed, rising out of the water 
some distance ahead. It appeared through the thin 
mists like a hay stack, and about as large. We spoke 
of it to Mr. McTear, and he told us it was Ailsa 
Craig. We remembered mention of it by Scott, in the 
Lord of the Isles, where he calls it rock instead of 
craig, in the mouth of Robert Bruce : 

" Lord of the Isles, my trust in thee 
Is firm as Ailsa rock ! " 



38 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 

We had supposed it was in the Forth on the other 
side of Scotland. As we were looking at it, 
Mr. McTear asked us to guess the distance to it. 
Strangers he said, were apt to greatly mistake the 
distance. We looked at the rock along the interven 
ing water. W T e could get no aid from the shores 
which were at great distance, quite out of sight on one 
hand. We supposed of course, we should underrate 
the distance. So we stretched it liberally, as we 
thought, and guessed two miles, though it did not 
look like that distance. You have made the common 
mistake, he said ; it is over twenty. We could hardly 
credit it ; but he told us we should see it was so, for 
we would be over two hours getting to it and were 
going at ten knots. And over two hours it was ; and 
such was the deceptive character of the way, that 
. when we thought we were coming right upon it, and 
wanting our friend Garrison, who was asleep below, 
to see it, we went down and told him to hurry up and 
see "Ailsa Rock." It proved, to the amazement of us 
both, that we w r ere then nearly ten miles from it. 
And the little prominence, that looked so like a hay 
stack, or a hay cock, when we descried it first, grew 
as we neared it, a mighty mountain, nine hundred and 
eighty feet high, rising abruptly out of the sea, and 
two miles about the base. 

He had been himself governor of the Craig some 
years before, and had great sport and some danger in 
killing the birds. His way of killing them was with a 
club, and he told us how many thousands, we dare 
not say how many he had killed in a single day of a 
famous kind of goose. He had let himself down to a 
quarter of the cliffs where they hunted to get the 
young and eggs, and the old ones attacked him and 
he fought them with his club till he was covered with 
blood, theirs and his own. He had a good mind, he 
said, to give them one gun, just to let us see them fly, 
as we were strangers. As he had been the .Marquis s 
governor, he said, he would venture that he would 
overlook it in him. He ordered his boy to bring the 
musket. The boy returned and said it was left 
behind at Glasgow. " Load up the swivel then," said 



NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 39 

the captain. " It will be all the better. It will make 
quite a flight, ye ll find. Load her up pretty well." 
The steamer meanwhile kept nearing the giant craig, 
which was a bare rock from summit to sea, and all of 
a dull, chalky whiteness, occasioned, as the captain 
said, by the excrement of the birds. We saw caves in 
the sides of the mountain and down by the water ; 
the retreats, our informant told us, in former times, of 
the smugglers who used to frequent the craig and 
carry on an extensive trade from these places of 
concealment. We had got so near as to see the white 
birds flitting across the entrances to the caverns like 
bees about the hive. W T ith the spy-glass we could see 
them distinctly and in very considerable numbers ; 
and at length approached so that we could see them 
on the ledges all over the sides of the mountain. We 
had passed the skirt of the craig, and were within a 
half mile, or less, of its base. With the glass we could 
now see the entire mountain side peopled with the 
sea fowl, and could hear their whimpering, household 
cry as they moved about, or nestled in domestic snug- 
ness on the ten thousand ledges. The air, too, about 
the precipices, seemed to be alive with them. Still 
we had not the slightest conception of their frightful 
multitude. We got about the center of the mountain, 
when the swivel was fired. The shot went point 
blank against it and struck the stupendous preci 
pice, as from top to bottom with a reverberation like 
the discharge of a hundred cannon. 

And what a sight followed ! They rose up from 
that mountain, the countless myriads and millions of 
sea birds, in a universal, overwhelming cloud that 
covered the whole heavens, and their cry was like the 
cry of an alarmed nation. Up they went, millions 
upon millions, ascending like the smoke of a furnace ; 
countless as the sands on the sea shore ; awful, 
dreadful for multitude, as if the whole mountain were 
dissolving into life and light, and with an unearthly 
kind of lament, took up their line of march in every 
direction off to sea. 

The sight startled the people on board the steamer, 
who had often witnessed it before, and for some 



40 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 

minutes there ensued a general silence. For our own 
part, we were quite amazed and overawed at the 
spectacle. We had seen nothing like it before. We 
had seen White Mountain Notches and Niagara Falls 
in our own land, and the vastness of the wide and 
deep ocean, which was separating us from it. We had 
seen something of art s magnificence in the old world; 
its cloud-capped towers, gorgeous palaces and solemn 
temples, but we had never witnessed sublimity to be 
compared to that rising of sea-birds from Ailsa Craig. 
They were of countless varieties in kind and size, 
from the largest goose to the smallest marsh bird, and 
of every conceivable variety of dismal note. Off they 
moved in wild and alarmed route, like a people going 
into exile, filling the air far and wide, with their 
reproachful lament at the wanton cruelty that had 
broken them up and driven them into captivity. We 
really felt remorse at it ; and the thought might have 
occurred to us how easy it would h&ve been for them, 
if they had known that the little, smoking speck that 
was laboring along the sea-surface beneath them had 
been the cause of their banishment, to have settled 
down upon it and engulfed it out of sight forever. 
We felt astonished that we had never heard before 
of this wonderful haunt of sea-fowl, and that no one 
had ever written a book upon it. It struck us really 
as one of the wonders of the world. And not us 
alone. Others, not at all given to the marvellous, 
declared it surpassed everything they had ever before 
witnessed. We supposed the mountain must have 
been quite deserted from the myriads that had flown 
away ; but lifting the glass to it, as we were 
leaving its border, we were appalled to find it 
still alive with the myriads that were left behind. 
They kept leaving and leaving until our steamer 
got far beyond the Craig, and till we could no 
longer discern their departure with the tele 
scope. And it was miles off into the dusky Irish 
Sea, before we saw the ebbing of their mighty move 
ment, and that they were beginning to return. We 
felt relieved to see them going back. It had scarcely 
occurred to us in our surprise, that they were not 



NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 4! 

leaving their native cliffs forever. Slowly and sadly 
they seemed to return, while the eye sought in vain 
to ken the outskirts of their mighty caravan. And 
Ailsa Craig had sunk far into our rear, and quite 
sensibly diminished in the distance, before the rear 
most of the feathered host had disappeared from our 
sight. 

The excitement occasioned us considerable depres 
sion of spirits, from which we were not entirely 
relieved until night came down upon the St. George s 
Channel, and the protracted northern twilight could 
no longer disclose objects to our wearied vision. 
Then after refreshing ourselves with some substantial 
confectionery, with which dear George Thompson had 
kindly stuffed our pockets from a shop at Greenock, 
before leaving "the land of cakes," our beloved fellow- 
passenger and ourself, after sundry fond remem 
brances of the other side of the ocean, some expecta 
tions of next day s greeting in Dublin, and some 
grateful sense, as we trust, of the goodness that had 
not forgotten us amid all our dangers by sea and 
land, we forgot what we had seen, and whereabouts 
we were, in the arms of oblivious sleep. 

To do justice to the memory of Nathaniel Peabody 
Rogers, to his character and work, would require 
genius and inspiration like his own. Nor, perhaps, 
would this cheap age even then understand nor com 
prehend it. It manufactures sham and shoddy at too 
many of its mills, political, literary, social, moral and 
religious. It quotes Pope and Burns about an 
" honest man," but seems not to know him when he 
comes. It celebrated the birthday of Robert Burns 
with much pomp and demonstration in less than one 
month after it hung John Brown for a heroism and 
devotion to freedom and humanity, which began, 
rekindled with divine fervor, where the zeal of 
LaFayette for a white man s liberty paled out of 
human sight. And socially, morally and religiously 
it had hung Rogers long before, in the same 



42 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 

persecuting spirit that burned his illustrious ancestor 
in the Smithneld pyre. In the true spirit of martyr 
dom did Rogers, like John Brown, join the anti- 
slavery movement in an hour of peril. Garrison had 
been mobbed in Boston, as was said, "in broad day, 
by Boston s best men in broadcloth, gentlemen of 
property and standing ; " driven from a female 
anti-slavery concert of prayer which he had been 
invited to attend and address. Mr. Garrison said of 
the spectacle when all the streets near the place of 
meeting were thronged with a mob burning with 
murderous intent : " It was an awful, sublime and 
soul-thrilling scene enough, one would suppose, to 
melt adamantine hearts, and make even fiends of 
darkness stagger and retreat. Indeed the clear, 
untremulous voice of that Christian heroine, Miss 
Parker, in prayer occasionally awed the ruffians into 
silence, and she was heard distinctly, even in the 
midst of their hisses and yells and curses." Garri 
son withdrew from the prayer meeting and the mayor 
entered in obedience to the wishes of the fiendish 
crew, and dispersed it. Then the cry, the shriek, 
the yell was, " we must have Garrison." " Out with 
him ! Lynch him ! " Some of the rioters discovered 
and seized him. They drew him furiously to a 
window and were about to thrust him out, when one 
of them relented and said, " Let us not kill him out 
right." But they coiled a rope about his body, nearly 
stripped him of his clothing, then dragged him 
through the streets till he was finally rescued byflosse 
comitatus and at frightful peril was at length got to 
the mayor s office. There he was provided with 
clothing and from thence sent to jail, as " a disturber 
of the peace," the mayor and his advisers declaring 
that " the only way to preserve his life " in Alton. 



NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 43 

Rev. Elijah Parish Lovejoy, too, another anti- 
slavery editor, had been shot and killed by a mob, 
five bullets being taken from his body, three from his 
breast, and that, too, in 1837, only a few months 
before Mr. Rogers removed with his family to Con 
cord to conduct the Herald of Freedom. So that in 
assuming such position, he also, as might be said, 
" took his life in his hand." For Concord itself was 
no stranger to the mob at that time and for years 
afterward was the consecrated guardian of slavery. 

As a member of the Plymouth Congregational 
church, both Mr. and Mrs. Rogers had cooperated 
earnestly, faithfully in works of religious benevolence 
and charity. But when they demanded that those in 
bonds in their own country should be remembered 
even " as bound with them," they were repulsed as 
disorderly, contumacious disturbers of the peace 
of the church and its minister, who, at that 
time, was among the most virulent opposers of the 
whole anti-slavery enterprise. But they did not 
withdraw from their church connection till they saw 
that southern slaveholders were more welcome to the 
pulpit and sacramental table, than were faithful, 
devoted abolitionists, whose moral and religious 
integrity of character, as well as soundness of opin 
ion, were above reproach or suspicion. Rogers, 
beyond most public men, ever had unshaken faith in 
the people, though conservative while a politician, and 
orthodox in his religious faith. When he left the 
church he investigated its character anew and for 
himself. The claims of the clergy to prerogative in 
things temporal as well as spiritual, he soon learned 
to hold in profound disesteem. To no one man then 
living, or who has appeared since, does the world owe 
more than to him for exposing and rebuking the 



44 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 

arrogance and insolence, not to say down-right fraud 
and dishonesty, of a ministry whose ruling, directing 
power in all the great popular demonstrations of the 
land, north as well as south, was exerted in support 
and sanctincation of slavery. The exceptions to this 
charge were too few to change the result, as will 
appear in the progress of this work. 

Mr. Rogers never doubted for a moment that the 
people, well and wisely taught, would abolish slavery 
and cease to oppress one another. And so like the 
Great Emancipator of Nazareth, he directed all his 
sternest strokes and rebukes at the priests and 
rulers, who really " bound the heavy burdens and laid 
them on men s shoulders," as in Judea, two thousand 
years ago. He and his associates of the Garrison 
school of abolitionists relied solely on the power of 
moral and spiritual truth to rescue the slave as well 
as to redeem and save the world. They formed, they 
joined no political party. They abjured the ballot 
altogether as a reforming or restoring agency, as 
much as they did the bullet, the only specie redemp 
tion of the ballot, in every government of force. 
Both Mr. and Mrs. Rogers were members and officers 
of the New England Non-Resistance Society. And 
none ever more highly adorned the doctrine of their 
profession than they. 

As one with vision anointed to perceive all moral 
and spiritual truth, Rogers seemed to stand almost 
alone. His editorial writings are witness to this, and 
w r ill be to more than the next generation. It were 
well for man and , womankind, if whole volumes of 
them, judiciously selected, could be reproduced and 
scattered everywhere, like the shining constellation 
among the dimmer stars. His words to-day are, 
many of them, wondrously fresh and new. 



NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 45 

The temperance cause had no firmer or more con 
sistent friend. The peace societies had best, of 
reasons to be proud of his support, in word and deed. 
To him human life was sacred as the life of God. 
Once, at a grand Peace gathering, it was strenuously 
argued by most of the members who spoke, that 
human life could and should be taken by divine com 
mand. And the president of the society himself 
made an argument in defence of all the slaughters 
of the Canaanites and other tribes and peoples, men, 
women and children, by Moses, Joshua and their 
destroying hosts, because perpetrated by command of 
God. It was at one of the last meetings Rogers ever 
attended, and he was then too feeble to bear an 
active part in the deliberations. But after listening a 
good while to scripture text and learned logic under 
Levitical law, he rose to his feet and in low voice 
asked : " Does our brother yonder say that if God 
commanded him, he would take a sword and use it in 
slaying human beings, and innocent, helpless human 
beings ? "Yes, if God commanded," was the answer. 
"Well, I wouldn t," responded Rogers, and sank 
back into his seat, amid loud cheers of evident 
approval and admiration. 

Woman, to him, was in all rights, privileges and 
prerogatives, the full equal of man. He was a 
Christian in the divinest, sublimest sense of that still 
mysterious and much abused word. And as such his 
kingdom was not of this world. And so he could 
neither vote in, nor ask others to vote in nor to fight 
for any government based on military power. 

As husband and father, none ever knew one in 
whom his family were more supremely felicitated. 
As companion and friend, blessed and happy were all 
those who enjoyed his confidence and esteem. Gentle, 



46 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 

simple, tender, kind, ready to sacrifice his own com 
fort ; sharing on occasion, like General Washington, 
his room and bed with a colored man, and yet always 
discriminating in high degree ; with tastes most 
refined ; ever ready to criticise, even censure a 
friend, however dear, when he deemed it just and 
demanded ; firm as his own Ailsa Craig, whenever or 
wherever, or however a moral principal was in 
jeopardy ; running over with music, poetry, and 
culture of every kind, he was a man, the like of whom 
the world has seldom seen may not soon see again. 



CHAPTER III. 

SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 

Everybody now is anti-slavery. It is honorable 
now to be a child of the man who "cast the first 
anti-slavery vote in our town ;" or called "our first 
anti-slavery meeting ;" or first entertained Garrison 
as guest, or Abby Kelley, or Frederick Douglass ; or 
rescued Stephen Foster or Lucy Stone from the hands 
of a ferocious mob ; or raised, or commanded the 
first company of colored troops in the war of Rebel 
lion, at the time when not a musical band could be 
found in the whole city of New York to play for a 
colored regiment, as it marched from the New Haven 
Railway station to the steamer at the foot of Canal 
street to embark for the seat of war ! " Paid pipers, " 
the venerable Dr. Tyng with withering scorn 
called them all on the same evening in Cooper Insti 
tute, where he presided at a lecture by George William 
Curtis. "Paid pipers," with wind too immaculate to 
blow away in escort of a gallant battalion of our 
country s saviors, when there was no other name under 
heaven given among men," whereby the nationality 
could be saved but the negro name ; despised as he 
was and rejected of men; "a man of sorrows" and 
acquainted all his dreary life with grief ! Everybody 
now is an abolitionist, or son, or grandson of an anti- 
slavery parentage, and so all seem to claim equal 
honor, so far as honor is due, for ridding the world of 
the sublimest scourge and curse that ever afflicted the 
human race. 



48 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 

Few now, however, have much conception of what 
slavery was ; or what was genuine, effective anti- 
slavery, when slavery sat supreme "on its throne of 
skulls," and ruled the whole nation, state, church and 
school, literature, trade, commerce, manufactures and 
agriculture, as with rod of iron ! And its first 
command, great command, only command was, 
"Thou shalt have no god but me." Not, as from 
Mount Sinai, "no other gods before me," but no other 
god. Not "no other gods before me," but "no other 
gods with, or above or below me !" So it was. Anti- 
slavery then, was more than a name ; more than pro 
fession ; or denomination in religion ; or party in the 
government. So Christianity had mighty meanings 
when the great apostle to the Gentiles wrote : " I am 
not ashamed of the gospel of Christ." And " I deter 
mined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ 
and him crucified." It had fearful meanings when the 
gardens of Nero were illumined with the burning 
bodies of martyred saints, both men and women, young 
and old ! When to name the Christ of God was 
death in lingering torments when crucifixions were 
so multiplied that, as in grim epigram it was said, 
" space was wanted for crosses, and crosses for chris- 
tians." And yet so sublime was Christian heroism at 
that hour, that it could have well been added, but 
christains are never wanting for crosses. 

But what was our slave system, that so many now 
proudly claim to have aided to destroy ? And whose 
fathers and mothers were those who really did bear 
active, effective part in the thirty years moral and 
peaceful conflict, inaugurated by Garrison with 
"sword of the spirit ; " whose only weapons were 

" The mild arms of truth and love, 
Made mighty through the living God ? " 



SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 49 

Or whose sons and brothers rushed at last to the 
field of mortal combat, and fought the bloodiest, 
mightiest, everyway, most frightful war, that has 
shaken the earth and darkened the skies in all the 
Christian years ? Slavery! What is it ? What was it 
on the American plantation ? " Peculiar Institution," 
some called it. " Patriarchal Institution," others ! 
But what was it? All language pales and is silent in 
its dread presence. Slave-holding ! " Deed without 
a name ! " In cant phrase we said slavery degrades 
man to the brute, sinks woman to the dead level of 
the horse. And then who knows the height and 
depth, the length and breadth of those stunning 
words ; insulting blasphemies against the Holy Spirit 
of Humanity ! Let one advertisement, distributed by 
large handbills, as well as published in the daily news 
papers of New Orleans, aid the imagination : 

RAFFLE. MR. JOSEPH JENNINGS respectfully informs his friends and 
the public that, at the request of many acquaintances, he has been 
induced to purchase from Mr. Osborne, of Missouri, the celebrated DARK 
BAY HORSE, " STAR," aged five years, square trotter and warranted 
sound ; with a new, light Trotting Buggy and Harness : Also the dark, 
stout Mulatto Girl, u Sarah," aged about twenty years, general house 
servant, valued at nine hundred dollars, and guaranteed: and will be 
RAFFLED for at four o clock p. M., February first, at the selection hotel 
of the subscribers. The above is as represented, and those persons who 
may wish to engage in the usual practice of raffling will, I assure them, be 
perfectly satisfied with their destiny in this affair. 

The whole is valued at its just worth, fifteen hundred dollars ; fifteen 
hundred CHANCES at One Dollar each. The Raffle will be conducted 
by gentlemen selected by the interested subscribers present. Five nights 
will be allowed to complete the Raffle. Both of the above described can be 
seen at my store, No. 78 Common street, second door from Camp, at from 
nine o clock, A. M., to two p. M. 

Highest throw to take the first choice ; the lowest throw the remaining 
prize, and the fortunate winners will pay Twenty Dollars each for the 
refreshments furnished on the occasion. 

N. B. No chances recognized unless paid for previous to the commence 
ment. JOSEPH JENNINGS. 

In the light of a spectacle like this, it is possible to 
fancy slightly what should be understood when it is 
said that slavery degrades human beings to the plane 
of brute beasts. 

Or reverse the order of illustration, if we dare, and 
imagine a brute beast raised to the dignity and honor, 



50 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 

the privilege and prerogative of a man, an immortal 
being. History or fable tells us of a Roman Sovereign 
who made a favorite horse first Consul of the Empire. 
Such mockery might have been. But suppose in a 
Christian country, in a Christian sanctuary, it were 
proposed to admit, not a horse, but some dogs into 
full fellowship and communion with the church. It is 
on a delightful Sunday of early summer, in a pleasant 
New England country town. The village gardens are 
already abloom with early flowers, the orchards are 
white with prophecy of abundant fruit, and every tree 
is an orchestra of cheerful birds, whose worship-notes 
almost charm the Sabbath silence into sweet accord 
with the songs of paradise. All the village and the 
districts around assemble at their, to them, " house of 
God." At the appointed hour, the baptized commu 
nicants of the accepted faith are invited to seats at 
the sacramental board. The unregenerate of the con 
gregation retire to the outer seats, paying silent but 
respectful attention. The first scene in the solemn 
service is admission of new members, who are invited 
forward to the altar. There, in presence of the con 
gregation, they listen and bow silent assent to the 
Articles of Faith and the Covenant Vows, and receive 
the seal of baptism, in the name of the triune God. 
Solemn and impressive as this may be, it may excite 
no unusual emotions, being neither new nor infre 
quent. But slavery, we used to say with lip only, 
" degrades man and woman to a level with the 
brutes;" puts the "bay horse, Star," and the " Mu 
latto girl, Sarah," into the same raffle, or on the same 
auction-block. Now change the order. Elevate the 
brutes to the place of immortal beings at the baptismal 
font and sacramental table. Whistle up two or three 
dogs and solemnly read over to them the creed and 



SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 51 

covenant, and sprinkle them with the holy drops of 
baptism, calling them by their appropriate brute 
names, " Lion, I baptize thee in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Tiger, 
I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost." And let the third be a 
female : "Topsy, I baptize thee in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. 
Amen." 

Let such a spectacle be enacted on a delightful 
summer Sunday afternoon, in a beautiful New Eng 
land village, in its pleasant white meeting-house, and 
at the memorial supper of that crucified Redeemer in 
whom the church and its pastor devoutly believed, 
and through whom they humbly hoped for salvation. 
Can the effect on the beholders of such a daring spec 
tacle be described, or even imagined ? As well, but 
no better, attempt a description of that slavery which 
truly did degrade human beings to a level with horses 
and with dogs. This whole scene was once supposed 
as illustration, in the days of slavery, in just such town 
and house of worship as here described, and not only 
that town, but the pulpit and religious press of both 
the hemispheres almost shrieked as with holy horror at 
what they called so audacious, so diabolical blasphemy. 
And the cry came up from near and far for imme 
diate punishment of him who had so illumined slavery, 
to the fullest demand of the statute, which was long 
confinement, it was held, in the State prison ! But 
one thing was made clear. The words, Slavery 
degrades man to a level with beasts, were seen and 
felt as perhaps never before. The congregation where 
the illustration was presented saw and solemnly felt 
that from beasts up to men to men exalted to angelic 
heights was no farther than those deeps down which 



52 SALVERY AS IT WAS. 

immortal man is plunged, to reach the level of the 
beasts that perish. And that frightful pit was reached 
by every chattel slave ever born. 

But the question, What was American slavery ? is 
not yet answered. To call it robbery, by only our dic 
tionary definition, would pay it high compliment. Its 
fell work began where all ordinary robbery leaves off. 
John Wesley saw it and pronounced it, " Sum of all 
villainies." And if he did not pronounce the slave 
holder sum of all villains, he did address him in words 
like these : 

What I have said to slave-traders, equally concerns 
all slave-holders, of whatever rank and degree, seeing 
man-buyers are exactly on a level with man-stealers. 
You say, I pay honestly for my goods, and am not 
concerned to know they are honestly come by. Nay, 
but you are. * * * You know they are not 
honestly come by ; you know they are procured by 
means nothing near so innocent as picking pockets, 
house-breaking, or robbery on the highway. You 
know they are procured by a deliberate species of 
more complicated villainy, of fraud, robbery and mur 
der, than was ever practiced by Mohammedans or 
Pagans ; in particular, by murders of all kinds ; by the 
blood of the innocent poured upon the ground like 
water. Now it is your money that pays the African 
butcher. You, therefore, are principally guilty of all 
these frauds, robberies and murders. You are the 
spring that puts all the rest in motion. They would 
not stir a step without you : therefore the blood of all 
these wretches who die before their time lies upon 
your head. " The blood of thy brother crieth against 
thee from the earth." O, whatever it costs, put a stop 
to its cry before it be too late ; instantly, at any price, 
were it the half of your goods, deliver thyself from 
blood-guiltiness ! Thy hands, thy bed, thy furniture, 
thy house, and thy lands, at present are stained with 
blood. Surely it is enough ; accumulate no more 
guilt ; spill no more the blood of the innocent. Do 
not hire another to shed blood ; do not pay him for 



SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 53 

doing it. Whether you are a Christian or not, show 
yourself a man ! Be not more savage than a lion or 
a bear. 

Slavery is not robbery therefore, because it is so 
much more, and worse. Indeed, to rob man of man 
hood, and beastialize him down with not only animals, 
but the dead matter on which brutes feed and tread, 
makes any farther spoliation simply impossible. 

Or shall we pronounce American slavery adultery, 
wholesale, unblushing adultery ? If not, it must be 
because, as with robbery, it was something so much 
worse. For, first, what is adultery but setting aside 
all rights, privileges and responsibilities, human and 
divine, of both the marriage and parental relations ? 
Slavery knew no more of marriage and parentage 
among slaves than among swine. Logically, as well 
as legally, it could not. And the statutes and court 
decisions so declared. 

But such abomination had not only state sanction, 
but church sanctification as well. Judge Birney, of 
Kentucky, once a slave-holder, in his memorable tract 
entitled : " The American Churches the Bulwarks of 
American Slavery," second edition, revised by the 
author, cites this instance : 

In 1835 the following query referring to slaves was 
presented to the Savannah River Baptist Association 
of Ministers : " Whether in case of involuntary sepa 
ration of such a character as to preclude all prospect 
of future intercourse, the parties ought to be allowed 
to marry again." 

The following was the answer : 

* * * Such separation among persons situated as 
are our slaves, is civilly a separation by death. And 
we believe that in the sight of God, it would be so 
viewed ! * The slaves are not free 

agents, and a dissolution by death is not more entirely 
without their consent and beyond their control than by 
such separation. 



54 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 

James G. Birney was at one time a slave-holder as 
well as judge in the courts, and a ruling elder in 
the Presbyterian church. He was induced to emanci 
pate his slaves, as well as to provide for their future 
support, taking them over into the free state of Ohio 
for that purpose, by the faithful and earnest argument 
and appeal of Theodore D. Weld, an early, eloquent 
and everyway most efficient apostle and laborer in the 
anti-slavery field. Washing his own hands from the 
blood and guilt of slave holding, Judge Birney set 
himself to the work of abolishing the foul system. 
Among his first endeavors was an attempt to purify 
the churches, beginning with his own. But neither his 
official standing in both state and church, nor his high 
consequent social status availed to shield him from 
every possible indignity and outrage at the hands of 
infuriated mobs, composed largely sometimes of mem 
bers of the churches. Driven from Kentucky he 
removed to Ohio. His descent on Cincinnati, where he 
had now become known, was a signal to waken all the 
vengeance of both church and state against him. 
Meetings were at once called, " to see if the people 
will permit abolition papers to be published in this 
city." At the first meeting the postmaster, who was 
also a minister, presided. A committee of thirteen, 
all eminent citizens, and eight of them church mem 
bers, was appointed to wait on Mr. Birney and assure 
him that his paper must stop, or the meeting would 
not be responsible for the consequences of its continu 
ance. The chairman of the committee declared that 
" if the paper were not promptly suspended, a mob, 
unusual in numbers, determined in purpose, and deso 
lating in its ravages, would be inevitable !" All of 
which proved true, for the paper did not stop. In the 
darkness of midnight the mob entered and carried 



SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 55 

press, types and all else of contents and sunk them in 
the Ohio river. And twice afterwards was the same 
outrage perpetrated. No wonder Mr. Burney enti 
tled his memorable tract, published at the time, " The 
American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery." 
For the title was more than justified on every subse 
quent page, as will hereafter be made to appear. And 
the word of divine truth uttered by Mr. Weld, and the 
baptism of fire and water three times administered by 
the fiendish mob, with full approval of state, church and 
pulpit, were sufficient consecration of the author of 
the memorable tract to his subsequent anti-slavery 
ministry and apostleship. 

But returning to the argument. Not only was slavery 
adultery, as sanctified and committed by the churches, 
in thus sundering all marriage rights and responsibili 
ties ; it was legally and in solemn compact annihila 
tion of human marriage and parentage. The court 
decisions contained sentiments such as these : "With 
consent of their masters, slaves may marry ; but in a 
state of slavery it can produce no civil effect, because 
slaves are deprived of all civil rights." [Judge Mat 
thews, of Louisiana.^ Attorney-General Delany, of 
Maryland, held that slaves would not be admonished 
for incontinence, or punished for adultery or forni 
cation ; or prosecuted for petty treason, or for killing 
a husband, being a slave. The code of Louisiana 
declared, " a slave could not contract matrimony. 
The association which takes place among slaves, and 
is called marriage, being properly designated contuber- 
nium, a relation without sanctity, and to which no civil 
rights adhere." So the plain, unquestionable fact was, 
slavery was wholesale, legalized, sanctified concubin 
age, or adultery, from first to last. Our government 
was based on the prostrate bodies, souls and civil,. 



56 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 

social, marital, parental, educational, moral and relig 
ious rights of half a million of immortal beings. In 
three-quarters of a century their numbers multiplied till 
at the downfall of the institution there were four mil 
lions, and not one legal marriage ever existed in all 
their generations ! And yet, compelled by law thus 
to live and herd like brute beasts, hundreds of thou 
sands of them were admitted to baptism and sacramen 
tal communion and fellowship in all the great evan 
gelical denominations in the land ! 

One other attribute of the dreadful system remains 
to be exposed, and that was murder. Under the writ 
ten law of slavery, more than seventy offences, when 
committed by slaves, were punishable with death. One 
law read, " if any slave shall presume to strike any 
white person, such slave may be lawfully killed." Of 
course killed on the spot. A woman or girl would 
have been killed (undoubtedly many were killed) for 
defending her person against the lustful attack of her 
overseer or other white assailant. 

Special laws existed for recapturing escaped slaves 
at any cost of life to the victims, by first proclaiming 
them outlaws. The following legal instrument with 
its accompaniments will suffice to show the way : 

STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA, } 
Lenoir County. j 

Whereas, complaint hath been this day made to us, two of the Justices 
of the Peace for the said county, by William D. Cobb, of Jones county, 
that two negro slaves belonging to him, named Ben (commonly known by 
the name of Ben Fox) and Rigdon. have absented themselves from their 
said master s service, and are lurking about in the counties of Lenoir and 
Jones, committing acts of felony ; these are, in the name of the State, to 
command the said slaves forthwith to surrender themselves, and return 
home to their said master. And we do hereby, by virtue of an act of the 
Assembly of this State, concerning servants and slaves, intimate and de 
clare, if the said slaves do not surrender themselves and return home to 
their master immediately after the publication of these presents, that any 
person may kill and destroy said slaves by such means as he or they think 
fit, without accusation or impeachment of any crime or offence for so 
doing, or without incurring any penalty or forfeiture thereby. 
Given under our hands and seals, this i2th day of November, 1836. 

B. COLEMAN, J. P. [Seal.] 
JAMES JONES, J. P. [Seal.] 



SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 57 

Two HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD. Ran away from the subscriber, a 
certain negro man named Ben, (commonly known by the name of Ben Fox). 
Also, one other negro, by the name of Rigdon, who ran away on the 8th of 
this month. 

I will give the reward of one hundred dollars for each of the above 
negroes, to be delivered to me or confined in the jail of Lenoir or Jones 
county, or for the killing of them, so that I can see them. 

November 12, 1836. W. D. COBB. 

Another advertisement, from the Sumpter County 
(Alabama) Whig, will illustrate the methods of slave 
hunting in other States besides North Carolina : 

NEGRO DOGS. The undersigned having bought the entire pack of 
NEGRO DOGS of the Hay & Allen stock, he now proposes to catch 
runaway negroes. His charge will be three dollars a day for hunting; and 
fifteen dollars for catching a runaway. He resides three and one-half 
miles north of Livingston, near the lower Jones Bluff road. 

November 6, 1845. WM. GAMBEL. 

The New York Commercial-Advertiser of June 8th, 
1827, contained the following item of news, not uncom 
mon at that time, as the irresponsibility of slave-holders 
over the lives of their slaves had hardly been ques 
tioned : 

HUNTING MEN WITH DOGS. A negro who had 
absconded -from his master, and for whom a reward 
of a hundred dollars was offered, has been appre 
hended and committed to prison in Savannah. 

The editor who states the fact adds, with as much 
coolness as though there were no barbarity in the 
matter, that he did not surrender till he was consider 
ably maimed by the dogs that had been set on him 
desperately fighting them, and badly cutting one of 
them with a sword. 

The St. Francisville (La.) Chronicle of February 
ist, 1839, reports a slave-hunt after this sort : 

Two or three days ago a gentleman of this parish, in 
hunting runaway negroes, came upon a camp of them 
in the swamp on Cat Island. He succeeded in arrest 
ing two of them, but the third made fight. On being 
shot in the shoulder, he fled to a sluice, where, the 
dogs succeeded in drowning him before assistance 
could arrive. 

Had assistance arrived," would it have been ten 
dered to the dogs or their victim ? is a question, to 

s 



58 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 

this day. But calling off the dogs altogether, let the 
subject be illumined a little farther with lights like 
this, from the Charleston (S. C.) Courier, in 1825. 

TWENTY DOLLARS REWARD. -Ran away from the subscriber, on 
the i4th instant, a negro girl named Molly. She is 16 or 17 years of age, 
slim made, lately BRANDED ON HER LEFT CHEEK, THUS, " R," AND A PIECE 

IS TAKEN OFF HER EAR ON THE SAME SIDE ; THE SAME LETTER IS BRANDED ON 
THE INSIDE OF BOTH HER LEGS. 

ABNER ROSS, Fairfield District, S. C. 

True, the killing is here omitted, possibly by acci 
dent, but if such an atrocity does not involve murder, 
sublimated, what shall be said of this from the Wil 
mington (N. C.) Advertiser of July i3th, 1838? 



ANAWAY MY NEGRO MAN, RICHARD. A reward of twenty- 
five dollars will be paid for his apprehension, DEAD OK ALIVE ! Satis 



factory proofwill only be required of his being killed. He has with him, 
in all probability, his wife, Eliza, who ran awav from Colonel Thompson, 
now a resident of Alabama. 

But no more such evidences of the murderous spirit 
of slavery can be needed ; though the last advertise 
ment suggests an incident in South Carolina, so late 
as 1844, which is too instructive and assuring not to 
be given. 

That " wife, Eliza, who ran away from Colonel 
Thompson," possibly might have a tale unfolded, 
whose lightest word would have harrowed up the soul. 
There were many such tales. A young man in South 
Carolina was seen walking with a young woman, a 
slave, to whom it was known he was tenderly attached, 
and whom, it was farther shown, he married and 
aided to escape from slavery. That was his crime. 
He was arrested, tried, and found guilty. Sentence 
of death was pronounced upon him by Judge J. B. 
O Neale, in word and spirit as now reproduced : 

JOHN L. BROWN It is my duty to announce to you 
the consequences of the conviction which you heard 
at Winnsboro , and of the opinion you have just 
heard read, refusing your two-fold motion in arrest 
of judgment for a new trial. 

You are to die ! To die an ignominious death 
the death on the gallows ! This announcement is, to 



SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 59 

you, I know, most appalling. Little did you dream of 
it when you stepped into the bar with an air as if you 
thought it was a fine frolic. But the consequences of 
crime are just such as you are realizing. Punishment 
often comes when it is least expected. Let me 
entreat you to take the present opportunity to com 
mence the work of reformation. Time will be fur 
nished you to prepare for the great change just before 
you. Of your past life I know nothing, except what 
your trial .furnished. That told me that the crime for 
which you are to suffer was the consequence of a 
want of attention on your part to the duties of life. 
The strange woman snared you. She flattered you 
with her words, and you became her victim. The 
consequence was, that, led on by a desire to serve her, 
you committed the offense of aiding a slave to run 
away and depart from her master s service ; and now, 
for it you are to die ! 

You are a young man, and -I fear you have been 
dissolute ; and if so, these kindred vices have con 
tributed a full measure to your ruin. Reflect on your 
past life, and make the only useful devotion of the 
remnant of your days in preparing for death. 

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy 
youth, is the language of inspired wisdom. This 
comes home appropriately to you in this trying mo 
ment. 

You are young ; quite too young to be where you 
are. If you had remembered your Creator in your past 
days, you would not now be in a felon s place, to receive 
a felon s judgment. Still, it is not too late to remem 
ber your Creator. He calls early, and He calls late. 
He stretches out the arms of a Father s love to you 
to the vilest sinner and says : " Come unto me and 
be saved." You can perhaps, read. If so, read the 
Scriptures ; read them without note, and without com 
ment ; and pray to God for His assistance ; and you 
will be able to say when you pass from prison to exe 
cution, as a poor slave said under similar circum 
stances : "I am glad my Friday has come." If you 
cannot read the Scriptures, the ministers of our holy 
religion will be ready to aid you. They will read and 



60 SLAVERY AS IT WAS! 

explain to you until you will be able to understand ; 
and understanding, to call upon the only One who 
can help you and save you Jesus Christ, the Lamb 
of God, who taketh away the sin of the world. To 
Him I commend you. And through Him may y 
have that opening of the Day-Spring of mercy from 
on high, which shall bless you here, and crown you as 
a saint in an everlasting world, forever and ever. 

The sentence of the law is that you be taken hence 
to the place from whence you came last ; thence to 
the jail of Fairfield District ; and that there you be 
closely and securely confined until Friday, the 26th 
day of April next ; on which day, between the hours 
of ten in the forenoon and two in the afternoon, you 
will be taken to the place of public execution, and 
there be. hanged by the neck till your body be dead. 
And may God have mercy on your soul ! 

No event in anti-slavery history up to that time so 
stirred the two hemispheres as did this frightful sen 
tence of Judge O Neale. Even in the British House of 
Lords, two illustrious members, Brougham and Den- 
man, gave it pathetic and powerful consideration. 
One London journal said: "The dreadful case of 
John L. Brown has created throughout Great Britain, 
a sensation of deepest and most painful character. 
Addresses to the churches in South Carolina have 
been extensively signed by the independent churches 
in England and Scotland." 

The Glasgow Argus, among the most important 
journals of Scotland, twice published the Charge on 
account of its fearful character, and said of it, "-we 
know of nothing more atrocious in the judicial annals 
of modern times. And what are we 

to think of a judge, who in passing sentence for what 
in our country, our land of Freedom, would be looked 
upon as a praiseworthy act, invokes the sacred name 
of Deity and the Holy Book of Inspiration as lending 
sanction to the atrocity about to be committed!" 



SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 6l 

But perhaps the most imposing movement in Great 
Britain, on this terrible perversion of all justice, as 
well as outrage on all decency, humanity and charity, 
was a " Memorial addressed to the Churches of Christ 
in South Carolina, as representing those of other states," 
signed by more than thirteen hundred ministers 
and office-holders in the churches and other benevo 
lent associations of London, and other portions of the 
kingdom, in solemn protest against it. But it need 
hardly be told, that all the sympathy felt, all the effort 
made, all the appeals and memorials sent, eloquent, 
tender, pathetic, devout as many, if not all of them 
were, seemed almost wholly thrown away on the press, 
pulpit, and vast majority of the people of the United 
States, even though South Carolina did yield to 
foreign pressure at last, and commuted the sentence to 
fifty lashes on the bare back ; and even they were 
said to have been remitted on condition that the 
young man quit the state forever. 

But this account though already extended, would 
not be complete unless the feelings excited in the 
hearts of the American Abolitionists, in view of the 
whole scene, could have utterance. Let then their 
favorite and faithful poet, Whittier, be their oracle : 

ON THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN. 

Ho ! thou who seekest late and long 

A License from the Holy Book 
For brutal lust and hellish wrong, 

Man of the Pulpit, look ! 
Lift up those cold and atheist eyes, 

This ripe fruit of thy teaching see ; 
And tell us how to heaven will rise % 

The incense of this sacrifice 
This blossom of the gallows tree ! 

Search out for slavery s hour of need 

Some fitting text of sacred writ ; 
Give heaven the credit*of a deed 

Which shames the nether pit. 



62 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 

Kneel, smooth blasphemer, unto Him 
Whose truth is on thy lips a lie 

Ask that His bright winged cherubim 
May bend around that scaffold grim 

To guard and bless and sanctify. 

Ho ! champion of the people s cause 

^Suspend thy loud and vain rebuke 

OT foreign wrong and Old World s laws 

Man of the Senate, look ! 
Was this the promise of the free, 

The great hope of our early time 
That slavery s poison vine should be 

Upborne by Freedom s prayer-nurs d tree 
O erclustered with such fruits of crime ? 

Send out the summons East and West, 

And South and North, let all be there 
W 7 here he who pitied the oppressed 

Swings out in sun and air. 
Let not a Democratic hand 

The grisly hangman s task refuse ; 
There let each loyal patriot stand, 

Awaiting slavery s command, 
To twist the rope and draw the noose ! 

But vain is irony unmeet 

Its cold rebuke for deeds which start 
In fiery and indignant beat 

The pulses of the heart. 
Leave studied wit and guarded phrase 

For those who think but do not feel 
Let MEN speak out in words which raise 

Where er they fall, an answering blaze 
Like flints which strike the fire from steel. 

Still let a mousing priesthood ply 

Their garbled text and gloss of sin, 
And make the lettered scroll deny 

Its living soul within : 
Still let the place-fed, titled knave 

Plead robbery s right with purchased lips, 
And tell us that our fathers gave 

For Freedom s pedestal, a slave, 
The frieze and moulding, chains and whips \ 

But ye who own that Higher Law 
Whose tablets in the heart are set, 

Speak out in words of power and awe 
THAT GOD is LIVING YET ! 

Breathe forth once more those tones sublime 
Which thrilled the burdened prophet s lyre, 



SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 63 

And in a dark and evil time 

Smote down on Israel s fast of crime 
And gift of blood, A KAIN OF FIRE ! 

Oh, not for us the graceful lay 

To whose soft measures lightly move 
The Dryad and the woodland fay, 

O er-locked by mirth and love ! 
But such a stern and startling strain 

As Britain s hunted bards flung down 
From Snowden to the conquered plain, 

Where harshly clanked the Saxon chain, 
On trampled field and smoking town. 

By Liberty s dishonored name, 

By man s lost hope and failing trust. 
By words and deeds which bow with shame 

Our foreheads to the dust ; 
By the exulting Tyrant s sneer, 

Borne to us from the Old World s thrones, 
And by his victims griefs ^-ho hear, 

In sunless mines and dungeons drear, 
How Freedom s land her faith disowns ! 

Speak out in ACTS, the time for words 

Has passed ; and DEEDS alone suffice ; 
In the loud clang of meeting swords 

The softer music dies ! 
Act act in God s name, while ye may ! 

Smite from the CHURCH, her leprous limb ! 
Throw open to the light of day 

The bondman s cell, and break away 
The chains the STATE has bound on him ! 

Ho ! every true and living soul. 

To Freedom s perilled altar bear 
The Freeman s and the Christian s whole 

Tongue, pen, and vote, and prayer ! 
One last, great battle for the right 

One short, sharp struggle to be free ! 
To do is to succeed our fight 

Is waged in Heaven s approving sight ; 
The smile of God is Victory." 

Severity of punishments inflicted on slaves short of 
death, were often a thousand times more cruel than 
death by the halter ; not unfrequently terminating in 
death, though only by whipping. But hanging was 
not always severe enough, as witness a law of Mary 
land, enacted in 1729 : " The slave shall first have the 



64 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 

right hand cut off, then be hanged in the usual man 
ner ; the head be severed from the body, the body 
divided into four quarters, and the head and quarters 
be set-up in the most public places of the county where 
such act was committed." And this horrible bar 
barity could be inflicted by a simple justice s court. 

But it may be said this legislation was before the 
foundations of this republic were laid. That is true. 
But in the year 1836, in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, 
an act was perpetrated, of which the following was the 
accepted newspaper account, on the spot and over the 
country : 

On the 28th of April, 1836, in the city of St. Louis, 
a black man named Mclntosh, who had stabbed an 
officer who had arrested him, was seized by the mul 
titude, fastened to a tree in the midst of the city, wood 
piled around him, in open day, and in the presence of 
an immense throng of citizens, he was burned to 
death. The Alton Telegraph thus describes a part of 
the scene : 

All was silent as death while the executioners were 
piling the wood around the victim. He said not a 
word till he felt that the flames had seized him. He 
then uttered an awful howl, attempting to sing and 
pray, then hung his head and suffered in silence. 
After the flames had surrounded their prey, his eyes 
burned out of his head, and his mouth apparently 
parched to a "cinder, some one in the crowd more com 
passionate than the rest, proposed to end his misery 
by shooting him. But it was replied that he was 
already out of his pain. " No, no," cried the wretch, 
" I am not. I am suffering as much as ever. Shoot 
me ! Shoot me !" " No," exclaimed one of the fiends 
standing by the roasting sacrifice, " no, he shall not be 
shot. I would sooner slack the fire if that would 
increase his misery !" 

A St. Louis correspondent of a New York paper 
sent an account of the diabolical deed, of which this 
is an excerpt : 



SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 65 

The shrieks and groans of the victim were loud and 
piercing, and to observe one limb after another drop 
into the fire, was awful indeed. In dying, he was 
about fifteen minutes. I visited the place this morn 
ing and saw the body, or the remains of it, burned 
to a crump. The legs and arms were gone, and only 
a part of the head and body was remaining. 

A subsequent judicial decision by judge Luke E. 
Lawless, of the Circuit Court of Missouri, made at a 
session of court in St. Louis, was, that as the burning 
of Mclntosh was the act, directly or indirectly, by 
countenance of a majority of the citizens, it is a case 
which transcends the jurisdiction of the grand jury ! 

And so the dreadful sacrament was sanctified and 
solemnized by high judicial decision. And as such 
atrocities were common while slavery lasted, why need 
the law of Maryland be shorn of its odium and terror 
in the popular apprehension, only because it was 
older than -the Declaration of American Indepen 
dence ? 

Assuming that nations are not better than their 
laws, or that laws are never made till needed, what 
shall be said of legislation like this ? A law of North 
Carolina provided that : 

If any person shall wilfully kill his own slave, or 
of any other person, every such offender shall, on con 
viction, forfeit and pay the sum of seven hundred 
pounds, and shall forever be rendered incapable of 
holding or exercising any office. 

And this law was not repealed till the year 1821, if 
ever. Another section of the same act provided : 

If any person shall, in sudden heat of passion, or 
by undue correction, kill his own slave, or the slave of 
any other person, he shall forfeit the sum of three 
hundred and fifty pounds. 

A still further provision of the same act read thus : 

If any person shall wilfully cut out the tongue, put 
out the eye, castrate, or cruelly scald or burn any 



66 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 

slave, or deprive any slave of any limb or member, or 
shall inflict any other cruel punishment, other than 
by whipping or beating with a switch, horse-whip or 
cow-skin, or by putting on irons, or imprisoning such 
slave, such person, for every such offence, shall forfeit 
and pay one hundred pounds. 

Judge Stroud, in his carefully prepared " Sketch of 
Laws Relating to Slavery," says in his latest edition, 
(1856) : "This, so far as I can learn, has been suf 
fered to disgrace the statute book to the present hour. 
Amid all the mutations which Christianity has effected 
within the last century, she has not been able to con 
quer the spirit which dictated this law." 

And not to speak of the shameful outrage, so 
denounced in Deuteronomy, xxiii ; ist, what must 
be thought of the decency, humanity, not to say 
religion, of a people that enacts, supports, sanctifies a 
law which beats without limit, without mercy, with 
horse- whip, cowskin or other missile, a human being, 
man, woman, child, unrebuked, unless the last stroke 
should produce immediate death ? 

With one more well authenticated fact and one 
other witness, and he none other than Thomas Jeffer 
son himself, the question as to the character of slavery 
shall be submitted to readers, to history, to posterity. 
The outrage to be described was witnessed by John 
James Appleton, Esq., whom Hon. David Lee Child 
and his illustrious wife, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, 
endorse as "a gentleman of high attainments and 
accomplishments," a secretary of legation at Rio 
Janeiro, Madrid and the Hague, commissioner at 
Naples and charge d affaires at Stockholm. Mr. 
Appleton was present at the burial of a female slave 
in Mississippi, who had been whipped to death by her 
master, for being gone longer on an errand than was 
thought necessary. She protested under the terrible 



SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 67 

torture that she was ill and had to rest in the fields. 
To complete the climax of horror, she was delivered 
of a dead child while undergoing the punishment!! Is 
it strange that she had to rest by the way ? But we 
will hasten to our last witness. 

To-day as I write, the Democratic party, party of 
Thomas Je,fferson, is celebrating here in Massachu 
setts, a political success, almost unexampled under the 
circumstances, in state elections, since the party was 
first inaugurated. The tribes of Israel never claimed 
Abraham as their father with more devout pride and 
filial reverence, than have the Democrats of this nation 
Thomas Jefferson as theirs, since their party first 
learned to lisp his name. 

And those tribes crying, " Crucify Him, crucify 
Him," in the court-room of Pilate, or mocking their 
victim as he climbed Mount Calvary, bearing his cross 
in sweating agony, did not more dishonor their patri 
archal father and founder than did the Democratic 
party and their Whig accomplices on the plains of 
Texas, murdering the Mexicans in a bloody war to 
reinstate slavery where the Mexican government, with 
its Roman Catholic religion, had not many years 
before, abolished it, as all humanity hoped, forever. 
That was almost forty years ago. Undoubtedly, devo 
tion to slavery sent the old Whig party to a scarcely 
too early grave. Worship of the same unclean and 
bloody Moloch, stove down democratic rule, from the 
kindled wrath of the Infinite Justice around Fort 
Sumter, until the victories won yesterday in so many 
States of this Union, and proudly celebrated to-day, 
give sign almost unmistakable, of its probable return 
at the next presidential election. 

And now the next and last witness as to the whole 
quality and character of slavery, even as he saw it 



68 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 

and himself embraced it, is the patriarchal American 
Democrat, Thomas Jefferson himself. 

His memorable " Notes on the State of Virginia," 
so often cited in the past, so greatly disregarded 
while slavery continued, were revised and published 
in 1787, when the problem of slavery was shaking the 
new republic to its foundation. 

The section relating to slavery contains so many 
general observations on human relations and obliga 
tions, individual as well as collective, social as^vell as 
civil and governmental, with a profoundly reverent 
recognition of higher authority than any man-made 
institutions, or constitutions, that it surely is not too 
much to declare that a return of the Democratic party 
to power will be a blessing or scourge and curse, 
exactly in proportion as it shall follow, or reject the 
doctrines and counsels of its justly venerated founder 
and progenitor, as laid down in the passage from his 
" Notes on the State of Virginia," here reproduced : 

There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on 
the manners of our people, produced by the existence 
of Slavery among us. The whole commerce between 
master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most 
boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on 
the one part, and degrading submission on the other. 
Our children see this and learn to imitate it ; for man 
is an imitative animal. This quality in him is the 
germ of all education. From his cradle to his grave, 
he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a 
parent could find no motive, either in his philanthropy 
or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance of 
passion toward his slave, it should always be a suffi 
cient one that his child is present. But generally it 
is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks 
on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same 
airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the 
worst of passions, and thus nursed and educated, and 
daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by 



SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 69 

it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a 
prodigy who can retain his manners and morals unde- 
praved by such circumstances. 

And with what execration should the statesman be 
loaded, who, permitting one-half the citizens thus to 
trample on the rights of the other, transforms those 
into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the 
morals of one part and the amor patrice of the other ! 
For if a slave can- have a country in this world, it 
must be any other in preference to that in which he is 
born to live and labor for another ; in which he must 
lock up the faculties of his nature ; contribute, as far 
as depends on his individual endeavors, to the evan- 
ishment of the human race, or entail his own miser 
able condition on the endless generations proceeding 
from him. 

With the morals of the people, their industry also is 
destroyed. For in a warm climate no man will labor 
for himself who can make another labor for him. This 
is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves, a very 
small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor. And 
can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when 
we have removed their only firm basis a conviction 
in the minds of the people that these liberties are the 
gift of God ? That they are not to be violated but 
with his wrath ? Indeed, I tremble for my country 
when I reflect that God is just : that his justice can 
not sleep torever : that considering numbers, and 
natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of For 
tune, an exchange of situation is among possible 
events : that it may becoiqe probable by supernatural 
interference ! The Almighty has no attribute which 
can take sides with us in such a contest ! But it is 
impossible to be temperate and pursue this subject 
through the various considerations of policy, of mor 
als, of history, natural and civil. We must be con 
tented to hope they will force their way into every 
mind. I think a change already perceptible since the 
origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the 
master is abating ; that of the slave rising from the 
dust ; his condition molifying ; the way I hope pre 
paring, under the auspices of heaven, for a total 



70 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 

emancipation. And that this is disposed, in the order 
of events, to be with the conent of the masters, 
rather than by their extirpation. 

Such was American slavery. Jefferson proved its 
historian as well as prophet, to wondrous extent. 
Happy for the nation, had it heeded his wise and 
timely counsels. Happy for it would it even now 
learn to regard them. 

When, before or since our slave system, did govern 
ments ever punish with death for seventy offences, 
and then forbid, under penalties almost as severe as 
death, to teach one of the victims of such tyranny to 
read one law of man or God, in any book, the Bible 
not excepted ? It may have been. But when, or where ? 
What but cold-blooded murder must such governing 
have been ! To rid the land of such a plague, no 
wonder it required an army on our side only, of more 
than two million seven hundred thousand men, half a 
million of whom never returned ! And then, as a 
crowning, sealing sacrifice, an idolized president mas 
sacred, murdered, and his tall form stretched across 
their premature graves, while not this nation only, but 
foreign peoples stood aghast! All this, not to speak 
of moneyed cost and loss ; nor counting the sighs 
and tears, bereavements and mournings of mothers, 
sisters, widows and orphans ! All this, not reckoning 
moral and spiritual, as well as financial impoverish 
ment and desolation, not to be restored perhaps till 
our third and fourth generations ! Such was part of 
the price paid to redeem the land from its uncommon 
curse. Men called the war of sword and bayonet, 
Rebellion. It might have been rebellion on the part 
of slavery and the South. But to the North it was 
Retribution. The South claimed as property, the 
slave. But the North, by the terms of the Federal 



SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 71 

Union, held him pinned down to the earth as with 
the point of the bayonet. From the torture-chambers 
of the imprisoned slave our guilt ascended, by silent 
but sure evaporation, until it hung in threatening 
clouds over all the sky, waiting the dread hour when 
the Infinite Patience could endure it no longer ! 

At last the command was given, and the tempest 
and thunder shook the very heavens, saying to the 
North, "Give up ;" to the South, " Keep not back." 
No lightning-rod shielded either ; and Slavery, with 
all its reeking, shrieking altars, and ghastly parapher 
nalia of whips, fetters, blood-hounds and red-hot 
branding-irons, was swept away in cataclysms of blood 
and fire ! 



CHAPTER IV. 

ANTI-SLAVERY WHAT IT WAS NOT, 
AND WHAT IT WAS. 

Such account could slavery give of itself, " Peculiar 
Institution " it was often called. But it was not pecul 
iar to the southern states. Fortunes were made by the 
African slave trade, even in little Rhode Island. The 
history of slavery and slave trading in Massachusetts 
is one of the most surprising volumes ever issued by 
the American press. New Hampshire held slaves. 
General Washington himself, while President of the 
United States, hunted a slave woman and her child 
all the wav into that then remote state. Vermont, had 
a fugitive slave case in 1808. But the brave Judge 
Harrington stunned the remorseless claimant with his 
decision that " nothing Tess than a bill of sale from the 
Almighty could establish ownership " in his victim. 
And he, too, returned home despoiled and shamed. 

Slavery was the sin and crime of. north as well as 
south. It was sustained by the government, it was 
sanctified by almost the whole religion of the nation. 
I have read that even the Quakers gravely considered 
the question, not whether it was right to hold slaves, 
but whether it- was proper to brand them with red hot 
marking irons. To the credit of that sect, however, 
it should be told that it was among the first, if not the 
very first, to cast the accursed thing forever out of 
its fellowship. 

Three clauses in the federal constitution were so 
interpreted as to brand the whole nation as slave 
holders, slave-hunters and slave-traders ; and one of 



ANTI-SLAVERY WHAT IT WAS NOT, ETC. 73 

those clauses was in two words, " suppress insur 
rections." And another was in this apparently inno 
cent, inoffensive period : 

No person held to service or labor in one state 
under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, 
in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be 
discharged from such service or labor ; but shall be 
delivered up on claim of the party to whom such 
service or labor may be due. 

And under that guarantee, which, as president, he 
was solemnly sworn to execute, did George Washing 
ton himself pursue a slave mother and her child from 
the Potomac to the Piscatauqua as remorselessly as 
though they had been a sheep and her lamb. For 
tunately, however, for the victims, they escaped and 
lived and died in the old Granite State. 

Our African slave trade was a piracy that paled all 
ordinary buccaneering into innocence. That traffic, 
with all its nameless terrors and tortures, was secured 
to the United States and positively protected by this 
specious and apparently inoffensive phrase in the 
ninth section of Article I in the federal consti 
tution : 

The migration or importation of such persons as 
any of the states now existing shall think proper to 
admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to 
the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a 
tax or duty may be imposed on such importations, 
not exceeding ten dollars for each person. 

And Mr. Madison, afterwards president, declared, 
and it is part of our history, that "the southern states 
would not have entered the union without the tem 
porary permission of that trade." 

The first fugitive slave law was enacted in 1793. 
But as anti-slavery sentiment increased, through the 
faithful and persistent labors of the uncompromising 
Abolitionists, " underground railroads," as they 

6 



74 ANTI-SLAVERY WHAT IT WAS NOT, 

were called, multiplied, and Judge Harrington s- 
decisions became more frequent. ^ Underground rail 
roads were only lines of travel through the northern 
states to Canada, over which, under cover of night,. 
great numbers of slaves were conveyed, sometimes 
in whole families; one anti-slavery man hurrying them: 
from his town to the next, or farther, if necessary, and 
then another taking them in charge, and so on till 
they were safely landed in Canada, beyond reach of 
further pursuit or danger. " Uncle Tom s Cabin " 
has no more interesting chapter than that in which 
Senator Bird s" adventure is described with his 
night express train over that memorable but dark and 
dangerous highway out of democratic despotism to 
freedom in a land of kings and queens. And large 
numbers escaped with greater security, as their friends 
multiplied along the way, by their own unaided 
efforts. 

So another and severer fugitive law was demanded, 
and in 1850 enacted. That law, in the first place, 
made every inch of our country, and the deck of 
every vessel, on sea, lake or river, hunting ground for 
slave-holder and kidnapper. And whoever refused 
to aid in the bloody, brutal business of chasing, 
seizing and holding the human prey, when called into- 
the service, or harbored or concealed the victims so 
that they escaped, was punished " by fine not exceed 
ing six thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceed 
ing six months." And, moreover, could be then held 
in an action for damages to the slave claimant, for 
one thousand dollars for every slave lost through 
refusal to obey that most shameful as well as unright 
eous and inhuman edict. And many of the best 
families in the land were beggared only for religiously 
observing the Golden Rule and remembering and 



AND WHAT IT WAS, 75 

regarding them who were in bonds as bound with 
them. . 

As early as the year 1840, efforts began to be made 
by some anti-slavery men, who had faith or hope 
in political action against slavery, to change the inter 
pretations of the constitution and decisions of the 
Supreme Court so as to make not only the clauses just 
now cited, but the whole instrument a proclamation 
and protection of universal liberty. Foremost among 
these men was Mr. Gerrit Smith, of New York. A 
third political party was inaugurated, and James G. 
Birney, whose name has already had honorable men 
tion in these pages, was the first nominated anti- 
slavery candidate for the presidency, and whose first 
anti-slavery works, as a repentant slave-holder, entitled 
him to such distinction. But his name was with 
drawn after his first vote was given in 1844, and John 
P. Hale of New Hampshire, succeeded him. He also 
was superseded in the candidacy for one who 
undoubtedly might control a larger vote, Martin Van 
Buren, but whose anti-slavery reputation was surely 
of most questionable character. But the popular 
sentiment, press, pulpit, everything, everywhere pre 
vailed over all such innovation till the election of 
Abraham Lincoln, who in his inaugural address on 
March 4th, 1861, declared for slave-holding and 
slave-hunting in these strange, but surely ever memor 
able words : 

I understand a proposed amendment, which amend 
ment I have not seen, has passed Congress, to the 
effect that the federal government shall never inter 
fere with the domestic institutions of the states, 
including that of persons held to service. To avoid 
misconstruction of what I have said, I now depart 
from my purpose not to speak of particular amend 
ments, so far as to say, that holding such a provision 



76 ANTI-SLAVERY WHAT IT WAS NOT, 

to be now implied constitutional law, I have no 
objection to its being made express and irrevocable. 

Mark the words, "express and irrevocable." 
Express : not implied ; not doubtful. Irrevocable : 
not to be revoked ; more than statute of Medes and 
Persians. 

Thus to slave-breeding as well as slave-working ; 
to slave-buying, selling, holding and hunting, was the 
whole nation and government committed under the 
presidency, not of a southern, but a northern man ; 
not of the Democratic, but the Republican party, and, 
as was claimed, the very best of that party. And the 
whole national domain was made human hunting 
ground, from Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill, to the 
wilds of Alaska, and the Golden Gate. And by the 
fugitive slave law, every man and woman was held to 
the bloodhound business of hunting slaves, when 
required by the officers, under heavy fines and cruel 
imprisonments. Such, in the Christian year one 
thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, was the 
culmination of all anti-slavery political parties. 

The American Anti-Slavery Society had also a 
constitution. Its declared aim was, " to convince all 
our fellow-citizens, by arguments addressed to the 
understanding and conscience, that slave-holding is a 
heinous crime in the sight of God ; and that the duty, 
safety and best interests of all concerned, require its 
immediate abandonment, without expatriation." 
Another declaration was this : " The society will 
never in any way countenance the oppressed in 
vindicating their rights by resorting to physical force." 

A declaration of sentiment, issued at the inaugura 
tion of the society, spoke thus : 

Our trust for victory is solely in God. We may be 
personally defeated, but our principles never. Truth, 
justice, reason, humanity, must and will gloriously 



AND WHAT IT WAS. 77 

triumph. * * We shall send forth agents 

to lift up the voice of remonstrance and warning. 
We shall circulate unsparingly, anti-slavery tracts and 
periodicals. We shall enlist the pulpit and the press. 

And faithfully, consistently, persistently, without 
concealment, without compromise, did the true aboli 
tionists continue so to act to the end. In an 
enterprise solely moral and religious, as well as 
philanthropic, the first, most earnest appeal was to the 
church and pulpit. A more devoutly religious man 
than was Mr. Garrison at the outset, or more soundly 
orthodox and evangelical in sentiment, could not be 
found. That has already been sufficiently shown. 
And his strongest, kindest, most affectionate appeals 
in behalf of the enslaved were first made to the 
ministers and churches of Boston, the then venerable 
Dr. Beecher being most eminent among them. 

I was a very humble unordained minister in a little 
New Hampshire town, where I was preaching as a 
candidate for settlement, when my first official testi 
mony was asked and cheerfully given in relation to 
the crime and curse of slavery. The county anti- 
slavery society where I was, issued, through a com 
mittee whose chairman was the afterwards well and 
widely known Stephen S. Foster, a Circular to all the 
ministers of the county, respectfully asking their 
several answers to the following questions, relative to 
the duty of the church and clergy of the country on 
the subject of slavery : 

1. Do you, or do you not believe that a man s right 
to liberty is derived from God, and is therefore 
inalienable ? 

2. Do you regard slave-holding, under all circum 
stances, as a sin against God, and an immorality ? 

3. Do you approve and support the principles and/ 
measures of the American Anti-Slavery Society and 
kindred organizations ? 



7 8 ANTI-SLAVERY WHAT IT WAS NOT, 

4. Do you allow the claims of the Anti-Slavery 
Society the same prominence in the pulpit exercises 
of the Sabbath as those of other benevolent institu 
tions ? 

5. Are the slave-owners excluded from the com 
munion of the church to which you minister, and 
slave-owning ministers from the pulpit ? 

6. Are you in favor of withdrawing all Christian 
fellowship from slave-owners ? 

7. Are you in favor of supporting such benevolent 
institutions as admit slave-owners to participate in 
their management, and knowingly receive into their 
treasuries the avails of the unrequited toil of the slave, 
and the human-flesh auctions of the south ? 

Readers, young and old, can see by these crucial 
questions what stern demands were made on the abo 
litionists at that day, who would keep their hands 
clean, their garments unspotted from the guilt of 
slavery, whose victims then numbered two and a half 
millions. 

Many ministers, to whom the letter of inquiry was 
sent, paid no attention to it. Some answered cau 
tiously and prudently, having in their churches and soci 
eties influential men whose political party ties, if not 
their own personal opinions, bound them as with iron 
bands, to the accursed institution. A very few ven 
tured as far in testimony or protest against the system 
as possible without periling their denominational 
position and fellowship. Perhaps the only satisfac 
tory response in all respects to the questions pro 
pounded, was in part as given below : 

Your sixth question is: "Are you in favor of 
withdrawing all Christian fellowship from slave 
owners ?" 

A step so important as this should not be rashly 
taken. * * * And yet to those who would be sep 
arate from all sin, who would " have no fellowship 
with the unfruitful works of darkness," what question 



AND WHAT IT WAS. 79 

could be of easier solution ? With those fell demons 
of darkness, whose awful cruelties are equalled only by 
their shameless and unblushing licentiousness, none 
should expect me to hold "Christian fellowship." But 
shall I with the more humane and outwardly moral ? 
For my part, I can conceive of no possible circum 
stances where one person can claim property in 
another, under our slave system, without being guilty 
of iniquity and oppression, and of giving countenance 
and sanction to whatever abuses may result from that 
system. I might own a slave, and so far as simple 
treatment is concerned, do him no injustice. I might 
feed, blanket, bed and house him as tenderly as I do 
my horse. I might give him mental and moral instruc 
tion so far as the laws regulating slavery allowed ; 
and, were it possible, make him as happy as the angels 
before the heavenly throne. * * * But what then? 
If I own him under the slave system of this nation, I 
lend my influence, countenance, sanction and sancti- 
fication to all the atrocities connected with that sys 
tem. Not one pain nor pang could be inflicted on the 
tortured slave, by cart-whip or cat-hauling ; the poison 
tooth of blood-hound, the murderous rifle-bullet, or 
red hot branding-iron, or the soul-crushing agonies of 
the mother torn from her helpless babes and sold on 
the auction block, forever from their sight, not one 
of these, nor any other of the nameless and horrible 
outrages and cruelties of the accursed plague, might 
not be justly chargeable to my account ! My very 
virtues as a slave-holder might do more to perpetuate 
the system than all the vices which cluster around 
it, till I might indeed be the most wicked slave-holder 
in the land. What better palliation could the average 
slave-holder plead than that such a man as I was a 
breeder and holder of slaves ? * * * In my own 
opinion, the most guilty of all among the slave-holders 
are those whose professions are loudest and strongest 
in favor of morality and religion ; the minister, the 
elder, the deacon and private member of the church. 
Jn one word, as Judge Birney, a ruling elder in the 
Presbyterian church, has already proclaimed and 
proved : " The American Churches are the Bulwarks 



80 ANTI-SLAVERY WHAT IT WAS NOT, 

of American Slavery." Did not their influence, sanc 
tify slavery, its own odiousness would be its overthrow. 
And must I commune in sacramental fellowship with 
those who of all others are guiltiest in relation to the 
most daring system of iniquity that ever cursed the 
earth or scourged the inhabitants thereof ? O, my 
soul, come not thou into their secret ; unto their assem 
bly, mine honor, be not thou uriited ! 

To-day, when everyone is, or would be thought an 
abolitionist, or the descendant of an abolitionist, such 
sentiments seem only reasonable and right ; only log 
ical and consistent ; slavery being everywhere and 
always a heinous sin and crime. But in 1840, when 
slavery had yet before it almost a quarter of a century 
in which to plague us, it was not so. Slave-holders 
were welcomed to the pulpits and sacramental suppers 
of the churches in every state and county, if not in 
every single town, where churches existed. And the 
faithful and devout abolitionists, however evangelical 
in sentiment, were as universally cast out. There 
were exceptions, but so rare as rather to affirm and 
confirm than impeach the rule. 

And the political test of the time was not less stern 
and severe. The great political parties vied with 
each other in zeal and devotion to the demands of the 
national idol. Louisiana and Florida had already 
been purchased by the government, in obedience to 
its behest, though in avowed violation of the federal 
constitution. All the Indian tribes in the southern 
seaboard states had been driven from their homes, 
their churches and school-houses, their printing presses 
and the graves of their ancestors, with unheard of 
haste and cruelty, that their coveted lands might be 
seized and doomed to slave-holding, the Seminoles in 
Florida only excepted. And General Taylor, with 
government troops, supplemented by imported Cuban 



AND WHAT IT WAS. 8l 

blood-hounds, was soon to complete the bloody busi 
ness by exterminating such as presumed to resist, and 
capturing and banishing the rest to the western wilds, 
then unexplored and almost unknown. Arrangements 
were making, secret and open, to seize Texas from 
Mexico, at whatever cost of national dishonor and 
war, to reinstate slavery, which Roman Catholic Mex 
ico had abolished almost twenty years before, and 
then annex it to the United States. Both the whig 
and democratic parties were emulating each other in 
their zeal and devotion to so vile an object- by such 
unhallowed means. And so the anti-slavery demand 
on the parties, as well as on the churches, was to come 
out of them. No religious or theological opinions 
were questioned, no political party preferences, were 
challenged, Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist or 
Presbyterian might remain true to their chosen creed, 
only treat slavery in the church as other robbery, adul 
tery, and murder. So whig and democrat, only let 
the equalty of all men, as announced in the Declara 
tion of Independence, be solemnly observed and 
applied, might remain whig and democrat forever. 

For themselves, the American Anti-Slavery Society 
abolitionists, at their national anniversary in 1844, 
adopted the resolution below, to which they adhered 
till the slave-holders rebellion made sure the end of 
slavery : 

Resolved, That secession from the present United 
States government is the duty of every abolitionist ; 
since no one can take office or cast a vote for another 
to hold office under the United States constitution, 
without violating his anti-slavery principles, and ren 
dering himself an abettor of the slave-holder in his sin. 

To expect to find editors, missionaries and apostles 
able, ready, willing to adopt, inculcate and defend doc 
trines and measures thus uncompromising and extreme, 



82 ANTI-SLAVERY WHAT IT WAS NOT, 

was to pay high compliment to human nature, courage 
and character. But such appeared, both women and 
men. Indeed, long before this time., the slave power 
had revealed itself in almost every possible way, both 
in state and church, as ready to execute terrible ven 
geance on any who dared refuse quick obedience to 
its behests, or even to question its right to reign 
supreme. At the opening of the anti-slavery apoca 
lypse by Garrison in 1830, the whole nation state, 
church, government, religion, education, trade, com 
merce, all were held subservient to its sovereign will 
and pleasure. Every conceivable human interest, 
nearly every distinguished clergyman, politician, office- 
seeker as well as office-holder, bowed reverently in 
our temple of Moloch, humbly exclaiming, "Not my 
will, but thine be done." Already had Garrison been 
heavily fined, and imprisoned in Baltimore, only for 
exposing in a newspaper an atrocious instance of 
cruelty in our coashvise slave trade. In Boston he had 
been mobbed, stripped nearly naked, dragged by a 
rope through the streets till rescued by the authorities 
and shut in the strongest jail, to save his imperilled 
life. A worthy minister in New Hampshire, engaged to 
give an anti-slavery lecture, was arrested as a " com 
mon brawler," jerked from his knees and pulpit to 
trial as he was offering his opening prayer. Churches, 
school-houses, orphan asylums and dwellings of colored 
people, in Providence, New York, Philadelphia and 
Cincinnati, had been mobbed, sacked, burned down ; 
twelve in New York and one church ; more than forty 
in Philadelphia and two churches ; and one church 
and many dwellings in Cincinnati. And many colored 
men were severely injured in their persons, and girls 
and women grossly outraged by their diabolical assail 
ants. So were they hated for their color ; and because 



AND WHAT IT WAS. 83 

millions of their kindred were slaves to democratic, 
republican and Christian masters. Pennsylvania Hall, 
in Philadelphia, was erected at cost of forty thousand 
dollars, wholly for anti-slavery and other philanthro- 
phic purposes. During an anti-slavery convention, in 
1838, that spacious and beautiful structure was 
mobbed, set on fire, and burned to ashes, with all its 
contents. A valuable library and much other property 
were consumed in the flames. Nor did the city 
authorities, from mayor and aldermen to sheriff and 
police, utter a protest ; still less proffer any protection, 
or word of sympathy to the innocent and peaceful 
sufferers. Rev. Elijah Parish Lovejoy, native of 
Maine, graduate of Waterville College, and brother of 
Owen Lovejoy, afterwards member of Congress, per 
ished in an attempt to protect his press and printing 
office from the fate of Pennsylvania Hall. It was in 
Alton, Illinois, north of St. Louis, on the opposite 
bank of the Mississippi, that the most heart-rending 
and horrible instance of burning a slave to death over 
a slow fire in St. Louis in the year 1837, had just been 
made public, as has been already described. The 
St. Louis newspapers, though generally approving the 
devilish deed, stirred the civilized world with their 
account of it. Of course the editorial pen of Lovejoy 
was hot with hallowed fire at the awful recital. His 
office and life were soon threatened. He appealed to 
the authorities for protection. He might as well have 
looked to the murderers of the poor slave. His 
friends counselled him to flee. He answered : " I 
dare not flee away from Alton. The crisis has come 
and I have counted the cost. Should I attempt to 
flee I should feel that the Angel of the Lord was pur 
suing me with flaming sword, wherever I went. And 
it is because I fear God, that I am not afraid of all 



84 ANTI-SLAVERY WHAT IT WAS NOT, ETC. 

who oppose me in this wicked city ! " This was the 
fourth printing press he had set up. All the others 
had been ruthlessly destroyed by the same mob vio 
lence that now assailed this. Refused all municipal 
protection, he and a few brave friends entered the 
building alone. They fearlessly faced the mob till 
the building was in flames. As they came out, Love- 
joy received five bullets and fell dead. Three of the 
bullets were taken out of his breast. He was but 
thirty-two and left a young wife and babes. When 
his mother read the account of his death, she said : 
" It is well ; I had rather he died defending his prin 
ciples, than that he should have forsaken them ! " So 
it became all who entered the conflict to count well 
the cost. 



CHAPTER V. 

ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, WITH SOME 
PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. 

My first intimate acquaintance and companion in 
travel in the missionary field, was Stephen Symonds 
Foster. To him was largely due my first and best 
lessons in anti-slavery work. My preparation for the 
Congregational Ministry was all made in less than 
four years from the reaper and the plough. The 
three years regular theological course was at Oilman- 
ton, New Hampshire, where attempt was made to 
stretch the charter of an accademical institution to 
cover an entire theological department. The enter 
prise failed, though in those years, the little, remote 
hamlet of " Gilmanton Corner," aspired and strove 
hard to become famous as the seat of Gilmanton Theo 
logical Seminary. I was first to enter the new depart 
ment, and for several days one professor, and he not 
inaugurated nor installed, and one student, were all 
that were visible of that "School of the Prophets." 
But during my three years, the usual three regular 
classes were formed, though with small numbers, and 
two professors were elected and inaugurated. Some 
good and useful men were graduated, but in a few 
years, " Gilmanton Theological Seminary " ceased to 
be, and was known no more. My own three years 
course seemed to me so short, preceded as it had 
been by neither collegiate nor academical study, that 
I determined on a year at Andover. It continued, 
however, only through the long fall and winter term ; 



86 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 

and then, after a short anti-slavery traveling agency, 
I commenced the work of a parish minister in a small 
New Hampshire town, but without ordination. My 
religious sentiments were of the true Gilmanton and 
Andover complexion. The creed of both was the 
same, though my printed copy was the Andover, a 
pamphlet of thirty pages octavo. A few extracts may 
be interesting to readers in these stirring theological 
times : 

Every person appointed or elected a professor in 
this seminary shall, on the day of his inauguration into 
office, and in presence of the trustees, publicly make 
and subscribe the following declarations : 

I believe that there is one, and but one, living and 
true God ; that the word of God contained in the 
scriptures of the Old and New Testament, is the only 
perfect rule of faith and practice; * 

that in the Godhead are three Persons : The Father, 
the Son and the Holy Ghost ; that these three are one 
God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory ; 
that Adam, the federal head and representative of the 
human race, was placed in a state of probation, and 
that, in consequence of his disobedience, all his 
descendants were constituted sinners ; that by nature 
every man is personally depraved, destitute of holi 
ness, unlike, and opposed to God, and that prev 
iously to the renewing agency of the Divine Spirit, all 
his moral actions are adverse to the character of God ; 
that being morally incapable of recovering the image 
of his Creator which was lost in Adam, every man is 
justly exposed to eternal damnation ; 
that God of his mere good pleasure elected some to 
everlasting life ; and that he entered into a covenant 
of grace to deliver them out of this state of sin and 
misery by a Redeemer ; that the only Redeemer of 
the elect is the eternal Son of God ; 
that the souls of believers are at their death made 
perfect in holiness and do immediately pass into 
glory ; that their bodies, being still united to Christ, 
will at the resurrection, be raised up to glory ; and 



PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. 87 

that the saints will be made perfectly blessed in the 
full enjoyment of God to all eternity ; but that the 
wicked will awake to shame and everlasting contempt, 
and with devils, will be plunged into the lake that 
burneth with fire and brimstone forever and ever. 
I moreover believe that God, accord 
ing to the counsel of His own will, and for His own 
glory, hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass ; 
* that God s decrees perfectly consist 

with human liberty, God s universal agency with the 
agency of man, and man s dependence with his ac 
countability. And, furthermore, I 
do solemnly promise that I will open and explain the 
Scriptures to my pupils with integrity and faithfulness ; 
that I will maintain and inculcate the Christian faith 
as expressed in the creed by me now repeated, together 
with all the other doctrines and duties of our holy re 
ligion so far as may appertain to my office, according 
to the best light God shall give me ; and in opposition 
not only to Atheists and Infidels, but to Jews, Mahom 
etans, Arians, Pelagians, Antinomians, Arminians, 
Socinians, Unitarians and Universalists. * * * 
The preceding declaration shall be repeated by every 
professor in the seminary, in the presence of the trus 
tees, at the expiration of every successive period of 
five years ; and no man shall be continued as presi 
dent or professor in this institution who shall not 
continue to approve himself to the satisfaction of the 
trustees, a man of sound and orthodox principles in 
divinity, agreeably to the system of evangelical doc 
trines contained in the said Westminster Shorter 
Catechism, and more concisely delineated in the afore 
said Creed. 

These extracts are copied from the Laws of the 
Theological Institution in Andover, printed at Andover 
by Gould & Newman, in 1837, one year before my 
entrance there. Nor had I openly dissented from any 
of these doctrines, as I understood them, when I left 
the Congregational church and its pulpit for the divine 
ministry of freedom, humanity and holiness. 



88 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 

My anti-slavery apostleship commenced as a life- 
work in New Hampshire in 1840. In that year was 
held in London the memorable World s anti-slavery 
convention, made memorable most of all by its rejec 
tion of several American commissioned delegates, one 
of them being Mrs. Lucretia Mott, because they were 
women. " British usage," was the only plea in justifi 
cation, in a realm that had had women at the head of 
state and church, parliament, army, navy, the whole 
nation, many times, all down the centuries from Boa- 
dicea to Queen Victoria. Mr. Garrison, of the Liber 
ator, and Mr. Rogers, of the Herald of Freedom, on 
seeing the credentials of their associate delegates thus 
dishonored, retired to the gallery and did not enroll 
themselves as members of the convention ; a course 
which was not only approved but admired by the great 
body of their constituents. 

My first work as an agent in New Hampshire was to 
conduct the Herald of Freedom during the absence 
of the editor abroad. When he returned to his edit 
orial post in autumn I entered the lecturing field, with 
full resolve to see the overthrow of the Southern slave 
system or perish in the conflict. The doctrine of the 
American society was moral, peaceful, religious agita 
tion, in the strain of the poet Whittier : 

" With the mild arms of truth and love, 
Made mighty through the living God. 

And as my leaders and teachers, Garrison and Rogers, 
relied only on truth, reason and argument for success, 
so not less did I. My first lecturing tour was in north 
ern New Hampshire, extending to but few towns and 
occupying only a few days. I went as substitute for 
Rev. John W. Lewis, a very large and unusually black 
Baptist minister my companion, John R. French, 
afterward printer of the Herald of Freedom. He had 



PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. 89 

been advertised in the Herald to accompany Mr. Lewis, 
neither of them, nor myself either, ever having been 
in that part of the State. Sudden illness kept Mr. 
Lewis at home, and I was deputed by the Board of 
Managers his substitute, perhaps as near to a colored 
man as could then conveniently be found. This cir 
cumstance led to many amusing incidents, as most of 
the towns we visited had never seen any person of 
African descent ; and so curiosity to see a specimen 
of the " connecting link " sometimes added many to 
our audiences. Nor did we always, at the outset, dis 
abuse the people, and more than once I was introduced 
with becoming grace as " Rev. John W. Lewis, who 
will now address us." In one instance, we .accompa 
nied an excellent old gentleman home to tea, be 
tween our afternoon and evening meetings. It was 
quite dark when we arrived, and there was not time 
for ceremony nor explanation, and I was immediately 
introduced as Rev. Mr. Lewis, and my companion as 
"our young brother, French." We had reached the 
tea-table before w r e revealed our secret. The only un 
pleasant circumstance attending was that it was then 
such reproach, almost crime, to wear a colored skin, 
that the family felt called upon to make to me humble 
apologies for the affront, if not outrage, they had put 
upon me. But I justified them satisfactorily, on two 
or three grounds. They had read and accepted the 
advertisement in the Herald ; nor had we explained 
to the contrary ; nor was my own color really so light 
as to entitle me to any special respect on its account. 
" No," said the good old man, quite earnestly, " nor so 
dark as to be suspected as a negro ; for I told some 
of my friends after the meeting that as you sat there 
by Nat Allen, while brother French was speaking, I 
looked at you both, and couldn t see but that Nat was 
quite as black as you." 



90 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 

Had I been Mr. Lewis, he would have noted a dif 
ference, as he was one of the tallest, largest and dark 
est of his race. 

Nat Allen, while he lived, was one of the noblest, 
truest of the anti-slavery host ; and as good at home 
as abroad. A humble, hard-working harness maker,, 
and poor as well as radical and outspoken, he was still 
everywhere respected. I drove at that time a small 
but very pretty nag I bought of my father, and Mr. 
Rogers had loaned me an old wagon and harness, the 
latter much too large for my little mare. This, our 
faithful friend Allen saw ; and before we had com 
pleted our work in Littleton and neighboring towns, 
he had cut out and made a handsome harness which 
exactly fitted my dapple Tunbridge name I gave her 
from her Morgan sire, and by which in after years she 
became well known to New England Abolitionists. 
Under the circumstances, a more generous gift was 
never bestowed. And more than once was the gener 
ous giver cruelly imprisoned for his fidelity to the 
cause of the more cruelly imprisoned slave. Readers 
may hear from Nat Allen again. 

At this time my severed connection with the church 
and pulpit had not been formal ; so occasionally I 
was asked to preach on Sunday, and especially where 
a liberal heresy had begun to assert itself. This hap 
pened in Littleton, where some wealthy Unitarians had 
aided in building a handsome Congregational church, 
on one condition. There were only one or two fami 
lies, and they seldom or never asked for the house, 
unless once or twice in summer, when a liberal clergy 
man might chance to be at the White Mountains, per 
haps arriving late in the week. It need not be said 
here that forty and more years ago the mountains 
were no such resort as at present ; nor were bronchitis 



PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. gi 

and hay-fever such sore judgments of the pulpit as to 
day. So it was not difficult to obtain of those build 
ing the Littleton church a pledge that the Unitarians 
should have an occasional use of it at the shortest 
notice. 

It chanced that the Unitarian families were not 
hostile to anti-slavery, and when I arrived in town on 
Saturday afternoon, my friend Allen and others asked 
their Unitarian neighbors to invite me to preach for 
them on the following day. There was no objection,, 
but it was questioned whether I, being a Congrega- 
tionalist, could properly ask to be admitted to the 
pulpit as such. To this there could be but one 
answer, and my friend Allen went with me to call on 
the minister. For some reason we did not see him till 
Sunday morning. When we called in the morning: 
we were shown into the library, and soon the minister 
entered, attended by his father, also a clergy 
man, well and widely known, but retired from regular 
service. We were coolly greeted and denied admis 
sion to the pulpit for any cause. My editorial con 
nection with the Herald of Freedom, then just termin 
ated, probably had not increased my ministerial pop 
ularity and any argument or appeal was only wasted. 
W T e were simply reminded that we had our answer and 
that it was getting late for church. I think we had 
risen to our feet before friend Allen began his part 
of our mission. In his usual serene and mild manner 
he said : "I am very sorry Mr. Pillsbury is refused 
access to the pulpit to-day in such an unchristian 
manner ; but I am instructed to say by the Unitarian 
trustees that, in case of such refusal, they shall 
occupy the meeting-house to-day, and that Mr. Pills- 
bury will be their preacher." Which at once 
changed the whole face of affairs. Both father and 



92 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 

son saw and felt that the failure was with them. But 
the end of the interview was not quite come. I do 
not remember what was said by, but only to our two 
opponents. I told the minister he had not in the 
least disappointed me, but that I should now prob 
ably, disappoint him. Your congregation, I said, are 
already assembling ; they are coming to hear you ; 
expect to hear you have a right so to expect ; and it 
is not in me nor my friend Allen to wish to disappoint 
them. So go now and attend your morning service 
as usual ; and only be so kind as to give notice that 
I will preach this afternoon and lecture on slavery 
this evening at seven o clock. My proposal was 
accepted, but by no means in the spirit with which it 
was made. However, it resulted admirably. For 
Littleton soon became one of our very best anti- 
slavery towns, as the volumes of the Herald of Free 
dom of subsequent years most fully show, and so 
remained till slavery was abolished. 

Another incident of this campaign and with which 
another congregational minister was connected, was 
in Campton, one of the approaches to the now well 
known " Franconia Notch " and rock-ribbed throne 
of the "Old man of the Mountain." The minister was 
Thomas Parnell Beach. His small but well instructed 
congregation were most of them already abolitionists. 
Arriving at his house by invitation, on Saturday 
evening, my companion and myself found that 
arrangements were made for us to occupy the church 
next day, provided I would give the morning and 
afternoon sermons. The proposal was accepted and 
with results, near and remote, of which none of us that 
night dreamed. But an interest was awakened which, 
in less than one year, led Mr. Beach to withdraw from 
his sectarian pulpit and denomination, generally at 



PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. 93 

that time apparently indifferent, or incorrigibly pro- 
slavery, and to reconsecrate himself unreservedly to 
the ministry of the gospel of humanity. 

On the pleasant August afternoon when Mr. Beach 
delivered his formal and affecting valedictory dis 
course to his congregation, Mr. Rogers of the Herald 
of Freedom was present and sent a brief report to his 
readers in the next paper, as given below in his own 
glowing words : 

Not returning home so soon as I expected, I send 
for editorial what I may throw off in a few minutes 
before the departure of the Concord stage. I shall 
attempt briefly a sketch of the most interesting and 
important Sunday meeting I ever witnessed, yesterday 
at Campton. I went up there to hear our persecuted 
and hunted brother, Beach. He 

has set an example for the age. His yesterday s work 
in the little meeting house at Campton will constitute, 
I apprehend, an important point of remembrance a 
land-mark in the history of the mighty reformation 
now going on for the deliverance of mankind and the 
overthrow of the usurped dominion of the sectarian 
clergy here and in other parts of Christendom. Fore 
noon, he preached from the text ; " The foxes have 
holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son 
of Man hath not where to lay his head." He illustra 
ted the character of the modern church and clergy in 
the light of his text set forth their love of the world, 
of popularity, ease and comfort, and the poverty and 
destitution of the Savior and his disciples 
It was unmitigated, unadulterated gospel preaching 
a terrible sermon, and I thought while hearing it, that 
it contained more of faithful, uncompromising gospel 
preaching than I ever before heard. The auditory 
was made up mostly of his warm friends and his per 
secuting, exasperated enemies. In relation to his stay 
among them, they are divided. A portion of them, 
including the new-organized abolitionists, are ransack 
ing the land to find petty faults on which to found his 
expulsion by a pro-slavery council. They have had 



94 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 

one, headed by Andrew Rankin, that found nothing in 
him worthy of death or excommunication. Their 
infamous partiality and hypocritical procedure went 
far to complete the opening of the eyes of Brother 
Beach to the anti-christian character of the whole 
sectarian machinery. And on Sunday he came out in 
all the confidence of simple faith in God and in the 
majesty of truth, and renounced the whole of it to an 
extent and in a manner, which, perfectly prepared as 
I was to second, I was not prepared to witness, and 
which was truly overwhelming. 

Afternoon he took his stand on the floor of the 
house, in front of the poor little abdicated pulpit, 
which looked utterly insignificant and heathenish when 
thus pointedly abandoned. He held a memorandum 
in his hand, and his text was, " Have faith in God." 
He spoke of the character of faith, not like a hired 
clergyman writing on his contract to preach, but as a 
man experiencing what he was saying. It was brief, 
full, clear, convincing, convicting. No sound mind 
could doubt his meaning or its truth. He said if a man 
had faith he would know it, and that if he had it not 
he would know it ; and that if he had it he would act 
upon it, and if he did not act upon it he was not a 
Christian. He denied that the gospel could be preached 
in faith on a contract for a salary. He said the preacher 
who relied on his contract for support, did not rely on 
God, and had not faith. He renounced his own con 
tract with the people to whom he was preaching, and 
released them from it. He declared himself bound 
to preach to them at the calling and mission of Christ"; 
and his obligation to rely on God for support. He 
released the people from all obligation they were under 
to pay him or sustain him for future preaching during 
the year, or for what they owed him for past preach 
ing. He released them from a two hundred dollar 
obligation and a forty dollar promissory note which 
they owed him, and declared them null and void, 
leaving the people to act on their consciences in re 
gard to the whole of it. He renounced his human 
license to preach and his ordination by men. He re 
nounced sectarian organization, and expressed his 



PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. 95 

regret that he ever entered into any covenant with a 
church corporation, or added anything to his covenant 
made with Christ at the surrender of his heart to Him. 
He renounced all profession of religion but that of 
Christian life and conversation renounced the pulpit 
as a consecrated elevation, and planted himself on a 
level with his hearers ; renounced his titled minister- 
ship, and declared he should henceforth go on his 
mission from Christ among his equal fellow men and 
women. He declared he should hold no more meet 
ings which were not open to all to speak freely as him 
self. He renounced all sermon writing as a mode of 
preaching the gospel. In short, he 

swept the board of all the mummeries of human in 
vention which had crept in upon the simplicity of 
Christ, and he did it all with a calmness, order and 
ability which filled me with admiration. I can give no 
account of it. To be appreciated it must have been 
witnessed. Thomas Parnell Beach stands now " re 
deemed, regenerated and disenthralled," a plain and 
simple preacher of Christ. 

The subsequent labors of Mr. Beach were of most 
devoted and heroic, and sometimes suffering, descrip 
tion, but not of long continuance, for he survived less 
than five years after his withdrawal from the sectarian 
ministry. He died in Sharon, Ohio, on the thirtieth 
of May, 1 846. He was born in Canada, Vermont,in 1 808, 
graduated at Bowdoin Collge, married in 1837 Miss 
Sarah Barker, of Bethel, Maine, and settled soon after 
in Wolfboro , N. H., as Congregational minister and 
Preceptor of the Academy, from which he afterwards 
removed to Campton, where the anti-slavery cause dis 
covered him in the autumn of 1840. 

Not very much was ever written concerning him, and 
few at this day probably remember him. But before 
this anti-slavery scripture is finished, he may be re 
curred to again in manner, it is hoped, not unbecom 
ing his memory. 



96 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 

In Whitefield, one of my Gilmanton classmates was 
the Congregational minister. He received us cordially, 
invited me to his pulpit on Sunday morning, and to 
his sacramental supper afterwards, and we held our 
subsequent anti-slavery meetings in his meeting-house. 

Rev. Mr. Fleming, of Haverhill, asked me to preach 
for him, he having been absent the past week and not 
being prepared to preach himself. But at the close 
of the morning service, he told the congregation 
what he had done, and then, turning to me, he said if 
the afternoon discourse was to be like this just 
heard, he must decline it. ^assured him it could not 
be less objectionable, in plain speaking, and he then 
announced that he should preach in the afternoon 
himself. Which he did, and gave a very feeble dis 
course to a small and not interested audience. My 
companion, Mr. French, and myself sat directly be 
fore him and near the pulpit, evidently much to his 
embarrassment. Undoubtedly his refusal to permit 
my preaching in the afternoon was both damage to 
himself and advantage to me. The small, uninter 
ested audience who heard him was surely a happy 
contrast, and most significant, too, measured by our 
large and quite spirited and attentive house in the 
evening. 

At that period the anti-slavery agents were accus 
tomed to call early on the ministers when they entered 
a town, particularly in all country towns and parishes, 
to confer with them and solicit their cooperation in 
anti-slavery work. It soon became apparent, however, 
that very little aid was to be expected in that quarter. 
A formal division in the ranks of professed abolition 
ists had already been made, and the evangelical 
churches and their ministers had, with wondrous 
unanimity, so far as they were anti-slavery at all,. 



PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. 97 

joined themselves to the " new organization." Griev 
ous charges were preferred against Mr. Garrison for 
heresy and infidelity, and the American anti-slavery 
society, at its anniversary in 1840, committed the un 
pardonable sin of insisting that on their platform, 
however it might be in the church or elsewhere, there 
should be no high nor low, rich nor poor, great nor 
small, male nor female. It was solemnly asked : 

l Shall we behold, unheeding, 

Life s holiest feelings crushed ? 
When woman s heart is bleeding, 
Shall woman s voice be hushed ?" 

Already had the eloquence of Sarah and Angelina 
Grimke, Abby Kelley, and other noble women begun 
to thrill the hearts of women and men, even ministers, 
all over the land, as they tenderly but fearlessly 
pleaded the cause of the slave woman under the lash 
and red-hot branding-iron or on the auction-block with 
her children, she sold one way, they in other ways, 
sundered forever, but all exposed alike to the cruel 
and merciless outrages of the slave system ! At the 
final separation the woman question was urged most 
vehemently as reason for breaking with the original 
American society, especially by the clergy. In New 
Hampshire the Methodists and Free Will Baptists 
were quite numerous, and had always encouraged, if 
not even demanded that their church members should 
bear active, equal part, men and women, in all social 
if not more public meetings for worship. But the 
more dignified denominations there, and not more 
there than in every state, deemed such usage a pro 
fanation and abomination. The Hopkinton Associa 
tion of Congregational divines doubtless spoke the 
general sentiment of Congregationalism, Presbyterian- 
ism, and all the sects held in highest esteem in all the 



98 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 

states, as well as New Hampshire, in a solemn decree 
unanimously and promptly enacted, the declarative 
portion of which was to this effect : 

Not that women may not bear a part in the songs 
of the church, because this is an established part of 
public worship, and is not prohibited to women as 
public teaching and praying are ; publicly to sing 
God s praise, under men as leaders, is, by implication, 
enjoined upon women, as is the celebration of the 
rioly supper, and of the Savior s resurrection, by 
keeping the first day of the week as holy time. Nor 
does the prohibition deprive females of any of the 
privileges of the Bible class, or religious conference, 
in which they are indulged with perfect freedom of 
speech, in answering the questions which their pastors, 
leaders, or catechists put to them. But, as to leading 
men, either in instruction, or devotion, and as to any 
interruption, or disorder, in religious meetings, " Let 
your women keep silence in the churches ;" not merely 
let them be silent, but let them keep or preserve 
silence. Not, that they may not preach, or pray, or 
exhort merely, but they may not open their lips, to 
utter any sounds audibly. Let not your women, in 
promiscuous religious meetings, preach or pray, audi 
bly, or exhort audibly, or sigh, or groan, or say Amen, 
or utter the precious words, " Bless the Lord ; " or the 
enchanting sounds, "Glory ! Glory ! " 

The resolution to sustain the equal right of women 
on the anti- slavery platform with man, was adopted in 
the American Society at the annual meeting in New 
York in 1840, by majority of 557 to 440 ; the test 
question at the time being simply the placing of a 
woman on one of the committees. But the new organi 
zation forthwith sprang out of it, known for a time as 
the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. 

The annual meeting of the New Hampshire Anti- 
Slavery Society was held in Concord, less than a 
month afterward and with result much the same, only 
that the opposition was less in numbers, though by 



PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. 99 

no means in spirit. The test vote, admitting or 
excluding women as members of the convention, was 
on an amendment substituting the word gentlemen for 
persons as originally submitted. The amendment was 
lost, 197 to 58 ; and the original resolution was adopted 
nearly unanimously, and with much enthusiasm. But 
a new organization society was immediately attempted, 
though with but indifferent success, excepting for 
political purposes, though carrying with it nearly all 
the ministers and most of the church members who 
made any pretentions to anti-slavery in the state. 

The Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society went over to 
the new organization almost in a body, with maledic 
tions on the doctrine of woman s equality anywhere. 
The Hartford Congregationalist also declared that the 
women s anti-slavery Fair had to be taken from 
New Haven because no place in that city could be 
obtained in which to hold it. The meeting at which 
the society set its terrible ban on women was held 
there and would have been held in a Congregational 
church, but both minister and church, the man part of 
it, declared it should not be opened without a pledge 
given that women should neither speak nor vote in 
the meetings ! That same minister presided at the 
opening of the meeting, when and where it was held 
and declared with indignant warmth : " I will not sit 
in a chair where women bear rule ; I will not sit 
in a meeting where the sorcery of woman s tongue is 
thrown around my heart ; Women shall not speak in 
our meetings. I will not submit to petticoat govern 
ment, here, nor anywhere else. I had enough of that 
in my childhood. Now I am a man, I will not sub 
mit to it even in my own house. No woman shall 
lord it over me. I am major-domo in my own house." 
Some one responded in the audience: "A strange spirit 



100 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 

has risen up among us ; " and he immediately called 
him to order ; adding, " I think I have the spirit of God. 
I am a Christian ! " This, and the Haverhill and 
Littleton ministers already described, with the Hop- 
kinton association of divines, were only true repre 
sentatives of the great majority of the popular New 
England clergy of that day. Their plainness of 
speech well accorded with the rest. And besides, 
much larger bodies than the Hopkinton association, 
were alike audacious in utterance, as well. 

That campaign in northern New Hampshire, made 
in the autumn after the society secessions, separations 
and new organizations, fully convinced me, had other 
hopes been entertained before, that the church and 
its ministry would be found in very deed the "bul 
warks," if not at last "the forlorn hope of slavery," 
in complete confirmation of the declarations of 
Hon. James G. Birney. 

It was no less plain, too, that very few of the aboli 
tionists themselves were aware of the terrible contest 
before them ; as many later withdrawals from their 
always scanty ranks proved. In a subsequent account 
rendered to the society through their paper, the Her 
ald, I hazarded the prediction, that "before the fell 
demon of slavery should be cast out, there would be 
contortions, foamings and wallowings to rend our 
civil, social, and ecclesiastical organizations, in so 
much that many would say, * They are dead. For it 
is of a kind that goeth not out but by prayer and 
fasting. Other foul spirits, too, will be discovered ; 
their very name, legion. All the foundations of the 
great deep will be broken up. On earth must be per 
plexity and distress of nations ; the sea and the waves 
roaring, and the hearts of men failing them for fear, 



PERSONAL SKETCHES AM) I EXPERIENCES. , 10l 

and for looking at the things that ara ccrring on the 
earth ; for the powers of heaven shall- be shak^ri." 

If our thirty years war of moral and peaceful agita 
tion failed to fulfill all these prophecies, what shall be 
said of the subsequent four years war of rebellion, 
with all their frightful costs of blood and treasure ? 
War, whose thunders shook the land, the sea, the 
skies ! Whose reverberations still go sounding down 
towards the night of the nineteenth century ! 



CHAPTER VI. 

CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS WITH MR. ROGERS 

AND MR. FOSTER DIGRESSION ON 

NEW ORGANIZATION. 

New Hampshire continued my field of operations 
through 1840. Following the Grafton county cam 
paign were two or three quite notable anti-slavery 
conventions, the best everyway, perhaps, at Milford, 
when all parts of Hillsboro county had representa 
tion. Mr. Garrison, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Foster, and 
some others were present to assist in the proceedings. 

The genius and spirit of our movement at that time 
may be gathered somewhat from the Resolutions gen 
erally, most thoroughly considered and usually adopt 
ed with few, if any, dissenting voices. At Milford the 
following passed after a searching and able discussion: 

Resolved, That slavery is a national, not a local, in 
stitution, and the whole people are involved in all its- 
guilt, evils and dangers. 

Resolved, That the churches, rebuked by anti-slavery 
and pronounced unworthy the name of Christian, and 
the clergymen whom it declares unworthy of support 
as religious teachers, are those, and only those, who 
connive at the existence of American slavery, or re 
fuse to bear faithful, public testimony against it. 

Resolved, That the anti-slavery society was originally 
constituted on principles of perfect equality and jus 
tice, arid any attempt to change that construction, and 
to new organize it, is a departure from those principles 
and a practical betrayal of the cause of the slave. 

Milford was early an anti-slavery town. With such 
resolutions most ably discussed, and almost unanim- 



CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS. 103 

ously adopted by a large congregation, the meeting 
was everyway a success. It commenced on Thanks 
giving evening, with an opening address by Mr. Gar 
rison, in the spacious and then new Congregational 
meeting-house, the minister, Mr. Warner, another 
Gilmanton classmate of mine. Himself and church, 
however, were already far on the road to new organi 
zation. Those who remained faithful to the anti- 
slavery cause soon after withdrew from the church, 
and were henceforth known as come-outers, infidels,, 
non-resistants, Garrisonians, or whatever other name, 
honorable or opprobrious, was fastened upon them 
and others like them. 

It may be worthy of mention that the Concord at 
tendants drove over to Milford in two open carriages, 
leaving home early on Thanksgiving morning, in a 
cold November rain, from which umbrellas were a 
poor protection. But the joyous greeting and recep 
tion which awaited us at our half-way house, the 
hospitable and sumptuous home of the farmers, 
Luther and Lucinda Melendy, on Chestnut hill, in 
Amherst, very soon dispelled all memory of outside 
storms, or other exposure or inconvenience. Rogers, in 
his Herald account of the convention, said of this 
incident: 

We were received at the Melendys with the wel 
come which compensates for months of pro-slavery 
scowling round about our path of life. Cordiality and 
brotherly love adorned the face of the household 
the bounties of the season, the hospitable board ; and 
the Bible, the Liberator, Herald of Freedom, and Na 
tional Anti- Slavery Standard the reading table. Here 
were the circumstances and conditions of genuine 
anti-slavery. We were obliged to 

leave the interesting spot too soon. We reached Mil- 
ford, brother and sister Melendy in company, just as 
friend Warner s meeting-house was lighted up for a 



104 CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 

lecture from Garrison. It rained with all the dismal- 
ness of a November night. 

But our Milford reception cleared the sky of every 
cloud, and hung rainbows of beauty and joy in every 
direction. Those early anti-slavery friendships surely 
were akin to heaven itself, growing brighter, too, and 
more beautiful, as the subsequent tempests of pro 
scription, ostracism and persecution rose in all their 
terrors over us. The triple power of society, the 
state and the church, conspired against the rising tide 
of humanity and liberty ; determined, apparently, to 
rivet on, fast and forever, the fetters of the slave, in 
the name of, and with sanction of our democratic re 
publicanism and Protestant Christian religion. At 
that hour all our hearts seemed to beat as one all 
anointed vision to see eye to eye. Garrison and 
Rogers had not met before since their arrival in Bos 
ton from their foreign tour, not many weeks previously, 
and they greeted each other as David and Jonathan, 
when their loves " passed the love of women ! " At 
that convention, almost all exclaimed, " It is good for 
us to be here." We reached Concord from the Mil- 
ford convention on Saturday night, glad and thankful 
for one day of change, if not of rest, after our Thanks 
giving week s work. 

On Monday, Stephen Foster and myself had en 
gagements in Canterbury. Our valiant friend Rogers, 
desirous to extend his acquaintance among the abo 
litionists of the state, volunteered to accompany us 
and to continue with us another week. Canterbury 
and last of November continued for us cold and 
most inhospitable receptions. The meeting-house was 
closed altogether, and the town-hall was as dirty and 
disagreeable, everyway, as it was dilapidated and cold. 
But we got into it. Pretty soon the meeting-house 



DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. 105 

was unlocked, and a few came, among others the 
Congregational minister, Rev. Mr. Patrick. Our friend 
Foster, and most of his quite numerous family con 
nections, were, or had been, members of his church ; 
and as Foster reasoned of righteousness, temperance 
and judgment to come, his minister trembled. In 
great excitement he rose to his feet as if to speak. 
He stood a moment, as though deliberating whether to 
speak or retire. But for some reason he did neither, 
and soon sat down, though much agitated at what he 
had to hear, and the truth of which he well knew 
could not be questioned. The evening meeting was 
better attended, and excellent work was done, with 
results not yet wholly effaced ; as the generous and 
high moral and progressive sentiment of the thriving: 
little town has always shown. 

Our next gathering was at Sanbornton Bridge, and 
in the very meeting-house out of whose pulpit, a few 
years before, Rev. George Storrs had been violently 
jerked, as, on his knees, he was preceding an anti-slav 
ery address with prayer. He was arraigned as a com 
mon brawler before a magistrate, and tried as such. 

How we and our mission might be estimated in such 
society, was shown in the fact that as it was presumed 
we should occupy the pulpit, the cushions were thor 
oughly plastered over with well crushed but most de 
plorably z/;/-merchantable eggs. Had the young priests 
of such an unholy anointing only known us a very 
little better, they might have been spared such an 
offering to their idol. We had a good while before 
proved most of the pulpits to be but cowards castles, 
or despots thrones, even without the baptism of bad 
eggs, and shunned the whole of them accordingly. 
The afternoon meeting was small, numerically, but 
not so the evening, for the heroes of the pulpit- 



106 CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 

cushion and addled eggs attended in person, and ren 
dered speaking most difficult by their foys-trous pro 
ceedings. Still, our work resulted beyond expectation. 
We were handsomely and hospitably entertained by 
Dr. Ladd and others ; and as w;e were then raising the 
means to discharge a debt of two thousand dollars 
owed by our society, we were much cheered by our 
success in that direction. 

From the* valley of Sjan&ornton Bridge we ascended 
next day to the heights of Sanbornton Square. We 
had not heard that even new organization had dared 
invade it, so well and widely was its hostility to the 
anti-slavery, temperance, and other reforms under 
stood. At the Bridge we did discover tracks of a new r 
organized agent, a minister who had done his best and 
worst, there and elsewhere, to blast the fair fame of 
the old society and all its instrumentalities, though, 
as we saw, more to his own harm than ours. But how we 
sped at the Square can best be told by the editor of 
the Herald of Freedom himself. In the number of 
December 4th, 1840, some editorial correspondence 
read as below : 

After dinner, Wednesday, we rode to Sanbornton 
Square, calling on Richard Lane. Mrs. Lane seemed 
an abolitionist. Her husband was absent, but they 
had received no notice of an anti-slavery meeting. 
Came soon to the sightly and commanding Square, 
superb with prospect. Tavern kept by Mr. Lane. It 
is the Lane that leads to the chambers of death a 
broad one, and numbers throng it. Had occasion to 
go into it. Many smoking their pipes in the bar-room. 
One respectable looking elderly gentleman at the end 
of a cigar. All smoking away, and the air three- 
quarters tobacco. Asked the landlord if any appoint 
ments had been given out Sunday before of an anti- 
slavery meeting, taking for granted if there had he 
would have heard of it, the rum tavern being in some 



DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. IOJ 

places on good terms with the meeting-house. None 
that he knew of. Brother Pillsbury had gone up to 
the neighborhood of the academy to find a Mr. 
Webster, said to be an abolitionist. Resolved to go 
there ; felt utterly desolate in the smoky rum tavern 
and the heartless pro-slavery square. Homesick to 
find one anti-slavery house. Went to Mr. Webster s ; 
told Mrs. W. (husband not in) that she must, if con 
venient, receive us as travelers at their temperance 
tavern. Our request was readily granted. Called out 
with brother Pillsbury to see about a meeting. Met 
the Rev. Mr. Bodwell, Congregational minister, in 
company with a distinguished Colonizationist, Dr. 
Webster, of Hill. Rev. Mr. Bodwell said he had 
received no notice of the meeting. Ascertained of 
him there was to be a prayer meeting at the academy 
that evening. Proposed to him, if perfectly agreeable 
to him, to have our anti-slavery meeting instead, and 
at the academy, if he thought best ; not otherwise, he 
having remarked just before that if we had an anti- 
slavery meeting in the neighborhood there would be 
probably few at the prayer meeting. He was not 
opposed to us, he was not in favor of us ; he stood 
neutral, and he wished to be so considered. He did 
not wish to be considered as having been called on in 
relation to the meeting ; could not say whether he 
would be present or not; told us Esquire Lane, 
Colonel Sanborn and himself were the committee in 
charge of the academy ; did not wish himself to give 
permission to use the academy for a meeting ; wished 
us to consult Esquire L. and Colonel S., and did not 
wish to be considered as having been consulted at all 
in relation to the academy. We remarked to him that 
it did not seem to us he could possibly take a neutral 
position, but he must judge for himself. In the course 
of our talk, Dr. Webster remarked that he objected to 
the abolitionists for their opposition to colonization ; 
that he did not see as they need quarrel with that, or 
why both could not go on harmoniously together. 
Mr. Bodwell said he could not, and that he had no 
objection to abolition if it did not oppose colonization, 
and he thought both might go on together. We told 



IOcS CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 

him if that were possible he might, for aught we could 
see, be an abolitionist, whether we liked colonizing the 
colored people or not. He need not oppose abolishing 
slavery because we opposed colonizing the free colored 
people. It was bleak talking on the cold hill side, 
and we parted, Mr. Bodwell to his snug parsonage 
and we down to find Esquire Lane. We found him 
accidently at the bar room of the tavern, and asked 
him for the academy, telling him of the non entity 
position of Rev. Mr. Bodwell, not assenting nor deny 
ing, nor doing neither, neither doing anything nor 
nothing at all. Esquire L. said at once he had no- 
objection, though he did not countenance the meeting. 
He said we were all slaves here. We told him we were 
afraid so. He said he was opposed to using force 
against us force had been used but he never coun 
tenanced it ; thought it only promoted our object, the 
way was to keep away from us. The subject he thought 
ought not to be agitated here where we had no slaves. 
We told him men differed as to the propriety of agi 
tating here, and that that was a fair matter of discus 
sion, and asked him if it were not. He admitted that 
it was, and that we had the right to discuss, but he 
should not come near us. We told him we should be 
glad to have him attend, and if we were wrong put us 
right. Barroom by this time pretty full. Esquire 
Caleb Kimball, among others, considerably excited by 
opposition to anti-slavery, or some other cause, said he 
knew us and was a friend, but had no opinion of this 
nigger question ; we had no right to be stirring it up 
here ; if anybody wanted a black wife, he might 
have one for all him. (A laugh.) He had as lief we 
should get pelted with rotten eggs as anyway, though 
he did not approve of mobs. He was far from approv 
ing mobs ; he would not be catched in one. The 
constitution, he thought, guaranteed slavery to the 
states, and the north no business to interfere ; had no 
business with it any way ; we had no more right to 
take away their property than they had to come and 
take away our cattle. The company gathered around 
and we carried on the talk under a thick cloud of 
tobacco smoke mixed with the breath of the tavern 



DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. 109 

bar. We did not deny Esquire Kimball s opinion, 
but contended that we and he had the right of discus 
sion and liberty of speech about any subject we 
pleased. We were one of the people as much as he 
was, and had a right to our opinions, and meant to 
have just what opinions we pleased, and to speak our 
sentiments out anywhere and everywhere, and at all 
times, and for all of anybody, and everybody else had 
the same right, and we did not believe there was a 
man in the room who would deny it. We were going 
to have a meeting if we could get a place, and should 
be glad to have every friend present attend it 
and speak his mind freely, and we believed that 
if they could hear us every man would say that 
we were right. We said slavery was an abomin 
able thing ; it was in the country and we had a right 
to talk about it, to talk against it, and we meant to, 
and had got to ; and if we did not and run it down, it 
would run us down, and eat us out of house and home ; 
had nearly done it already ; had made us nearly all 
slaves here, as Esquire Lane had just said ; that it had 
got us so low that we did not dare to speak about it 
or allow our neighbors to ; that Esquire Kimball had 
just said he thought we ought to be pelted with rotten 
eggs if we did not keep still about it. The squire 
said he was no friend to mobs. Yes, but said we, you 
.said you had as lief we should be pelted with rotten 
eggs as not if we stirred up this slavery question here ; 
and if we did you would have to mob us. Slavery, 
we said, would demand it of you, and you would have 
to. The squire said his father was one that helped to 
adopt the constitution, and he remembered all about 
it, and about slavery ; it was in the constitution, he 
said. We contended that the constitution was a free 
one, and was always called so, and a glorious free one, 
and the like. And so we went on discussing, and the 
very rum-drinkers and tobacco-eaters and smokers 
heard us with a patience the Rev. Mr. Bodwell could 
not in his meeting-house; reminding us, as we thought 
of it, of the Savior s comparison of the publicans and 
harlots with the clergy of Jerusalem. We could con 
vince the tavern haunters, by the way, if the property 



HO CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 

and standing would only allow us a chance, we could 
make abolitionists of them much easier than of the 
better classes, civil, military or ecclesiastical. * * * 
* * * A tall substantial-looking farmer came in 
and listened awhile to our discussion as we were talk 
ing of slavery s effect on the north. He said emphat 
ically that it was as bad to enslave black people as 
white ; and that if you enslave any it enslaves every 
body else ; and if you allow slavery in the country 
you can t keep liberty. Give us the blue-frocked 
farmers for anti-slavery. * * * On the whole, we 
had a grand meeting, and wish we had continued it 
there in the evening ; we should have had an atten 
tive auditory, and we don t believe Mr. Lane would 
have sold a drop the whole evening. We went out 
with brother Pillsbury, after getting leave to have the 
academy, and called at every house and notified the 
people of our meeting, and brother Foster drove in his 
sulky out of the neighborhood to do the same. The 
hour arrived ; we resorted to the literary institution. 
It was a steeple edifice meeting-house and town- 
house (church and state) hard by all in a row ; all 
steepled and painted as white as so many " whited 
sepulchres." No light gleamed from the academy 
windows ; all dark as " the people covered with gross 
darkness." We entered it ; not a spark of fire nor a 
soul there. We consulted what to do. Four little 
boys came in, then one man. Deacon Lane, and a 
woman, then two young women, academy scholars, 
boarders at our friend Webster s, one more man, and 
lastly, friend Webster himself, the abolitionist of San- 
bornton Square, and our assembly was complete. 
Brother Pillsbury found the bell rope and pulled it 
till the sound rang clear and loud all over Sanbornton 
hills. It agitated the cold night air, but not the colder 
hearts of the people. Brother Bodwell must have 
heard it like a knell in his study. Nobody else came 
near. Brother Pillsbury went to a store and bought a 
candle and lighted the house, wrapping a bit of news 
paper round it and setting it in a corner of the desk. 
It threw its beams round upon the empty seats and 
the "darkness visible" of the "Woodman Sanbornton 



DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. Ill 

Academy," the title, we believe, of this Liberal insti 
tution. We held a season of prayer, not with the full 
formalities of a meeting. We felt the desolate condi 
tion of the unfortunate people and their minister, and 
we prayed for them. Brother Foster followed. When 
we rose from our knees he opened his mouth to 
the handful present in a most impressive and striking- 
exhortation, addressing them as " the entire humanity 
of the place," told them that on them, in the provi 
dence of God, had devolved the responsibility of 
awakening that people and minister ; told them the 
slave s case and of the judgment, and bore an appal 
ling testimony against the place. Brother Pillsbury 
and myself followed with similar appeal and testimony. 
Friend Webster spoke with feeling for the cause and 
sorrow for the state of the people, and we separated, 
chilled by sitting without fire. Brothers Foster and 
Pillsbury went to see Mr. Bodwell, and from what 
they said, did their duty to him faithfully. 

Could the editor of the Herald of Freedo-m have ac 
companied Mr. Foster and myself through the state, 
during that cold and dreary winter, he would have 
found many Sanbornton Squares, and some even more 
benighted and morally desolate. Even at the tavern 
there, we met several persons who, spite of rum, tobacco, 
blasphemy and negro hate, spoke many kindly words, 
and thought we were honest in our belief and work, 
and entitled to better treatment than we were receiv 
ing. And the generous, even heroic, hospitality of 
Mr. Josiah Webster and his excellent wife (father and 
mother of our Concord fellow-citizen, Calvin Webster, 
then a boy of thirteen) won our admiration, as well as 
gratitude, for in those days it was often perilous to 
harbor and entertain an abolitionist. Mr. Webster 
had a brother, Rev. John Calvin Webster, who was 
also well known as an abolitionist, and, f,or a clergy 
man, of best and truest type, away beyond and above 
most of his clerical brethren. 



112 CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 

Leaving Sanbornton we crossed over to Gilmanton, 
then seat of the Theological seminary from which I 
emerged a licensed Congregational minister two years 
before, one of a class of eleven, the first graduating 
class, most of us professing to be earnest, outspoken 
abolitionists. Our reception at Gilmanton, but for 
one family, must have been as dreary and cheerless as 
Sanbornton Square would have been without its 
Websters. And we had begun to say that every Sodom 
seemed to have a Lot, and every Sahara at least one 
oasis. And in the spacious, hospitable home of Mr. 
Clark, we were like Bunyan s pilgrims on the " Delec 
table mountains." 

But alas for our cause ! The Congregational meet 
ing-house was opened, warmed and lighted for us, 
afternoon and evening, and the minister had given 
notice of our coming from the pulpit. The Theolog 
ical seminary and academy were close at hand, the 
latter with its preceptor and pupils ; the former with 
its three professors and as many classes. In the vil 
lage were a Methodist and Quaker, as well as Con 
gregational meeting-house, and all open on Sunday for 
worship. The day was not unfavorable, the traveling 
for the season was remarkably good. At the appointed 
hour we entered the meeting-house. It was empty 
and void as chaos before the eternal fiat had gone 
forth, " Let.there be light." The Clarks came in good 
time. Next three women, then two theological stu 
dents and one other man. The Baptist minister, Rev. 
Mr. Boswell, had ridden over some miles of Gilman 
ton hills to be present, and remained through the 
evening, giving friendly and approving testimony, and 
late and last Mr. Lancaster, Congregational minister. 
He came to both meetings, but spoke no word. In 
the evening the numbers were less by two or three, 



DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. 113 

the only woman present, Mrs. Lancaster, wife of the 
minister. Nor was there but one theological student. 
Three years before had the like of Rogers and Foster 
come there to speak on slavery, my whole class of eleven 
would surely have attended, with possibly one or two 
exceptions, and though most of us were working our 
passage into the pulpit, the dollar or half dollar of 
each would have helped on the collection. But at 
that time the torpedo touch of new organization had 
not done its fell work ; and many of the younger min 
isters, as well as theological students, were earnest and 
devoted abolitionists. While slavery was regarded 
only as an evil, and at the distant south, no tell-tale 
telegraph nor lightning express trains, nor even 
" under-ground railroad" between, discussion of it 
might be tolerated. But when Garrison proclaimed it 
a sin and crime, always and everywhere, the pulpit 
began to be alarmed. And when next we began to 
resolve and re-resolve that no slave-holder could be a 
Christian ; and later that his northern abettor and 
.apologist was as bad as himself ; and that a slave- 
holding religion was essentially anti-Christ ; a slave- 
holding church a synagogue of Satan, and a slave- 
holding ministry and all the fellow communicants a 
brotherhood of thieves, of man-stealers, the battle was 
joined in deadly earnest. 

Our next encounter was Pittsneld. The Congrega- 
tionalist minister, Mr. Curtis, was a pioneer in the new 
organization, and in various ways we felt his baneful 
influence. The Free-will Baptist minister and one or 
two of his congregation showed us some hospitality, 
especially Mr. and Mrs. McCrillis of his church. 
We had an audience of a dozen, but two young men 
of them had come with us* all the ten hilly miles from 
Gilmanton. Pittsneld was a flourishing cotton factory 



114 CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 

village, and Mr. Curtis had at one time been an able 
anti-slavery apostle ; nor did he apostatize till the axe 
was laid at the root of the deadly tree of slavery, the 
church and its pulpit. He was president of the New 
Hampshire anti-slavery society at the time of secession, 
but he had been conspiring with his clerical brethren 
all the previous year, 1839, to seize the helm of the 
society and bring it under clerical and congregational 
control. At the anniversary of that year, he exhibited 
much sectarian bitterness and new organization 
predilection, more than once ruling Stephen Foster 
out of order while speaking, and once even calling our 
invited guest, Mr. Garrison, down for what he termed 
irrelevancy. Still he was next day re-elected presi 
dent, the society wishing to avoid the very appearance 
of proscription.- 

In the following autumn, the Deerfield Association 
of Ministers, Mr. Curtis a leading member, issued a 
call for a convention of Congregational and Presby 
terian ministers and churches, for the purpose as was 
declared, of correcting a mistake existing at the south, 
relative to the position of the New Hampshire 
churches on the subject of slavery. The convention 
met in Concord and sat two days and then quite por 
tentously adjourned to meet in Concord on the day 
preceding the next anniversary day of the state society. 
The motive for such adjournment could not be mis 
taken ; Mr. Curtis was president of that convention, 
and as such, was careful and prompt to have season 
able notice given of the adjourned meeting. At the 
same time he sent to the congregational organ of New 
Hampshire, then The Panoply, a call over his own 
name, addressed " to the sound, judicious and enlight 
ened abolitionists of New Hampshire," summoning 
them to attend the meeting of the state anti-slavery 



DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. 115 

society, and save it from being perverted to unworthy 
purposes. And a request accompanied this call, that 
when the Panoply had copied it, it be sent to the 
Herald of Freedom. 

The call to the Concord convention of ministers and 
churches, issued by the Deerfield Association, included 
the editor of the Herald, and Stephen Foster, both of 
whom were still church members. Early in the 
second session, Mr. Rogers offered this resolution : 

Resolved, That this convention cordially approve 
of the American Anti-Slavery Society and kindred 
organizations ; and the direct and proper way of 
assuring our southern brethren that we are not in 
favor of slavery, is to unite with these organizations 
for its overthrow. 

That resolution was laid on the table The resolu 
tion limiting membership to the convention to minis 
ters and male church members, excluding women, was 
adopted. Mr. Foster asked for the yeas and nays, 
and the vote stood forty to twenty-six against women 
membership. So when the roll was called, the names 
of women were passed over. Late on the second day 
of the convention, the resolution of Mr. Rogers was 
taken from the table, amended and passed. 

But the editor of the Panoply, Rev. David Kimball, 
himself a member of the convention, in his leading 
editorial, published with the convention proceedings, 
declared that more than half the members were gone 
when the resolution of Mr. Rogers was taken up, and 
so there was not a fair expression of the minds of the 
convention. Which was doubtless true. And an 
other thing was also true. Only a very small num 
ber of the Congregational and Presbyterian ministers 
of the state cared enough about the anti-slavery cause 
to attend the convention as friends or foes. Less 
than forty-five of the two hundred and thirty towns in 



Il6 CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 

the state had any representation, and more than half 
of them, probably, were represented only by laymen, 
though several sent women, only to be rejected. And 
another fact is as patent as, and more significant than, 
the rest. Only the very best of the clergy, those who 
had shown most friendliness toward the anti-slavery 
movement, were present at all. And some of them 
soon became, and so continued, our most inveterate 
enemies. The last resolution which the convention 
adopted unanimously read: 

Resolved, That as long as ministers and church 
members continue in the sin of slave-holding, we feel 
it our duty to withhold from them Christian fellowship 
and commuion. 

What that resolution implied shall be referred to 
Rev. Mr. Curtis, who was president of that conven 
tion, and at that time of the New Hampshire anti- 
slavery society, to explain and declare. He had for 
some years been active in measures for a pretended 
severance of church fellowship between the north and 
south,^through the missionary, Bible and other simi 
lar cooperating organizations, including also the Gen 
eral Assembly of the Presbyterian church, and the 
Congregational churches of New England. What 
kind of separation he intended is seen by an extract 
of a letter of his own in the Congregational Journal 
at the time, to this effect: 

My advice was, to dissolve all connection with the 
General Assembly, as a body, while they, as a body, 
sanction slavery. I do not perceive that such a meas 
ure need at all decide the question, or make it doubtful, 
whether individual Congregational and Presbyterian 
churches should continue in the kindest fellowship 
towards one another, when neither professes any sym 
pathy for slavery. Let the individual fellowship of 
the churches be left to their own regulation, as it must 
be left. 



DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. 117 

That was the kind of excision contemplated by Mr. 
Curtis, who represented the most radical anti-slavery 
wing of the New Hamsphire and of the New Eng 
land Congregational pulpit and church. Cut off the 
General assembly as such, refuse cooperation with 
Bible and missionary societies as such, but retain sac 
ramental and other communion with the " individual 
Congregational and Presbyterian churches " composing 
them as before ! A surgical operation never con 
templated at the school of Salerno, nor any other med 
ical institution since. But even such action was not 
taken. The advice of Mr. Curtis was never accepted 
nor respected to any observable extent. The fellow 
ship continued as before. 

But readers may have forgotten that this episode of 
explanatory history commenced back in the town of 
Pittsfield, where the anti-slavery lecturers and the 
editor of the Herald encountered in an unusual degree 
the baneful influence of a professing anti-slavery minis 
ter. Mr. Bodwell, of Sanbornton Square, made no anti- 
slavery pretentions ; nor did Mr. Corser at the Bridge, 
where the pulpit cushions were " daubed with such 
untempered mortar," as if typifying the quality of the 
gospel preached there. But the sacramental fellow 
ship was as real and constant with them as with the 
most radical anti-slavery church members and minis 
ters in the land And the same Christian embrace was 
extended to all the individual churches and clergy 
composing the General assembly of the Presbyterian 
church as well. 

Our Pittsfield meeting was held in the basement, 
vestry of the Free Will Baptist church, the only build 
ing in the town to which uncompromising anti-slavery 
could be admitted. The Free Will minister, Rev. Mr. 
Cilley, attended, as did a very few members of his. 



Il8 CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 

church ; Mr. and Mrs. McCrillis, who kindly enter 
tained us while in town, of course among them. Rev. 
Mr. Curtis and his new organized church and society 
kept carefully aloof. The account given of our recep 
tion and experiences there by the editor of the Herald, 
might be too long to reproduce here, but a few 
excerpts can hardly be spared. And the more because 
Pittsfield was pre-eminently a representative town, 
anti-slaverywise, under the newly organized type of 
the doctrine, and Mr. Curtis and his church and people 
of the very best membership, as well in New York 
and New England as New Hampshire. So in what 
follows, Mr. Rogers spoke really of the whole Congre 
gational and Presbyterian churches of the northern 
states : 

We groped our way to the underground meeting, 
where we found assembled anti-slavery s accustomed 
numbers a full dozen of the surviving heart of Pitts- 
field. Brother Cilley was among them. Brother 
Curtis came not also among us. He was said to have 
been at a school exhibition in the town, and in uncom 
mon flow of spirits ; as merry, according to the 
account, he must have been as Herod the night of 
John s beheading, and as regardless of the despised 
and infidel meeting going on in the little Free Will 
vestry as that festive monarch was of the scenes in the 
prison of the Baptist. * * * We wondered if 
brother Curtis did not now and then think of our 
anti-slavery meeting, amid the gay festivities of his 
exhibition. And when he went home to his evening 
devotions, did not that meeting intrude into his solemn 
fancy ? And when he laid his head upon his pillow 
that night, did not that meeting occur again to his 
unquiet remembrance ? Nay, in his night visions did 
it not usurp the place of that joyous exhibition ? And 
in the morning when he went through his reverend 
services at the altar, did not that intrusive meeting 
interrupt the even tenor of his solemnities, and more 
than once occur during his "long prayer?" He 



DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. 119 

knows. Sundry women were in our meeting, and some 
others of brethren. We could scarcely have fallen 
short of a dozen. We took up the comparative claims 
of the anti-slavery and new organization societies, 
mainly for the sake of brother Cilley (not yet quite new 
organized) ; read over the creed of new organization, 
as set forth in the New Hampshire Abolition Society 
constitution, and found it extremely extraneous. We 
were astonished at its impudent charges against anti- 
slavery, and its open and shameless commission of the 
very offences it had falsely charged upon us. Brother 
Cilley seemed hardly satisfied after all on " the woman 
question." The propriety of woman s acting on com 
mittees seemed to worry his mind. We had supposed 
that in the Free Will church woman s sphere was as 
broad as man s, and that that order thought it no 
shame for a woman to speak in a meeting, but an 
honor rather and a duty. Brother Cilley had scruples, 
however, as to the propriety. * * * Anti-slavery 
leaves woman and man and child free to equal action. 
Freewillism obliges woman to speak, while it only 
expects man, thus maintaining the darling masculine 
prerogative and superiority. Sister McCrillis rose at 
length, after the evening was well nigh spent, and she 
had not once opened her lips, and very significantly 
asked permission to go home. Her question seemed a 
poser to brother Cilley s queries as to the proprieties, 
and we thought at once relieved him of them all. The 
noble woman and her female fellow-attendants went 
out, leaving us quite ashamed of the idea of question 
ing the right or the propriety of woman s doing in an 
anti-slavery meeting as she thinks best. 

What is exactly true of the connection of the north 
ern Congregational, Presbyterian, and other large 
evangelical Christian bodies, acting together as Bible, 
missionary and tract societies and associations, is, there 
never was any real separation ; in the large bodies 
they all acted together. Individual churches some 
times for themselves, made protest and even a feeble 
form of separation. But Mr. Curtis, one of the most 



120 CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 

anti-slavery ministers among them all, told us to what 
purpose. " Let the individual fellowship of the 
churches be left to themselves," he said after cutting 
connexion with the larger ecclesiastical bodies. But 
even that to any effective extent, was never done. 

In 1842, Judge Birney revised and made more con 
clusive the argument in his work entitled " The Ameri 
can Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery;" 
himself a leading member and ruling elder of the 
Presbyterian church when the book was written. In 
1844, appeared, "The Brotherhood of Thieves; or a 
True Picture of the American Church and Clergy," 
taking up the argument where Mr. Birney had left off, 
besides greatly strengthening his, by multiplied proofs 
from the same sources. 

In 1847, " The Church as It Is ; the Forlorn Hope of 
Slavery" appeared, bringing the action of the churches 
and clergy on the slavery question down to that time. 
A peculiarity of all these books was, the churches and 
ministers furnished the testimony, so that they were 
judged by their own words and works. A division 
occurred in the general conference of the Methodist 
church. But the south, not the north, separated. 
And there still remained seven or eight annual con 
ferences in the northern division, the boundaries dis 
tinctly discribed in the Book of Discipline. And on 
slavery the books of north and south read exactly 
alike, and it was shown clearly by Methodist testi 
mony that there were still thousands of slave-holders 
and many thousand slaves in the northern general 
conference. The one unquestionable fact was, that 
though there were exceptions to the fearful charge, 
the system of slavery was supported by the govern 
ment and sanctified by the religion of the nation, till 
the Infinite Patience could bear it no longer. The 



CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS. 121 

trump of the avenging angel first sounded at Fort 
Sumter, summoning north and south to their judgment 
day. Nor could the dread call be resisted. At the 
memorable field of Bull Run the two armies met face 
to face. It was on a beautiful summer Sunday morn 
ing. The northern and the southern states, regiments 
of Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Presby 
terians, Episcopalians, from Maine to Michigan ; regi 
ments of the same denominations were up to meet 
them from the shores of the Mexican gulf to Mason 
and Dixon s line. Many of both armies must have 
sometime sat together at the sacramental supper-tables 
of the same denominational faith. But now their 
hour had come. Now the warnings, entreaties and 
expostulations of the faithful abolitionists were ended, 
and their terrible predictions were to be fulfilled. On 
that bright Sunday the two armies met in battle array. 
Avenging Justice beheld them, and seizing the one in 
His right hand the other in His left, dashed them to 
gether, dashed them in pieces, and gave frightful 
multitudes of them their last sacrament ; not any more 
in the blood of slaves sold for wine of communion, 
but in the steaming battle blood of each other ! 

For days both sides claimed a victory. The rebel 
commander-in-chief sent to his congress at Richmond 
forthwith dispatches dated Sunday night, and com 
mencing thus : "The night has closed upon a hard 
fought field. The enemy were routed, and precipi 
tately fled, abandoning a large amount of arms, knap 
sacks and baggage. The ground was strewn for miles 
with those killed, and the farm-houses and grounds 
around were filled with the wounded. Pursuit was 
continued along several routes till darkness covered 
the fugitives." 



122 DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. 

Let readers mark those words, "the fugitives." New 
England, Boston even, had many noble sons in that 
fight ; and only a little while before New England, 
and even Boston, was returning fugitive slaves to their 
masters. Who was He who once said, " With what 
measure ye meet, it shall be measured to you again ?" 
And what the Boston pulpit, what Andover Theologi 
cal Seminary said, what nearly every evangelical doc 
tor of divinity taught on the duty of returning fugi 
tive slaves, shall be shown in some future chapter of 
these fearful chronicles. 



CHAPTER VII. 

ACTS CONTINUED, WITH PERSONAL SKETCH OF STEPHEN 
SYMONDS FOSTER. 

The last chapter contained an account of a sally 
into the lecturing field in which Mr. Foster and myself 
were accompanied by our inestimable coadjutor, Mr. 
Rogers, of the Herald of Freedom. My next cam 
paign was with Foster alone, and as some account of 
Mr. Garrison and Mr. Rogers has been given, it may 
be proper to advert briefly to some of the more general 
incidents in the early life of Stephen S. Foster. It 
has been already intimated that in this work only the 
acts of a small number of the anti-slavery apostles can 
be even named. There were many, both men and 
women, whose separate faithful labors, patient endur 
ance of privations, perils, sacrifices and sufferings, 
earned for each one a volume larger and abler than 
this can possibly be. Men and women whose very 
names should only be spoken by those of cleanest lips 
and purest hearts. 

Mr. Foster was born in Canterbury, New Hamp 
shire, in November, 1809, son of Colonel Asa Foster, 
of revolutionary days. He was the ninth child of a 
family of thirteen. 

The old Foster homestead is in the north part of 
Canterbury, on a beautiful hillside, overlooking a long 
stretch of the Merrimack river valley, including Con 
cord, and a wide view east and west, as well as south. 
It includes several hundred acres, and is still owned 
by one of the Foster brothers. 



124 ACTS CONTINUED, 

Stephen left it early and learned the trade of a car 
penter and builder. In that, however, he did not come 
to his life occupation. His parents were most devout 
and exemplary members of the Congregational church, 
to which he also was joined in youthful years. At 
that time the call for ministers and missionaries, espe 
cially to occupy the new opening field at the west, 
called then " the great valley of the Mississippi," was 
loud and earnest. At twenty-two he heard and heeded 
it, and immediately entered on a course of collegiate 
study to that end, and it is only just to say that a more 
consistent, conscientious, divinely consecrated spirit 
never set itself to prepare for that then counted holiest 
of callings. Though assenting to the creed and cov 
enant of his denomination, his whole rule of practical 
life and work was the " Sermon on the Mount," as 
interpreted and illustrated in the life and death of its 
author. 

With him " Love your enemies" was more than 
words, and " Resist not evil" was not returning evil, 
nor inflicting penalties under human enactments. And 
he went early to prison for non-appearance at military 
parade, armed with weapons of death. 

In Dartmouth College he was called to perform mil 
itary service. On Christian principles he declined, 
and was arrested and dragged away to jail. So bad 
were the roads that a part of the way the sheriff was 
compelled to ask him to leave the carriage and walk. 
He would cheerfully have walked all the way, as once 
did George Fox, good naturedly telling the officer, 
" Thee need not go thyself ; send thy boy, I know 
the way ;" for Foster feared no prison cells/ He had 
earnest work in hand which led through many of them 
in subsequent years. 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 125 

Eternal Goodness might have had objects in view 
in sending him to Haverhill, for he found the jail in a 
condition to demand the hand of a Hercules, as in the 
" Augaean " stables for its cleansing. His companions 
there were poor debtors, as well as thieves, murderers, 
and lesser felons. One man so gained his confidence 
as to whisper in his ear that on his hands was the blood 
of murder, though none knew it but himself. Another 
poor wretch had been so long confined by illness to 
his miserable bed, that it literally swarmed with vermin, 
crawling from his putrid sores. 

Foster wrote and sent to the world such a letter as 
few but he could write, awakening general horror 
and indignation wherever it was read, and a cleansing 
operation was forthwith instituted. The filth on 
the floor was found so deep and so hard trodden, that 
strong men had to come with pick-axes and dig it up. 
And that jail was not only revolutionized, but the 
whole prison system of the state from that time began 
to be reformed ; and imprisonment for debt was soon 
heard of here no more. 

His college studies closed, he entered, for a theo 
logical course, the Union Seminary in New York. 
Soon afterward there was threatened war between our 
country and Great Britain, over a short stretch of the 
northeastern boundary line, about which the two 
nations had disputed for half a century. Wholly 
opposed to war as was he, for any cause, he and a 
few of his friends proposed a meeting for prayer and 
conference, in relation to it as then menaced. Foster 
asked for the use of a lecture room for their purpose, 
but was surprised as much as grieved to find the sem 
inary faculty not only opposed to granting the use of 
the room, but sternly against the holding of any such 
meeting. 



126 ACTS CONTINUED, 

That refusal, probably more than t any other one 
event, determined his whole future course. For while 
in college he had had many serious doubts and mis 
givings as to the claim of the great body of the Ameri 
can church and clergy to the Christian name and 
character ; not only because of their supporting war 
and approval of his incarceration for peace principles, 
but also for their persistent countenance of slave- 
holding and fellowship of even slave-breeders and 
slave-holders, as Christians and Christian ministers. 

In 1839, Mr. Foster abandoned all hope of the Con 
gregational ministry, and entered the anti-slavery 
service, side by side with Garrison, of the Boston Lib 
erator, and Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, of the New 
Hampshire Herald of Freedom. And from that time 
onward till slavery was abolished, and indeed to the 
day of his death, the cause of freedom and humanity, 
justice and truth, had no more faithful, few if any 
more able champions. 

In the autumn of 1845, he married Miss Abby 
Kelley, of Worcester, Massachusetts, then a well and 
widely -known lecturer on anti-slavery, temperance, 
peace, and other subjects pertaining to the rights and 
the welfare of man and womankind. She and a 
daughter, their only child, survive him. The daughter 
graduated first at Vassar College, then entered Cor 
nell University, which she left at the end of the year, 
with the degree of Master of Arts. 

I first saw Stephen Foster in the autumn of 1834. 
We were commencing teaching schools in adjoining 
districts of a small country town. A " revival of 
religion" soon appeared in the town, and was emi 
nently powerful in his school, if, indeed, it did not 
commence there. His school was much larger than 
mine, and many of the parents were members, and 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 127 

some of them officers, of the Congregational church. 
They found in Mr. Foster a teacher, or at any rate a 
leader in religion, as well as in the literature of their 
school. And though most satisfactory progress was 
made in all the branches, and the discipline of the 
school was deemed throughout of the very best, nearly 
every scholar of or above fifteen years old was con 
verted and joined the Congregational church ; and then 
their teacher and some of themselves came over as 
missionaries into my more remote and benighted dis 
trict, and quite a work was accomplished there. The 
venerable minister of the town thought, and from the 
standpoint, and in the light of that day, thought truly, 
that, " with young Mr. Foster, evidently, was the 
secret of the Lord ! " And that same characteristic 
faithfulness he brought with him into the anti-slavery 
cause. And soon learning where was the great, deep, 
tap-root of the deadly upas, he laid the axe at the root 
of the tree. 

His encounters with the church and ministry, the 
frequency with which his meetings had been and were 
still broken up by brutal mobs, not unfrequently jus 
tified by the pulpit and religious press, had made him 
a disciple to the Birney doctrine, "The American 
Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery," long 
before this startling tract had come before the public. 

Mr. Birney s experiences with the same power sug 
gested his title ; but a few years later, another pam 
phlet appeared from Foster s own pen, entitled, "The 
Brotherhood of Thieves ; or a True Picture of the 
American Church and Clergy." Mr. Birney had 
already proved the pertinence and propriety of such a 
title in his little work ; but in a ringing book, of more 
than seventy pages, Foster showed, by super-abundant 
testimony, and every single witness furnished by the 



128 ACTS CONTINUED, 

church itself, that if slavery were man stealing, as the 
Presbyterian church had declared it forty years before, 
and "the highest kind of theft" then surely the whole 
southern church was indeed a vast "Brotherhood of 
Thieves /" with their northern baptized brethren, who 
fellowshiped them as Christians, their not less guilty 
accomplices ! 

Mr. Foster therefore made the popular, prevailing 
religions his main point of attack. What could he 
have done otherwise ? The churches of the north 
were opened to southern slave-breeders, slave-traders, 
slave-hunters, and slave-holders, if members of the 
same, and often even of widely different denomina 
tions, both for preaching, baptizing and sacramental 
supper occasions and purposes. There were a few 
exceptions ; but not enough to affect the general 
charge. Northern academies, colleges, universities, 
and theological seminaries, toned down their whole 
curriculum of moral and religious training and teach 
ing to suit the depraved demand and taste of the 
whole brotherhood of southern slave-holders. And 
with most rare exceptions, the northern press attuned 
itself to the same key. 

The religious public soon learned to dread Mr. Fos 
ter s presence or approach. Convicted of the most 
malignant pro-slaveryism, and by its own public records 
and reports of proceedings of ecclesiastical bodies and 
associations, from general assemblies, general confer 
ences, and American Bible, missionary and tract 
societies, to state and county conferences and conso 
ciations, they had good reason to fear such a judg 
ment-day before the time. 

So there was a conspiracy among all classes of the 
people to conquer the abolitionists, " by letting them 
severely alone." And in some states the clergy went 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 129 

so far as to issue pastoral letters to the churches, 
declaring that anti-slavery lecturers had no right to 
invade a people who had chosen a pastor and regularly 
inducted him into office ; nor had such a people any 
right to permit it. A Massachusetts clerical mandate, 
duly published in the religious papers, signed by two 
congregational ministers, contained this paragraph : 

When a people have chosen a pastor, and he has 
been regularly inducted into office, they have so far 
surrendered up to him the right to discharge the 
appropriate duties of his office in the parish over which 
he is settled, that they themselves can not send another 
to discharge those duties, all or any part of them, 
against his wishes, without an evident invasion of his 
territory. Whoever comes before a parish under these 
circumstances is an intruder. And equally so is he 
who, after being admitted by the pastor, sets up his 
judgment in matter that falls properly under the pas 
tor s control. These are both acts of trespass, and 
the perpetrators of them are or should be liable to 
ecclesiastical censure. The unfaithfulness or incapac 
ity of the pastor is no apology for the offence. 

Nor was this law a dead letter in any place where it 
could possibly be enforced, whether in Massachusetts 
or anywhere in the north or west. 

But the brave faithfulness of Mr. Foster to the 
enslaved and to his own solemn convictions, soon tri 
umphed over such religious despotism. He conceived 
the idea of entering the meeting houses on Sunday, 
and at the hour of sermon, respectfully rising and 
claiming the right to be heard then and there, on the 
duties and obligations of the church to those who were 
in bonds at the south. 

This measure he first adopted in the old North 
church, at Concord, in September, 1841. He was 
immediately seized by "three young gentlemen, one 
a southerner from Alabama, and the other two, guards 



13 ACTS CONTINUED, 

at the state prison, thrust along the broad aisle and 
violently pushed out of the house." A full account of 
the transaction was published in the Herald of Freedom 
on the following Friday, iyth of the same month. 
But Mr. Foster could not be deterred from his pur 
pose. And the measure proved so effective as a 
means of awakening the public attention to the 
importance of the anti-slavery enterprise, that others 
were led to adopt it. Of course it led to persecution, 
and some were imprisoned for the offence Mr. Foster 
as many as ten or twelve times, in New Hampshire 
and Massachusetts. Perhaps his most memorable 
experience at the hands of the civil law, at the time, 
was in Concord, in June, -1842. On Sunday, the 
twelfth of that month, being in Concord, he went to 
the South church, and at the time for sermon he rose 
in a pew at the side of the pulpit, and commenced 
speaking in his usual solemn and deeply impressive 
manner. He evidently would have been heard, and 
with deep attention, too, for many in the house not 
only knew him well, but knew that this was a course 
not unusual with him, and one in the rightfulness of 
which he conscientiously believed, and, besides, was 
sometimes able to make most useful and effective.. 
Even the Concord Unitarian society, one Sunday, gave 
respectful hearing ; the minister, Rev. Mr. Tilden, 
inviting him to speak. 

But at the South church, it was not so. There he 
was seized by the then Secretary of State, others 
assisting, and forthwith carried by main force out of 
the house. The editor of the Herald of Freedom was 
present and saw the whole transaction, and in his next 
paper, gave a remarkably clear and full report of it. 
It is well worth reading and even study, by any who- 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 13! 

would understand the spirit and temper of those tur 
bulent times. 

As the whole affair was conducted, and as it finally 
resulted, it was not inappropriately called in the 
Herald, a mob. "A mob in the sanctuary called the 
South church. House ostentatiously dedicated to the 
worship of God. A mob begun in the pulpit by the 
anointed embassador of the prince of peace, in 
midst of professed Christian worship !" 

At the close of the long prayer of morning service, 
during which, in those days, the congregation all rev 
erently rose and stood, Foster remained standing and 
when the people were seated, he commenced in low, 
solemn and devout manner to say that he wished to 
speak a few words in behalf of two and a half millions 
of our kidnapped and enslaved countrymen. Nearly 
all appeared deeply attentive, and the scene was pro 
foundly serious and impressive, as became the hour, 
the place and the theme. 

But instantly, the minister from the pulpit called 
out with much anger, " Mr. Foster, we must not be 
disturbed in our worship ! " At the same time a man 
high in authority, stalked across the house in front of 
the pulpit and seized him by the arm. But he had 
laid violent hand on no brawling disturber of the 
peace, nor of worship, but the equal in every way of 
the minister, and morally and spiritually, vastly his 
superior, as every moment demonstrated more and 
more. He was perfectly serene, gentle, orderly and 
respectful ; and that seemed the more to waken the 
pulpit indignation. He mildly asked the officer, who 
as yet confronted him alone, if such conduct as his 
became a Christian, and if Jesus Christ ever interrupted 
respectful speaking in such a way, or forced anybody 
out of the house only for speaking ? But the people 



132 ACTS CONTINUED, 

must not be permitted to hear him ; and as no one yet 
had come to the rescue with the officer, he called up to 
the choir to set the music going to silence him. Fos 
ter responded that he hoped the choir would not resort 
to such means to silence his voice ; or if they should, 
they could not repress the truth. But before this was 
all uttered, the music was set going in full diapason 
with all the spite of the vilest mob. 

The music, of course, blasphemously silenced Fos 
ter ; but while it was performing, the officer, in true 
posse comitatus manner and spirit, ordered up the sex 
ton and several others, chiefly church members, if not 
wholly, and some of them new organized abolitionists, 
and seizing hold of him, carried him by main brute 
force out of the house, he making no resistance nor 
proffering any resistance by using his own strength or 
limbs. 

It was said in defense of the infamous act : 
" They carried him gently out !" To that Mr. Rogers 
responded the same week in the Herald of Freedom to 
this effect : 

Yes, very gently. They did not use a particle of 
brute force, beyond what was necessary to effect their 
brute purpose. But remember they laid hands on a 
man and put him out of a house before all of the con 
gregation, against his will, in contempt of his right of 
speech, and in the deepest intended dishonor of his 
person. The officer would have struck any man dead 
who had thus profaned his official person. So would 
that reverend minister. I thought the officer might 
refrain from Foster while he remained silent. All was 
hush, save the devout music ; that had restored the 
interrupted worship and it was solemnly going on. 
But they feared Foster might speak by and by, and so 
thought they would put him out by anticipation. 
* * * They laid hold of Foster when he was stand 
ing perfectly still (whether he had a right to speak or 
no right), when all was hushed but the clamor in the 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 133 

gallery, and lawlessly conveyed him out of the house 
of God. He meekly submitted to the infamous indig 
nity. The minister looked on with all clerical com 
placency, from his curtained elevation. Nero would 
hardly have looked on with more when he fiddled at 
the burning of Rome. They laid their sacrilegious 
hands on Foster. I care not that they handled him 
gently. The outrage is that they handled him at all. 
It was an outrage most abhorrent to human feelings. 
The very law abhors it, sprung, as it was, from the 
dark ages of feudal England, and punishes its slight 
est touch of a man. But ecclesiastical supremacy 
knows no law. They trampled law under foot ; and 
had they been outraging a man wicked as themselves, 
he would visit it upon them. But Foster is a Chris 
tian, and they are safe. It was a flagrant breach of 
the peace, and a highly gross assault and battery, 
aggravated by outrage of the right of speech. * * * 
I saw Foster in their hands. It was an unusual sight. 
It was an abhorrent, unnatural sight. It was as a 
lamb in the hands of wolves. His countenance beamed 
with magnanimous Christian expression. Several of 
the congregation indignantly left the house ; I was 
among the number. At the bottom of the entrance 
stairs I found the abductors in a state of guilty agita 
tion, on the verge of furious excitement. The officers 
hard breathing and most vivaciously at work shutting 
the folding doors and fastening them. * * * I 
could not help exclaiming, shame on you friends ; 
shame on you for your conduct ! " Do you want to 
go out or stay in, Mr. Rogers," said the excited officer. 
Go out, of course, said I, out of such a house as this. 
They shut all the doors and bolted them behind them 
with most cowardly care. We walked away pondering 
on the spirit of the worship we had left. Some women 
who came out after us found the doors locked, and 
had to go out through a round-about-way to a postern 
which was also locked from terror of Foster. 

All this transpired at the morning service. In the 
afternoon, Mr. Foster felt constrained to enter the 
church again and attempt to speak a few words before 



134 ACTS CONTINUED, 

the services commenced. All of his friends discour 
aged the attempt ; even Mr. Rogers counselled against 
it. He said he would no more go into that South 
church with those murderous stone stairs at the out 
let, than he would walk into the Spanish inquisi 
tion. But Foster answered in the very spirit of the 
heroic apostle, Paul, when he asked his less brave 
brethren, " What mean ye to weep and to break my 
heart, for I am ready not to be bound only, but also 
to die for the name of the Lord Jesus." And he went 
again in the afternoon up those same " murderous 
stone stairs." 

He commenced speaking as soon as he entered, and 
before the performances had begun. Immediately 
some young men, without order or authority even from 
the pulpit, most ferociously seized him, dragged him 
down the aisle and cast him down as far as the broad 
stairs of the ascent, from which he was forthwith, in 
the very spirit of most malignant murder, hurled down 
the entire stairway ; and then with kicks, hair-pulling 
and other indignities, thrown out on the ground. By 
this time the whole entrance was thronged with a 
violent vociferating mob, furiously, and some pro 
fanely, defending the sacredness of the meeting-house. 
Foster, pale, faint and disabled, lay on the ground, 
still at the mercy of the mob. Some of us took him 
up and tenderly assisted him to the then hospitable 
home near by, of Amos and Louisa Wood. Mr. Wood 
soon arrived and told us that after the outrage on 
Mr. Foster, he had risen in his pew to protest against 
such proceedings, and that the same officer who con 
ducted the attack in the morning rushed upon him, 
and with others thrust him also, although a member 
of the church, out of the house. 

Mr. Foster appeared so seriously injured that we 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 135 

deemed it advisable to summon a physician. So it 
fell on me to return and venture up the broad aisle of 
that same perilous sanctuary, and call a doctor from 
the base of the pulpit itself. No bones were broken 
nor dislocated ; but bruises and sprains rendered 
walking difficult and painful for several weeks. 

But only the tragic portion of this wondrous spec 
tacle has yet been told. A farce followed more re 
markable still, for the church and pulpit counted their 
grievance so great as even to appeal to the civil courts 
for redress. They well knew their victims were non- 
resistants, both Mr. Wood and Mr. Foster, whose 
rights they had so atrociously infringed, not to speak 
of bodily ills inflicted, especially on Foster. Both 
were Christians in the sense and meaning of the Ser 
mon on the Mount. Both suffered imprisonment in 
our then loathsome jails, rather than perform military 
service or pay fines in money for non-appearance on 
the murder-meaning, murder-breeding muster field. 
So a suit at law would be perfectly safe at the worst. 
And a suit was commenced on Monday afternoon. 
Foster, only able to move about on a cane, was 
arrested at the house of Mr. Amos Wood, where we 
had taken him after his injury at the hands of the pul 
pit, the church and their then only too willing outside 
defenders. Several of us had been informed that the 
arrest was to be made, and had gathered there to wit 
ness the doing of it. 

The sheriff was a most kind hearted man, and 
appeared to appreciate properly the quality of the 
business then in hand. Entering the room where we 
were sitting, Mr. Foster in an invalid chair, he ap 
proached him, warrant in hand, and said : " Mr. Fos 
ter, I have authority here to take you before Judge 
Badger, to answer to a charge of disturbing public 



i 3 6 

worship." Probably these are not the exact words 
spoken, but Foster, in the mildest manner possible, 
responded : " I do not know of any business between 
me and friend Badger requiring my attendance to-day, 
and must decline to answer to your call." Of course 
the sheriff insisted, as in duty bound, but in manner 
and spirit that contrasted strangely with the truly mob 
demeanor of the meeting-house on the day before. 
When he saw that if Foster went he must be carried, 
literally, he asked some of us present if we would be 
kind enough to assist him in bearing him out to his 
carriage, which we naturally declined. Then he said 
he should have to call in other aid. Foster good 
naturedly suggested thatf the minister and his aids of 
yesterday would be the proper persons on whom to 
call. The news of what was transpiring by this time 
was on many tongues and in many ears, and the ex 
citement on the street was not small. It did not prove 
an easy matter to summon the posse comitatus. But 
finally one member of the church, and a working man 
not of the church, came in with the officer, and taking 
Foster gently in their hands and arms bore him bare 
headed to the door and placed him on the carriage 
seat. Foster, Rogers and others asked the non- 
church member why he didn t let the church do her 
own dirty work ? And the sheriff himself instead of 
arresting us, some of us being women, too, for thus 
attempting to obstruct the purposes of justice, only 
answered that it was " a very unpleasant duty to per 
form," which, knowing the man as we did, we well 
understood before. A crowd followed the prisoner to 
the judgment hall. It was on the second story, and 
the stairway being narrow it was truly a ludicrous 
operation for the officer and his posse to climb it with 
so unseemly a burden. Foster said afterwards him- 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 137 

self that he felt rather serious than otherwise, till 
ascending the stairs, feet foremost high above his 
head, and yet handled with utmost caution, he could 
not help laughing outright, and did not recover his 
gravity again through the whole farcical trial. 

As the editor of the Herald of Freedom was a law 
yer and witnessed the court proceedings, probably 
readers would prefer his account in his own words. 
And in this they shall be gratified, copied literally, a 
few names omitted, from his columns of the same 
week : 

The court room was thronged. Esquire Badger 
took his seat and read over the complaint in the hear 
ing of Foster, charging him with " rude and indecent 
behavior," etc., "force and arms," etc., in the usual 
rigmarole of a criminal process, and asked him : 
" What say you, Mr. Foster, are you guilty or not 
guilty ?" Foster replied : " Friend Badger, I do not 
recognize you as my judge, nor shall I answer before 
you as a culprit. I am not your subject, and owe you 
no allegiance. As a brother man and equal I am 
willing to talk with you, on this or any other subject, 
but not as a magistrate." Friend Badger said the 
answer was not such as he wished. He wished him 
to say whether he was guilty or not guilty. Foster 
replied that he had his answer, and must put such con 
struction on it as he saw fit. 

The first witness was called and put on oath to tell 
the truth. It did not use to strike me so absurdly to 
hear a man sworn to tell the truth. He, the witness, 
said he was in the meeting house, saw Mr. Foster 
rise to speak, and Esquire S. immediately go to him 
and stop him, and take him out of the house. When 
asked if he did not interrupt the meeting by rude and 
indecent behavior, etc., he replied that he did not hear 
what he said. This was the substance, as I remember, 
of his testimony. 

Capt. A. M. next presented himself as a witness. 
He is a member of the church that dragged Stephen 
out, and the same captain who shut Amos Wood up 



138 ACTS CONTINUED, 

in the Black Hole at Hopkington, winter before last, 
for not being willing to train. Captain M. S. s testi 
mony was in effect the same as Captain S., who pre 
ceded. He didn t hear a word Foster said in the meet 
ing. I think he gave it as his opinion that he inter 
rupted, or disturbed the meeting by speaking, but 
did not tell what he said. When Captain M. retired, 
Captain W. came forward. Captain W. was also of 
the South church. He was sworn. He seemed com 
petent to give all necessary testimony, within his 
knowledge, and not unreasonably backward to furnish 
it. He sat close by Foster, he said, in the meeting* 
house, saw him stand up, and heard him speak, and 
thought what he said was a great disturbance of the 
meeting, etc., could not tell, however, what he said ; 
not a single word of it. He was asked if Foster 
behaved in a rude and indecent manner. Captain W. 
thought he disturbed the meeting very much, and that 
his speaking was contrary to the regulations of the 
South church. Foster asked him if speaking itself 
was contrary to the regulations, and when he said not, 
asked him who had a right to speak there ? The cap 
tain answered, nobody but the minister. Foster 
asked him if it would be contrary to the regulations of 
the South church if he should come in during service 
time and give an alarm of fire ? The captain replied 
in a grave manner that he did not choose to enter into 
that kind of conversation. But you are a witness, 
said Foster, and must answer all proper questions. 
He, however, did not answer. I will ask another 
question, said Foster : If your child should be kid 
napped and carried off to the south, and I should learn 
of it in service time of the South church, and should 
come in and give the alarm, would you think that an 
interruption ? The captain appealed to the court, and 
I think he was told he must answer ; for he did, and 
as I understood him said he should not think that an 
interruption. Suppose then, continued Foster, that 
two and a half millions of my countrymen should be 
kidnapped and sold into slavery, and I should come 
in in time of service and give the alarm, would that be 
violating the regulations of the South church ? The 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 139 

audience manifested great satisfaction at Foster s 
questions. The captain said thereupon, " These ques 
tions are asked for sport." The testimony here closed 
not a word being sworn to of what Foster said, nor 
any evidence given of rude or indecent behavior on 
the part of anybody but the minister and the officer 
who first laid hands on Foster. One spectator said> 
" Discharge him ; " another, as he left the room, said, 
" This is a farcical piece of business ; " a third said, 
" There isn t a particle of evidence against Foster ; " 
still another asked me, " What will the court do ? " 
Convict, I answered. "On what ground ? " he asked : 
I said : I cannot tell on what ground, I only think he 
will convict him. 

Early in the trial Esquire Whipple, ( the prosecutor ) 
read the law on which the complaint was founded. 
Toward the close of the examination, Foster glanced 
his eye over it and discovered that it was not in force, 
that it had been repealed. He observed to the court 
pleasantly, that he did not wish to interfere in their 
proceedings, but he believed they were trying him 
upon a statute that was not in force. He did not wish 
them to be at the trouble of going over the business 
twice, he said, and .he had not the time to spare him 
self. He had had occasion in his dealings with other 
churches to look at the law, and told them what it was 
and where they would find it. Hereupon a burst of 
applause broke from all parts of the audience, which 
lasted considerable time. Esquire Whipple looked 
amused and Esquire Badger a little put to it. How 
ever, Foster set them on the right track as to the law, 
and after awhile all went on again. Come to read the 
law through, it was plain as noon-day to every one 
that it contemplated no such case as Foster s. So 
they had no law against him, and no facts. 

Friend Badger then went out and was gone some 
minutes. I thought it might be to consult higher 
authorities as to the course to be taken with a criminal 
against whom there was neither law nor proof. Still, 
I had a presentiment he would convict. He returned 
and resumed his seat. He asked Mr. Foster if he had 
anything to say in his defense. Foster replied, 



140 ACTS CONTINUED, 

he made no defense, that what he said was not 
said to the court, but to the audience. I am in 
your power I know you can fine me or imprison 
me. You know I have done no wrong. No one has 
said aught against me. One witness gave his opinion 
that I had interrupted the meeting ; but he had no 
right to give opinions, he was a witness, he should 
give facts. You know I have done nothing amiss. If 
I had, why was not Daniel Noyes, the minister, here to 
testify against me ? He sat where he could see all 
that 1 did. I have done no wrong. He and Stevens 
and those who violated my rights of speech and of 
person, why do you not prosecute them instead of 
me ? It is not my duty said Friend Badger. It is your 
duty upon your own principles, replied Foster. I can 
not prosecute. It is contrary to my principles. You can, 
and are bound to. The injury is not against me. It 
is against the State, and you know their guilt and are 
bound to prosecute them. But do with me as you 
please. 

Esquire Badger then gave sentence. He would 
protect an anti-slavery meeting, he said, as soon as any 
other meeting, if it was disturbed. He woultl do 
justice to Mr. Foster as soon as to anybody else. 
( Thought I, Friend Badger, you had better not give 
reasons, but convict and say nothing. ) He went on to 
say " The complaint was broad enough to cover the 
case." Sure enough ; but then, there was no evi 
dence to sustain it. He said nothing about any evi 
dence. The complaint is broad enough he said to 
cover the case, and he declared Foster guilty, and 
fined him five dollars and the costs ! ! An expression 
of disapprobation, amounting pretty near to sovereign 
contempt, manifested itself throughout the court 
room ! The champions of the church had already 
sneaked off. A man like Nathan Stickney must have 
been ashamed of the decision. T. C., who was about, 
(looking sheepishly enough, ) hither and thither dur 
ing the trial, exerting what malign influence he could 
covertly, would not be so scrupulous as to the kind of 
victory, or mode of obtaining it. He looked as though 
he would enjoy a sentence against Stephen Foster to 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 14! 

that pestilential dungeon at Hopkinton for twenty 
years, for the quiet of the South church. And he is 
an anti-slavery man! He is, I believe, secretary of 
New Hampshire new organization. 

As soon as the magnificent sentence was pronounced, 
the friends of humanity present ( not abolitionists 
neither, professedly, though nearer being so than they 
are aware of ) rushed to the table and threw down the 
money to pay it. I would give their honored names, 
but it adds nothing, yet, to any man s reputation with 
the world to be commended in the Herald of Freedom. 
They are well known here. They make no sectarian 
profession, but if not in the kingdom of heaven, they 
are nearer to it infinitely, than the miserable pro- 
slavery devotees of the meeting-house. Foster thanked 
them in the fullness of a grateful heart, but protested 
respectfully against their paying. It will be better for 
the cause, said he, that I suffer. I can go to their jail, 
seeing they have unlawfully doomed me there. Others 
are there now. But no heed was paid to his 
remonstrance. Everybody felt deeply that he was a 
persecuted, injured, innocent and faithful man ; and 
entertained the profoundest contempt and indignation 
at the hypocritical priest and the rnobocratic official 
of the State, who had outraged and injured him. 

The tide of humanity ran too strong for the legal 
opinions of friend Badger. He seemed to find he had 
mistaken the current. He had fined an innocent man, 
prosecuted by the church, five dollars, and the PEOPLE 
were against it. He had not anticipated that. The 
church minions had slunk away. The table was covered 
with more money than was wanted. Friend Badger 
caught the general feeling and remitted the fine. The 
friends immediately passed the money over to Foster, 
who told them he would spend it in the anti-slavery 
cause. 

The whole article, from which this account is but 
an extract, fills more than seven solid columns of the 
Herald of Freedom, and the names and titles of per 
sons are given in full, and especially those most prom 
inent in the shameful transaction. Perhaps it were 



142 ACTS CONTINUED, 

better that they had been all given in the same man 
ner and continued in this extract. Almost all the 
parties, official and unofficial, are now dead ; many of 
them died long ago, even those who led the mob out 
rages at the church door where Foster received his 
bodily injuries. The court room during the trial, 
which lasted through the most of an afternoon, was 
crowded with an audience whose sympathies at the 
beginning were doubtless quite evenly divided, for 
Concord was at that time by no means an anti-slavery 
town. But when the complaint was read, solemnly 
charging the accused, who was a well-known, con 
sistent peace man and non-resistant, with " force and 
arms," and " rude and indecent behavior," the whole 
scene assumed a ludicrous aspect only. As the trial 
proceeded, however, it soon became manifest that 
malice and spite instigated the arrest, and that sum 
mary vengeance was to be inflicted, however unjust. 
Then when Foster so serenely corrected the court in 
its knowledge of law, telling just when the law was 
repealed, and where, and at whose desire, and exactly 
for what purpose the law then existing to protect 
public religious meetings was enacted, all of which he 
showed to the full satisfaction of the court, the burst 
of admiring applause was as general and hearty as it 
was long continued. Nor was there any attempt to 
suppress it. That was the verdict of humanity and 
justice, instinctively rendered, with voice and power 
irresistible. 

And when Judge Badger remitted the fine, which 
doubtless gave him great pleasure, though he trans 
cended his authority in doing so, there was another 
demonstration of delight, at which Sheriff Pettingill 
stepped forward and told him he would remit his fees 
with the fine, and take nothing for his services. To 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 143 

which the judge good naturedly responded that he 
would not be outdone in magnanimity, and would 
throw in his charges with the rest, and Mr. Foster 
might be discharged. The demonstration which suc 
ceeded needs no description, no report. 

But there was yet one more incident worthy of men 
tion. Judge Badger beholding the generous pile 
of silver which had been tossed on his table, asked, 
" What shall be done with all this money ?" " Give 
it to Foster, give it to Foster," was shouted out from 
all over the yet crowded room. Carried by acclama 
tion. It was done. Sheriff Pettingill then gave Fos 
ter his hand and said, " Now if you will step into my 
carriage I will be very happy to take you back to your 
lodgings." The offer was cordially and gratefully 
accepted by our weary and suffering friend, and thus 
ended the day with its strange and wondrous disclo 
sures and deeds. 

But perhaps narration should not close without a 
brief mention of two or three meetings held immedi 
ately, to consider the right and propriety of so lib 
eral construction of the rights of speech and worship, 
as were attempted by Mr. Foster and countenanced by 
Mr. Wood. Both being members of the state anti- 
slavery executive committee, that committee united 
with them in a formal call for such expression. And 
a committee was appointed to extend a special invita 
tion to the clergy of the town to attend and partici 
pate in the deliberations. But the clergy did not 
come, though the people did, in number and quality, 
too, much to their surprise. Mr. Foster vindicated 
himself in the course he pursued, by the example of 
Jesus Christ and his apostles, who were both dragged 
out of the synagogues by the church and clergy of 
their time. He showed that Christ enjoined on his 



144 ACTS CONTINUED, 

disciples to enter those places, and assured them that 
they would be scourged in the synagogues and dragged 
out, and that there would come a time when whoso 
ever should kill them, would think he did GoH service. 
He showed that the modern synagogue was even more 
intolerant and persecuting than the ancient Jewish. 
For there Christ and His apostles were even invited 
to speak, and never were disturbed for speaking, but 
only for what they spoke. But he said you drag me out 
of your Christian houses of worship only for attempting 
in a respectful and Christian manner, to be heard, not 
knowing what I would say. And you haul me before 
the magistrates and thrust me into prisons, and may 
yet kill me for only attempting to do what Christ and 
His apostles could and did do, unmolested, in all the 
places for worship of their time. It was only when 
they rebuked the hypocrisy and wickedness of the 
worshippers, that they were accused of disturbing the 
worship, and thrust out accordingly. Mr. Foster was 
just recovering from the severe injuries he had suffered 
at the hands of the South church, and perhaps never 
in his life spoke with more pathos and power. And 
the whole sympathy, if not sentiment, of his crowded 
audience was with him. The following resolution was 
on the table for discussion : 

Resolved, That the conduct of Stephen S. Foster 
and Amos Wood, in attempting to speak in behalf of 
our enslaved countrymen, in the South church on 
Sunday last, without leave of the minister, was a gross 
and flagrant outrage on the prerogatives of the clergy 
and the rights of the people, and should be most un 
equivocally condemned by every friend of good order 
and lover of liberty. 

The editor of the Heraldic, his report, said : " Only 
one voice answered in favor of the resolution, and that 
was an abortive, faint remanded yea, taken back in its 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 145 

very birth and sounding ludicrously with the thun 
dering no, which followed upon it. This must have 
been gratifying to our lame and suffering brother 
Foster, who was still undergoing great pain from the 
Christian handling of the church. Though it would 
not have shaken his faith, his own firm faith, had the 
response or the responses of all men, been the other 
way." 

Most of the leading abolitionists, including Mr. 
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and others in Massachu 
setts, doubted the wisdom of Mr. Foster s course in 
thus entering the Sunday congregations, where only 
the stated minister was expected to speak. But none 
who knew him intimately ever doubted his entire hon 
esty, indeed deep, solemn conviction of religious duty, 
in what he did, and in all that he did. The clergy 
were not behind the most depraved politicians in their 
determination to prevent the people, both in and out 
side the churches, from learning the truth on a problem 
which every abolitionist knew full well involved the 
national preservation or destruction, accordingly as it 
might be solved. The whole nation came to under 
stand it rightly at last ; but not till its eyesight had 
been washed and clarified in blood and tears. 

Mr. Foster, having adopted and proved the great 
utility of his new method, persisted in it until it was 
demonstrated that no other had ever subserved so 
good a purpose in arousing the whole nation to its 
duty and danger. Nothing like or unlike it, before or 
afterward, so stirred the whole people, until John 
Brown, with his twenty heroes, marched on Harper s 
Ferry and challenged the supporters of slavery to 
mortal combat. 

One reason that Foster often gave for his extreme 
action, as well as utterance, was, that ends sometimes 



146 ACTS CONTINUED, 

justified any means, He would say, "should I see 
your house on fire, and yourselves and families in 
danger of instant death in the flames, must I go and 
gently knock and wait till you come and unlock the 
door before notifying you of your peril ? Or, suppose 
I saw a church full of worshipers, with the roof all 
ablaze, would they be likely to drag me out should I 
rush in, unbidden, and shout, fire, fire, at the top of 
my voice?" And then he would say, "your whole 
country is in extremest peril. Your whole country is 
on fire. Every one of you should tremble, like 
Thomas Jefferson, remembering that God is just, and 
that His justice cannot sleep forever / " But as we now 
know, he was not believed ; though his words could 
not have been more true, had they been in very deed 
inspired by the Holy Ghost. 

Another argument he often urged with great per 
tinency and force, based on Christian scripture, too, 
and the practice of the Apostolic church : 

The great apostle, Paul, gave direction for conduct 
ing worship ; and at this time neither Paul nor Jesus 
had a more devout disciple than P oster ; nor the Con 
gregational church a more holy, conscientious and 
consistent member. The apostolic injunction simply 
was, that order be preserved, though every one, hav 
ing psalm, doctrine, interpretation or revelation, should 
be heard, each in turn. And then, to close, is 
added, " For ye may all prophesy one by one ; that all 
may learn and all be comforted." So, too, the exam 
ple and practice of Jesus Christ in the Jewish syna 
gogues, he would cite, as already shown, with much 
point and power. "True," he would say, "the people 
sometimes dragged him out as you do me. But it was 
not because he spoke ; it was for what he said." It 
was always his claim, as with both Christ and Paul, 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 147 

that, where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," 
and liberty of speech preeminently. 

When the people came to his meetings he never 
went to theirs. If the ministry kept away, and, as they 
generally did in those days, endeavored to keep the 
people away, he went to them as frequently as possi 
ble, at whatever cost. If imprisoned, as many times 
he was, he comforted himself that he not only " re 
membered them that were in bonds as bound with 
them," but that he actually was bound with them, and 
for their sake ; and verily, he had in it great reward. 

Whoever attended his meetings always had the 
largest liberty of speech, no matter how widely they 
differed from him. He asked only two things of an 
opponent : first, that good temper and spirit be kept, 
and second, that both parties keep strictly to the ques 
tion in hand. And sometimes he would hold his audi 
ences till midnight. 

Probably he encountered more mob opposition and 
violence than any other agent ever in the anti-slavery 
lecturing field. But almost always he would in some 
way obtain control of his opponents. There were ex 
ceptions. Once he had four meetings broken up in a 
single week. Though in Portland he suffered more 
by violent hands than in the South church at Concord, 
he was finally rescued and borne off in triumph by a 
band of noble and heroic women. Not, however, till 
he had suffered much bodily harm and the loss of his 
hat and other parts of his clothing. His traveling 
companion, Rev. John Murray Spear, was worse han 
dled than he. He was carried to his home at the hos 
pitable house of an anti-slavery family, and confined 
to his chamber for a number of weeks. There was 
suffering as well as heroism, in those days. 



148 ACTS CONTINUED, 

On the island of Nantucket, mob violence became 
such that a course of lectures Foster had com 
menced was cut short, and he was advised to leave 
the place by his friends, which he did, though before 
he left they desired him to write a letter at his earliest 
convenience, explanatory of his course, and in further 
illustration and proof of some of his positions. His 
answer to that reasonable request was, The Brother 
hood of Thieves : or, a True Picture of the American 
Church and Clergy ; in some respects the most remark 
able pamphlet of seventy-two closely-printed pages 
that the anti-slavery, or any other enterprise of reform 
has ever produced. It was published in 1843. It 
defied contradiction, both as to doctrine and declara 
tion. It passed through many editions, and went 
everywhere, east and west. And no matter who, or 
what power and influence abolished slavery, that work 
stands unrefuted and unrefutable ; and shall stand a 
monument to the moral and material heroism, ability, 
fidelity, and disinterestedness of its author, till time 
shall be no more. 

Distinguished abolitionists were often called men of 
one idea. Anti-slavery, in its immeasurable importance 
to all the interests of the country, material, mental, 
moral, and social, as well as religious, and political, 
was one idea far too great for ordinary minds, even 
without any other. But the sturdy symmetry and con 
sistency of Mr. Foster s character were as wonderful 
as were his vigor and power in any one direction. 
Earliest and bravest among the temperance reformers, 
when even that cause was almost as odious as anti- 
slavery became afterward ; a radical advocate of peace 
from the standpoint of the Sermon on the Mount, 
" Resist not Evil," seconded by the apostolic injunc 
tion, "Avenge not yourselves;" a champion in the 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 149 

woman suffrage enterprise from its inception ; an 
intelligent, earnest advocate of the rights of labor, 
and deeply interested in all the educational and 
moral, social and philanthropic associations for the 
advancement and improvement of the city and neigh 
borhood where he lived, he left behind him a record 
and a memory to grow brighter as the years sweep on; 
and his virtues becoming more and more luminous, 
shall be the better appreciated by multitudes who 
learn to profit by them. 

The beauty and harmony of his home were unsur 
passed. It was sacred to peace and love. Its unosten 
tatious but elegant and generous hospitality was the 
admiration of all who ever enjoyed it, by day or night. 
At almost seventy-two, he -passed away on the 8th 
of September, 1881, deeply lamented by many true 
and devoted friends, whose respect, admiration and 
affection he had won by a long life intensely devoted 
to the highest interests of man and womankind. 

But it is time for Mr. Foster and myself to return to 
the lecturing field. 

On a cold, cloudy afternoon in early winter, we left 
Concord for a short campaign, to commence in that 
part of Pembroke now known as Suncook. At that 
time it was a neighborhood of a dozen houses, mostly 
small, one store, a tavern of the class then known as 
" Meadow-hay taverns," and a brick school-house, 
elbowed a little to one side, and in which we were to 
hold our meeting. The road was rough and hard 
frozen, the day was cold, and my old open wagon 
unfurnished with buffalo robes. But we were young 
and tolerably vigorous, and cared little for such trifles, 
well warmed within with an earnest purpose, we could 
resist a good deal of wind and weather. We intended 
to reach an anti-slavery family on our way, in time for 



150 ACTS CONTINUED, 

tea and then go on with them to the meeting, a mile 
or two beyond. But when we arrived, tea was done 
and nothing was said about it, though a ride of some 
miles over a frozen, rough road, after a busy afternoon 
of preparation for the tour, seemed to argue strongly 
in favor of some refreshment, the prospective evening 
work emphasizing the necessity. So we fasted, and 
my patient pony, Tunbridge, communed meantime with 
the stone hitching-post at the gate. In due season, we 
started for the meeting, the family carriage leading 
the way. The people were gathering in goodly num 
bers and, tying Tunbridge to a tree and covering her 
well in her warm blanket, we entered the school-house 
and were soon at our wonted business. Our meetings 
were always open to, and often lively and late with 
free discussion. So it proved on that evening ; and 
when we did close, it was after ten o clock, and Foster 
and myself found ourselves left entirely alone in the 
house, and our horse and wagon outside, fastened to 
a tree. 

For special reasons it should be told here that when 
we entered the service of the State Society, we found 
it in debt to the editor and publishers of the Herald 
of Freedom, two thousand dollars ; nor did it own any 
printing-press, type, nor other office appointments. 
Our first business then seemed to be of a financial 
character, and Mr. Foster entered into it with his 
characteristic energy and fidelity. Most of the debt 
was due to the editor, contracted while patiently per 
forming work of unsurpassed ability, fidelity and 
devotion to the cause of liberty and humanity. Fos 
ter conceived the plan of funding the debt and divid 
ing it into shares of five dollars each, in all amounting 
to four hundred shares. Any individual might take- 
one share or more according to ability or inclination, 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 151 

and two persons could unite in taking one share. 
No payment was to be required till all the shares were 
secured, and to the lasting honor and credit of 
Mr. Rogers, it should be told that his own subscrip 
tion to the shares amounted to almost half the sum 
due him. To dispose of these shares was, of course, 
an important part of the business of our meetings 
where there was prospect of any success ; and our 
own compensation by a general collection, was never 
named till all the shares possible, were secured. And 
my own salary that year was exactly three hundred and 
four dollars and forty-eight cents, and that not all col 
lected in cash. And Foster certainly was not better 
paid. Whether at that Pembroke meeting we passed 
round the hat for ourselves 1 do not remember, but we 
did secure a few shares to the debt. At all events, 
when the meeting closed, we were left entirely alone. 
Our only recourse was the " Meadow-hay tavern," 
down in the village. No reproach to the then keeper 
of the house that such were sometimes so misnamed. 
I had met him before and knew him as a worthy man. 
We drove down, but found the house closed and the 
family all in bed. But the hostler, as was then universal 
custom, slept in a " bunk," as it was called, in the bar 
room. Not quite Goldsmith s : 

* * * >l bed by night and chest of drawers by day," 

but still subserving some such purpose. With not 
much difficulty we waked the hostler and he appeared 
and let us in. We told him we were sorry to disturb 
him but we were strangers and wished accommodation 
for ourselves and horse over night. He said he could 
feed our horse but that he could do nothing for us, 
beyond giving us a bed. So I went with him to the 
stable, saw our Tunbridge well fed and cared for, and 
the wagon placed under cover, and at eleven o clock, 



152 ACTS CONTINUED, 

we went supperless to our bed. That, we shared 
together, as the best our vice landlord could do for us 
at that hour of the night. 

Our next engagement was away across the country 
at Epsom, a long drive over rough and hilly roads, and 
we were to commence at one o clock. Before sunrise I 
was at the stable with the hostler attending to my mare. 
When Foster appeared, we went into a store opposite, 
and invested four cents in baker s biscuits, and four 
more in raisins ; and sitting down by the stove, we 
made our supper of the previous night and our break 
fast for that morning out of our purchase. And, whole 
truth to tell, Foster had no money and I had left most 
of my own small amount with my lonely little wife at 
home, so that we were only living as we could afford. 
The wife of an anti-slavery apostle then, enjoyed no 
enviable lot. 

And this may be the place to repeat of my own 
wife, that she supposed, and all her friends supposed, 
and I supposed and all my friends supposed that when 
she wedded, it was to a Congregational minister who 
had, even while a theological student remarkable 
experiences and successes in revivals of religion, and 
had besides four invitations from parishes in New 
Hampshire and Massachusetts to preach as a candidate 
for settlement. But while preaching a year as a hired 
supply, it became unmistakably certain that I could 
never do any good, honest, hearty anti-slavery work, 
such as the nation and the times demanded, and 
retain my standing in the Congregational pulpit. I 
found the neighboring ministers were prowling about 
among the church and people of rny congregation 
whispering surmises that my anti-slavery zeal and my 
intimacy with the "Infidel Garrison," and the already 
suspected Rogers were shaking my own orthodoxy too. 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 153 

And one day a member of our church was sent to 
remind me that the brethren were fearing I was getting 
too much in the way of preaching works instead of 
faith as the means of salvation. He brought me 
several texts, such as : " By grace are ye saved through 
faith ;" and others of like import, a whole foolscap 
page of them, the last being : " Not of works lest any 
man should boast." I pleaded guilty as to the charge 
of dwelling more on works, and gave as reason that I 
thought we failed less in faith than in works. But 
he did his errand and went his way. And I went 
mine, though it soon led a long way from that and 
every other pulpit. But more about this hereafter. 
Possibly a good deal more. Here it need but be 
said that it was only after serious, solemn considera 
tion that my resolution was formed. That however 
hardly made the disappointment less, to wife, or her 
friends, or mine, and, possibly, to myself least of all. 
But our breakfast over we returned to the tavern, 
on which the sun had not yet risen. I greeted the 
landlord and called for our bill. " Bill," he said good 
naturedly ; u bill, why, you don t owe anything, do 
you ?" He knew we could have had no supper, and 
the tavern breakfast bell had not yet rung. So I 
explained to him that our last evening meeting held 
late, and that we had to drive to Epsom for another 
there to-day at one o clock. So we had to catch a 
bite at the grocery across the street, and get on our 
way, but that we owed him for horse-keeping and our 
lodging. He poured a good natured glass of satire 
on our anti-slavery friends who would treat us so gen 
erously, and said we might pay him half a dollar if we 
had a mind to, for our horse, but for us he should 
charge nothing. So we were soon off for Epsom. 
The morning was fine, but the roads were hilly and 



154 ACTS CONTINUED, 

rough, so that when we arrived it was time to com 
mence, and a good audience had assembled, some 
from several miles away. The days were at the short 
est, and we were to hold an evening meeting, so that 
there was not much time to be lost. It was quite sun 
set when we closed. A Mr. Sanborn came and said 
we had better go home with him to supper, as prob 
ably no other family would invite us, and there was no 
tavern in the town. He told us he and his family were 
anti-slavery, and kept to the old organization, and 
would be extremely glad to entertain us, though he 
lived two miles away, and up the mountain besides. 
And he also said, and much to my joy, that we need 
not take our horse out in the evening, as we could be 
brought back in the family wagon, " Catamount 
hill," as it was and is called, proved to us the " Delect 
able mountains" of Bunyan s pilgrims. We had two 
interesting meetings, but New Organization had 
preceded us and captured the church and minister, so 
that those who aided us there, as elsewhere, with hos 
pitality, with sympathy, or otherwise, were outside of 
the sectarian folds. The experiences of Monday and 
Tuesday were a fair average of the experiences of the 
week, for we reached Concord on Monday, having 
been absent eight days ; and we had held one or two 
meetings every day. A snow storm came in the time, 
and we were compelled to have our Tunbridge winter 
shod in consequence. We had had some success in 
disposing of our shares to the debt, but beyond that 
our financial operations would not to-day be pro 
nounced a success. On reckoning up we had exactly 
thirty-seven cents more than when we set out, and 
that was in my hands. I did not smile if Foster did, 
when he said : " Well, Parker, I have no wife and 
you have ; so this time we will not divide." Nor prob- 



SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 155 

ably did my wife smile heartily when I reached home 
and disclosed to her the situation. We made our sup 
per of plain coarse bread and butter. But next morn 
ing, to my wonderment, we had just the same for 
breakfast. In a joking way I complained of her fare, 
and said something about a new boarding house un 
less she set a better table. The wit was a little too 
cool and deposited a dew drop or two in her eye and 
down her cheek, as she told me her money was out, 
and she did not like to break our resolution, never to 
be in debt. It would have been in order then for my 
eye to reflect back her s, but a rainbow in her sky 
seemed to me just then the needed return. It was 
true we determined in our little forty dollars a year 
rent never to be in debt ; but her health then was not 
as robust as mine. Such a breakfast was soon dis 
patched, and nearly as soon I was on the street to 
break our good resolution, if there was strength in my 
credit to do it. Mr. Franklin Evans then (as I be 
lieve ever since) kept an excellent general country 
store, and readily consented to trust me for whatever 
was needed. When I asked for my first and costliest 
article, which was fourteen pounds of good flour, he 
advised my taking a half barrel, as more economical. 
But I declined his generous proposal, and kept my bill 
within three dollars, though some nice butter and sugar 
were in my purchase. Before bed-time three dollars 
came from some unexpected source, with which the 
debt was paid as promised, and wife and I slept that 
night as before from our marriage, "owing no man 
anything, but to love one another." And it is only 
truth and justice to say that from that night, the 
handful of meal and cruse of oil never wholly failed 
our humble home. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES CONTINUED LETTER OF CON 
CORD WOMEN CLERICAL USURPATION MORE REVE 
LATIONS OF NEW ORGANIZATION-RIOTOUS PROCEED 
INGS AT DOVER BY THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD OF 
FREEDOM. 

As we are now back in Concord, we will once more 
recur briefly to the South church. Readers doubtless 
have seen, if not deplored, some repetition in previous 
chapters only necessary till they become acquainted 
with the persons and the principles mostly presented in 
these pages for their consideration. 

It is now proposed to present a new phase of anti- 
slavery action and effort, in which all could bear ac 
tive part who chose. Concord South Congregational 
church had several excellent men and women, who 
had made themselves quite offensive to the minister 
and some prominent members by their fidelity to the 
anti-slavery cause. Some had even withdrawn, both 
from communion supper service and Sunday worship. 
Some were women who were denied all speech or 
prayer, in private as well as public assemblies. They 
addressed a formal communication to the church, ex 
pressive of their views and determinations, and then 
withdrew wholly from such fellowship. 

And in presenting that letter here it should be said 
that the same course became common, if not general, 
among genuine abolitionists all over the country, until 
the sect known as Come-outers grew to be numerous, 
and odious, too, to all who lacked courage or honesty 
to imitate that entirely scriptural course. Great 
numbers of these church withdrawal letters are before 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 157 

me in the bound volumes of anti-slavery papers, some 
of them of diamond points ; those of Mr. and Mrs. 
Rogers among them. New organized and third polit 
ical party abolitionists displayed most fiery zeal at the 
ballot box once or twice a year ; would vote for no 
whig nor democrat to fill the meanest office. At the 
baptismal and sacramental altar whig and democrat 
shrunk into " gnats," and were swallowed in the com 
munion wine, who, on Monday at the polls, swelled 
into larger " camels" than ever were exhibited at Bar- 
num s menagerie. Not so the women, nor some 
of the husbands of the women who addressed the sub 
joined 

Letter to the South Congregational church in Concord, 
under the pastoral care of Daniel J. Noyes : 
DEAR BRETHREN AND SISTERS : We, the under 
signed, members of the South Congregational church 
in this town, feel bound in duty to God and man to ad 
dress to you the following communication : 

Three millions of our fellow beings are living in 
our midst under the following circumstances : The 
family institution is abolished among them husbands 
and wives, parents and children, are torn asunder to 
gratify the cupidity of their oppressors ; they are pun 
ished as felons for any attempt to learn to read the 
Holy Gospel ; parents are liable to be scourged and 
punished with death for teaching their children the 
way of life and salvation by Jesus Christ. Eight 
thousand children are annually stolen, labeled as prop 
erty and converted into merchandize. One sixth of 
the population of this nation are driven to incessant 
and unrequited toil from the dawn of life to its close. 
Three millions of God s immortal children, our breth 
ren and sisters, are held and used among us as chat 
tels personal, and bought and sold as brute beasts. 
Parents not unfrequently sell their own children. 
Thus a cloud of frightful, perpetual night is drawn 
over millions of souls in this land of Bibles and pro 
fessed Christian ministers and churches. 



158 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

The American church and clergy constitute a main 
pillar of support to this system of unutterable crimes 
and woes. Thousands and tens of thousands are re 
ceived as Christians and Christian ministers who are 
identified with this system as slave-holders and apolo 
gists for slavery. These millions of imbruted slaves, 
our brethren and sisters, are fallen among thieves and 
robbers by your church door. The church has re 
fused to pour in the oil and the wine. Both pastor 
and church have acted the part of priest and Levite to 
these suffering beings. By your silence as a church 
you are lending the most efficient support to this sys 
tem. You fellowship man-stealers as Christians and 
Christian ministers. 

We owe it as a duty to Him who hath loved us and 
died for us, and to our suffering brethren and sisters 
in bonds, to refuse all participation in slavery. We 
feel that we do participate in that sin while we recog 
nize any body of men and women as a Christian church 
that refuses to bear an open, clear and solemn testi 
mony against it. 

With such views and feelings we can no longer re 
cognize you as a Christian church while as a body you 
continue in your present position of silence to the 
wrongs of the slave. * * * 

* * * And we furthermore feel bound to protest 
against the spirit of a church which could prompt to 
the exclusion of two of its most worthy members, who, 
that they might keep a conscience void of offense to 
wards God and towards man, have absented them 
selves for a season from your meetings ; while others 
far behind them in spiritual attainments, and over 
whom you have solemnly promised to watch, are guilty 
of the same offense, and are suffered to remain with 
out advice, warning or expostulation. 

May we all be directed by that wisdom which cometh 
from above, and at last be reunited in the church tri 
umphant. LOUISA W. WOOD, 

ESTHER W. CURRIER, 
MARY ANN FRENCH, 
SARAH H. PILLSBURY. 

CONCORD, N. H., January 16, 1841. 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 159 

The last signer of this letter supposed, when she 
married, one year before, that she was the wife of a 
reputable and very promising young Congregational 
minister, and a large and highly conservative circle of 
family connections, one or two of them members 
of this same South church, and all of them of the 
best society in Concord, presumed the same. It can 
readily be supposed that at that time it required no 
little heroism in a young woman of two or three and 
twenty, thus to come out from all church, and family, 
and society relations, and continue her future destiny 
with an anti-slavery lecturer who had also made 
himself doubly odious by renouncing church, pulpit, 
and society and party affiliations and united himself 
with Garrison, Rogers and the school of "Come-outers," 
already more odious, if possible, than any other infidel 
ity or heresy of those days. It may be added that 
most of the relatives of that then young wife, are now 
no more of earth, but such as do remain, have come, 
and not recently neither, to hold her in high and well 
deserved esteem. The other signers of the letter, who 
survive, are, and ever have been, among the truest and 
noblest women in the land. And all of them lived to 
prove to the world that in their whole anti-slavery 
course, they were guided by the highest, divinest dic 
tates of conscience and humanity. 

The next movement of Mr. Foster and myself was 
into the counties of Rockingham and Strafford. 
Wherever we- went our great difficulty was to reach 
the ear of the people. The clergy, especially the new 
organization clergy, seemed most incorrigible, most 
unscrupulous of all. They appeared, as already inti 
mated, to have conspired together against us. The 
following extract from one annual report of the 
Vermont Domestic Missionary society, signed by 



l6o ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

Rev. Samuel Delano, corresponding secretary, "in 
behalf of the directors," gives the sentiment of that 
numerous and powerful body, embracing the strength 
of the whole Congregational and Presbyterian church 
of that state : 

The ministers are the heads of the churches the 
leaders in the sacramental host of God s elect. No 
measure can be carried without them, much less in 
opposition to them. And scarcely any proper meas 
ure can fail to succeed, when the ministry put forth 
their power. In view of this fact, it is asked, with the 
utmost earnestness, ought they not, and in view of 
their obligations and of the glorious results sought, 
will they not come up to this work, and lead on the 
churches ? The churches can be reached in no other 
way. No man can approach a church when the pas 
tor interposes. He cannot, and he may not if he can. 
To give Vermont to Christ this is the peculiar work 
of the church of Vermont. It is the field given to 
these ministers and churches to cultivate and keep. 

Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher, at the seventeenth annual 
meeting of the American Home Missionary Society, 
in a resolution, presented the necessity "of a stated 
evangelical ministry, as eminently the power of God 
for the conversion of the world." In his address, he 
spoke mainly in behalf of the " great west." He 
supported his resolution with characteristic force as 
against a transient ministry, pointing, perhaps, to the 
Methodist policy of rotation or change. Summing 
up, he said : 

A stated ministry unites society by strong bonds. A 
good pastor is a sort of central power in society. He 
holds the affections of those with whom he dwells, 
and becomes a patriarch among them * * * * 
Instances of the effects thus produced might easily 
be mentioned. I could tell you of a minister who 
having preached in a place fifty years became the 
patriarch of the village. And once when a lecturer 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. l6l 

came there whom he thought unsafe, he put on his 
gown and wig and cocked hat, and walked up one 
side of the street and told his people they had better 
not go, and then walked in the same way down the 
other side, and every soul staid at home ! All that is 
healthful in society, finds support in the stated 
ministry. 

We found clerical authority like that in full force in 
many a country town, so that much of our work was 
actual invasion. " The kingdom of heaven suffering 
violence and the violent taking it by force." In 
the town of Northwood, we found the minister, 
was in every important sense the " village patriarch " 
after the very heart of Dr. Beecher. He would not 
give our notice, and no public notice had been given 
of our meetings, which we intended should continue 
two evenings. And when Foster called on him and 
solicited the use of his vestry and his own attendance 
and cooperation, he quite spiritedly refused having 
anything to do with him. The vestry, however, was 
not too holy to be used for whig and democratic 
caucus and convention, not always conducted in very 
orderly or decent manner. A mile away from the 
church we had the use of a school-house two evenings, 
as at first intended. We spent the cold day in going 
from house to house, endeavoring to waken an interest 
in our movement. At the first meeting but few came, 
and they men and boys only. One glimmering tallow- 
dip and a small glass lantern made almost a vain 
attempt to show us to each other. After prayer, with 
which we then opened our meetings, we introduced a 
resolution, declaring all not actively engaged in the 
anti-slavery enterprise, to be by position if not in 
spirit, slaveholders. Such a charge brought several 
of the staunchest advocates of slavery and ablest men 
of the town to their feet. A lawyer and an old 



/l62 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

academy preceptor defended slavery from the Bible. 
And both pleaded earnestly the cause of the church 
and pulpit against our charges as deduced from the 
resolution presented. The ex-preceptor said he had 
lived at the South among slaveholders and that our 
" Southern brethren" emphasizing the words, were 
"as high minded, hospitable and pious a people as 
could be found on this globe." And moreover, that 
no happier class of persons could be found anywhere 
than the slaves. Indeed, he earnestly declared their 
very labor was a source of happiness, as he knew from 
his own experience, never having been so happy in his 
life as when at work on his father s farm. 

Toward the close, the debate ran high, and a member 
of the Congregational church, not relishing a discus 
sion when the truth was so manifestly against him and 
his side, tried hard to adjourn us, complacently assur 
ing Foster and myself that " our further labors in 
the town could be dispensed with." But hoping to 
get access to a better class of people, we succeeded in 
an adjournment to next evening, much to our surprise 
as well as gratification. 

The next evening brought a full house, but the 
enemy overpowered us, and organized and officered 
to suit themselves. Some would have gladly heard us 
had they been permitted. We did get an opportunity 
in the course of the evening to present one more res 
olution, which we had prepared before hand. It was 
our custom when we saw that a mob was inevitable, to 
try to turn it to good account, by making what we did 
say, as effective and as likely to be remembered as pos 
sible. So my second resolution read in substance that 
no person should be regarded as a Christian or Chris 
tian minister, who was not an earnest, active, out 
spoken abolitionist. The uproar was renewed at once 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 163 

with augmented violence, the moment the resolu 
tion was heard. After a time Foster obtained the 
floor for a few moments, and reasoned of righteous 
ness, temperance and judgment already come, as few 
young men of that or any day since ever did. Even 
our stoutest opponents stood aghast, if, like the Roman 
Felix, they did not tremble. But our meetings showed 
no immediate good results. One old gentleman 
kindly entertained us, and with his family sympathized 
deeply with us in our seeming disappointment. But 
we devoutly thanked him and the family, and assured 
them on parting that we were already accustomed to 
such repulsions, and were prepared for whatever 
awaited us. 

Deerfield, the next day, proved equally inhospitable 
to the truths we carried there. The Calvinistic Bap 
tist minister was personally very friendly to us, and 
an abolitionist, too, but had not heard of our coming, 
and no notice had been given of our intended meet 
ings ; nor was it convenient for us then to attempt 
any meetings. We called on the Free Will Baptist 
minister, and found him a hard-headed, harder-hearted 
democrat, of the most pronounced pro-slavery type. 
Doubtless he has long since passed away ; but to his 
dying day, I dare affirm he remembered the remon 
strances and rebukes he, on that occasion, received 
from the inspired voice of Stephen Foster. 

At Nottingham I was invited by the Congregational 
minister, Mr. Le Bosquet, to preach for him on Sun 
day, during the day. I had not then, in form, laid 
down my ministerial prerogative, and accepted when 
convenient every such proposal. Mr. Le Bosquet was 
a new organization abolitionist, and so could not 
wholly agree with me then, though friendly towards 
me, and even magnanimous. But he finally lapsed 



164 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

entirely into the political vortex, and never, so far as 
I knew, abandoned the Congregational pulpit or de 
nomination, with all its incorrigible pro-slavery char 
acter. 

Our reception at Lee, home of the Quaker family 
of the Cartlands, was not unlike that at Northwood in 
so far as the character of audiences was considered, 
though they were numerically larger and more voci 
ferous. Northwood had no Cartland family, as had 
Lee, and that made a difference in our favor, morall}^ 
of thousands, though our resolutions were voted down 
of course, by stamping majorities. A venerable Bap- 
list minister attended on Sunday evening ; even post- 
. poned his own regular meeting for it. He not only 
opened our exercises with prayer, but bore friendly 
testimony to our general course. So on the whole our 
few friends in Lee were much pleased with our visit 
and labors there. 

Exeter, to which we went next, was one of the old, 
aristocratic, wealthy, conservative towns, and a county 
seat besides, so that really we had little to hope at its 
hand or heart. We had not underestimated the moral 
and spiritual quality of the people. In the larger, 
most popular, denominations clerical authority was 
more malignant, more imperious than we had any 
where found it before. The Christian minister was ill, 
and we did not call on him, but were assured that he 
was decidedly friendly to us and our cause. The Meth 
odist clergyman showed himself indeed on our side, 
for he not only permitted us to occupy his meeting 
house, but suspended some special protracted relig 
ious services then holding, that we might have not 
only his house, but congregation as well. And we 
found two or three colored families in the town 
who manifested deep and intelligent interest in our 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 165 

work, so that on the whole, we found a goodly 
number of interested sympathizers in our mission, 
if not among the opulent and popular, certainly 
of that not less worthy, nor by any means less import 
ant class, who, eighteen hundred years before, heard 
" gladly " a far greater teacher and lecturer. 

One morning call on a Congregational minister of 
the place was worthy of remembrance and recall, and 
that will be all that need be said of our visit to Exe 
ter. We certainly entered his study in a becoming 
manner and proper and kindly spirit. We gave our 
names and the object of our coming in tone and tem 
per of which none could complain. But in a bluster 
ing, threatening mood and language absolutely 
abusive, he positively forbade our speaking on our 
subject in his presence. Mr. Foster told him that we 
sometimes had to speak to men whether they would 
hear or forbear. He snatched up his pen with the ut 
most violence and commanded us to leave him to his 
work. His large size and great agitation, his lip 
actually quivering with rage, and the haughty manner 
in which he stormed at us, strongly reminded us of 
the caution of Him who spake as never man spake : 
" Beware of Men !" As we turned to go we told him 
we must express our disapprobation of his course, and 
in obedience to divine command, shake off the dust of 
our feet as our testimony against him. His treatment 
of us compelled the belief of many things told us 
against him as to his manner of life. At that very 
time men were going home drunk and abusing their 
families ; one man actually murdered his wife in his 
drunken rage, and yet that same minister was baptiz 
ing the rum trade and trader, and receiving them to 
full church communion and fellowship. It need not 
be told that several of his church members had already 



l66 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

withdrawn from his ministrations. And if other facts 
concerning him, which were given us from eye and 
ear witnesses, should be here produced, they would 
almost exceed belief. But his demeanor towards us 
prepared us to accept whatever of immorality might 
be spoken against him. Afterwards we said and wrote 
truly that we had pleaded the cause of the slave in 
bar-rooms and in grog-shops, in the field, the forge, 
the factory and the highways, if not in the hedges, 
but it was for a New England minister, pastor of one 
of the largest Congregational churches in his state, to 
positively and peremptorily forbid us to open our 
mouths for the dumb in his reverend presence. 

Should it be objected that he was only one, and 
represented only himself, it could be answered that he 
was one of a powerful denomination and influential, 
too far above the average membership in every coun 
cil ; and a denomination, too, that made the heresy of 
rejecting infant baptism at that day an offense of such 
importance as to refuse ordination for the ministry at 
home and the missionary abroad. 

Readers by this time understand that every individual 
clergyman or separate church described in these 
records is only as representative of large numbers, 
and by no means as exceptions to general rules. One 
incident, however, is worthy of mention for its origin 
ality. Nor do I remember more than one or two like 
it in all my lecturing mission of almost forty years, 
and it was in the afternoon of the day we left Exeter. 

We drove into Stratham, where we had sent on an 
appointment for afternoon and evening. Inquiring 
the way as we rode along, we learned that our meeting 
would be at two o clock, in a meeting-house, to which 
we were easily directed, and which we soon reached. 
It was a small, pretty little steepled building, situated 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 167 

almost alone, not a house very near it, and only a few 
in sight of it. Driving our horse under a friendly shed 
in the rear, we entered and found everything comfort 
able and desirable as possible, but not a human soul 
nor body present beside ourselves, The hour had ar 
rived, and so had the speakers, but where was the 
audience ? We sat an hour or more, till the sun was 
getting low, and then drove on to a little village pros 
pecting ; but soon found to no purpose. It was made 
very certain that the house would not be lighted nor 
warmed for evening, so we drove down to Greenland, 
adjoining, which we found, spite of its name, a warmer 
clime. 

But Foster could not forget Stratham. We had 
met mob after mob ; minister after minister, sometimes 
the direct instigator of the mob ; and almost always 
we had achieved some sort of honorable success ; if 
not triumph. True, it was " hard to kick against 
pricks ;" but to kick against nothing, could not be 
borne. However, it was early spring before he found 
it convenient to visit Stratham again. Then he went 
alone. He had his meeting appointed in a school 
house, on a bright April moonlight evening. When he 
entered the house, a dozen or two had gathered. He 
waited a reasonable time, hoping to see more. But no 
more came. So he commenced his lecture. I do not 
know what he said or did not say. Probably it would 
have made no difference. For just as he grew a little 
animated and earnest in gesture as well as utterance, 
his audience rose, probably at a preconcerted signal, 
and deliberately and respectfully walked out of the 
house, leaving him entirely alone ! So there he stood, 
a sentence half uttered, a gesture struck down in its 
formation. Perhaps never before nor afterwards, was 
he more completely subdued. 



l68 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

At North Hampton, we had a little clerical exper 
ience not unworthy of mention. No meeting had 
been appointed so we assumed all responsibility, not 
" mobbing," as Mr. Emerson charged, but taking 
possession of the town. We fortunately found one 
good man who went with us to call on the minister to 
ask for his vestry and his cooperation for an anti- 
slavery meeting. The minister was a mile away visit 
ing a winter school. Foster sat in the sleigh while our 
friend with me knocked at the school-house door. The 
minister appeared in the entry as we desired, but no 
sooner were my name and business announced than 
the clerical wrath kindled. He did not, like his stalwart 
Exeter brother, forbid my speaking in his presence, but 
in similar spirit declared he would hold no communi 
cation. No, said he, " I have heard of you and 
Stephen Foster, and I want nothing to do with you. 
You abuse the ministers in your Herald of Freedom ; 
men that I respect. I know what it contains. I read it." 

So do most of the ministers, might have been 
responded to him, but I did not interrupt him. When 
I did speak I said, you treat us just as do most of the 
orthodox ministers ; and you need not wonder that we 
expose them in the name of humanity and for the 
sake of the down-trodden slave. " O, I see," he said, 
"what you are after. You want to draw me into argu 
ment and then hold me up in your Herald, as you 
have so many other ministers ; but I shall not put 
myself in your power." I then made some little 
remark, which stirred his indignation, and he broke 
forth again and charged me and my companion very 
vehemently with attacking holy institutions, rending 
churches, abusing ministers, disturbing the public 
peace and seeking to undermine all the institutions of 
society. He forgot what he said a moment before 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 169 

about putting himself in my power and stormed along 
till all he said would have made a very much longer 
account than is here given. I did send what made 
nearly two columns in the Herald, and mailed copies 
of it to most, of the leading men of the town, there 
being then no subscribers, or not more than one 
there. 

It is highly probable that Mr. Foster and myself in the 
lecture field, with Mr. Rogers at the helm of the Herald 
of Freedom, were justly chargeable with not a little dis 
turbance of the public peace. I wrote a sermon at 
the time from the text, "Think not that I am come to 
send peace on earth : I came not to send peace but a 
sword." It was strictly orthodox in doctrine, so I 
sometimes preached it in orthodox pulpits ; did so in 
Concord South church, which was the beginning of 
its anti-slavery sorrows, for Foster did not go there 
till more than a year afterwards. Rogers was present, 
and here are a few things he said of it in the next 
Herald. I had not then wholly abandoned preaching, 
nor been disowned by the Suffolk association of minis 
ters from whom I received regular license in Boston 
to preach the Congregational gospel. But I was soon 
called to account after my presumption in preaching 
such a sermon to such a body as Foster proved the 
South church to be in its coming judgment day, some 
year or two afterwards. 

After a few words on ministerial influence and what 
constitutes it, and who it was who " made himself of 
no reputation," and had "no weight of influence," 
Rogers proceeded to say : 

Parker Pillsbury is doubtless one of the three 
intended by the Christian Panoply. He has no influ 
ence. But the Panoply and kindred ministers abound 
with it. Those who heard brother Pillsbury on Sunday 



1 70 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

evening before last, may understand what it is that 
gives "influence and weight" to a New Hampshire 
minister. The full auditory that heard him that even 
ing, with the attention of life and death, and the 
hushed stillness of the churchyard can tell how 
necessary "influence and weight" are to constitute a 
preacher of the gospel. 

The text was the declaration of Christ, that he came 
not to send peace, but a sword, on the earth. Then he 
spoke of the human character ; the agitating, disturb 
ing influence of truth on that character he glanced 
.at the turmoil and confusion into which truth had ever 
wrought it, and the bitter hostility the church and 
ministry had manifested towards the spirit of reforma 
tion, from the days of Him who came to bear witness 
unto the truth down through the times of Luther to 
our own. He spoke of the necessity, safety and whole- 
someness of moral agitation in society and in the church, 
and the deadly danger of moral stagnation. He illus 
trated the one by the tossed ocean, ever pure and whole 
some from its ceaseless inequietude, and the other by 
the stagnant, lifeless pool, become putrid by its own 
quiescence, breeding only croaking frogs and noisesome, 
hurtful reptiles. He declared the duty of the watch 
man on the walls of Zion was to be ever in the van of 
moral agitation. When the tempest was up he should 
be prompt to mount the foremost billow and direct the 
storm. And in time of dead calm, the watchman of 
all men, should wake the moral hurricane. 

We can merely touch on this sermon. The breath 
less auditory best attested its power and its palpable 
truth. But the Christian Panoply says brother Pills- 
bury has no weight of influence. Of the manner of 
the speaker, we can only say he seemed to us to be 
mightily in earnest ; to believe solemnly what he was 
preaching and not at all like -one reciting a task. 

This testimony from Mr. Rogers is only produced 
here to show what really was the disturbing element 
among the clergy, and gave such point and significance 
to the anti-slavery movement, especially to the labors 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. iyi 

of the field lecturers ; and at that time in New Hamp 
shire and Massachusetts much more than anywhere 
else. The cause was now eleven years old, but never 
before had the sin of slavery been so directly laid at 
the door of the church. But the time had come when 
" judgment must begin at the house of God." Even 
Judge Birney s "American Churches the Bulwarks of 
American Slavery " had by no means produced the 
desired effect. For some reason, it was first published 
in England, and seems not to have had much circula 
tion in the United States till its second edition revised 
by the author, in 1842, and published in Garrison s 
native town, Newburyport, Massachusetts. 

While slavery was only an evil, the church and even 
the clergy could be, and many of them were opposed 
to it. Professor Stuart, of Andover Theological Sem 
inary, denied even that doctrine, and wrote and pub 
lished a tract entitled, "Slavery not a malum in se," 
which had many readers and believers, and produced 
a marked effect, particularly among the ministry. But 
Garrison was already in the field, and slavery was 
branded as a sin against God and a crime against man, 
always and everywhere ; and the only remedy for it 
was immediate and unconditional emancipation of 
every slave. This demand had many supporters in 
the church and pulpit, till the application was made 
directly and forcibly to them, with the more startling 
declaration that no slave-holder could be a Christian. 
And when at last the uncompromising abolitionists 
proclaimed their determination to have " no union nor 
fellowship with slaveholders, in state nor church," and 
pronouncing the northern apologist and abettor, no 
less wicked than the slave-holder, because sinning 
against more light, and with less motive and tempta 
tion, then the alarm pealed out so as to reach the 



172 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

deafest ear, the deadest church. Almost every Con 
gregational and Presbyterian minister in the north 
heard it and stood aghast ! Even President Lord, of 
Dartmouth college, fled in dismay ; though he, like 
Rev. Mr. Curtis had preached and written plainly 
against slavery as sin, not the "malum in se," of pro 
fessor Stuart. The most anti-slavery ministers made 
haste to find, or base a remedy in new organization. 
So especially was it here in New Hampshire, as has 
been sufficiently shown. Only three Congregational 
ministers, I think, in the state remained to the old 
society, and one of them was unordained, and another, 
Rev. Benjamin Sargent, was Presbyterian, settled in 
that part of Chester now known as Auburn. He and 
Thomas P. Beach, who has already appeared in these 
pages, and will again, next year (1842) remained true 
to their convictions, though at cost of much personal 
bitterness and even cruel persecution from their clerical 
brethren and other opponents of the anti-slavery cause. 
The third was he of "no weight of influence" in 
Christian Panoply esteem ; and more especially after 
he had preached his sermon on moral and religious 
agitation, from the text, " I am not come to send 
peace, but a sword." 

I pass over several meetings of much interest, 
attended by Mr. Foster and myself, one at Great Falls, 
which continued two or three days and closed on Sun 
day afternoon in time for us to ride to Dover for a 
meeting there in the evening. 

Mr. Rogers had come down in the last of the week 
and was with us a part of the time at Great Falls. But 
the Dover meeting on Sunday evening proved of 
greater interest and more importance than had been 
anticipated. And so marked were some of its pecul 
iarities and so prominent was the part borne in it by 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 173 

Mr. Rogers, that readers will surely be grateful to me 
for permitting them to read his description of it, in his 
next week s Herald. The heading to his editorial 
read thus : 

VIOLENT BREAKING UP OF A MEETING AT DOVER 
REV. MR. YOUNG, FRANCIS COGSWELL, ESQ., AND 
COL. ANDREW PIERCE. 

We mention the names cf these three individuals 
here in the same connection with the words above in 
which they appeared with the disturbance and breaking 
up of an anti-slavery meeting in the place last Sunday 
night. We give the public the facts. 

Sunday evening, accompanied by our state agents 
Pillsbury and Foster, on our way home from the 
Somersworth convention, we met a very large and most 
respectable assemblage of the people of Dover in the 
Orthodox Congregational meeting-house. It was, so 
far as we could judge, as intelligent and enlightened 
an auditory as that large town could furnish. The exer 
cises began by reading a hymn by Rev. Mr. Young, 
minister of that house, singing by the choir, prayer by 
Rev. Mr. Haydon, Baptist clergyman, then a hymn 
read by Mr. Young and singing again ; when, after 
explaining to the audience the mistaken notice that 
had been given which might have led to an expecta 
tion of a prepared address from us, we offered for the 
consideration of the meeting, a resolution of the fol 
lowing purport : 

That at this stage of the anti-slavery enterprise, no 
intelligent person, not openly and faithfully engaged 
in it, ought to be recognized as a Christian, or as 
possessed of common humanity. After reading the 
resolution through distinctly twice to the meeting, we 
proceeded to enforce it in the plainest, most faithful 
manner we were able to do without any preparation 
except the brief prayer we offered to God in secret 
that he would enable us to say something to reach the 
heart and conscience of the influential and high minded 
auditory before us. Owing to severe exhaustion and 
indisposition, we had intended to say but few words 
-at the meeting, and to leave the main service in the 



1/4 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

hands of our brethren, the agents ; one of whom took, 
the resolution to the meeting with that understanding. 
But just before the close of the second singing he 
handed it to us with the wish expressed that we should 
lead in the discussion, to which we assented, trusting 
in God to give us somewhat to say on so embarrassing 
an occasion. We proceeded to remind our audience 
of the fact of our country s enslavement of a sixth 
portion of the people, of the character and objects 
of the anti-slavery enterprise, of its advancement, 
from the beginning and its present stage, and of the 
unchristian and inhuman position of all in the country 
who refused to enlist openly and faithfully in it. We 
talked some forty minutes as near as we could judge, 
and as plainly and faithfully as we were able. The 
audience gave us the stillest and most active attention.. 
Considering the pointed character of the remarks we 
were obliged to make and the auditory we were 
addressing, proud in talent, influence, wealth and 
reputation and all that finds human self-respect, we 
were deeply grateful and somewhat surprised that, 
they gave us such patient and forbearing audience. 
May God bless it to the anti-slavery repentance of 
them all. 

We were followed by our brother Foster in a strain 
of the pertinent, eloquent and solemn remark which 
distinguishes him as an anti-slavery speaker. In the 
course of his exposition of the character of the com 
munity in relation to slavery, he remarked on the sup 
port given the slave system by their honoring it in the 
persons of distinguished slave-holders for whom they 
had recently voted for high offices in the gift of the 
people, and by their fellowshiping slave-holders and 
their apologists as Christians and ministers of the 
gospel. The auditory awarded him throughout the 
most pointed attention. 

When Foster closed, we addressed them to show 
that their position while out of the anti-slavery enter 
prise, was the one, and the very one, and the only one 
which could aid the south in their slave-holding, and 
which the south desired them, or would consent that 
they should take. We spoke of their estimation of the 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 175 

free colored man, and of the estimation in which he 
was held abroad by subjects of monarchy, by the first 
talent and character in Great Britain and of the 
reception we met with there as abolitionists on our 
recent visit abroad, compared with the estimation we 
were held in here at home. The same attention was 
vouchsafed us while we spoke, as before. 

At our closing, brother Foster arose and requested 
the enlightened audience, if any among them denied 
or doubted the soundness of our positions or the truth 
of our facts, or of the resolution before us, they would 
give the meeting the benefit of their opinions, and set 
us right. No one rose nor moved from his seat. A 
considerable time elapsed in perfect silence. Brother 
Pillsbury privately asked us if it were advisable to 
offer anything farther. We advised him to consult his 
feelings and follow his duty. 

He arose, and after alluding to the lateness of the 
time and the probability of his wearying the audience, 
went on to speak of the effect produced by him on the 
last fourth of July upon an auditory in that house by 
an anti-slavery address, when nearly all the people, 
ministers and all left him at the sound of martial music 
which struck their ear as it was heralding in the 
streets a liberty procession in honor of the declaration 
of man s inalienable birthright to freedom. He then 
referred to the resolution, and was proceeding to 
illustrate and enforce with striking power the implied 
charge of the unchristian and inhuman character of 
the pro-slavery community, by its fellowshiping and 
honoring slave-holding in the professor and in the 
minister of the gospel, when he gave the name of the 
Reverend Edwin Holt, of Portsmouth, as a highly 
honored and ardently fellowshiped instance of the 
slave-holding minister who had, he averred bought a 
woman, held her as a slave and sold her again and 
deeded her away body and soul to the slave purchaser,, 
and had never repented of it nor confessed it, and 
notwithstanding was held in high estimation by the 
brotherhood of the ministry. He spoke of the impos 
sibility of putting down slavery while slave-holding 
was so esteemed declared Mr. Holt s offence worse 



176 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

than killing the body that slavery was rightly esti 
mated by Patrick Henry, when he exclaimed, " give me 
liberty or give me death !" He was proceeding to 
compare Mr. Holt as a murderer with Ferguson, the 
Exeter murderer, and to give his offence the preemi 
nence, when the Rev. Mr. Young, rudely and with 
great excitement and violence of manner, broke in 
upon him : "Mr. Pillsbury, Mr. Pillsbury, you must 
stop ! I must protest solemnly against such slanderous 
accusations being thrown out in this house. I cannot 
consent to have my brethren in the ministry thus 
slandered in my presence when they have not been 
impeached by their brethren," and more in like strain 
and temper. 

Brother Pillsbury calmly asked him : But is not 
what I say true ? If I have uttered anything slander 
ous before this audience I wish to be convinced of it 
that I may make becoming acknowledgements. Mr. 
Young replied, this is not the place to settle that his 
brethren in the ministry were the tribunal to settle 
that, and he should not discuss it. Brother Pillsbury 
replied that any one had a right to state the truth, and 
particularly such truth as that. Whereupon Francis 
Cogswell, esq., rose and in vehement voice and man 
ner said, that as a member of that church, he would 
not sit there and see that sacred place desecrated by 
the slanders that had been thrown out by the speakers 
that evening, and that the meeting ought to break up, 
etc., whereupon a voice of similar earnestness came 
down upon us from the gallery in the same strain, 
accusing the speakers of slander, and of profaning 
that holy place, (pointing to the foot of the pulpit 
where we were standing) with delivering political 
addresses on that holy day and when he had spoken 
as long as he wished, proposed that the meeting now 
close. The speaker, we were sorry to see, was Colonel 
Andrew Pierce. We immediately demanded of him 
to state before that audience, a single slanderous word 
we had uttered that evening ; stated that we submitted 
ourselves to the auditory, and if we had said a single 
untrue thing, or anything not demanded of us as an 
advocate of the slave in their presence, we would 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 177 

retract it and make them acknowledgement to their 
entire content. Col. Pierce then confined his accusa 
tion to the other speakers, whom he said he did not 
know ; and on our asking what they had either of them 
said that was slanderous, he replied that they had said 
that three-fourths of the professors of the religion in 
the country were on the road to hell alluding to 
brother Pillsbury s remark, that if the resolution were 
true, three-fourths of the professed Christianity of the 
country were in the broad road to death, and that the 
church and ministry of the country were the strong 
holds of slavery. There had been no argument used, 
he said, by the speakers, and he declared there was no 
one in the house who was not opposed to slavery. We 
replied by asking him if it was not a truth that the 
church and the ministry were the stronghold of 
slavery ? when Mr. Cogswell again furiously interfered 
and protested against further discussion and hoped 
the meeting would break up and go home ; whereupon 
we were greeted with a tumultuous rising all at once, 
a smart hissing from the vicinity of Messrs. Pierce 
and Cogswell, and a violent slamming of seats and 
going out of the house ; all of which struck us as 
savoring more of desecration of the house than any 
"words of truth and soberness" that had been uttered 
by the speakers. One rose out of the auditory about 
the middle stage of the disturbance and demanded to 
know of those who accused the speakers of slandering 
Mr. Holt, whether the accusations against him were 
true he wished for information to know if it were 
denied by any man. It was the first time he had 
heard of it, and he wished seriously to be informed if 
Mr. Holt had done what was charged, and what was 
pronounced slanderous. The questioner was John 
Parkman, Unitarian minister, whose position on the 
occasion we really respect too much to attach to his 
name the unwarrantable title of Reverend. His 
questions for the moment hushed the tumultuous 
tempest, but no one answered him. We had been 
accused three times by three different speakers of 
slander in relation to Mr. Holt, and when a denial of 
the slanderous charge was called for, no man was pre- 



178 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

pared to deny it or offer the least word in support of 
the false and wicked accusation made against us. 
Our meeting had been rudely and violently broken up, 
and the auditory thrown into a spasm of mobocratic 
excitement by Messrs. Young, Cogswell and Pierce 
and the speakers falsely accused of slander, and when 
called on even to deny the truth of what was charged 
as the slander, neither of them had the hardihood to 
deny its truth. Indeed Rev. Mr. Young shortly after 
in private conversation at the pulpit foot, admitted the 
truth of the charge, and said that Mr. Holt knew his 
sentiments in relation to slavery; that he had pro 
claimed them before the people there, and that he 
himself felt that he could not again exchange pulpits 
with Mr. Holt. Why then, we asked, did you accuse 
our brethren of slander, when you knew the charge 
was true? It was not the charge, he said, but the 
manner, and time, and place ! He said Mr. Holt had 
not been impeached by his brethern. That was the 
very thing complained of, we responded ; it was that 
our brother Pillsbury was complaining of, when you 
interrupted him ; he was charging that very fact on 
the ministerial brethren, that they were fellowshiping 
a slave-holder as a minister of the gospel, and that 
slave-holding in their estimation, was no ground of 
impeachment. It was an unhappy state of things he 
admitted, but here was not the place to discuss it. 
There was coming up at this moment, a part of the 
audience who had retired. 

About the time the hissing commenced, Mr. Young 
had quitted his seat in the pew and taken his place on 
the platform with us and requested the people not to 
hiss. In justice to Mr. Cogswell we add that we 
understood by someone that he endeavored to check 
the hissing which took place while he was speaking 
and very naturally accompanied the furious tone in 
which he spoke. 

As the meeting was breaking up, brother Foster 
proposed that the singers retain their places till the 
noise subsided, that we might close our meeting with 
singing. The choir were prevented from this, had 
they been disposed to it, by an immediate extinguish- 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 179 

ment of the lights, which took place at the call of some 
one in behalf of the disturbance. " Put out the lights," 
was the cry in real 1835 style, and we supposed it was 
preparatory to a personal onset. After the singing 
was prevented, and the lights out in the gallery, and 
silence restored, brother Foster called on Rev. 
Mr. Young to close the meeting with prayer. He 
declined, and brother Mack of the Morning Star, was 
called on and immediately complied. And his prayer 
was most appropriate to the occasion. We told 
Mr. Young that the whole violence and outrage were 
chargeable to him ; and he promptly admitted it. 
The lights were quickly extinguished and we were 
left at the foot of the pulpit stairs to grope our way 
out in utter darkness as best we could. But we left 
the house unmolested. The 

people of Dover had their option to admit us to the 
meeting house or not they acted their pleasure as to 
coming to hear us ; they had opportunity any of them 
to reply to anything we had said ; they were so 
apprised ; they were invited to ; they were urged to. 
They declined, and they knew they could be heard 
after brother Pillsbury should close. Were they not 
bound then to surfer the meeting to proceed and to 
close in quiet? Had Mr. Young, Mr. Cogswell, or 
Mr. Pierce, either of them a right to excite the meet 
ing as he did, as they all did, and hazard the disgraceful 
and infamous results of a mob, after they had declined 
an invitation to say regularly and properly all they 
wished to say ? Is that their Christianity ? Is that their 
respect for the liberty of speech ? 

Such was the account of the Dover meeting-house 
mob given by the editor of the Herald of Freedom in 
the same week of its occurrence. If nothing was ex 
tenuated, surely nought was set down in malice. But 
it was an act of peculiar aggravation, when the cir 
cumstances are put in the record of it. Dover had had 
for several years one of the ablest and best Congre 
gational ministers in the state, and certainly one of 
the most active in the anti-slavery cause, Rev. David 



l8o ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

Root. Nor was his church as a body, far behind him. 
Nor was he by any means among the first, nor most 
active in the clerical conspiracy which led or drove to 
the division and new organization. Had northern 
clerical cooperation and church participation in all the 
crimes, cruelties and damning guilt of slavery never 
been arraigned, Dover had never had a mob in de 
fence of such partnership in the sin. Had Mr. Root 
remained the minister of that church, it is hardly 
probable that scenes so disgraceful would have been 
witnessed. But Mr. Root had left Dover and New 
Hampshire, and the Rev. Mr. Young was in his stead 
straight from the sombre shades of Andover Theo 
logical Seminary. It was a large, rich church and 
society that had settled and ordained him, and they 
worshipped in one of the largest and finest meeting 
houses then in the state. Some of us who were with 
Mr. Young at Andover rather wondered at their selec 
tion to succeed such a man as David Root. But so it 
was, though his stay in Dover was short, and he early 
abandoned the ministry altogether. 

The mob of that dark December night was precipi 
tated by the arraignment of Rev. Edwin Holt, of 
Portsmouth, as a slaveholder. And yet Mr. Young 
knew the charge was true. He admitted it to Mr. 
Rogers at the very steps of the altar, before the 
tumult had wholly ceased. His church must have 
known it was true. And Mr. Holt knew that Mr. 
Young knew it was true, because Mr. Young told us 
that Mr. Holt knew what his opinion of the business 
was, and he gave us to understand, doubtless intended 
that we should understand, that he had dealt very 
faithfully with him, as an offending brother. Why, 
then, did he cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war 
on our meeting for free and friendly discussion ? A 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. l8l 

meeting, as were all the meetings we ever held, free 
alike to our foes and friends. A meeting in which 
Mr. Young or Mr. Cogswell, or Mr. Pierce, could have 
had half of every hour, and more, had he desired, to 
contradict or disprove any statement of ours, about 
Mr. Holt, or anybody, or anything else. But the 
truth was, there was nothing to contradict. We knew 
whereof we affirmed. That was no new scene to us. 
On that very night, Foster had on a coat, (a dress coat 
of the style of that time), one skirt of which was torn 
square off in a violent mob at Portland, only the week 
before, and which coat he wore for weeks afterward, 
as a testimony against Portland Christianity, though 
his friends very soon furnished him another. 

No, it is not very likely we could be convicted of 
false statements in the face of two or three mobs in a 
week. For we were not courting persecution. We 
were not ambitious for martyr honors, nor confessors 
crowns. But we spoke the truth, and if not the whole 
truth, certainly nothing but the truth in the love of 
God and man. And we could not often be success 
fully contradicted, as most who heard us knew full 
well. 

Mr. Young was not countenanced by all his congre 
gation in his strange and unwarrantable course on 
that occasion. Indeed, he was quite sharply, though 
good-naturedly rebuked by one parishioner as we 
groped our way out in the total darkness. He hap 
pened, unfortunately, to tell us what we could not 
mistake, that it was very dark. Then responded his 
parishioner, who could hear but not see him, " True, 
Brother Young, but it is about as light as you ever 
make it for us." 



CHAPTER IX. 

MEETINGS IN WEST CHESTER-RIOTOUS AND SHAMEFUL 
CONDUCT RIDE TO DERRY, AND WHAT CAME OF IT- 
FRANKLIN MOB DESCRIBED IN LETTER BY MR. FOSTER. 

That the churches were indeed the bulwarks of 
slavery grew every day more and mere apparent. 
And as Dover, and several other of the larger towns 
have testified, it may be proper to report briefly on a 
few of the smaller places we visited, such as Auburn, 
Chester, and Derry. Auburn was at that time known 
as West Chester. Its church was Presbyterian, its 
minister, Rev. Benjamin Sargent, already introduced 
in these pages, venerable in years and rich in the 
graces of the true Christian minister and man of that 
period. 

The Methodists had a strong hold in West Chester, 
but at the center of the town, Congregationalism held 
undisputed sway and ruled with rigor not often sur 
passed. No town ever more sternly or successfully 
resisted the anti-slavery, or other unpopular reforms. 

In conversation with a venerable deacon of the 
church on the Indian question, so prominent at the 
time of the Seminole war, he declared to me that it 
was the duty of the first settlers of the country to ex 
terminate the Indian tribes as completely as did the 
Israelites the inhabitants of Canaan and of Midian ; 
" killing everything that breathed." He said all our 
Indian wars ever since were God s judgments, sent as 
penalty for neglecting that duty ! And, moreover, 
that they would be inflicted till that duty was done. 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. - 183 

He seemed exactly of the spirit of some Connecticut 
colonists, who, it was told, seized the territory under 
two resolutions, unanimously adopted : 

I. Resolved That the earth is to be given to the 
saints as an inheritance forever. And 

II. Resolved That we, being saints, do hereby take 
possession of that portion of it bounded as follows, 
etc., etc. 

I never heard that the Chester Congregational 
church, or its deacons, or minister, held ever after 
wards any more humane sentiment towards the In 
dians, or even the slaves, while slavery lasted. 

Our first anti-slavery meeting at West Chester was 
held in the Methodist meeting-house adjourned 
there from the school-house, which was too small for 
half who came, the evening being Sunday. Most of 
the time was occupied by Mr. Foster, who paid the 
Methodists, who were present in large numbers, the 
compliment of presuming that they wished to know 
the exact truth as to their connection with slavery, 
that they might be governed accordingly. So he 
opened Judge Birney s tract and proceeded to read 
exactly the record the denomination had furnished 
for itself in the past as far back as 1780 ; when it was 

Resolved, That the conference acknowledges slavery 
contrary to the laws of God, man and nature ; and 
hurtful to society ; contrary to the dictates of con 
science and true religion. 

In 1784, when the Methodist church had been fully 
organized, rules were adopted fixing the time when 
members who were already slaveholders should eman 
cipate all their slaves, and then followed this solemn 
injunction : 

Every person concerned, who will not comply with 
these rules, shall have liberty quietly to withdraw 



184 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

from our society within the twelve months following 
the notice being given him as aforesaid. Otherwise, the 
assistants shall exclude him from the society. No 
person holding slaves shall be admitted into our 
society or to the Lord s supper, till he comply with 
these rules concerning slavery. And those who buy, 
sell or give away slaves, unless on purpose to free 
them, shall be immediately expelled. 

And then, again, in 1801, the conference declared : 
We declare that we are more than ever convinced 
of the great evils of African slavery, which still ex 
ists in these United States. ***** Every 
member of the society who sells a slave shall, imme 
diately after full proof, be excluded. ***** 
Proper committees shall be appointed by the annual 
conferences out of the most respectable of our friends, 
for the conducting of the business. And the presid 
ing elders, deacons, and traveling preachers shall pro 
cure as many proper signatures as possible to the 
addresses : and give all the assistance in their power 
in every respect to aid the committees and to further 
the blessed undertaking. Let this be continued from 
year to year, till the desired end be accomplished. 

So much, and more of the same character, Mr. 
Foster had in hand to read to the Methodists who on 
that evening composed a large proportion of our nu 
merous audience. And so much he read to the credit 
of early Methodism. But then he had to unfold and 
expose the terrible degeneracy and apostacy in a 
single generation. And this was his offence, though 
his testimony was still as before only what the denom 
ination itself furnished him. 

In the year 1836 the general conference was held in 
Cincinnati, Ohio, and adopted with only fourteen dis 
senting voices this resolution : 

Resolved, By the delegates of the annual confer 
ences in general conference assembled, that we are 
decidedly opposed to modern abolitionism ; and wholly 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 185 

disclaim any right, wish, or intention to interfere in 
the civil and political relation between master and 
slave as it exists in the slave holding states of this 
Union. 

And this resolution, though ample to the purpose of 
Foster, was a small part of the stunning testimony he 
presented to show that the northern Methodists were 
fully as guilty as their southern brethren of all the 
abominations of slave holding. For instance, he cited 
the declarations of the most eminent northern minis 
ters and doctors of Methodist divinity. Rev. Dr. Fisk, 
president of the Wesleyan university of Connecticut,, 
said and published to this effect : 

The relation of master and slave may, and does 
exist in many cases, under such circumstances as free 
the master from the just charge and guilt of immor 
ality. The text, i Cor., yth chap., 20 to 23d verse, 
seems mainly to enjoin and sanction the fitting con 
tinuance of their present social relations. The free 
man was to remain free, and the slave, unless eman 
cipation should offer, was to remain a slave. The 
general rule of Christianity, not only permits, but in 
supposable cases, enjoins a continuance of the master s- 
authority. The New Testament enjoins obedience upon 
the slave, as an obligation due to rightful authority. 

Only so much from a great deal by Dr. Fiske, in like 
vein and tone. And this one baptismal seal by Bishop 
Hedding, then living in Lynn, Massachusetts, as read 
in the Christian Advocate and Journal : 

The right to hold a slave is founded on this rule : 
" Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men 
should do unto you, do ye even so to them, for this is 
the law and the prophets." 

The argument of Mr. Foster enraged as much, as 
surprised the Methodist portion of the audience. He 
showed slavery to be wholesale adultery and concubin 
age, and that all, who upheld it by fellowshiping it 



l86 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

as Christians, or fit to be regarded with anything less 
than abhorrence and execration, were partakers in 
those sins and shames. He proved, that Methodist 
church members and ministers had held, or still held 
hundreds of thousands of slaves, while pretending to 
detest slavery and to be seeking its overthrow; holding 
them as "goods and chattels," robbing them of mar 
riage, and dooming them to perpetual prostitution, till 
the southern Methodist church had made itself a great 
house of ill-fame, a vast brothel, into which the Son 
of God himself, in the person of his forlorn brethren 
.and sisters, was continually and hopelessly cast! He 
declared no house of ill-fame in New York was guilty 
of such fearful impiety, such frightful abomination. 
For there the victim or the guilty could flee out and 
escape, while in the churches they were held, were 
compelled by both religion and government, to stay 
and endure, even though their soul and spirit were 
pure as the angels of God ! 

Mr. Foster was heard an hour or more with com 
parative order and attention. Suddenly a man rose 
in great agitation, much as a drunken man or lunatic 
some times did in our meetings, and demanded proof 
of what had been said. Nothing needed proving, as 
the church and clergy supplied all the argument, and 
the inferences were as self-evident as heat from fire, 
or light from the heavens. But instead of drunkard 
or lunatic, the man proved to be one of the leading 
members of that very church, and it required the aid 
of some of his brethren to quiet him and restore the 
order of the meeting. Foster then opened the Bible 
and read the eighteenth chapter of Revelation down 
to the thirteenth verse, and sat down, leaving the re 
maining time to me. 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 187 

The verse containing the injunction : " Come out 
of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her 
sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues," read in 
Mr. Foster s deep, earnest, solemn tones, produced a 
deep impression ; and a man rose with much apparent 
sincerity and asked : " Would it not be better to re 
main in the churches and reform them ? " He, too, 
was a Methodist brother and, we were told, was a re 
formed inebriate. Had I known that at the time, I 
should have asked him whether dram-shops and 
brothels were fit haunts for those who had abandoned 
them, even to save the still lost ones, when everything 
and more could be done, and better done, from the 
outside ? and especially if remaining within, or 
going within, involved eating of the same loaf and 
drinking the same cup with the guilty. 

But as it was, I asked why Wesley did not remain 
in the old Episcopal church ? Why not so preach his 
doctrine as not to create schism and separation ? I 
asked if Unitarians or Universalists were ever exhorted 
to remain in their communion and work reform there, 
Instead of coming out and uniting with the more 
evangelical churches into whose faith they had been 
converted. On the question of changing their religious 
preferences or beliefs, by leaving their pro-slavery 
communions to become abolitionists, I remarked that 
no such change would be required. I said, do you 
wish or prefer to be a Methodist ? Then be a Metho 
dist with all your heart ; be such a Methodist as was 
Wesley who declared slavery "the sum of all villanies" 
which must brand a slave-holder as the sum of all vil 
lains ; such a Methodist as was Dr. Adam Clarke, your 
own great Bible Commentator, who said and wrote : 
" If one place in hell is hotter than any other, that 
place should be appropriated to slave-holders." To 



1 88 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

the Presbyterian and Congregationalist, my doctrine 
was substantially the same. To the Baptist, I asked, 
do you wish to be a Baptist, and be immersed bodily 
in the beautiful Massabesic, whose waves roll in here- 
almost to our very feet ? no abolitionist shall say you 
nay. Only carry out your own avowed principles, and 
inasmuch as you will not drink the sacramental wine 
with such as have only been sprinkled with clean 
water in baptism, or with such as will commune with 
them, they themselves having been immersed, so in, 
relation to slave-holders. Have no religious fellow 
ship with them, nor with any who do commune with 
them as Christians. Exclude the slave-holder and all 
who will not exclude the slave-holder. Not that I hold 
to your doctrine of "Close Communion," as it is called : 
but that is your affair, not mine. Your right of 
religious freedom is as good as mine, and shall be 
respected and defended by me as sacredly as my own^ 
Only be consistent in other particulars as well as in 
that already suggested. And that is, do not make, 
infant baptism a greater heresy, (more damnable- 
heresy, the apostle would call it,) than infant stealing;, 
robbing cradles of their priceless contents, and help 
less mothers of their innocent babes. Do not exclude 
from fellowship the infant sprinkler, and then welcome, 
the infant-stealer, the cradle-robber, the trundle-bed- 
plunderer to pulpit and sacramental supper, as of the 
same "one lord, one faith, one baptism" with your 
selves. That, I said, is all we abolitionists have a right 
to ask. 

The meeting closed at a late hour, in good order, 
and apparently, in the main, friendly spirit. We 
appointed meetings for Monday and Tuesday even 
ings, the latter in the school-house of the village where 
we then were. 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 189 

On Monday I met the Methodist minister, and held 
with him a long conversation. He assured me he 
would gladly attend our meetings and hold discussion 
with us, but his engagements rendered it impossible. 
He gravely charged Mr. Foster and myself with incul 
cating the most wicked and abominable sentiments ; 
accused us of the grossest misrepresentation and 
.falsehood on the previous evening, and said he should 
take a public opportunity after we were gone to expose 
us. I told him he should have been at our meeting 
of last evening and heard for himself ; for it was evi 
dent he knew nothing at all about what was said or 
done. He insisted that he had full confidence in his 
informant, though it was plain that he had talked with 
none better than the half-crazed being, who so rudely 
and wildly interrupted our proceedings. But I again 
invited him in most cordial manner to come to our 
meetings, and proposed to go in to one of his, but he 
gave me no further attention. 

When we went to our meeting on that evening, we 
found the school-house door locked against us. This 
was done by a prominent member of the Methodist 
church, on his own responsibility ; in full assurance 
that anti-slavery sinners had no rights that Methodist 
saints could be bound to respect. A noble and gener 
ous-hearted man of the world, opened his commodious 
dwelling, and there we held our meeting. The Pres 
byterians were holding their monthly concert of prayer 
for the heathen, close by, and at the same hour. 
Mr. Foster left me to conduct our meeting, and went 
into the Presbyterian s concert of prayer and was per 
mitted to address them a half hour, as afterward 
appeared to effective purpose. And whom should he 
meet there cheek by jowl with the rest, but my Metho 
dist minister, who in the morning, assured me he 



190 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

would certainly attend our meeting, "but for positive 
engagements ! " He had passed directly by our 
meeting, and gone to a Presbyterian concert of prayer ; 
what he had never in his life done before, and in all 
probability, never did again. 

Mr Foster addressed the concert on the character 
and conduct of the American Board of Foreign Mis 
sions in regard to the heathenism of our slave system 
at home. He showed how the treasury of the Board 
was replenished by robbery. Man-stealers, and the 
buyers and sellers of stolen men, women and children,, 
not only contributors to, but controllers, with other 
officers, of the moneys raised the price of blood, the 
very blood of Christ himself, in the person of his 
children and little ones, the price of his blood given 
in contributions to publish his name to the distant 
tribes of Africa, and the heathen world ! Showing 
from Judge Birney s American Churches, the Bulwarks 
of American Slavery, that the Board even had slaves 
bequeathed in will to its funds, by pious persons at the 
south. It was said that in the case cited by Judge 
Birney, the bequest was not accepted ; but the reason 
probably was, that to receive it, involved attendance 
"on the part of all who claimed it" at the Superior 
Court of Bryan county, in the state of Georgia. None 
will doubt this when that stupendous body, the Amer 
ican Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions 
shall come hereafter into these chronicles for examin 
ation. On the next morning, Mr. Foster was told by 
some who heard him at the concert, that the) had 
withheld their contributions, never before having 
dreamed that the American Board was sustained by 
robbery, and controlled in part by man-stealers. 

In the course of Tuesday, we learned that attempts 
were making to close the school-house against us on, 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 19! 

that evening also. The plan was frustrated by our 
friends who secured the key. Then a riot was con 
certed ; we knew that, because the zealous Methodist, 
who, on Sunday evening came so near utterly routing 
us, told us he " had labored hard more than three 
hours, to prevent a riot this evening." We always 
knew well what to expect, when ministers and other 
like good and influential men told us how much they 
feared a mob, and how hard they were working to 
prevent it, and how they hoped that now there would 
be no mob. 

On this occasion, we had a large attendance, and 
the best and most respectful attention to the close. 
But the Methodist minister did not appear. Our 
zealous Methodist friend, who had labored three 
hours to prevent a riot, was conspicuously absent. 
Some others, also, who had been quite demonstrative 
in defence of the church and clergy, especially the 
Methodist church and minister of that place, were ab 
sent, in body, to say the least. 

All this absence was easily accounted for when we 
came out. The evening was dark and rainy. Several 
had brought lanterns. Our horse and carriage stood 
outside, with others, but ours had been singularly dis 
tinguished. Past experience had taught us that it 
might be so, especially when good men " had labored 
hard to prevent our being mobbed." Borrowing a 
friendly lantern, we discovered that all the upholstery 
of the carriage, (a new comfortable, covered buggy,) 
cushions, whip, reins and valisses, had been deeply 
"daubed," not with the untempered Methodist "mor 
tar " of those days, nor the super-fragrant eggs of 
Sanbornton Bridge, which our readers cannot have 
forgotten, but with an anointing quite as unsavory 
and unclean, furnished by some grass-fed and well 



IQ2 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

fed Chester cow. The Methodist minister, a Mr. 
Quimby, had assured me he would be with us that 
evening and take part in our meeting, but for positive 
pre-engagement. He was surely well represented 
outside the school-house, and had no need to attend 
himself. 

Next day but one, all damages were repaired in 
time for us to drive over to Derry. There, again, we 
fell into Methodist hands. Both the Congregational 
and Presbyterian pulpits and churches had long be 
fore proved themselves impervious to anti-slavery 
truth by word or deed. Accidentally, we encountered 
the Methodist minister, Mr. Hazeltine, who seemed to 
speak us kindly, and tendered us his meeting-house 
for two evenings. We blessed and thanked him de 
voutly, and soon had notices posted about the village 
accordingly. Then we drove away two or three miles, 
to look up some abolitionists of whom we had heard 
but never seen, and to extend, as widely as possible, 
notice of our meetings. At the hour appointed we 
were at the meeting-house, but, to our surprise and 
disappointment, we found the door locked against us. 
Nor was anybody in sight of whom we could ask ex 
planations. We went into a shoemaker s shop to make 
inquiry, and were told "the brethren" had been to 
gether, and unanimously vetoed the kindly offer of 
their minister. We demanded of the minister, who 
came in, what the strange procedure meant. He said 
that since he had offered us the house he had seen 
the West Chester minister, who, it appeared, had 
scampered down after us as quick as possible, to 
sound an alarm, and that he had given such report of 
our meetings in his parish that it was not deemed ad 
visable to have anything to do with us. For his own 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 193 

part, he said, he was still in favor of our having the 
meeting-house, but the Discipline did not warrant it, 
as he had not appointed the meetings. 

It somehow got abroad in the village that we were 
in the shoemaker s shop, and very soon the room, en 
try, steps and all, were thronged with a noisy, babbling 
rabble that it would wrong the real brutes to call 
brutal, all burning with indignation, because, as they 
most vociferously declared, we were seeking to tear 
down the Church and the Sabbath. I never met a 
more abusive gang in any grog-shop. We congratu 
lated the minister on the number and quality of his 
defenders. The three most prominent, the actual 
leaders, were all members of his own church. One of 
these taunted Foster with w r earing spectacles. This 
raised a great laugh. I asked the man, " Do you 
know God could, with one lightning flash, so blind 
you that, even with spectacles, you could never see 
more ? " Another of them said, " The Chester Meth 
odist minister was here to-day, and told us you called 
his church a brothel." Then one cried out, "O, they 
know what a brothel is!" which raised a yell of glee, 
with clappings and stampings that shook the whole 
building. " Yes, yes," bawled another, "their looks 
show it." And this, to them, minister and all, seemed 
to clinch the argument wholly in their favor. The 
victory was theirs. We admitted it, and left the town 
to celebrate and enjoy it to all hearts content. I 
never heard that a genuine anti-slavery meeting was 
ever held in that town. There might have been. 
Doubtless, New Organization lecturing might have 
been called in to take away the reproach and shame 
of driving away the earnest and devoted abolitionists, 
who had taken their lives in their hands and gone 
forth everywhere, proclaiming liberty to the captive, 



194 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

whether guilty men and ministers would hear, or 
whether they would forbear. Both those ministers 
were New Organizationists of most Pharisaic type. 
And both declared they preached, themselves, once a 
year, on slavery, though they always selected Fast or 
Thanksgiving day for that subject. And both seemed 
to think that entitled them to our acceptance and 
respect as abolitionists. As we drove slowly out of 
the village, in the dark evening, and with sad hearts, 
the crowd of "brethren" and others from the shoe 
maker s shop pursued us with their shouting and 
howling, some of them seizing our carriage wheels 
and holding back so that our poor little Tunbridge 
had hard work to pull us out of their power. What 
they wanted was to provoke us to resistance. Then 
they would have taken sweet revenge by violence on 
our persons, perhaps to the extent of Lovejoy s mur 
derers at the west, a few years before. We never 
doubted that our non-resistance principles saved our 
lives in many a desperate encounter. And in them 
and their heroic Author we confidingly reposed our 
trust. Nor surely, under the circumstances, could 
we have pursued a wiser course, whatever might have 
been our principles. For we stood almost always 
nearly alone against the towns, at first. 

In the account thus given of our reception in some 
of the smaller or average New Hampshire towns, the 
object can hardly be mistaken. Almost exactly such 
reports could be extended to length beyond human 
patience and endurance. And without going out of 
New Hampshire, or including any other persons than 
the three already named, the editor of the Herald of 
Freedom, Mr. Foster and myself. 

It must not be supposed, however, that we did not 
find or make excellent friends and glad co-workers 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 195 

with us in our mighty mission. We lived, when 
abroad, much of the time on the fat of the land ; 
only metaphorically as to the/iz/, for we entered the field 
vegetarians, and Foster so continued till age, infirmity 
and medical men counselled him otherwise, though 
possibly, neither wisely nor well. I always doubted 
it. We collected money, and in two years paid off 
the society-debt and bought press and type and office 
appointments for the Herald of Freedom. We broke 
down the Democratic party soon after, and did vast 
damage to many pro-slavery churches and pulpits by 
exposing them to the light of day and truth. My 
salary the first year was exactly eighty-three cents a 
day. The second year I was voted four hundred dol 
lars, all collections above that sum to be paid into the 
treasury of the society. And Mr. Foster s pay was 
probably less, but he often insisted on a too liberal 
division with me, on the ground that I had a wife and 
he had none. 

In West Chester were, besides Rev. Mr. Sargent, 
whose faithfulness cost him his pulpit, Mr. Benjamin 
and Mr. Amos Chase, not brothers, only in soul and 
spirit, whose anti-slavery devotion was too deep and 
divine for human praise. Sadly as our carriage suf 
fered, they did not permit it nor us to leave the place 
till all damage was repaired and everything rendered 
clean and sweet, and new, so far as necessary. Once 
afterwards Lucy Stone and myself had an engage 
ment there, and no conveyance could be had nearer 
than two miles and a half. Two or three inches of 
snow had fallen that day, and the road we had to take 
was through woods, and not a track had been made. 
No conveyance possible, I proposed to walk on to 
Amos Chase s and send him back for my companion, 
while I would commence the meeting alone. To this- 



196 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

Lucy bravely objected, saying her bloomer dress and 
calf-skin boots, made like mine, would carry her safely 
through with me on foot. And they did. She was 
hardly willing to allow me to carry her bag a part of 
the way. It was pitch dark some time before we ar 
rived, and the soft, damp snow had wet our feet as 
though we had walked in water all the way. Mr. 
Chase insisted that I should wear his boots to the 
meeting, and socks, as well. The family took Lucy 
away, and, as she told me next day, put her in a com 
plete change from head to foot, which perspiration, 
added to the wet snow, had made absolutely neces 
sary. Had West Chester been Derry on that night, 
our situation must have been deplorable indeed. But 
we knew into what hands we should fall, and so 
trudged cheerily, though wearily on, through darkness, 
forest and snow. Mr. Benjamin Chase still lives, an 
honor and ornament to the best rural society of the 
Granite state. 

Most of the mob violence yet described, has been 
rather of the harmless sort, so far as bodily injury is 
considered, since Mr. Foster and myself together took 
the field. And Mr. Foster has hardly yet been heard 
through the Herald columns. He shall now have his 
turn, and readers will soon see to what purpose. 

In the same month, (or within four weeks, a part of 
two months), of our Chester and Derry encounters, we 
attempted to hold some meetings in Franklin. I told 
Foster it rather appeared to me that he could give a 
better account of our experiences there than any one 
else, and besides, that it was time for him to do part 
of the reporting, were it only for the sake of variety. 
Though dreading a pen almost as much as a sword, 
in his own hand, he reluctantly consented ; and the 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 197 

following description, every word, every way as truth 
ful as it is graphic, is his own verbatim letter, as in 
the Herald of Freedom, of November igth, 1841 : 

ANOTHER MOB THE PULPIT ITS ORIGIN. 

To the Rev. Isaac Knight, pastor of the Congrega 
tional Church in Franklin : 

SIR Impelled by a sense of duty to you, to your 
flock and the public, I sit down to address you relative 
to the recent outrage that was perpetrated upon an 
anti-slavery meeting in your parish, and by persons 
under your immediate supervision. That transaction 
has inflicted a blot upon the character of your once 
respectable village, which time will not soon efface. 
It has degraded it in the eyes of all who respect 
either the laws of God or man, by openly setting both 
at defiance, trampling under foot the rights of the de 
fenceless and unresisting, and spurning every appeal 
to the claims of justice, humanity and pure religion. 
That savages and barbarians, whose trade is war, and 
whose only law is the dictates of unchastened pas 
sion, should occasionally indulge in acts of brutal 
violence, is not surprising. But a mob among Chris 
tians, under the very eye of the pulpit, and in de 
fence of that pulpit fills the mind with astonishment- 
It is sad proof that the pulpit and mob are identical 
in spirit and coincident in their aims ! 

My object in this communication is to call the at 
tention of all who will take the trouble to read it, to 
the origin of those disgraceful proceedings, which 
have earned for Franklin the unenviable reputation of 
having riotously broken up and dispersed an anti- 
slavery meeting ; but more especially to hold up a 
mirror in which you will be able to see your own 
character and that of your fellow craftsmen. Like 
David in the matter of Uriah and Saul of Tarsus in 
the martyrdom of Stephen, you are doubtless uncon 
scious of your guilt. But will not posterity and a 
coming judgment assign to you the authorship of 
that outrage ? 

Was it not through your influence, aided by that of 
your clerical coadjutors, that your parishioners were 
induced to trample upon their own laws, brutally 



198 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. . 

assault the friends of liberty, and transmute the quiet 
.and security of their village into uproar and lawless 
violence ? Such I solemnly believe to be the fact. 
Am I mistaken in this opinion ? Let a rehearsal of 
the scenes of that dismal night, and of your con 
temptuous treatment of the anti-slavery cause on the 
previous Sunday, answer. Notice had been giv y en, 
through the Herald, that brother Pillsbury and my 
self would hold anti-slavery meetings in your parish 
on Sunday and Monday evenings, in which all parties 
would be allowed a hearing, and in the discussions of 
which all would be allowed to participate. Your 
meeting-house was closed against these meetings, and 
you were generally understood to regard them as a 
.nuisance, and those who were to conduct them as in 
fidels and "dangerous men." You had said that you 
"would sooner co-operate with fiends from perdition 
than with them." So inveterate was your hostility, 
that our friends thought it useless to ask you to read 
a notice of the meetings. One was, however, posted 
up within the walls of your meeting-house. But it 
soon fell a sacrifice to the piety and loyalty of your 
parishioners, and shared a kindred fate with the meet 
ing it was designed to notify. 

No inconsiderable portion of the people of Franklin 
regard you as their spiritual guide. Your opinion on 
all moral subjects is their supreme law. Wherever 
you lead, they implicitly follow. What you recom 
mend, they cordially support. What you repudiate, 
they feel religiously bound to oppose. I knew this, 
and that your hostility to anti-slavery would, in all 
probability, deter most of them from attending our 
meetings. I knew, also, that they were profoundly 
ignorant of the character of our enterprise, and of 
their own guilt as accomplices and abettors of south 
ern man-stealers, and that they were likely to remain 
so. To enlighten, and, if possible, to reclaim them 
from the idolatrous worship of a slave-holding religion 
to the pure doctrine of the gospel, was my aim and 
purpose. For that purpose I attended the meeting 
-over which you have assumed the authority of a 
" Rabbi," which is to say, being interpreted, (a) 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 199 

Master. In doing this, I was clearly within the rights 
guaranteed to me in the New Testament. The meet 
ing was public. Everybody was invited to attend, 
and by the law of God, which you profess to preach, 
all who were present had an equal right to speak. I 
chose to avail myself of that right in behalf of the 
despairing bondsman, who has neither Bible, Sabbath 
day nor marriage institution. But, no sooner had I 
commenced speaking than the house was thrown into 
utmost disorder and confusion through your agency. 
Your abrupt descent from the sacred desk," and 
exit from the house, was the signal for a general re 
treat. The meeting-house was instantly in uproar. 
Seeing their "guide" retire, about two-thirds of the 
vassal audience immediately followed But they went 
out at your beck, and not prompted by their own con 
sciences. They were anxious to hear, but were afraid 
of displeasing their master. But, having satisfied the 
claims of the pulpit, as they supposed, by leaving the 
room, most of them remained in the entry, literally 
choking up the doors, so desirous were they of hear 
ing what I had to say. A few had the courage to re 
turn and resume their seats after you had left. 

Evening came, and brought together an unusually 
large number for an anti-slavery meeting, but your 
seat was vacant. " Here are the sheep," thought I, 
as the seats of the capacious town hall were rapidly 
filling up with men and women, some of whom were 
from a distance of three or four miles, "but, where is 
the shepherd ? He fancies they have broken loose 
from the fold, and that wolves are among them. Has 
he left them and fled? Is he indeed a hireling?" 

The exercises of the evening elicited a good degree 
of interest. After some preliminary remarks from 
brother Pillsbury, I addressed the meeting for nearly 
two hours, on the slave-holding character of the 
American church and ministry. The audience was 
unusually solemn and listened with marked attention 
and much apparent interest and conviction, while the 
religious professions of the country were successfully 
shown to be at war with Christianity, and to constitute 
the main bulwark of slavery. Every sect in the country 



200 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

was shown to be more or less contaminated with the 
spirit of slave-holding, while in most of them, man-steal 
ing is not a disciplinary offence. Nor is it regarded as a 
sin, as is apparent from the fact that many of their 
most popular ministers are man-stealers ; and their 
theological seminaries, such as Andover, Princeton, 
and Middletown, teach the doctrine that man-stealing 
if accompanied by mild treatment, is not sinful. 

As our remarks on Sunday evening were confined 
to the church and ministry, I was not a little surprised 
on entering the meeting on the following evening, to 
find there a large number of men and boys u of the 
basest sort," some drunk, some sober, apparently much 
exasperated at our doctrines, and determined, if pos 
sible, to put a stop to their spread. They could not 
endure to hear their ministers and churches so tra 
duced, and had come to their defence. The leader of 
this gallant band, a Mr. Hilton, whose intoxication was 
only zeal for the honor of the church, rather than of 
new rum, was in shirt sleeves, as the insignia of his 
office. Several others had appropriate emblems. The 
room was filled with a dense, fetid smoke, which was 
exceedingly annoying, and rendered respiration in 
some parts of it difficult. On examination, it was 
found that these fumes proceeded from breathing 
holes of perdition in a remote part of the room, which 
Satan had contrived to open for our special annoyance, 
through the lips of some half a dozen of your young 
parishoners, by means of some ignited tobacco leaves, 
which he had caused to be rolled into the shape of a 
pig s tail, and put into their delicate little mouths. 
Brother Pillsbury commenced speaking, but was soon 
interrupted by the talking and racket of these young 
gentlemen of the cigar. Finding it difficult to proceed, 
he remonstrated against such rude behavior, and 
expressed his regret that youth of so much promise 
should, in an unguarded hour, suffer themselves to be 
made a cat s paw by their parents and other superiors 
in age, to tear in pieces the sacred charter of the lib 
erties for which their ancestors bled ; and which it 
should be their highest honor to inherit and transmit, 
unimpaired to posterity. 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 2OI 

This appeal was not without effect upon most of 
those for whose particular benefit it was intended. 
But the speaker had not proceeded far when he was 
again interrupted by an outburst of holy indignation 
at his infidelity and irreverence for man-stealers and 
their abettors from an opposite quarter of the house. 
This proved a more serious affair. Captain Hilton, 
accompanied by his tipsy corporal, one Kimball, made 
a pass at the speaker. Their feelings, it appeared, 
had been deeply wounded by some of the speaker s 
remarks, and nothing would appease them short of a 
total retraction of the obnoxious sentiments. They 
were no non-resistants. They had embraced the 
Christianity of the Concord church. They wanted 
satisfaction and they knew how to obtain it. Brother 
Pillsbury coolly replied to their demands that he had 
spoken the truth and should make no apology for it. 
"Damn you," said the captain, "you have slandered 
and abused all our ministers and churches, and every 
thing that s good among us." "Damn you," cried 
another, "you shall take all that back ; " and imme 
diately seized him by the collar. The room at this 
time exhibited a scene of dreadful confusion and 
alarm. Observing that the women were preparing to 
leave the house, I left brother Pillsbury in the hands 
of his assailants and to the protection of his heavenly 
Father, and passed to the other side of the room for 
the purpose of allaying their fears and encouraging 
them to remain. 

As the crowd had by this time become so dense 
around brother Pillsbury that I could not approach 
him, I stepped upon the railing and with much 
strength of lungs, succeeded in raising my voice 
above the uproar that filled the house. My expostu 
lations with the mob on the meanness of disturbing a 
free meeting, where all enjoyed equal privilege of 
being heard, succeeded in restoring quiet, when it 
was found that brother Pillsbury, with an unresisting 
demeanor, had protected himself from personal in 
jury, although for a time entirely in the power of 
infuriated drunkards ! Order being restored, he 
resumed his remarks. 



202 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

But the mob were not yet satisfied. They had not 
fully vindicated their character nor that of the church 
and ministry from the slanderous accusations of the 
anti- slavery agents. After the lapse of about three- 
quarters of an hour, most of the rioters retired from 
the hall. Joined, as we supposed, by a new recruit 
from the bar-room, they soon came back and com 
menced a hideous noise in the entry, which entirely 
overpowered the speaker s voice, and gave signs of 
another brutal assault. Several persons, not abolition 
ists, attempted to hush the noise, but to little purpose. 
One of them called upon the constable to take the 
leaders into custody, but he declined on the ground 
that he had no precept. I took occasion to remind 
this scrupulously conscientious political "minister of 
God " that when I entered your meeting-house for the 
purpose of preaching the gospel in an orderly man 
ner, it was not thought necessary to obtain a precept 
in order to dispose of me ; but that any member of the 
congregation who chose, the minister himself not ex- 
cepted, turned constable and thrust me from the house. 

Finding it impossible to proceed with our exercises, 
brother Pillsbury and myself felt it our duty to shake 
off the dust of our feet and leave the place. This 
we did by a short, though solemn testimony, against 
all those through whose agency the meeting had been 
broken up. While recording that testimony, a death 
like silence pervaded the room. Even the infuriated 
ranks of the besotted rioters that were momentarily 
threatening to break forth upon us, were overpowered 
by its fearful import, and they silently retired in dis 
may at the terrors of the coming judgment, leaving 
us to return in safety and unmolested to our lodgings. 

Such are the prominent facts connected with this 
disgraceful outrage. It only remains for me to sub 
mit the question whether, in view of them, I am not 
fully justified in the opinion that you were the guilty 
author. What possible interest had Mr. Hilton and 
his associates in the breaking up of our meeting? 
The anti slavery enterprise does not and cannot mo 
lest them. They have nothing to fear from the prev 
alence of free principles. The mob was on your be- 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 203 

half. Its avowed object was to defend your charac 
ter, and that of the church and ministry generally, 
against what it professed to regard as the slanderous 
accusations of the abolitionists. 

How is it, sir, that the bar-room has disgorged it 
self to furnish a body-guard for the pulpit ? Why 
are the most vicious of your citizens so jealous of your 
reputation ? Can we suppose that they acted contrary 
to your wishes in this matter ? Men may oppose, but 
will rarely defend us by means which we do not sanc 
tion and approve. 

You declared you "would sooner co-operate with 
fiends from perdition than with Rogers and his coad 
jutors !" 

Is not this mob alarming proof that you are co 
operating with fiends from perdition in the perpetuity 
of slavery, and not with Rogers and his coadjutors in 
its overthrow? Respectfully yours, 

STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 

Andover, Afass., Nov. 7, 1841. 



CHAPTER X. 

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE RIOTOUS BEHAVIOR OF THE 
STUDENTS-STRAFFORD COUNTY ANNIVERSARY EAST 
ERN RAILROAD AND ITS JIM CROW CARS OUT 
RAGES ON COLORED PASSENGERS. 

Franklin was but a specimen of New Hampshire, 
and Mr. Knight was in immense majority, and Dart 
mouth college was helping to keep the number of his 
kind good, if not increase it. At Franklin, the rioters 
were mostly boys, set on or led" on by some old enough 
to be their fathers and grandfathers, drunk on rum or 
rage, spleen and spite, but doing the will and pleasure 
of church and minister. Their ribaldry was as offen 
sive as their blasphemy. What we most feared, had 
most reason to fear, was that some indiscreet friend 
of ours might be impelled to resist their outrages of 
word and deed by force. True, the provocation was 
very great. But had such resistance been made, even 
to a single blow, however slight, it would have filled 
the hordes surrounding us with fiendish delight, and 
bloody scenes must inevitably have followed. Since 
the war of the rebellion, almost every ruffian appears 
to be armed with dirk, pistol, or both, ready for use at 
any moment. It was not so then and there, but I long 
kept in my cabinet stones and other missiles, includ 
ing heavy bullets, which had been hurled at me and 
my brave companion, through windows, or as we 
walked or rode along the streets to or from our meet 
ings. We read in New Testament times of a Stephen 
stoned to death by a mob. I traveled and worked 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 205 

with another Stephen who would have cheerfully 
suffered similar fate. And who shall say it would not 
have been in an equally holy cause? And in deep 
humility and sincerity I can say we together passed 
through many scenes where it would have been our 
joy, and true honor, too, to fall as did the ancient 
Stephen, could our cause have been best subserved 
thereby. But it was only in extreme peril that my 
constitutional cowardice was so far overcome. Mob 
violence was ever my aversion and dread, till deep in 
the midst of it. Brave old military heroes have often 
told me that they trembled at the outset, and till after 
the first few shots had been exchanged. Then there 
was no more fear. I could well understand them. 
But not so my friend Foster. He seemed ever cool 
and serene, before and through the fiercest encoun 
ters. Nor did any one ever see him exultant, in his 
most brilliant successes. But to return to our 
narrative. 

The next experiences and their results to be de 
scribed occurred, soon after at Dartmouth college, 
which introduced me to society and scenes unknown 
before. 

The question has often been asked me, sometimes 
in letters from distant states, at what college I re 
ceived my education. It always sounded strangely in 
my ears, when remembering that at seven and twenty 
there was not a harder worked, nor working man, 
young nor old, in my native state of Massachusetts, nor 
my involuntarily adopted state of New Hampshire, at 
four years old. At twenty-four, I joined the Congre 
gational church, in Henniker. To me, it was the 
most sacred, solemn step of my whole life. There 
had been none of those dark, despairing convictions, 
so frequently felt and described, and still less had 



206 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

there been any of the raptures, the "joy unspeakable 
and full of glory," that so many experienced, and 
even loudly boasted. I waited for such, long, earn 
estly, expectantly, and confidently. A doubt that 
such were necessary had not entered my mind, though 
many around me gave sad evidence in their lives and 
conversation after their experience, that even the most 
intense anguish of conviction and exttaic joy in the 
hour of conversion, were no assurance of regenera 
tion or change of heart. The reasonableness, wisdom 
and righteousness of the divine requirements were 
made so plain to my understanding, and the observ 
ance of them, according to my enlightenment, so 
necessary to the highest happiness and welfare of the 
human race, that in the very love of them, I accepted 
them, irrespective of all questions of perdition as 
penalty or paradise as reward. Educated almost 
from infancy in the Congregational Sunday-school, 
and corresponding religious teaching with scrupulous 
care and faithfulness at home, it was easy to assume 
as true all the doctrines of our denomination, trinity 
atonement, total depravity and election, as well as 
everlasting rewards and retributions. If away beyond 
my comprehension, I remembered how many great 
and holy men had embraced and defended them ; how 
many godly men and women had died martyrs for 
them on torturing racks and in burning flames; and 
who in my situation could doubt their truth without 
violence to every pulsation of soul and spirit? 

And so I entered the church tremblingly, but re 
solved to the best of all I was, or could become, to 
adorn my profession. And whatever duties were 
taught me as a Christian professor, I endeavored to 
perform. Temperance and anti-slavery were among 
my first espousals ; the former with the approval of 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 207 

and encouragement of our pastor, but the latter rather 
in spite of him. Our first anti-slavery lecture was 
delivered in the Methodist meeting-house, by Moses 
A. Cartland, then a most excellent Quaker school 
teacher and principal, if not founder, of the once well- 
known Clinton Grove school, in the adjoining town of 
Weare. It was in the spring of 1835, while I was yet 
with my father and family on the farm. The lecture 
was a calm, serene, but truthful and faithful presen 
tation of the wrongs of the slave, the crimes and 
cruelties, the outrages and abominations inseparable 
from the slave system ; but all delivered with the 
gentleness and spirit of Lydia Maria Child, from 
whose writings he frequently and liberally quoted, 
and several older members of the church than myself 
were deeply impressed by the important truths we 
heard. Not so, however, the minister and most of the 
leading church members and officers. A general town 
meeting was called at the town house, and speeches 
were made and resolutions adopted denouncing and 
condemning the anti-slavery agitation and all who 
abetted or encouraged it. And similar meetings 
were held in many towns all over the state, and 
their proceedings were published in the newspapers. 
At this time, and for three or four years after 
ward, the agitation had not jarred the founda 
tions of church or pulpit to such a degree as to pro 
duce the winnowings, the separations and rendings 
that were to ensue in 1839 and 1840, when in very 
deed judgment had to begin, and did "begin at the 
house of God!" Till then, there were many in the 
churches, ministers as well as others, who hated 
slavery and were willing it should be abolished if the 
peace and sleep of their organizations be not thereby 
disturbed. But so it could not be. In our church at 



208 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

Henniker, temperance was held and preached as a 
cardinal Christian virtue. The church covenant re 
quired of every member " total abstinence from ar 
dent spirits as a drink," as early as 1835, if not before. 
Had the ministers espoused and proclaimed the doc 
trines and duties of anti-slavery as earnestly, most of 
the church would as cordially have embraced them. 
My anti-slavery gave some offence, especially when 
once a slaveholder came and preached in our pulpit, 
and I absented myself from meeting solely in conse 
quence. But only few held with me, and none had 
gone so far as to refuse sermon and sacrament from a 
slaveholder, though several men and women approved 
my course in such refusal. 

It was to the question however, at what college my 
education was obtained, that I proposed to answer a 
fe.jv words, and directly in continuation of the matter 
in hand. In prosecuting our mission, Mr. Foster and 
myself found ourselves at Hanover, and the gates of 
Dartmouth college, from whence Foster had graduated 
only three years before, and with more than ordinary 
college honors. I had never before seen the interior 
of that, nor of any other college, in my life ; and to 
academies and high-schools I was scarcely less a 
stranger. 

The annual meeting of the Grafton county society 
had been already held, but in the south part of the 
county, a full clay s drive from Hanover, and a similar 
convening seemed desirable in the northern section, 
and Hanover was the selected place. It was a full 
week, however, before any house could be found in 
which to assemble, and the committee were at length, 
after that delay, compelled to call our meeting at the 
dancing hall of the principal hotel. Neither church 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 209 

nor college would open to us a door, nor condescend 
to give us any reason why we were so summarily 
denied. 

At the time appointed, however, the convention 
assembled in encouraging numbers, was duly organ 
ized, opened with prayer, and we proceeded to busi 
ness. Henry C. Wright, of Philadelphia, formerly a 
Congregational minister, Mr. Foster, and myself 
were present as principal speakers, though all persons 
present were cordially invited, as was our invariable 
custom, to participate in the discussions. The first 
resolution presented was to the effect that in any 
moral conflict, strength and success depended, not so- 
much upon numbers, as on inflexible adherence to 
principle. An interesting debate ensued, which occu 
pied the remainder of the morning session, when the 
resolution passed unanimously, and we adjourned 
till afternoon. 

At two o clock we again assembled, when after 
prayer the following resolution was offered : 

Resolved, That every person in the nation, north or 
south, who is not an open abolitionist, is by his influ 
ence, sustaining and perpetuating slavery, and should 
be regarded by every friend of humanity as a virtual 
slave-holder. 

This resolution was the order for afternoon. A 
clerical agent of the new organization came also among 
us. He moved an amendment diluting the resolution 
to his taste and temper. And as church, college and 
village made a large part of the audience after closing 
all their doors against us, the original resolution was 
rejected, by small majority. In the evening, our 
resolution read as below : 

Resolved, That American slavery is a complication 
of the foulest crimes ; robbery, adultery, man-stealing, 
and murder ; and should therefore be immediately 
and unconditionally abolished. 



210 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

The college students crowded themselves together 
and were very disorderly, both before and after the 
exercises began, clapping, hissing, and hooting, in 
most indecent and vulgar manner. Mr. Foster opened 
the discussion in an address of wondrous eloquence 
and power of argument, showing how slavery was all 
the resolution charged and a great deal more, and 
that logically, morally, every way, the slave-holder 
must be robber, adulterer, man-stealer and murderer. 
Then he illustrated what these crimes meant in slavery; 
how a man-stealer must be as much greater than a 
horse or sheep-stealer, as a man is better and greater 
than sheep or horse. Then he asked : " How much 
greater is a man than a sheep ? " " Who in Dartmouth 
college can solve that problem ? Who ? " And yet, he 
declared, " those monsters are hourly stealing the very 
Christ who died for them, in the person of his little 
ones. For inasmuch as they do it to the poorest, 
blackest of his children, they do it unto God ! And 
to Christ his Son. All this, not to speak of the other 
capital crimes mentioned in the resolution. And who 
perpetrates these outrages ? They are ministers, 
bishops, elders, doctors of divinity, deacons, and 
church members, presidents and professors of colleges 
and theological seminaries." And he declared, "those 
at the north who fellowshiped such as Christians and 
Christian ministers, are bad as they. They voluntarily 
make themselves man-stealers and robbers, adulterers 
and murderers, in position, all of them ; and many of 
them in heart. We do not see them do the deeds, 
and so we hold them innocent. But what would you 
say if President Lord, of your own college, should be 
seen carrying home at night, a stolen sheep ? or buy 
ing one he knew had just been stolen ? " 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 211 

From that time, the order and quiet of the conven 
tion were no more. But the disturbance did not 
begin then, it was only mightily increased. It com 
menced before the opening prayer, and did not wholly 
cease during the evening. There were those, not all 
boys, who, during some of Mr. Foster s most thrilling 
appeals, and blood curdling descriptions, would keep 
up their scraping, whistling, and snickering, as though 
they were in some cheap circus or minstrel show. 
Possibly on some battle-field in the Rebellion, they 
learned their mistake. 

For a time we were completely silenced by the 
uproar. The editor of the Hanover Amulet, who hap 
pened to enter at that moment, said in his next paper: 
" Judge of our surprise when we entered the hall where 
we supposed every heart beat in unison with sympathy 
for the oppressed, to find general tumult and confu 
sion," which tumult continued through the evening 
with greater or less atrocity to the very last ; and the 
clerical new organization agent added greatly, and 
seemed to enjoy greatly, the outrage. 

But no explanation which Mr. Foster could make 
availed anything. For a long time, he had no hearing 
at all. When he obtained the ear for a few moments, 
he abjured utterly, any disrespect to President Lord 
or to the college. He only wished to impress on the 
minds and hearts of his h.earers, the awful wickedness 
of slavery, and not less of the north, especially the 
northern church and clergy, in fellowshiping as 
Christians, these monsters of iniquity that for Dr. 
Lord he had only profound respect ; and with good 
reason, he said, for he had ever been as a father to 
him, both while he was at college and since he gradu 
ated ; and that sooner should his tongue cleave to the 
roof of his mouth than be guilty of uttering one word 



212 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

to his injury ; but all to no purpose. He was con 
stantly hissed and insulted till he closed his remarks^ 
and afterwards, if he attempted to speak, until we 
closed the meeting. 

Henry C. Wright was not much better received,, 
though in most pathetic word and tone, he depicted 
the condition of the enslaved, completely, hopelessly, 
and to their last breath, in the power of those who had 
been proved beyond all possibility of doubt, robbers, 
and adulterers, man-stealers and murderers ; cruel, 
remorseless, relentless as death. Mr. Wright was. 
heard, with more or less interruption, nearly half 
an hour. 

The next speaker was the new organization minis 
ter. He was from some place in Massachusetts. In 
rather a sneering, contemptuous manner he asked, 
not the mob, but us who had called the meeting, if he 
might speak. He had surely heard the resolution 
offered, and seen it adopted unanimously, that " all 
persons present be invited to participate in the delib 
erations of the convention." In his conventions and 
meetings, no such resolution was ever offered, speak 
ing and voting being always insolently denied to 
women, even such women as Abby Kelly, the Grimke 
sisters, and Lucretia Mott. He, of course, as in the 
afternoon, strenuously opposed our resolution, and 
presented a stupidly modified and diluted substitute. 
The solemn and pathetic address of Mr. Wright had 
produced a deep and desirable impression on many 
minds, and the object of the substituted resolution 
and its mover was to efface it. His low, vulgar wit, 
the farthest possible remove from the searching de 
scription and appeal of Mr. W T right, was loudly 
cheered and applauded by the uproarious crew for 
whose benefit it was uttered. Very sapiently, he quo- 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 213 

ted the law of his state of Massachusetts as to what 
constituted murder. He was applauded and approved. 
Mr. Foster responded from his seat with the scripture 
law, " He that hateth his brother is a murderer," and 
was loudly hissed. As the best our opponent could 
do with the scripture allusion as a higher law, he be 
gan a taunting strain of remark about our being, not 
an anti-slavery society, but a non-resistance, no-gov 
ernment association ; and gave as his proof that we 
quoted scripture instead of ordinary, legal definitions. 
This false and foolish charge, two or three times re- 
peate d and boisterously applauded, was all the irrele 
vant matter thrust upon us in a business way. No 
.notice was taken of this, except by Mr. Wright, who 
very coolly remarked that an anti-slavery convention 
was not the place to discuss non-resistance. Our op 
ponent admitted that the resolution was strictly true 
in every charge but that of murder. In our argument 
we had not alluded to scripture at all on any of the 
counts in the resolution. We had judged slavery by 
ordinary statute and the natural rights of common 
humanity. At this point, we asked our opponent 
whether to shoot down, or tear in pieces with trained 
blood-hounds, a poor slave who, under cover of night, 
was quietly, peacefully fleeing to Canada for freedom, 
was not murder ? " No," he said, " not legal murder," 
and this answer elicited applause loud and long, mak 
ing the floor to tremble under our feet. From this 
time, if not indeed long before, all sense of honor, 
propriety, decency, was disregarded. The women 
present had before retired in disgust, and it seemed 
probable that we who had called the convention 
would no longer be suffered. But Foster determined 
to make one more effort at a hearing. Seizing on a 
moment of comparative silence, in a loud voice he 



214 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

proceeded to say that he had a few days before visited 
Hanover, to secure a place for this convention, but 
was unable to procure any place whatever that was 
controlled by the college ; that he then applied for 
this tavern hall, and, after some delay and delibera 
tion, he secured it, at the not unreasonable price of 
three dollars a day ; that it had been our intention to 
continue the convention two days and evenings, but 
such had been the confusion and uproar of this even 
ing, and such the manifest intention, if possible, to 
hinder the orderly and quiet prosecution of our busi 
ness, the meetings will be closed to-night ; and the 
responsibility of disturbing and breaking up an open, 
free-discussion, anti-slavery convention, may rest on those 
to whom it justly belongs. 

These remarks, in good, strong, earnest tone and 
spirit, made a deep impression. Many had not before 
comprehended the position in which they had placed 
themselves and their college. One young man, after 
wards a professor in a theological seminary, rose and 
attempted what proved a most lame and impotent de 
fence of the rioters. He said it was the custom of 
the students to express their approval or disapproval 
of whatever passed before them in this way ; that an 
attack had been made on Dr. Lord, an honored and 
respected officer of the institution, and it was not 
strange that those who honored and venerated him 
should thus manifest their disapprobation. And be 
sides, the students themselves had been reproached, 
and took this method to express their displeasure at 
that also. One or two others also spoke to about the 
same import ; one adding to other charges, that our 
speeches were wild and windy," and another, that 
they "were long and tedious." 



^ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 215 

Glad at seeing any change for the better in the 
temper or methods of our opponents, I ventured, for 
the first time during the evening, to occupy a few 
minutes, and began by assuring the meeting that it was 
not strange, since the president and college professors 
had driven the poor slave to the tavern hall as the 
only place where, with their approval, his friends 
could assemble to plead his cause, the students, imi 
tating their spirit, should come here also to drive 
us from this, the slave s last refuge. I reminded 
them that this, like all our meetings, was open 
to free and friendly discussion ; unlike most assem 
blies, as free to our opponents as our friends. 
We learned afterwards that the committee of the 
Congregational meeting-house, which was also refused 
us, was composed in part of the college faculty, the 
very chairman of the board being one. I said further, 
what surely was always true at that time, that we found 
the most violent opposition to the anti-slavery cause 
among the so-called "educated ministry," and that 
from this time we could not be surprised at it, for here 
at college, they see the doors of meeting-houses, ves 
tries, lecture rooms, shut against us, and commence 
their hostilities by driving us even from tavern halls, 
Here to-night, I said, we see what the candidates for 
the ministry can do through hatred to our movements, 
and in imitation of the spirit of those under whose 
tuition you have placed yourselves ; and everywhere 
we are seeing and feeling what you may do when you 
come to be ministers. I said that my own life had 
been anything rather than a student s life ; that, 
though I had traveled and lectured extensively 
throughout New York and New England, singularly 
enough, I had never, till to-day, seen even the outside 
of a college (we thought of that, exclaimed one in 



2l6 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

the crowd) ; and I hoped as to moral character, that 
what we saw here, was not a fair specimen of our 
higher institutions of learning ; though I felt com 
pelled to say, that, judging from the spirit and posi 
tion of the clergy and most of our educated men on 
the great questions of moral reform, I feared most of 
our large seminaries of learning had not been much 
misrepresented by the students of Dartmouth college, 
here to-night. It did not surprise me that by this 
time the tumult was renewed by some of the younger 
portion of the disturbers, nor did I greatly regret it, 
for I felt that my rebuke was as necessary as it was 
richly deserved ; and that kind of hostile demonstra 
tion only clinched tighter the argument. Many 
endeavored to hush the confusion and some cried 
loudly, " Hear him, hear him." But I had closed my 
remarks, and kept my feet till it was possible to be 
again heard, and then moved that the convention be 
now finally adjourned; which was immediately put, and 
carried unanimously. And with that closed my first 
and last connection with any college. And now the 
question is answered ; at what college I obtained my 
ediication ? The answer ; my collegiate education, at 
Dartmouth ; and all in one day. There needed no 
more. One or two later, fiercer, college mobs added 
nothing new, nor important to my stock of knowledge 
in that department. 

Still, why blame the students ? They had good rea 
son to suppose they were serving the college, and 
doing the will of its officers. It was no worse for 
them to mob us out of the hotel hall, than it was for 
their masters and the church authorities to send us 
there, by shutting us out of every other place. Our 
cause was then passing through its most fiery ordeal. 
The time having come "that judgment must begin 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 2iy 

at the house of Gcd," church and pulpit, college, 
university and theological seminary seemed to have 
made treaty, offensive and defensive, against it. Most 
of those institutions, as well as the academies and les 
ser seats of learning, were then, as always, largely 
under clerical control. The writings of President 
Lord, of Dartmouth college, on slavery and the abo 
litionists, were fearful. Some of them lie before me. 
In the light of the "Golden Rule," of Confucius, and 
of the Sermon on the Mount, centuries after, they are 
infamous. Amid the blazing terrors of Fort Wagner 
and Port Hudson, the torments of Andersonville and 
Libby prisons, they are truly diabolical. Shall we 
blame the pupils of such a president for a few hours 
of rude, indecent and vulgar behavior, and riotously 
breaking up of a county convention with welcome 
entrance to what might have been a free, friendly 
anti-slavery discussion ? Verily, no ! 

Andover Latin Academy and Lane Theological 
Seminary had driven away large numbers of their 
bravest, most conscientious and high-minded students 
by downright pro-slavery intolerance. Canaan, New 
Hampshire, Academy, had been broken up for the 
unpardonable sin of admitting a few colored pupils on 
equal terms with the white, by vote of the people in 
legal town meeting assembled. A committee was ap 
pointed for the business, and, as officially reported in 
the N. H. Patriot, the edifice was lifted from its 
foundations, and by three hundred men and a hun 
dred yoke of oxen was hauled out of town. The 
most respectable and wealthy farmers in the place 
assisted in service like that at the bidding of the 
slave-power, which then ruled supreme. Well does 
Senator Wilson, in his History, ask in his account of 
it, " Could the fanaticism of slavery go farther than 



2l8 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

that? how demoralized the community which could, 
furnish the actors in such a drama, and applaud it 
when enacted ! " 

But "the fanaticism of slavery" could and did go 
a great deal farther than that, as Senator Wilson and 
his country learned to their cost, in the coming years.. 

Miss Prudence Crandall, a benevolent and philan 
thropic woman of the Society of Friends, had her 
school in Canterbury, Connecticut, utterly broken up 
and routed for the same offence as that of the Noyes 
academy at Canaan. Her s was a school for girls, 
and the outrages attending the transaction were some 
of them too shameful to be told. Town meetings 
were held, resolutions offered and discussed in words 
harder than bullets ; Mrs. Crandall was arrested, 
thrust into prison, dragged to trial, and, though ac 
quitted by the court, was re-arrested, tried over again, 
and this time convicted. Her counsel filed a bill of 
exceptions, and appealed the case. By the highest 
tribunal in the state the verdict was overruled. Then 
a ruffian erowd assailed her house, and destroyed it, 
and the pupils were all sent to their homes, to return 
no more ! 

We could easily forgive the rioters at Dartmouth 
college. And moreover, a clerical new organization 
agent was present, greatly to encourage them. The 
churches had already been proved, by their own vol 
untary testimony, "the bulwarks of American slavery," 
and nearly all the large literary and theological insti 
tutions in the land were buttressed about them. We 
forgave the students, remembering who it was that 
said, " It is enough for the disciple that he be as his 
master, and the servant as his lord." 

This chapter will close with a highly descriptive 
and instructive account of the annual meeting of the 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 219 

Strafford County Anti-Slavery Society, in 1842, at 
Dover, much of it from the pen of Mr. Rogers. It 
was largely attended, and continued three whole -days 
and evenings. Many resolutions were discussed and 
adopted with entire unanimity. The most important 
are given below. The first was offered by Rev. John 
Parkman, then Unitarian minister of Dover : 

Resolved, That our devout acknowledgments are 
due to that Almighty Power whose arm has sustained 
us so graciously in every stage of our enterprise, for 
the encouragement furnished to future exertion by 
the successes of the past. 

The resolution was earnestly supported by the 
mover and Mr. Garrison, and unanimously adopted. 
The next were as below : 

Whereas, According to the recognized interpreta 
tions of the United States Constitution, and the uni 
form practice of the federal government, the free states 
are pledged to the support of slavery ; and whereas, 
southern slaveholders, by their oppression and cruelty, 
are doing all in their power to incite their slaves to re 
sistance, at the same time relying upon our aid to de 
liver them in their hour of peril ; therefore, 

-Resolved, That we solemnly warn the whole country 
that, come what may come, compact or no compact, 
Constitution or no Constitution, Union or no Union, 
neither duty to God nor allegiance to law would ever 
allow us to obey any requisition of government call 
ing us to put down by arms any rising of the slaves. 

Resolved, That it be recommended to abolitionists 
to call town meetings in their respective towns, to 
consider those terms of the federal compact which 
have been construed to bind them to the support of 
slavery, and whether they would comply, should they 
be called upon to do so by the United States Govern 
ment. 

Resolved, That the church that has set and that con 
tinues the example of the negro pew, (and which 
example has been so eagerly followed by the proprie 
tors and conductors of our steamboats and railway 



220 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

cars,) is guilty of an attack on the works of the great 
Creator which gives convincing assurance that it is 
not governed by the spirit of Christ, nor the fear of 
that God who is declared to be "no respecter of per 
sons." 

Resolved, That the Eastern Railroad corporation, in 
compelling its servants to outrage people of color by 
invidiously commanding them out of respectable into 
inferior cars, and even in dragging them out by force 
and violence, is cruelly proscriptive and insulting to 
our common humanity. 

Resolved, That in the rejection, by the United States 
senate, of the nominations of Messrs. Everett, Wilson 
and Eastman, upon the alleged ground of opinion in 
regard to slavery, we see another proof of the undue 
predominance of southern interests in our national 
legislature, and we regard the expression of pub 
lic sentiment recently manifested upon this point as a 
sign that the free states are becoming sensible of this, 
and of the connection between their own rights and 
the assertion of the rights of the slaves. 

Resolved, That the omission of the United States 
senate to confirm the nominations of Everett and 
others, on account of their anti-slavery opinions, just 
named, reveals the horrid truth that the South holds 
slavery to be the paramount interest of the country ; 
and that the resentment manifested at this refusal by 
the pro-slavery northern press betrays the humiliating 
truth that the North regards the rejection of party 
nominations as a greater insult to liberty than the en 
slavement of one-sixth part of the people. 

Resolved, That the course of Andover theological 
seminary in attempting, through some of its profes 
sors, to justify American slavery from the Bible, in 
openly opposing the anti-slavery enterprise, and in 
giving to the community a ministry that has generally 
proved itself the sternest obstacle to the progress of 
anti-slavery truth, has been such as should excite the 
deepest apprehension and alarm for the cause of hu- 
mai.ity and of Christianity, and calls loudly for the 
severest rebuke of every abolitionist. 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 221 

Subjoined are the editorial remarks of Mr. Rogers, 
in the Herald of Freedom : 

The Dover Meeting. We had intended a full 
account of this great and interesting and most im 
portant convention, for this week. It was the more 
necessary as the report of the officers of the meeting 
is so condensed and bare. The proceedings lose much 
of their intrinsic force by the compressed form in 
which they are presented. Several resolutions, for in 
stance, that were acted on separately, are given in one 
and as if passed together. We are about starting to 
accompany Brother Pillsbury to Hancock and Fran- 
cestown to a series of anti-slavery meetings, and can 
say now but a hasty word and be more particular here 
after. The meetings were held in the old Court 
House, a very convenient and comfortable room, and 
well employed ; and as fit as a meeting house would 
be, and more free. There was a goodly attendance. 
The mass of the people did not come in. They were 
not advised to by their controllers. The ministers did 
not as they ought to have done, give the people notice 
and exhort or encourage them to attend. They did 
not want them to. They wanted them not to. They 
were there themselves, led by curiosity, or policy, or 
fear, or all three. The Rev. Mr. Young was there, 
in nervous but heartless attendance, during the entire 
meeting. He looked on verily like a priest and a 
Levite. The Rev. Mr. Horton was in and out, with 
his sneer and his laugh, looking and acting more like 
a jolly friar than a Christian. He is professionally en 
gaged in reading Church of England service Sundays, 
and that is the worship of his sect. Nothing would 
be deemed by him "a greater insult," he asserted to 
some one during the convention, " than to be called 
an abolitionist." Nothing, we remark, would be so 
deep an insult to abolitionism. " I would not be 
caught shaking hands with Mr. Lloyd Garrison," he 
said. 

We intend to give a full and particular representa 
tion of the meeting, and of the part acted by promi 
nent opposers in attendance as well as *he abolition 
ists, if we can get time before we forget it. It was a. 



222 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

marvellous meeting, and there were marvellous human 
developments there which would instruct the times if 
they could be graphically delineated. Hogarth would 
be the narrator to give the demeanor of a pro-slavery 
minister or politician at an anti-slavery meeting. 

This is all for which Mr. Rogers had time during 
the week of the convention. Attending other meet 
ings with Mr. Foster and myself the next week in 
other counties, to which his presence added great 
charm and force, prevented but a few more remarks 
on that at Dover, in the next Herald, to this purport; 

THE DOVER MEETING is not forgotten, but un 
avoidably deferred. We have never attended a meet 
ing of any character so splendidly sustained and so 
orderly, voluntarily and beautifully conducted. It 
was a self-governed meeting. Our nominal president 
declined keeping order ; and when, once or twice, some, 
who came in to dispute, called for order and bred 
some little disorder, he threw the meeting on its 
Self-government, and all was quietness. Oh, that the 
people, the laboring people, the toiling people, the 
livelong-day working men, and the women, whose task 
is never done, oh, that they had been allowed to be 
present and hear the truths that would have found 
response in their unsophisticated hearts! They were 
not allowed to be there. They were discouraged 
away by the unprincipalled politician and the Jesuiti 
cal priest. How shall anti-slavery get at them? 
Must it go with Foster into the synagogues on Sun 
day, and speak to them in the face of the cannon s 
mouth and bayonet s point ? When shall anti-slavery 
find a chance to speak to the people ! We were amazed 
.above measure to hear brother Francis Cogswell and 
Rev. Brother Young eulogizing Garrison. " I have 
been highly pleased with Mr. Garrison," said brother 
Young. Brother Young s being pleased or displeased, 
by the way, was infinitely unimportant. He seemed 
to think it more material than to repent of his mobo- 
cratic, pro-slavery spirit, which could outrage the 
-decencies of^an anti-slavery meeting, last winter, in 
his own meeting-house! He declared solemnly, the 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 223 

second evening of the convention, that he was pleased 
with some of the proceedings of the meetings ! an in 
direct clerical blow at other of the proceedings viz. 
at the apostolic plainness of Pillsbury, and the Nathan- 
like directness of the faithful Foster. He would 
compliment the infidel Garrison himself if he could . 
do it at the expense of these men. " If you would 
send out such men as Garrison," said friend Cogs 
well, "your cause would prosper." " How long have 
you been an admirer of Garrison, brother Cogswell ?" 
said we. "Oh, I have not liked his writings," said 
he. "He has not written as he speaks, here." "Al 
ways," said we, "only he speaks with more ultraism 
and denunciation than he has ever written. " Impos 
sible! I find no fault with anything he has said 
here," said Brother Cogswell. "Everybody finds 
fault with Garrison," said we, "until they see him and 
hear him speak. If you had read what you have 
heard, it would have bt&n ferocious denunciation. But 
when you see the man and hear him, it is quite an 
other thing. And, brother Young," said we to him, 
as he stood by, praising Garrison, "brother Young, 
we never shall hear anything from you of Garrison s 
.infidelity hereafter. Remember that." * * * * 
* * * The Strafford-county anti-slavery society 
is auxiliary to the N. H. anti-slavery society. We 
mention the auxiliaryship, for, on that point, our 
friends were strenuously assisted by the genius of new 
organization under the treacherous form of neuterism. 
A few clergymen, afraid to espouse the unpopular 
:side of old organization, and ashamed of the revealed 
infamy of the new, took refuge under the name of 
neutrality, or neither one thing nor another. This an 
niversary was not of the excrescence which they con 
trived to form. Such excrescences have no anniver 
saries. They do not live long enough. They never 
live a year unless kept alive by external galvanic in 
fluences. The American Union lived but a day. 
The new organization lived longer, but it was by gal 
vanism. It has undergone a change, now, "in its 
mode of existence." It is a third political party, with 
liberty poles up and flags flying, as smart as any of 
the "nations round about." 



224 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

Strafford anti- slavery organised itself as an auxil 
iary to the old movement. And it is its grand anni 
versary we are noticing. We spoke last week of some 
of the names in it. * * * We do not eulogize 
abolitionists as men do the politicians, but we proclaim 
.their excellencies, if at all, in behalf of our despised 
and down-trodden cause. We claim for that cause 
the worth of those enlisted in it. We remind the 
scornful world that "the salt of the earth is with us." 
And we bid them beware on whom they are trampling. 
But anti-slavery leans not on the merits, however great, 
of those who have embarked in it. It is among the 
chief merits of any man, that he has espoused so glo 
rious a cause as this. But this is delicate ground and 
we hasten from it. The forenoon of the first day was 
spent, after getting over the choice of officers, which 
being matter of constitutional obligation could not be 
dispensed with, had it been desired, but which was 
disposed of in the most summary manner possible, by 
choosing, at one vote, all the last year s officers, en 
masse, in discussing a resolution offered by John Park- 
man. A resolution touching the influence of the 
church and clergy on our enterprise had been offered 
by Brother Lunt, of Somersworth. It went to the very 
gist of the movement, and touched slavery in the apple 
of its eye. At Brother Parkman s request, it was 
deferred by the mover till the consideration of one he 
desired to introduce, which came very properly as a 
threshold topic to wit: acknowledging obligation to 
God in view of the past successes of the cause, and 
the grounds of encouragement found in them to future 
effort. This was beautifully discussed by Brothers 
Parkman and Garrison. 

The afternoon was not, in our opinion, so wisely nor 
profitably spent. Instead of taking up Brother Lunt s 
resolution, as should have been done in its order, 
Brother Henry C. Wright, with a view perhaps to 
bring out the eminent talent present, on the constitu 
tional question, introduced a series of resolutions in 
volving the relations slavery sustains to that poor old 
unprincipled compact. The afternoon was wasted in 
a waste of ability on a heartless theme. There was 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 225 

much good speaking, which in Faneuil hall or any of 
our meeting houses, on some patriotic occasion, would 
have been lauded to the stars by the party presses. 
But no appeals were made to the heart or conscience 
of a slave-holding people. For one, though, we once 
labored a good deal to vindicate the old military com 
pact from the reproach of slavery, we care very little 
about it now, as an anti-slavery question. It will move 
the hearts of the people neither one way nor the other. 
While as pro-slavery as they now are, the thunders of 
the Almighty alone can rouse their attention, or lead 
them to repentance. The awful truths of the BIBLE, 
not the constitution, are to be poured on their obdur 
ate hearts. We care nothing for our obligation, one 
way or the other, under this compact, to interfere in a 
rising of the southern slaves. Abolitionists, as such 
cannot fight for the slave, nor need they tell the south 
they will not fight against him. The south don t ex 
pect us to. She thinks, or pretends to think, aboli 
tionists are for inciting the slaves to rise and kill them 
all. Of course the masters need not be told, nor the 
north either, that we will not take arms in behalf of 
slavery. That slavery is unconstitutional, we have no 
doubt. But the nation does not care for that. They 
will interpret the constitution as they choose to under 
stand it. Least of all, would they ever alter their 
habits, or change their social character to suit a mere 
heartless political compact. They will hold slaves in 
spite of everything but the fear of hell. We would 
urge on them the horrible iniquity of incurring that 
awful retribution. They would fear it now but for the 
ungodly influence of the clergy. That sears their 
conscience and hardens their heart. The mind of the 
convention was perplexed by an argument on the con 
stitution. No doubt the clergymen present were 
greatly edified and relieved by it. We put it to the 
sound judgment of all concerned, whether the subiect 
is worth our anti-slavery while. The constitution can t 
hold slaves when the great national brotherhood of 
thieves shall have relaxed their grasp upon them. 
Had the Strafford bar been present, who usually occu 
pied the room, or had the court been sitting, the argu- 



226 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

ment would have enlightened their heads, if it could 
not have softened their hearts. But the convention 
was a body of plain- minded, simple-hearted men and 
women, whose souls would starve on such husks as 
statutes and constitutions. 

The evening meeting was at Rev. Mr. Young s 
synagogue. He did not break it up riotously, as he 
did the meeting of our state agents last winter, which 
disorderly and mobocratic proceeding was suffered to 
pass too lightly. Had poor laborers mobbed the 
meeting, we should have treated them with much less 
ceremony. But it was the reverend and elevated Mr. 
Young, and we treated it, as well as bore it, with very 
deferential submission. It was really a ruffian dis 
turbance. Jeremiah Young broke in upon the de 
cency and order of the meeting with the rudeness 
and lawlessness of a ruffian. He differed from a 
drunken brawler only in form. He as clearly violated 
the right, and so did friends Cogswell and Pierce. 
They declined speaking when invited, and when they 
had the right. They held back till they were excited 
by their mobocratic minister, and then they broke out. 
They must not think to treat anti-slavery quite so 
contemptuously, and go unreproved. We ought to 
have reproved them on the spot, as riotous and dis 
orderly men. But the evening meeting at the anni 
versary was not disturbed. We take occasion, how 
ever, to enter our disapproval of its arrangement. It 
was planned beforehand for the purpose of an intel 
lectual impression. Not exactly so, but in accordance 
with that sort of policy. The ablest speakers were 
selected, instead of leaving the meeting, these among 
the rest, to its spontaneous action. Garrison and 
Phillips spoke, but not like themselves. They were 
hampered by the arrangements of the meeting. They 
were not impelled to speak. And the fugitive Doug 
lass was mounted away up into the mahogany perch, 
where the people look up to gaze at Rev. Brother 
Young, Sundays, as the Israelites did up Mount Sinai 
after Moses, or after him who abode in the thick 
clouds about its summit. What a place for a fugitive 
slave to speak in, and to tell his simple story ! It was 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 22y 

incongruous enough to be in the synagogue itself, 
where a free colored man can t be allowed a pew, as 
we understand. But it was the awkwardest of all 
places, to be mounted up among those astral lamps, 
as high, almost, as the stars. The parties all per 
formed as well as men could under the circumstances, 
but it was no evening for the afternoon that preceded 
it. Rev. Brother Young was " delighted " with it. No 
mob dog moved a tongue, whereas, had the meeting 
been spontaneous, Douglass would have moved hearts 
of stone there, and Garrison and Phillips would have 
made the house quake through all its dedicated re 
cesses. Brother Young was so pleased with the meet 
ing that he condescended, the next evening, to de 
clare his satisfaction publicly. He was pleased, he 
graciously said, with most that he had heard ; mean 
ing, of course, the parts of the meetings we have no 
ticed. Collins said something, at a late hour, of the 
outrage inflicted on himself and Douglass on board 
the railroad cars from Boston. Douglass gave a 
.sketch of his slave experience, and of slavery itself, 
but somewhat embarrassed by his unnatural position. 
He told how he learned to read of his conflict with 
the alphabet and the abs amid the hazards of slavery. 
He learned to write on board fences, making some of 
his early capitals with their heads downwards and 
looking the wrong way. It was laughable to hear 
him. Still, we could not help thinking of humanity 
driven to such extremity for the rudiments of knowl 
edge, here amid the lights and professions of a relig 
ious republic. Here, where learning is as common as 
the air, the poor slave, trodden down below humanity, 
has to steal the crumbs of intelligence that lay about 
almost within reach of the dogs in the street. Thanks 
to our missionary, theologizing, Bible-circulating, 
tract-spreading religion ! It has slaves whom it dooms 
to death for learning the letters and syllables of the 
language they have to speak, and in which they want 
to read the Bible ! 

Next morning the meeting opened tree and unfet 
tered. A voluntary prayer was offered, not as an 
.unmeaning ceremony, as is common in fettered 



228 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

assemblies, and hunt s resolution was called. He 
made a plain, sensible, spirit-moving speech upon it. 
Many others spoke, as mentioned in the report of the 
meeting, and with exceeding power. We hardly ever 
witnessed a half day like it ; it was an uninterrupted 
stream of solemn interest throughout, particularly the 
passage between brothers Coues and Garrison. 
Brother Coues had rarely attended anti-slavery meet 
ings, and had been rather repelled by apprehensions 
of anti slavery harshness and denunciation. He 
deprecated in his speech, which was very beautiful 
in manner, but we think, too full of allowance in sen 
timent to pro-slavery claims, the denial of Christian 
character to all slave-holding; and claimed for them 
a sort of indulgence to remain in their unhallowed 
relation to their fellow-men. Garrison answered him 
in apostolic style ; and the manner in which brother 
Coues received his over-powering admonition, was 
most affecting and delightful. It was uttered with 
Christian fidelity, and received with Christian magnan 
imity. Garrison s appeal was one of the best expos 
itions of Christianity we have ever heard. Sundry 
clergymen heard it, who had doubtless often warned 
their flock against anti-slavery, on account of "the 
infidelity of Garrison." They now heard him, 
and how must the remembrance of their falsehood 
have blistered their consciences, if hot iron had 
not seared them ! * * * * 

The Dover Enquirer, one of the party presses, in the 
magnificent struggle going on in the country for the 
loaves and fishes of office, ventured the other day to 
speak of the meeting, and of our remarks upon it. 
The editor supposed he had espied out an indefensi 
ble sentence or two, and he seized upon them with 
true pro-slavery veracity, leaving out all that common 
honesty would have published in connection, to give 
the reader opportunity to judge of the unwarrantable 
extracts. Colonel Wadleigh (for most all of these 
political editors are colonels or majors), is almost fero 
cious for the sacred honor of the meeting house. The 
politicians and militia officers nearly all are. They 
think meeting houses are the sure defense of religion, 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 229 

as the clergy think the militia is the sure defense of 
a state, which the ministers profoundly believe. They 
have little confidence in any other security but mili 
tary. " Trust God " they say with Cromwell, but like 
him they would emphasize particularly, "keep your 
powder dry." The editor imagines a discrepancy 
between our doubting whether we could have had a 
meeting house for our discussion meetings, and the 
fact that one was opened to evening lectures. It was 
of them of which we spoke, and not of the public lec 
tures or set speeches. These are not near so sacri 
legious as free discussion on resolutions. We do not 
think Brother Young would consent to have his taber 
nacle exposed to another discussion meeting when 
Parker Pillsbury and Stephen S. Foster were to be let 
loose among the speakers. The Rev. Brother Horton, 
of the elegant piece of gothic that stands in the shoes 
of Brother Freeman s old law office, would have hardly 
allowed Garrison to profane his solemn sanctuary. 
But they were not asked for nor offered. It was very 
convenient, for Dover has so few that are interested 
in anti-slavery, that almost any building is big enough 
to accommodate its meetings there. A " hard cider " 
meeting, to procure for the poor, bleeding, miserable 
country THE RELIEF of a couple of bank vetoes, would 
have called for a more spacious apartment. Friend 
Wadleigh would have been out at that, with a log 
cabin or musty cider cask about him in the way of 
badge, chock full of patriotic excitement. He spoke 
of our hard talk about Dover people. We have this 
to say of them, whether we said it before or not; that 
so small an attendance in so populous a village, on a 
meeting, that for magnitude of subject and for talent 
and ability in the discussion, has never been paralleled 
in New Hampshire, betrays a peculiarity of taste not 
the most creditable. A whig hurrah, or a democratic 
Van Buren row would have assembled twenty times as 
many at least, if not a hundred. The laborers of the 
place would have gladly attended, had they under 
stood the character of our meeting and been permitted 
to go. The rulers and priests dare not have them go. 
Any laboring people under heaven, if sober, would 



230 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

have been delighted with that meeting. Probably 
Friend Wadleigh would not. He is a politician. Pol 
iticians tastes could not like it, any more than rum- 
burnt, tobacco-steeped palates can like spring water. 
O, the miserable lot of a political editor ! We know 
none more deplorable, except a rum-selling store 
keeper s or taverner s, All his life long, he has to 
stand and watch the weathercock, and drop in with its 
variations. To conclude with Friend Wadleigh, we 
ask him, if he ventures to publish anything more from 
our paper, to give enough for a sample, if he have not 
space, after giving the whig victories, to publish the 
whole. 

The second evening of the meeting went off far 
better than the .first. The church and minister resolu 
tions were discussed. The meeting was not quite so 
unshackled as it would have been out of a Solomon s 
temple. For dedication is a decayer of free discussion. 
" Sacred architecture," as Daniel Webster calls it, is 
not so promotive of free talk or thought as it is to 
something more agreeable to the apprehension of car 
dinals and clergy. The resolutions, however, were 
pretty profitably discussed. Friend Smith, of Somers- 
worth, made a good speech. Henry C. Wright got 
Rev. Brother Young into the sled where anybody but 
a divine would have had his legs broke. A divine can 
get out of a sled where nobody else could. And if 
his legs are broke all up into fragments, he can walk 
off on them as though nothing had happened. Or, if 
he limp, he is so solemn and sacred nobody will no 
tice it. The auditory were called on to vote. They 
could vote as they pleased. They had a right to 
speak. So had Rev. Brother Young. But he did not 
choose, or dare to. But when the vote was about to 
be taken, he got up in true cardinal style to warn the 
congregation not to vote for the resolves. He offered 
no argument. He had none to offer. Nobody could 
have any, in truth. So he offered \\\s ghostly warnings- 
and caveats. He whined and looked solemn, and 
tried to clergy -fy the people out of their free vote. It 
was a blockhead effort. He had no right to try to 
induce that audience to vote by any other influence 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 231 

than argument and reason. He did not attempt to 
offer any of either. And Rev. Brother Scott, too, of 
the Methodist-Episcopal order, who had through the 
two days kept his solemn and cunning peace, he rose 
up on the eve of the vote to interpose his sacerdotal 
authority. Peradventure some poor class-led soul 
there, had been delivered enough to follow conscience 
a short space, and vote condemnation to a church and 
clergy that enslave humanity. He groaned out his 
naked opinion with all the impudence of Yankee sect, 
and all the importance of the Episcopal high church, 
which characterizes that order of our priesthood. 
Why did he not attempt an argument, or else hold his 
tongue? What right had he to try to influence re 
sponsible immortals by long-faced authority merely? 
It is supreme arogance, and an insult to all who have 
to hear it. Rev. Daniel I. Robinson attempted an ar 
gument. He is a Methodist, but he is a man, also, 
and although far out of his old and right way, as we 
think and see, he does not attempt to lead people after 
him, by merely a denominational disfigurement of 
face. We detest this holy puckerism, and will scout it. 
It makes fools of men, and roguery under it is su 
premely detestable. The resolutions passed, in spite 
of the reverend scarecrows and lamentations. 

The next morning, our Massachusetts friends 
returned to their homes, and the society met by 
adjournment to close the unfinished business ; expect 
ing only a short morning session. Reverend Brother 
Young, Francis Cogswell, esquire, and some other dis 
tinguished persons were promptly in attendance.. 
Brother Young seemed to feel relieved, by the absence 
of the Massachusetts men, of the embarrassment which 
had kept him two days silent, and he entered bravely 
into debate. A resolution was up, censuring those 
churches that still maintain the abomination of a 
negro pew. Brother Young took hold of it with 
quite an unceremonious hand. He spoke with true 
clerical superciliousness, of the rashness and indiscre 
tion of abolitionists, and of the inacuracy of the reso 
lution. The church, he said, was not at all responsi 
ble for the negro pew. They did not own the pews> 



232 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

nor build them ; it was the parish, and the church and 
parish were two things quite distinct as distinct as 
husband and wife, he said. He did not offer any 
amendment to the resolution, nor take any responsible 
part in the meeting, but only condescended to show 
the absurdity and folly of the resolve, and of those 
who advocated it. Brother Cogswell spoke of "the 
confusion of ideas " that seemed to prevail there, in 
mistaking pew-owners for the church, and in suppos 
ing that the churches had the real estate in meeting 
houses, and the regulation of negro pews. He denied 
that there were any such pews, and so did Brother 
Young, and called for proof. In reply it was said, 
after thanking the gentlemen for condescending to our 
debate, that there was some "confusion of ideas" in 
the meeting, but that it still appeared to abolitionists 
that the allowance of such an infernal exclusion in a 
house of worship, as negro pews, was the prerogative 
of the church and clergy who led the worship and 
accepted the house and the act of parish that it was 
not a question of estate, but of unrighteous distinc 
tion ; that as to the existence of it, the existence of 
the colored people in the country, might as well be 
questioned and as reasonably attempt to be proved. 
The pertinency of the comparison to " man and wife," 
by Brother Young, when speaking of church and par 
ish as two distinct things, was remarked on, as not 
expressive of vast separation, inasmuch as they twain 
were one flesh, etc., whereupon Brother Young denied 
that there was any prejudice against colored people, 
or desire to exclude them referred to distinction 
between domestics and employers, by way of showing 
that there was none between white people and colored. 
On being routed from that by innumerable instances 
of negro pews, and the like exclusions all over the 
country, which were poured in upon him by the meet 
ing, the reverend brother adroitly retreated upon 
this, that he had not denied the existence of prejudice, 
but that it was only against the color of the skin. It 
was against something else, he said ; a matter which 
nobody had agitated, or cared about ; a poor attempt 
to -get off, not candid, nor true. But these great 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 233 

meetings should have reporters. That Dover meeting 
fully reported, would have been one of the most 
entertaining and instructive ever holden. The elo 
quence poured forth on that occasion, should not be 
lost. * * A report of it would fill a 

volume ; and whoever began it would finish it. 

So far the Herald report of Mr. Rogers. Surely 
but for him, the outside world would have known very 
little of one of the most remarkable and important 
anti-slavery conventions ever held in the state or the 
nation. A note was struck in it which rang out loud 
and long over New England and round the land, as 
will be seen, if these chronicles get truly and faith 
fully recorded, even though to but limited extent, 
which may be their chief calamity. A few special 
explanatory remarks on the resolutions adopted, 
may still be in place for the benefit of those 
whose fathers and mothers had no active, friendly 
hand in the mighty moral upheavals of that period. 
And surely they were almost the whole nation then, 
whatever may be the boast of to-day. 

The first resolution, though wholly devotional, had 
in it no unmeaning cant, for our movement was strictly 
moral and religious, and probably a large majority of 
the convention were devout members of some Chris 
tian church. 

The resolution declaring our determination not to 
aid in the rendition of escaped slaves, was at that 
moment especially proper, were it only as an agitating 
and educating instrumentality. The constitutional 
obligation was then beginning to be more strenuously 
insisted upon, as anti-slavery sentiment increased. 
And the way to Canada was more and more patron 
ized, and many faithful conductors were found for the 
underground railroad up to that city of refuge from 



234 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

our republican, democratic system of whips and 
chains, blood-hounds and red-hot branding irons. 
And the lore of college and university and the wis 
dom and piety of the theological seminary had been 
called in or voluntarily tendered in support and sanc- 
tification of such diabolical doings. And the great 
body of the clergy, as well as the rank and file of 
both political parties, were ready spaniels, sharp of 
scent, fleet of foot, to run and bark, to catch and 
hold as bidden. And this explains the reason why we 
publicly resolved that we would not obey the fugitive 
slave law. 

The two long resolutions relating to the nomina 
tion of Edward Everett, as minister to Great Britain, 
with two other appointments of less significance, 
hinted at a good deal more than was true. No such 
refusal was meant or intended, nor certainly for any 
such reason as was held out. Neither was there really 
reason for abolitionists to stoop to pick up such 
crumbs of comfort from the circumstances, as some of 
us appeared to hope. It was not regard for northern 
rights which led to such little resistance as was made. 
It was only fear of disturbance in the party ranks, 
and dread of loss of party supremacy. 

And then as to Mr. Everett s anti-slavery senti 
ments, the south had no fear of them. He had al 
ready given full proof of his subserviency, at sundry 
times and in divers manners. The slaveholders fre 
quently chastized their slaves, not for any offence 
committed, but only to remind them that they were 
still slaves, and must know and keep their place. Mr. 
Everett was now called to a new and high dignity, 
and it seemed proper to his northern masters, or at 
least prudent, to impose a few cracks of the cow- 
skin, were it only to quicken his memory, as well as 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 235 

movement, in their foreign service, to them at that 
time, nearly as important as any at home. Mr. Everett 
was a member of congress in 1826, when an amend 
ment was submitted to the federal constitution, which 
brought up u the vexed question" of slavery. Then 
came his opportunity to declare what he called his 
"confession of faith" on the terrible problem. His 
large learning, gained at Harvard and the institutions 
of Germany, and especially scripture learning, for it 
must be remembered, he was Jteverend Edward Everett, 
led him to strictly examine and expound to his fellow 
congressmen the true meaning of the Greek word, 
doulos, as used in the New Testament. His speech 
on the occasion was printed under his own supervision, 
and the following is a paragraph : 

The great relation of servitude, in some form or 
other, with greater or less departure from the theoretic 
equality of man, is ///-separable to our nature. I know 
of no way by which the form of this servitude can be 
fixed, but by political institution. Domestic slavery, 
though I confess not by that form of servitude which 
seems to be most beneficial to the master, certainly 
not that which is most beneficial to the servant, is not, 
in my judgment to be set down as an immoral and 
irreligious relation. I cannot admit that religion has 
but one voice to the slave, and that this voice is "rise 
against your master." No sir ; the New Testament 
says, "slaves obey your masters ; " and though I know 
full well, that in the benignant operation of Christian 
ity which gathered master and slave around the same 
communion table, this unfortunate institution disap 
peared in Europe, yet 1 cannot admit that, while it 
subsists, its duties are not pre-supposed and sanctioned 
by religion. It is a condition of life, as well as any 
other, to be justified by morality, religion and interna 
tional law. 

In another paragraph, Mr. Everett declared : 
Sir, I am no soldier ; my habits and education are 
very unmilitary ; but there is no cause in which I 



236 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

would sooner buckle a knapsack on my back, and put 
a musket on my shoulder, than that of putting down 
a servile insurrection at the south ! 

In 1834, Mr. Everett was elected Governor of 
Massachusetts. The anti-slavery enterprise then in 
its fourth year, had already greatly agitated the north 
and south, and filled the latter with apprehension and 
alarm. While northern politicians of both parties 
were clamoring for the suppression of The Liberator 
and other anti-slavery publications, as " incendiary 
matter" Governor McDuffie of South Carolina, in his 
message to the legislature, pronounced slavery "the 
corner-stone of the republican edifice." And he 
moreover declared that the laws should punish such 
interference with slavery as that of the abolitionists, 
by death, without benefit of clergy. 

And Governor Everett, of Massachusetts, in his 
message to the legislature, responded on this wise : 

Whatever, by direct and necessary operation, is cal 
culated to excite an insurrection among the slaves, 
has been held by highly respectable legal authority, 
an offence against the people of the commonwealth, 
which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at com 
mon law. The patriotism of all classes must be 
invoked to abstain from a discussion, which, by exas 
perating the master, can have no other effect than to 
render more oppressive, the condition of the slave ; 
and which, if not abandoned, there is great reason to 
fear, will prove the rock on which the union will 
split. 

Surely, with such a record as this, unsullied by any 
anti-slavery blemish except of most indirect character, 
and above all, never having by word or deed expressed 
sympathy or approval towards the anti-slavery enter 
prise, it is hardly possible that the south felt any fear 
or distrust of Mr. Everett, as ambassador to the court 
of Great Britain. If we cannot trust him, the slave 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 237 

power might well have asked, whom can we trust ? 
They first whipped him with seeming rejection, that he 
might not forget who were his masters, and then con 
firmed his nomination. 

The outcry raised against the south, by the north 
ern pro-slavery press, for its apparent distrust of 
Mr. Everett, is well characterized in the second of the 
two resolutions at the Dover convention. It was the 
rejection merely of a party nomination ; not any insult 
to liberty! 

All three of the nominations named in the resolu 
tions, were confirmed ; the other two were New 
Hampshire men. Hon. Joel Eastman was appointed 
to a local position in his own state, and Gen. James 
Wilson to be surveyor-general of Iowa. 

The other resolutions in the report relate to some 
prescriptive outrages perpetrated on persons of color 
by the officials of the Eastern railway, then running 
from Boston eastward through Lynn and Salem. The 
church setting the example of a " negro pew," ex 
tending often to the sacramental table, as well as to 
seats in the meeting-houses, the Eastern railroad made 
haste to follow it in arranging its passenger cars. A 
"negro car," always inferior in convenience and com 
fort, was provided, and all colored people, men, 
women, children, well-dressed or ill, cultivated and 
accomplished, or barbaric and rude, were driven into 
it. Charles Lenox Remond, an elegant, highly-bred 
colored man, a perfect gentleman in whatever exalts 
and ennobles manhood, an intimate friend of Lady 
Byron, and other of the most distinguished personages 
in Great Britain ; and Frederick Douglass, now so 
well and widely known in two hemispheres, intimate 
while abroad with the like of O Connell and other 
eminent men of the two houses of parliament, both of 



238 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

these, on returning from their foreign travels, were 
subjected to such cruel indignities, and two or three 
times with added and most aggravating accompani 
ments. 

Senator Wilson, in his " History of the rise and fall 
of the slave power in America," volume first, page 
492, refers to " the unchristian prejudice " which induced 
the regulations adopted by railroads to exclude persons 
of color from the ordinary passenger cars, and com 
pelling them to ride in cars by themselves, or sometimes, 
without regard to tastes, character or means, in " sec 
ond-class cars," bare and comfortless, the enforced re 
ceptacle of all who from any cause, could not, or 
would not take seats in first-class cars. The two cor 
porations in Massachusetts, which were prominent in 
making and enforcing these odious regulations, were 
the Eastern and the Boston and New Bedford. * * 

* * * In the year 1841, David Ruggles, a colored 
man of New York, who had aided six hundred of his 
countrymen in escaping from slavery, was ejected from 
the cars against the earnest protest of Rev. John M. 
Spear, for the simple offence of taking a seat with 
white passengers. He brought an action in the New 
Bedford police court against the employes of the com 
pany for an aggravated assault. But Justice Crapo 
discharged promptly the offenders. On the Eastern 
railroad, scenes of violence were of frequent occur 
rence. Colored persons of character and intelligence 
were, in several instances, violently dragged from the 
cars occupied by white passengers ; and in some cases 
their friends, who remonstrated against such brutality, 
were treated in like manner. Among those forcibly 
ejected from the cars, was Frederick Douglass. * * 

* * * The general agent of the Massachusetts 
anti-slavery society was repeatedly insulted while trav- 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 239 

eling on that road, for remonstrating against its un 
just and inhuman usages. In one instance he re 
ceived blows and kicks, from the effects of which he 
did not recover for a number of weeks. Once, a 
colored man being ejected, Dr. Daniel Mann and sev 
eral other white passengers remonstrated, when they, 
also, were seized and dragged violently out and pro 
hibited from pursuing their journey, " unless they be 
haved themselves ! " Dr. Mann brought an action in 
the Boston police court against the conductor of the 
train, but could obtain no redress for such high-handed 
outrages. * * Charles Lennox Remond 

was a native of Salem, a colored gentleman of intelli 
gence and worth, and of highly preposessing man 
ners. In England, where he had spent nearly two 
years, he had vindicated the cause of the oppressed, 
and had won the confidence and applause of the 
British abolitionists. He was everywhere hailed as 
the champion of his race, and treated with most 
friendly and respectful consideration. He bore from 
England the warmest sympathies and best wishes of 
the friends of emancipation. He was commissioned 
to bear the address of sixty thousand Irishmen to 
their countrymen in America, headed by the names of 
O Connell and Father Mathew. Arriving in Boston, 
he went to the Eastern railroad station to take passage 
for his home in Salem. He was not allowed to take 
his seat with other passengers, put was compelled to 
occupy what was called the " Jim Crow " car. Several 
of his white friends, wishing to welcome him on his 
return, met him at the station and took seats with him. 
They were, however, ordered by the conductor to 
leave the "Jim Crow " car, voluntarily, or to be removed 
by force ! Thus was this gentleman of character and 



240 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

culture, fresh from his travels and the hospitalities of 
the best families of England, rudely and roughly 
treated on his arrival in his native state. 

And Senator Wilson could have named others be 
sides Dr. Mann, who suffered similar indignities and 
for the same reasons. James N. Buffum had traveled 
extensively in Britain with Douglass, addressing im 
mense anti-slavery meetings ; but in his own town of 
Lynn, with him was dragged out of railway cars, 
making no resistance except to cling to the backs of 
the seats, which, as they were athletic men, they gen 
erally brought out with them, " one in each hand." 
The railroad authorities at length became so indig 
nant that they refused to allow the trains to stop in 
Lynn at all. And for several days the rule was en 
forced. At one time they sent a police-officer with 
the trains to see that their atrocious mandates on 
the subject of negro hate were obeyed. One 
day Mr. Buffum saw a white man riding in the 
cars with a pet monkey in his lap. He good-naturedly 
asked the conductor : " How is this, that you drag 
out the connecting link, as you call the colored man, 
and permit the two extremes, the white man and the 
monkey, the opposite link on the brute side, to 
ride unmolested as any white gentlemen?" The 
conductor did not reply. He had his orders and must 
obey them. And the shameful "Jim Crow" car con 
tinued, with occasional outrages, till public opinion 
rose indignantly on legislation, and compelled enact 
ments sweeping them out of existence. " The negro 
pew " in churches can still be found, north, east and 
west, as well as south. 



CHAPTER XL 

DISCUSSION ON CHURCH ORGANIZATIONS BY REV. MR. 
PUTNAM AND REV. MR. SARGENT HILLSBOROUGH 
COUNTY CONVENTION AT HANCOCK AND MEETING 
AT NASHUA, BY MR. FOSTER, AND WHAT CAME 
OF IT. 

The Strafford-county anniversary has occupied much 
space, but discloses the genius and spirit, philosophy 
and methods, of the anti-slavery enterprise ; and could 
the addresses and speeches have been reported and 
published with the proceedings, the wondrous ability 
of at least some of its advocates, would have been no 
less apparent. The editor of the Herald earned un 
payable thanks for his glowing descriptions which are 
as just and truthful as they are brilliant and beautiful. 

New organizanion was now asserting itself, and 
gave us some inconvenience, chiefly through clerical 
influence and action, as the following incident will 
reveal : 

In the winter of 1841, Rev. Rufus A. Putnam, Con 
gregational minister, of Chichester, proposed an even 
ing discussion with our faithful friend, Rev. Mr. 
Sargent, of West Chester, on the question : "Are our 
church organizations Christian?" Happening that 
week to be at home in Concord, and the moon and 
sleighing favoring, I proposed to Mr. Rogers that we 
attend and hear the arguments. Knowing that our 
new organized clergy, of most of the sects, were then 
in arms to defend them, he readily consented, and 
just as the sun was setting and the moon rising, we 



242 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

set out on our ride of seven or eight miles. A mile 
short of Mr. Putnam s meeting-house, where the 
meeting was held, lived Mr. Benjamin Emery, a true 
anti-slavery man, and there we left our horse and 
sleigh, and with him walked the remainder of the dis 
tance. We arrived in time for the preliminary exer 
cises, which were quite as many and lengthy as at the 
ordinary Sunday services of that day, now over forty 
years ago. Mr. Putnam read a hymn, which was sung 
by the choir. Then the Methodist minister offered 
(performed, Rogers called it), a long, miscellaneous 
prayer. The people were not impressed, nor inter 
ested ; and it seemed a waste of valuable time. Some 
had come long distances to attend what it was pre 
sumed would be an interesting, instructive and profit 
able discussion, and were impatient, evidently, to get 
at the business of the occasion. It might be unchar 
itable to presume that the unexpected arrival from 
Concord had something to do with the prolonged de 
votional exercises. But the editor of the Herald had 
voice as well as pen, and it would have been uncourt- 
eous not to have invited him to a part in the proceed 
ings of the meeting. But undoubtedly the less time 
allotted to him, the better it might be for the affirma 
tive side of the question in hand. And so some were 
not surprised that prayer and praise were thus pro 
longed, even though inopportune, for still another 
hymn had to be solemnly read and then sung. 

There was a good country audience, some, like Mr. 
Rogers and myself, having come several miles. Pre 
liminaries being settled at last, Mr. Putnam appeared 
behind a huge pile of notes, newspapers, and other 
signs of most elaborate preparation, and commenced 
a tiresome apology, for ill health, many duties, includ 
ing attending a funeral, and general want of suitable 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 243 

preparation and arrangement. He feared he shouid 
not be able to speak to acceptance, on account of 
bodily infirmity, but would do the best he could, 
and there were others present who would take part 
in the meeting, which was to be free to all. He con 
tinued in this strain till we felt constrained to believe 
that he had made all possible preparation, and, be 
sides, was not over-desirous that his opponents should 
have more time than was their right. And so it turned 
out. He had a manuscript discourse of, apparently, 
about his usual length, besides piles of newspapers, 
which he read at intervals, with dry and desultory 
comments and needless explanations, consuming quite 
two hours, in spite of "bodily ailments," which, had 
they been as described, should have kept him at home. 
His main subject, instead of being as was expected, 
the Christianity of the churches, was the infidelity and 
Jacobinism of the old organization. And he tried to 
prove it by showing that Garrison and others in Mass 
achusetts had betrayed the anti-slavery cause, by sift 
ing into The Liberator other subjects than anti-slavery, 
such as non-resistence and woman s rights, no Sabbath, 
no ministry, no church of Christ. He did not pretend 
that these subjects were brought openly into the anti- 
slavery society, but we were secretly promoting them. 
He read a part of the phrenological character of Gar 
rison, as given by O. S. Fowler, to prove his secretive- 
ness, and that he did not tell everybody all he thought. 
And Rogers and Pillsbury and Foster had introduced 
these subjects into New Hampshire, and Garrison and 
Rogers had even carried them to England. He read 
with all the emphasis at his command, something from 
a print he had brought, advocating the right and pro 
priety of unlimited intercourse of the sexes, and 
placed it with his other documents, which he had given 



244 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

his audience to understand were publications of old 
organization abolitionists. That was a little too atro 
cious for Mr. Rogers. He at once rose and demanded 
of him "the author of that beastly stuff!" and, 
moreover, why he read it here. Mr. Putnam admitted 
that it was not an anti-slavery publication, but then 
Garrison associated in convention with persons of 
such sentiments, though he by no means presumed he 
held them himself. "But why, then, produce them 
here, and read them as though you believed, and in 
tended your hearers should believe, that he both held 
and inculcated them?" I had till that moment 
thought Mr. Putnam honest, but easily influenced by 
his abler clerical brethren ; though I could never have 
suspected him of any such duplicity, not even as a 
"pious fraud." Had not some one been there, how 
ever, to arraign him, probably many present, and 
nearly all his own people, would have supposed such 
"beastly stuff" old organized anti-slavery morality. 
The purpose was palpable that by such reckless au 
dacity he expected to prove that the abolitionists were 
promoting the most shameless libertinism, under the 
guise of anti-slavery. Had he been let alone, he 
doubtless would have done it, at least to his own sat 
isfaction, and to the great delight of all who implicitly 
trusted him. And yet we certainly always regarded 
Mr. Putnam as, on the whole, one of the very best of 
the new organized ministers. But there he was in a 
dilemma like that. Self-convicted, too. Mr. Rogers 
charitably attributed it to ministership. The end he 
imagined to be right. Of the means there need be 
no scruple nor hesitation. Mr. Rogers said, and 
doubtless truly, that had the device of reading that 
filthy newspaper been perpetrated in a law court, it 
would have excluded the daring offender from the 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 245 

court, and the rabble that haunt the court-house would 
have spurned him from their groggy circle. In his own 
words, Rogers, in describing the scene in the Herald, 
farther said : "There is some regard for principle in 
a desperate game of sharps before a jury ; but not a 
shadow of any in a church trial. * * * * Every 
man s and every woman s experience, who has had 
trial of them, can testify that this is true. * * * 
* * We are not speaking of the clergy as men, 
aside from their office. "But bring the church into 
straits ; disturb their denomination ; touch their cler 
ical power, and they will out Herod the evil one him 
self in their obliquity. Literally they stick at 
nothing." 

Certainly every word of this was warranted by 
what we saw that evening. But at the end of nearly 
two hours weary reading and not less tiresome talk 
ing, Mr. Putnam sat down. Once in the time, his op 
ponent in the discussion, Rev. Benjamin Sargent, 
asked him one simple question. He was reading a 
charge against the Methodist church, relating to sla 
very, made by Stephen Foster in some printed paper. 
Mr. Sargent asked if the charge were not true. Mr. 
Putnam declined to answer. One of his church mem 
bers came to his rescue, and in most flippant tones 
protested against any interruption. When Mr. Rogers 
asked why Mr. Pntnam read the " beastly " newspaper 
he did, the same church member had interposed, and 
quite officiously, as if in some sense the armor-bearer 
of his chief. He said " Mr. Putnam might as well 
answer forty questions as one." Of some questions, 
he could more easily have answered forty thousand, 
than the single one then asked. 

Mr. Sargent, in his brief reply, expressed a just and 
proper regret that the question proposed, had not yet 



246 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

been even approached. He asked what the opinions 
of William Lloyd Garrison, on the sabbath question, 
the non-resistance, or woman s equality questions had 
to do with " The Christianity of Church Organiza 
tions ? " to consider which the meeting had been 
called. He had no objection to stating what were the 
views of Garrison on all those subjects. As to the 
Sabbath, he showed and proved that Garrison held 
exactly with the Quakers, and they with John Calvin, 
Martin Luther, Archbishops Paley, Whately, and sev 
eral others whom he named. On non-resistance he 
cited Jesus, the Christ, in the whole letter and spirit 
of his memorable sermon on the mount. For woman s 
equality in the church, he quoted him who said : 
"there is neither Jew nor Greek; bond nor free; 
male nor female." He spoke of sectarianism as 
non-christian, as a denial practically, of the Christian 
name and faith ; that as there was neither Jew nor 
Greek, male nor female, so there could be neither 
Congregational nor Presbyterian, Baptist nor Metho 
dist ; and consequently, that our church organizations, 
whatever else they may be, or may not be, are surely 
not Christian, nor even Paulian. He thought Mr. Put 
nam admited that sectarianism was unchristian, by his 
frequent association with his neighbor, the Methodist 
church. Mr. Putnam denied that his association with 
Methodism was frequent. Mr. Sargent said he had 
been told moreover, that a member of Mr. Putnam s 
church had been excommunicated for attending 
Methodist meetings. That, too, Mr. Putnam denied. 
But we were assured on the spot that it was true, and 
that the person was then present. Mr. Rogers offered 
the columns of the Heraldic any authentic statement 
of the facts, but I think no statement by either side 
ever came. 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 247 

Mr. Sargent spoke but briefly, though every word 
was to the point and the purpose, and on the question 
mainly for which the meeting had come together. On 
sitting down he expressed the hope that Mr. Rogers 
and myself might have a little time, late as it had 
become, Mr. Putnam having occupied quite two hours. 
But before either of us could speak, Mr. Putnam had 
to reply to Mr. Sargent ; though not with success, but 
quite otherwise, we thought. Next, the church mem 
ber who had frequently spoken, or interrupted speak 
ing, had to be heard at some length, he too having 
numerous minutes and documents to assist his mem 
ory. Finally, the coast being clear, Mr. Rogers rose, 
evidently much to the satisfaction of a large part of 
the audience. He expressed his satisfaction at seeing 
so goodly a number present to hear for themselves. 
Anti-slavery he thought had been deprived of a fair 
hearing before the people, who had been greatly 
alarmed or hindered by the calumnies of the clergy 
and church. But he believed if the people could hear 
candidly and impartially, they would render a just 
verdict and the slave would have his liberty. He said 
the drift of Mr. Putnam s reasoning was to convict the 
old organized abolitionists of wickedly incumbering 
the anti-slavery cause with extraneous doctrines and 
demands. He denied the charge wholly and totally ; 
declared the old organized abolitionists had but one 
fundamental doctrine and demand, namely : that our 
slave-holding was a sin and a crime, and should be 
immediately and unconditionally abandoned. Whereas 
the new organization had many doctrines, such as 
sacredness of human governments, and church organ 
izations, and their machinery ; sabbath, ministry, and 
the like, woman s inferiority, necessity of litigation, 



248 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

and many other things, and he proved all his positions 
by simply producing and reading the constitutions of 
both organizations. 

Mr. Rogers was asked if he had not changed his 
opinion respecting anti-slavery political action. He 
said frankly, he had, but becoming convinced that all 
legislation was force, and that as anti-slavery, in our 
opinion, was a strictly moral and religious movement, 
a work of repentance and reformation, we could not 
resort to physical force. He contended that without 
the life-taking power, or the power and right, usurped 
or assumed right, to enforce its decrees, government 
would be powerless ; a mere exhortation. 
That if slave-holding were forbidden by congress, it 
must be with penalties and power to enforce them at 
whatever cost, otherwise all such legislation must be 
null and void. If the penalty were resisted by force, 
it must be repelled by force to the extent, if need be, 
of cutting off the head of every offender by the sword. 
And so, to enforce a law, would be as the march of an 
army. Or if the penalty were not death, but only 
imprisonment, and the culprits refused to enter the 
dungeon doors, the sword of the marshal must enforce 
the penalty even at cost of life. Or if fine only be the 
penalty, it must be collected though at point of bayo 
net or sword. If law be penal, it is capital ; and if 
not penal it is no law. " Finally," said Rogers, "legal 
abolition of slavery would be abolition at the point of 
the sword, and as decidedly military in spirit, and as 
far from being moral as would be an invasion of the 
slave plantations by an anti-slavery army." Mr. 
Rogers told the people no less frankly that as an 
abolitionist, he felt compelled to denounce the clergy 
as an anti-christian order, and the sectarian church 
organizations, as disowned by Christianity and forbid- 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 249 

den of God. They used their influence, he said, in 
the name of Christianity, to crush out the anti-slavery 
enterprise. Had they not done that, we, as abolition 
ists, should have let them alone. But in doing that, 
they proved themselves false to the Christian name 
and all that it implies, and fidelity to the slave 
demanded that we unmask and expose them. Had 
they let the slave and his cause alone, the clergy 
might rule the people, and the people might bow to 
their authority, as to any other idolatry, and anti- 
slavery might never have molested them. 
Mr. Rogers had every ear, and it was a golden oppor 
tunity well improved. It is impossible to convey any 
idea of the impression produced at that late hour of a 
winter s night, many having come several miles to 
attend the meeting. 

My own part in the discussion was of little account, 
and almost literally postponed to the eleventh hour. 
Our church-member opponent, in the plenitude of his 
charity, had declared he could even fellowship me as 
an abolitionist. When I rose, at the last moment, there 
was only time for me to decline the extended hand, in 
the name of, and for the sake of anti-slavery consist 
ency, fidelity and moral integrity. In the first place, 
our friend was an abolitionist, tried and true, as was 
supposed. Then he apostatized into the new organi 
zation and liberty party. Then he back-slid, or down- 
slid, into the whig party, and became a champion in 
the presidential canvass, 

" For Tippccanoe and Tyler too," 

until it was almost as hard to count him as it was the 
speckled pig of Uncle Peter. He said he could 
count them all, only that one ; but he jumped and 
flew around so, it was impossible to count him. The 
meeting adjourned in excellent humor, though my op- 

16 



250 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

ponent regretted that there was no time to reply to 
my illustration of the pig, which he declared was of 
the nature of a libel. And we were afterward in 
formed that he deliberately contemplated a suit at 
law, to restore his offended dignity. But no such 
calamity ensued. 

We footed it briskly back under the bright moon 
to Mr. Emery s, the merry sleighbells of the farm 
ers from remote hills and valleys swiftly passing us. 
A hasty cup of tea and accompaniments, while the 
boys put our Tunbridge in position from her warm 
stable, well prepared us for our hour s midnight ride, 
and we trotted gaily into our own street and yard just 
as the old Baptist church clock told the hour of 
twelve. 

Such, at that time, was new organized clerical anti- 
slavery. And the best of it. It is a sorrowful con 
sideration, that nearly all the parties named in this 
narration have gone to the realm of departed spirits. 
A good reason why their words and works should be 
regarded with all the respect and charity possible. 
None doubted Mr. Putnam s hatred of slavery ; but, 
with his sect generally, especially its ministers, the 
church organization and its machinery were more 
than the liberty of the enslaved. Strange how priest 
and Levite are much the same in all time. And the 
" Good Samaritans," though often outlawed by state 
and church, are ever foremost in rescuing the robbed 
and despoiled, the fallen and oppressed, from even 
the thraldom, civil and political as well as ecclesias 
tical, of the church and clergy themselves. 

This work is Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles, not 
history of the anti-slavery enterprise. The present 
generation can know little of the labors and experi 
ences of the years between 1831 and 1861 ; nor can 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 251 

any better lessons be now given than by true descrip 
tions, word pictures, taken on the spot, and by the 
actors in or witnesses of, the scenes and encounters. 
The following report of a Hillsborough county, New 
Hampshire, convention, is also by Mr. Rogers. He 
aided me immensely in conducting, he shall now aid 
me no less in reporting it to history and posterity. 
The world knows far too little of the editor of the 
Herald of Freedo7n. Part of the account, personal to 
this writer, is given with deep humility, and only at 
the earnest solicitation of his few surviving friends 
and fellow-laborers ^in the great conflict, whose will 
and wishes may well be his highest law. It is from 
the Herald of October 2ist, 1842 : 

THE HANCOCK CONVENTION. Another grand anti- 
slavery meeting has transpired. And truth enough 
has been told to revolutionize a nation, with either 
eyes to see or ears to hear, or hearts to understand. 
Our nation has neither. We can hope for little more 
than to prevent the coming on of another generation 
like the present. We may cripple the power of the 
slaves of the present age to disable the generation 
that is rising from discerning the truth. If we can, 
the coming generation may have sense and courage 
enough to perceive that slaveholding is not the quint 
essence of righteousness. 

Six of us went over to the Hancock convention 
from Concord : Joseph and Mary Ann French, Parker 
Pillsbury, Stephen Foster and Caroline Farrand, and 
myself. A half day s ride through a most benighted 
region, embracing Reverend Moses Kimball s prevince 
of Hopkinton, whose only remnant of humanity that 
I know of is their tasty jail, the moral aspect of the 
whole way contrasting mournfully with the glorious 
upland country and a yellow autumn day, brought us 
to a couple of anti-slavery homes, on the Henniker 
highlands, George and Daniel Cogswell s. We were 
welcomed with a heartiness and cheer that fully made 
up for the utter blank which stretched all the way 



252 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

from there to Concord. I don t know of a single 
habitation in all that distance that would have given 
us a human reception, had they known us as we were, 
the mortal enemies of slavery, and of its patrons, the 
priesthood. We left the river road, on the margin of 
the Contoocook, and wound our way among the hills 
to the southward of the beautiful village of Henniker. 
It brought us at length into a valley behind the high 
ridge that overlooks the village. We ascended to the 
summit, where stand the pleasant and comfortable 
dwellings of our two friends. Brother dwellings they 
are, near by each other as are the families, twin in 
affection as in kindred. I could hardly image to my 
self a more desirable location. Remote, but not lonely, 
the two families, alone, affording each other abundant 
society. A glorious prospect stretches around them. 
Off to the south, beyond the deep, narrow valley, rose 
high, wooded hills, their heavy hard-wood growth 
touched gorgeously with the frost- pencil of October. 
North, the village, shining at their feet, with its 
painted dwellings and green fields, deformed only by 
a sectarian steeple or two and a kindred rum tavern, 
a wide upland country swelling beyond, rising in the 
distance and terminating with old Kearsarge, its bare 
head among the drifting clouds. 

After a most pleasant refreshment, bodily and men 
tal, with our affectionate friends, (who have not yet 
cast off from their association their pro-slavery church 
corporation) we resumed our ride for Hancock, among 
some of the boldest inhabited scenery I have ever 
seen in New Hampshire. Bold and free as his own 
intrepid spirit, we passed the farm on which grew up, 
from four years old, our noble coadjutor and veteran 
fellow-laborer, Parker Pillsbury. The rugged moun 
tain homestead where he was bred from early child 
hood bred to toil ; where he worked through all his 
young life, hard and faithfully as his manhood is labor 
ing for the slave, with almost as little acknowledge 
ment or thanks as the world then awarded him, when 
he developed obscurely among the rocks. We passed 
the solitary school house where he was allowed the 
few weeks schooling of his childhood. But thanks 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 253 

they were so few. He was educating all the better 
for humanity s service on that rugged farm. He there 
taught himself to be a MAN. A great lesson he had 
effectually learned before he came in contact with 
seminaries and a priesthood. These proved unequal 
on that account, to over-match and cower down his 
homespun nobility of soul. They tied their fetters 
round his manly limbs, but he snapped them as Samson 
did the withes, and went out an abolitionist, carrying 
off the very theological gates with him upon his manly 
shoulders. He is away from home now ; gone on a 
campaign into Rhode Island, and I will have a word 
about him. It is due from me, and has long been. 

The abolitionists of the country ought to know 
Parker Pillsbury better than they do. I know him 
for all that is noble in soul, and powerful in talent and 
eloquence. The remote district school houses in New 
Hampshire and in the granite old county of Essex, 
Massachusetts, where he was born, would bear me 
witness to all I could say. He is one of the strong 
men of our age. I wish he oftener felt his own 
strength, if he ever feels it and would oftener put it 
forth, when he happens among the multitude audi 
ences of the lowlands, where he is too apt to keep 
himself in the back ground. And the abolitionists, I 
fear, have regarded him too much as he regards him 
self. He has overlooked himself, and they .have over 
looked him. He has undervalued his inestimable 
services, and the abolitionists have imitated him in it. 
He has gone unpaid not that, it is not the word he 
would allow. Paid or unpaid are not the words for 
him, but unsustained, unsupported. He has broken 
down in two or three years by giant labor, a consti 
tution of adamant, matured and hardened into iron 
in the school of his early toil. He has broken it down 
and what has he received in requital ? The curses of 
the priesthood and their vassal followers, and the for- 
getfulness of the abolitionists. He has been abroad 
in the fields, and they snugly at their homes ; he has 
performed the incessant labor of the galley slave, with 
little better than slaves fare, often times, and hardly 
better than slaves wages. He never complains, but 



254 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

that is no sign that I should not. I have neglected 
to complain for him, as other abolitionists have given 
cause for the complaint. It is a shame that such a 
man as Parker Pillsbury should be unappreciated. I 
know the anti-slavejy cause is odious in the commun 
ity ; I know its advocates are detested, but abolition 
ists should not forget their field laborers. Pillsbury, 
and Foster, and Beach have served and suffered in 
this cause the last two years as hardly any of its cham 
pions have suffered or served ; and their fidelity has 
had little other effect upon abolitionists than to cause 
them to shake their heads at their daring temerity. 
Instead of pouring into the breach made by them in 
the wall, abolitionists have, too many of them, halted 
and stood gazing to see how it would come out with 
them, amid the hosts of the enemy closing around 
them, or else absolutely discouraging their gallant ad 
vance. So it is, and so it is always to be. 

But I must hasten on to Hancock. Hancock, a 
revolutionary name named too for the bold signature 
at the head of the brave old Declaration, but the abode 
of a population anything but akin in spirit to revolu 
tionary fathers. Contented colonists and vassals, 
most of them under the bloated tyranny of Archibald 
Burgess, and a subaltern aristocracy. We reached the 
dwelling of our friends, the Boutells, at nightfall, 
where we were at once at home amid all that is kind 
and comforting in anti-slavery hospitality. 

We learned that the old Orthodox meeting-house 
had been obtained for our meeting, it being so owned 
that the Very Reverend Father Burgess could not by 
his nod prevent our having it. He had also given 
notice of the convention from his pulpit on the Sab 
bath before, and with all the ghostly importance of a 
haughty friar, had warned the church and congrega 
tion not to attend it. He gave the very sensible and 
priestly reason that if they did attend, and the meet 
ings were mobbed, / / would be laid to them ! As honest 
and rational remark as commonly falls from a thick 
headed priest. As if a mobbing could be laid to those 
who attended the meetings it was breaking up, and 
helped to bear the brunt and danger of it. The 
course of all others that would prove conclusively to 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 255 

the abolitionists that they were not countenancing the 
mob, so anybody but a soggy would perceive. And 
what did he talk about a mob for ? Had he used his 
influence to stir one up ? His minions, when spoken 
to about our having the house, said " Yes, if the aboli 
tionist will be answerable for any damage done to it." 
As much as to say, " If you will pay for what mischief 
we may do to it, you may have it." For who but they or 
their children would harm the house, or disturb the 
meetings ? The creatures of friend Archibald did stay 
away, but they sent their young fry to mob the con 
vention, by ringing the bell, by uncouth pranks and 
brute noises, by hurling stones along the aisles and 
through the windows. We picked up two stones 
large enough to cause instant death had they struck 
any of us on the temple or other dangerous place. 
They were preserved and brought away as trophies of 
the education of the hopes of the church in Hancock, 
and of the godly preaching of the Reverend Archi 
bald Burgess. He has preached there a good while. 
It was his sacerdotal pleasure that his old folks should 
stay away from the anti-slavery meeting, and that 
their nimbler offspring should go and do what in 
them lay to break it up. And so they did. The old 
ones staid away with commendable self denial. Many 
of them doubtless felt curious to go, but they had to 
deny themselves and stay away, and friend Archibald 
ought to commend them for it in the pulpit at the 
head of the regiment. Three days the meetings con 
tinued, day times and the evenings of two days, in 
the midst of a thick settled, populous village, and the 
mass of the population had to stay at home ; and the 
meetings ten fold more interesting and more instruc 
tive than any they had ever had among them of any 
kind. They would have thought so themselves if 
they could have been allowed to be there. But they 
were not. Archibald Burgess, their priest, admonished 
them to stay at home, and they did not dare to go. 
God admonished them by their consciences to go, but 
who was the Lord, that they should obey his voice ? 
Archibald Burgess was their Divinity, their fat Idol. 
They must worship him or he would frown at them 



256 ACTS OF ANTI:SLAVERV APOSTLES. 

from that awful pulpit, on that holy day, and, may be, 
pray against them, so that they would not have pros 
pered " in their basket and store." 

The godly children of the church, rang that old 
liberty bell till they made it hoarse, and almost broke 
their young mobocratic backs with pulling the rope. 
It annoyed the village more than it did us, who were 
down under it in the house. We told them to ring on 
in welcome. It was a free meeting, and every one of 
them was at liberty to take what part in it he chose. 
If he had no ability to speak against anti slavery, he 
might ring the bell, or he might sneeze, or bark, or 
throw stones. There A\as one pro-slavery tailor in 
the entry that had sneezed with great ability. I never 
heard anybody that had such talent at sneezing. I 
remembered hearing him sneeze when we were there a 
year ago. He sneezed out doors then, and he 
was heard all over the neighborhood. Mr. Burgess 
himself could not have sneezed like him, I don t be 
lieve. He came into the meeting, and when any of 
the speakers touched on Mr. Burgess connection with 
man-stealing, the tailor would sneeze in his defense. 
Others of his defenders would bark, some whistled, 
others scraped the floor with their hind feet ; one 
came in with a great club in his hand and marched up 
to the altar, and, with mock solemnity, took a seat be 
fore it. The young mobocrats " laffed." The aboli 
tionists took no notice of him nor them. He got sick 
of sitting there and marched out. Then they " laffed " 
out again. By and by he came in again and marched 
up into the pulpit. That was a killing manoeuvre. 
They did " laff " " like all possessed." We thought it 
was the very place for the poor fellow, and that he 
became it quite as well as their lubberly priest. He 
began to preach up there. Foster was speaking at 
the time, but gave way for him. He talked away and 
could not help saying some good things. One of the 
young religious gentry present interrupted him, for 
things did not seem to be working just right for the 
opposition. Pillsbury requested that the speaker be 
not interrupted, and said he had spoken more im 
portant truth, he would be bound to say, than had 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 257 

been spoken in that pulpit in two years. It was so 
apt a remark, and, with all, so confounded true, that 
the whole monocracy cheered it with a peal of applause. 
They could not help it. They forgot for the instant 
the errand they were sent on, and gave a volley of 
spontaneous and hearty cheers. After that they were 
glad for a while to be still. But Foster roused them 
again by his terrible invective. He displayed Burgess 
in such condemning light as one of the great brother 
hood of thieves anti patrons of robbery and adultery 
in the slave system, that they could not bear it, and 
began again to show their religious rage. Several 
large stones were hurled in at the front door, and 
went tumbling up the broad aisle to the foot of the 
pulpit. They were big enough to have broken the 
legs of anybody who might have stood there. By and 
by smash went the glass, and in at the side windows 
came the stones, glass rattling and stones bounding 
against the pew doors. Real clerical argumentation. 
Truly religious weapons of defense for the church and 
minister. 

This was in the evening. The academy students 
had poured in, in considerable numbers. There are 
two seminaries close by the meeting-house. A Con 
gregational academy and a Baptist, where Baptist 
larniri and orthodox larnin are severally taught. 
Dipped arithmetic and grammar at one, and sprinkled 
at the other. With whatever intent the students came 
in at first, the chief of them, after hearing awhile what 
was said and done on both sides, manfully moved into 
the center of the house, away from the mob at and 
near the doors, so as to separate themselves from it 
and identify themselves with the meeting. Some of 
them spoke and protested against the conduct of the 
mob, and behaved very honorably, and received the 
commendation of the convention. And I would here 
add that, if those young men were out from under 
this priestly control, they would most of them be 
abolitionists, and make free and noble men. And 
they will not be such slaves as their fathers. Their 
young breasts will inhale the reviving and disenthral 
ing atmosphere our reform is generating around them, 



258 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

and it cannot fail to give them more or less of free 
dom. Saturday morning there was hesitation about 
letting us have the key. It seemed to be feared that 
an impression was making in the meetings, dangerous 
to the church and the minister, although both staid 
away and kept most of the people away. Those 
young students would go in, and no knowing what 
effect it might have upon them. It was some time 
before the house could be got open, and shelter from 
a falling rain was obtained in sheds or where else it 
might be. No mobbing on Saturday, save ringing 
the bell. One young student ventured up into the 
pulpit, to show his "gimp." He had not witnessed 
the experiment there, probably, of the night before. 
The audience were reminded, in his hearing, of their 
entire freedom to say and do what they severally 
pleased, but on their own responsibilities. If they 
wanted to mount up into the pulpit, to play the fool, 
or for whatever purpose, it must be on their own ac 
count. The convention would not be responsible. 
And if any of them wanted to play the buffoon, or 
mobocrat, the pulpit was a fit place to perform in as 
any other. Every one to his taste. Pro-slavery was 
very partial to the pulpit, and the pulpit was open to 
it on that occasion, as every other part of the house. 
They might whistle, or they might behave quietly 
and kindly, as they would be done by. They might 
speak, or they might bark and play the quadruped, or 
they might sneeze, as their champion had done the 
night before, or hurl stones through the windows, 
only it would all have to be done on their own ac 
count, and not on ours. Several of the students did 
speak ; some, who seemed to be dieting for the minis 
try, spoke cant and absurdity. One young man, 
Marshall, of Nashua, quite young, spoke very man 
fully, and with candor and ability. If he follows out 
his heart, he will be an abolitionist and make an able 
advocate. A young Mr. Chamberlain canted and 
cavilled. He was a great friend of religion, and 
greatly wounded at our treatment of the virtuous and 
philanthropic folks, who, as we said, were instigating 
what their children had been doing to break up the 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 259 

meeting, and who had kept the people from attend 
ing it. Mr. Student Bonner was quite loud and vehe 
ment in defence of " our church and clergy." He 
was not in favor of slavery, but he wanted the blacks 
sent to Africa if they were liberated. They did not 
belong to this country, and had no rights here. Stu 
dent Bonner, by the way, belongs to Canada. He 
said they did not help carry on the revolution. 
He denied that liberty would do the slaves any 
good. He denied that slave-holding was man-steal 
ing, or criminal. Foster had declared that it was ; 
Bonner rose and denied it. Foster bade the audience 
beware of that young man ; he would put the com 
munity on its guard against him. He had denied 
that stealing children and enslaving them was sinful. 
That young man, he said, was dangerous in commun 
ity with such notions. He bade those who had prop 
erty exposed to beware of him. He had avowed the 
principles of a thief : the young fellow had been 
exceedingly impudent in his remarks upon the aboli 
tionists, saying everything offensive and abusive, he 
well could ; specifying nothing, attempting to prove 
nothing, and well deserved Foster s severity. Whether 
there was any peculiar pertinency in the application 
of the word thief, more than Foster knew of, Conner s 
acquaintances can say. Another young gentleman 
student was highly scandalized at "the abuse heaped 
on the clergy and Mr. Burgess." He was young, but 
could not refrain, when sacred things were thus 
attacked. Foster might speak here, he said, but if he 
were to go into yonder house, (where Burgess was to 
speak on Sunday,) he would be among those who 
would lay hold on him and drag him out. 

The students, however, behaved very well in the 
main ; some of them exceedingly well, considering 
the pro-slavery influence with which they stood con 
nected. They did not talk with much good sense ; 
they spoke like student s ; had they been free, unsoph 
isticated youth, uninfected by the schools and the 
meeting-house, they would have gone en* masse for 
the meeting, and borne a generous testimony in its 
favor. Pillsbury told them very impressively the 



260 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

obligations they were under to the meeting. It was 
at the first meeting, he admonished them, where their 
right of free speech had ever been recognized. They 
were called and reckoned boys, by other meetings of 
the day, and would not be allowed to speak on equal 
terms in any of them. Here they were not boys, but 
men. What would have been their reception, he 
asked, in an association of ministers, had they ven 
tured to speak as they were free to speak here ? He 
asked them to appreciate it. He told them they were 
not boys ; they had rights and responsibilities ; and 
he warned them how they used them. That should 
be a memorable day to them, he said, when in a con 
vention of men and women, their equal right of free 
speech was for the first time recognized and asserted 
for them, even by those to whose objects they were 
not friendly. Asserted, not for this meeting only, but 
for all meetings of a public and proper character. He 
told them they had right to speak everywhere for 
themselves ; as good right as any number of years 
could ever confer upon them. He told them of the 
part they might act for God and humanity, if they 
would only use their talents and act up to their con 
science and their convictions. 

Sunday was devoted to the Scriptural evidences of 
the sacred institutions. The clergy are wielding to 
overawe and put down the anti-slavery movement, 
the Sabbath, the clerical order, the dedicated temple 
and the meeting-house worship, to which anti-slavery 
as well as every other moral reform, is obliged to give 
way. All these were freely and faithfully discussed 
in the light of Christianity, and were all shown from 
abundant scriptural authority and evidence to be un 
warranted by the gospel and forbidden by its great 
Teacher. If the people had been there and dared to 
hear impartially, enough was said to convince them 
all. Had the priesthood human ears and common 
mortal understanding, it would have saved them from 
their diabolical delusions to have been there and heard, 
if truth can save them. But the people were only few 
of them there. The clergy would not let them come. 
The clergy were not there. The two belonging to 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 261 

that neighborhood were absent. They did not dare 
to be there. They would as soon resign their licenses 
as meet the abolitionists in presence of the people on 
the meeting-house floor. 

Now, I appeal to the people if they themselves 
ought not to have attended the convention. Subjects 
of the utmost importance to them were those to be 
discussed, and in a perfectly free meeting. They had 
full and equal liberty to speak as well as to hear. 
Men and women were to discuss those subjects whom 
the community had no reason to doubt were compe 
tent to a sensible and profitable examination of them. 
They ought to have been there. They would have 
been if they had been free. They would have been 
had they not been slaves. 

And the two clergymen ought to have been there. 
Burgess should have given notice of the meeting and 
exhorted the people to go and hear for themselves. 
If the meeting was free and open to reply as well as 
to abolitionist, and he knew it would be, he surely 
should have been there himself, and advised others to 
be there. If we were propagating errors, he knew the 
place to put us down was in our own meetings. If 
we were wrong he was the man learned and faithful 
enough to put us all right. He would put us right 
for our sakes as well as for other people. Why not ? 
Suppose we did not reverence him. We complain of 
him that he wants reverence. Will he prove it by 
refraining to meet us because we won t render it to 
him ? He pretends to regard us as wolves, while he 
professes to be a shepherd. What is the duty of a 
shepherd when the wolf cometh ? To flee and hide 
himself ? " The hireling fleeth because," etc., but the 
true shepherd never. If we were wolves, Shepherd 
Burgess was afraid of us. If he is a wolf in sheep s 
clothing, he had good reason to fear us. 

But the clergy can t always keep us from the peo 
ple. By the blessing of God, anti-slavery will yet 
deliver the people of this clergy. They may as well 
let us have a hearing first as last. They may as well 
meet us. They must meet us before the people, or 
the people shall at length know the reason why they 



262 ACTS OK ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

do not meet us. This skirmishing and dodging will not 
always avail them. A hand-to-hand conflict must by 
and by come, and under circumstances most unauspi- 
cious to the clergy. They will utterly dishonor and dis 
credit themselves before the world by their behavior in 
avoiding the contest. We are right, and they shall 
meet us, or we will fall upon them at their very altars, 
and take hold of their horns as Benaiah did upon 
Joab. Foster and Beach, Brown and Allen, are al 
ready scaling the walls of their sanctuaries. Others 
will follow. The pulpit is "coward s castle," but it is 
being stormed and it will be taken. If the clergy will 
hide there and by spells and sorcery prevent the peo 
ple from hearing the cry of outraged humanity, its 
advocates will point their cannon at the sacred 
order, and never cease battering till it tumbles to 
the ground. 

Our convention terminated on Sunday afternoon, 
near night. * There was throughout a goodly, but not 
full attendance. All the humanity of the place was 
there. There was a lack of attendance on the part 
of abolitionists from the surrounding region. Why 
are they not awake ? When liberty lies bound, lacer 
ated and bleeding on southern plantations, and her 
advocates here in New England are imprisoned for 
pleading her deliverance, is it time to stay at home 
for ordinary cause ? Would they stay, at home if a 
brother or sister or a wife were a slave, or if a hus 
band were shut up in a loathsome cell at Newburyport, 
only for liberty of speech ? 

I must not forget in this hurried sketch, Foster s 
preaching at the threshold of Burgess synagogue, on 
Sunday noon. He entered it in the forenoon, not to 
speak, but to appal, as I suppose, that haughty hire 
ling by his presence. And it made him turn pale 
with coward apprehension. He feared Foster would 
open his mouth to speak. He knew he could oppose 
nothing to his powerful word but brute, ruffian, raga 
muffin force. He trembled to be driven to it before 
his parish. Wicked man ! Why does he not give 
liberty of speech? Can he not defend himself? 
Foster is an able man, but I am not afraid of him 



ACTS OF ANTI- SLAVERY APOSTLES. 263 

where he is wrong. Why should the Reverend Mr. 
Burgess be? Has he no tongue to defend himself, 
and in the midst of his own people ? 

Foster spoke over half an hour, out on the com 
mon before the synagogue, at intermission, and with 
great power. The people heard him. Burgess was 
within, like Putnam s wolf, but did not dare to come 
out. He must have heard Foster s voice, and prob 
ably ordered the few that were with him to set up a 
tune, for they did, the cowards ! They did not dare 
to listen to the truth, so they sang a psalm. They 
were "not merry" and so they sang psalms. They 
were scared at the truth, and so they sang to drown 
it. Some of the leading subalterns of the priest at 
length returned from their home to the meeting. 
They were filled with rage when they came within 
sound of Foster s voice. They howled like very 
fiends. One of them, mighty well dressed and re- 
spectabje looking, said : " The damned creatnre is 
crazy; what is he here for? " If he is crazy," cried 
another, "he ought to be kicked off the ground." 
"Takeaway your minister," said one of the select 
men to our friend, David Wood, " or I will have a con 
stable here to take care of him." But Foster was on 
the common, and it was intermission time, to boot. 
" I do not keep a minister," replied our friend Wood. 
"Foster is his own minister, not mine." 

We had no officers in our convention, no president, 
no secretary, no business committee, no resolves passed. 
The question of president was fully discussed, and 
officers dispensed with unanimously. There was no 
vote of invitation to all persons present to participate. 
We were an open human meeting. We were met to 
promote humanity. And we declared everybody had, 
of course, a right to speak and act in our meeting, 
for it was everybody s meeting. Our harmony was 
perfect. Even the mobocracy was subdued and 
brought to order by the overpowering influence of 
liberty. 

The foregoing may seem to young readers a narra 
tive too long drawn out. But it conveys only a faint 
idea of the scenes witnessed and encountered there. 



264 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

And not only there, but in hundreds of towns besides.. 
And the mob spirit there manifested was mildness it 
self compared with many other places east and west. 
When the clerical or political party leaders saw that 
we were determined the cause of the slave should 
be presented to the people, they felt safe in setting the 
mob on us at any time, knowing that we were non- 
resistants in every encounter. At Hancock, when the 
volley of stones came crashing in at the windows 
among the people, the women kept quiet, but a man 
cried out, " Let s adjourn ; let s adjourn." Happening 
to be speaking at the moment, I raised my voice so as 
to be heard in the confusion and asked ; Did your 
fathers adjourn at Bunker Hill when fired upon by the 
enemies of freedom ? The effect was as sudden as sat 
isfactory, and the silence and order continued to the 
close of the session. The poor fellow with \.\\tshilalah 
in the pulpit had been drinking, but he rose and made 
a few very sensible remarks, rebuking severely the 
disturbers, which we applauded, and that rather won 
him to our side. I had often by strategy captured the 
champion of rioters whom they had crazed with liquor 
and put forward to annoy me so as to break up the 
meeting if possible. Sometimes I would invite him 
to a friendly discussion and take him to the platform 
and propose that I would speak half an hour and he 
take notes and reply as he saw might be needed. I 
would furnish paper and pencil and proceed. The 
plan would not always succeed ; neither did it always 
fail of the desired result. I well recollect such an oc 
currence one terrible night in Vermont. The moon 
was bright as silver, but the mercury was much below 
zero. I should have held my man and the audience 
had not the rioters began pelting their champion at 
the table with paper pellets, tobacco quids and similar 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 265 

arguments, doubtless the best they had to offer. He 
soon kindled into rage against them, and I think 
would have died then in my defense had it been 
necessary. I was able to continue speaking in the 
confusion till the disturbing element was shamed into 
comparative silence, and then closed the meeting. 
This was unexpected, and some of the most violent 
begged me to proceed, promising the best of order 
and behavior to the end. But I declined, telling them 
I had captured their champion and proved him the 
most decent man of them all, and now they might 
have the responsibility of breaking up a free meeting 
where they would have been welcome to half the 
time. 

The Hancock convention had no presiding nor 
other officers, and so was a gathering after Mr. Rog- 
ers s own heart, as his graphic but eminently just and 
truthful description shows. 

While on Hillsborough county it may be opportune 
to report one more meeting held or attempted by Mr. 
Foster alone. It was in the town of Nashua, where 
anti-slavery never had rapid nor healthy growth. The 
people not coming to Mr. Foster he felt called on to 
go to them. It need not be told again that he differed 
at that time from most of his fellow Christians in 
modes of worship. He believed devoutly that in all 
Christian assemblies there should be freedom of utter 
ance, whether by prayer, speaking, or song, as was 
both preached and practiced by Christ and the early 
apostles. But into whatever religious assembly he 
entered, his manner was always decent and respectful, 
and whether he spoke or prayed, his tones of voice 
were remarkably solemn and impressive. But I am 
sure he never once interrupted any religious services, 
except in places where political leaders and religious 



266 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

teachers had used all their influence and authority to 
keep the people from attending his meetings, which 
were always supereminently free. 

Mr. Foster s own account of the affair will best 
describe it, and as it was written in a prison into 
which his faithfulness brought him, it will be all the 
more interesting. A part only of his letter will here 
be given. It was dated, 

AMHERST JAIL, May 7, 1842. 

MY DEAR BROTHER ROGERS Under the superin 
tending providence of Him by whose permission, 
Joseph was cast into prison in Egypt, and the prophet 
Jeremiah was incarcerated in a loathsome dungeon, 
and Jesus Christ scourged, spit upon, and nailed to 
the cross, I have been given up into the power of my 
enemies, arrested and confined within the walls of a 
loathsome cell. But though captured, I am not con 
quered ; nay, I am a conquerer. My body is indeed 
incased in granite and iron, but I was never more free 
than at this moment ; I have at length triumphed 
over every foe ; I have achieved this victory by con 
quering my own servile slavish fear of man, and all 
the instruments of torture and death, which his mali 
cious passions have invented. I 
was a slave. I am a slave no longer. My lips have 
been sealed by man. They will never be again, till 
sealed in death. My body is freely yielded to the 
persecutors to torture at pleasure. But my spirit must 
and shall be free. Equal, unrestricted liberty of 
speech at all times, and in all places, is my birthright. 
It is the gift of God to every member of the family of 
man, and I will defend it in the face of prison and of 
death. You, brother Rogers, and 
the rest of my anti-slavery coadjutors may turn your 
backs upon our synagogues, or sit silent spectators of 
their hypocritical worship, while the dying wail of 
millions of your countrymen is borne to your ears on 
every southern breeze if you can. I cannot. I will 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 267 

not. So long as the soil of America is polluted by the 
footprints of slavery, I will speak in behalf of the 
victim, wherever I can reach a human ear. 

* My countrymen are pirates. They 
legalize the sale and enslavement of their own "free 
and equal" brethren. They authorize their transpor 
tation to distant ports to be sold into perpetual slavery. 
I scorn the friendship of such a people ; it is enmity 
against God. My enemies never 

made greater blunder than when they sent me to this 
gloomy prison. It is an honor 1 did not expect ; one 
I feared I might never merit. 

As your readers may wish to know the circum 
stances under which I came to this place, I will relate 
them, with such accuracy as can be done from mem 
ory, though there is not time for detail. 

Last Saturday 1 visited Nashua, with the intention 
of giving a course of anti-slavery lectures, similar to 
those I have recently given at Dover, Exeter, and Som- 
ersworth. On my arrival, application was made for 
a house suitable to my purpose, but no such place 
could be obtained. The meeting-houses were refused, 
for no valid reason, except the Universalist, which 
was engaged for a course of scientific lectures. I 
called on Rev. D. D. Pratt, pastor of the Baptist 
church, and requested permission to address his con 
gregation on the subject of slavery, the next clay. 
Mr. Pratt refused my request, and remarked that he 
felt himself compelled to decide what was best for his 
people, and that he would send for me when he wanted 
my help. I then called on the Congregationalist min 
isters, Mr. Richards and Mr. McGee, for similar pur 
pose, but with no better success. 

On Saturday evening, I attended a meeting at Mr. 
Richards vestry, and spoke twenty minutes or more 
to an attentive audience, most of whom I presumed 
were members of the church. On Sunday morning, 
after mature reflection and fervent prayer to God 
for divine guidance, I visited the Baptist meeting 
house for the purpose of occupying some portion of 
the day in advocating the claims of that part of 
our countrymen who are held in slavery by the minis- 



268 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

ters and members of the Baptist church. In doing- 
so, I acted in good faith to the assembly I met. 
They said that place was the house of God, and I 
took them at their word and claimed in it the rights 
and privileges of a child of God. They said their as 
sembly was a Christian meeting, and I knew if it was, 
it would recognize and respect the equal right of all 
to speak, or "to prophesy one by one." They said 
Christ was their Lord and Master, and I knew if they 
were followers of his, I should be in no danger of be 
ing thrust from their house. For when was it ever 
told of "the Prince of Peace " that he was seen run 
ning out ot the synagogue with a Pharisee on his 
back? Or when did he privately instruct Deacon An 
drew or Rev. Simon Peter to drag out the spies that 
he. foreknew would come into the temple " to entangle 
him in his talk," feigning themselves iustmen? They 
said they were the sheep of Christ s flock, sent forth 
by their divine shepherd into the midst of wolves, of 
which I was one, and I knew if such were the fact, 
I was in no danger of being devoured by them, or 
dragged from their fold ; for when was it ever heard 
of sheep that they had devoured a wolf, or ferociously 
seized upon him and hurled him from their pen? 
They said Jesus had commanded them to "be wise as 
serpents and harmless as doves," and I knew if they 
followed such directions, they would look to God 
for protection, and not to a wicked Universalist ; and 
would seek to conquer their enemies by the power of 
love, and not by the terrors of the avenging sword. 
They claimed to be Christians, and I knew that among 
such, it would be perfectly safe for me to give utter 
ance to my sympathies for God s perishing poor. 

I rose for that purpose, but was immediately inter 
rupted by Mr. Pratt, who said he wished to commence 
the regular exercises. I did not notice this interrup 
tion, and was proceeding with mv remarks, when sud 
denly Deacon Chase pounced upon my back and held 
me fast in his talons. We did not have a regular fight, 
like some which have recently disgraced the halls of 
congress, for the one only reason, that I declined a 
combat with the reverend ambassador of Christ and 



ACTS OP" ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 269 

his devout deacon. I would not assert that Rev. Mr. 
Pratt would have fought in person, had I stood upon 
my rights. He might have thought that too undig 
nified. He would doubtless have contented him 
self with aiding and abetting the arfray, by giving 
it his countenance and approval, as he did my subse 
quent ejection from the house. After being dragged 
from the platform by the deacon, I was carried into 
the street by three or four rnen, whose names were not 
given. I inquired of the deacon, who still had me in 
his talons, if I was his prisoner. He replied that I 
was not, and let go his grasp. I then turned to go 
into the house, but was arrested by the deacon and 
his associates. A messenger was immediately dis 
patched to the Universalist meeting-house, in search 
of one of those "ministers of God, who bear not the 
sword in vain." The messenger soon returned, ac 
companied by Constable Gillis, by whom, with the as 
sistance of Deacon Chase, I was pulled by the arms 
and collar a distance of fifteen rods or more, to a rum 
tavern, and thrown on the bar-room floor. Soon 
after, I was seized and dragged up two flights of stairs 
and thrown upon the floor of a small upper chamber, 
and subsequently delivered into the custody of two 
keepers. 

Having secured me in this temporary prison, the 
deacon returned to his meeting, to tender to the 
church the emblems of the body and blood of "the 
Prince of Peace." I was arrested, as the constable 
informed me, on complaint of Deacon Edwin Chase, 
Deacon David Philbrook, Norman Fuller, and another 
member of the church, whose name I have lost. 

During the afternoon, Brother Preble, a Free-will 
Baptist minister, came into my prison and asked the 
constable, who was then present, to accompany me to 
Thayer s hall, at five o clock, to fulfill an appointment 
made for me at that place. This he declined doing, 
but said he would release me for that purpose, on con 
dition that Brother Preble and certain others would 
be responsible for my return, provided he could ob 
tain consent of the complainants. Their consent to 
this was asked, but denied ! During the evening, one 



270 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

of my keepers left. The other remained through the 
night, and slept with his clothes on, the door locked 
and the lamp burning. Indeed, I was as strictly 
guarded as though I had been a felon, waiting only an 
opportunity to escape. 

At ten o clock, on Monday morning, I was put on 
trial before Israel Hunt. The complaint set forth 
that I had entered the Baptist meeting-house, "with 
force and arms," and disturbed the meeting by mak 
ing a noise, by rude and indecent behavior, etc., etc. 
The principal witnesses against me were Rev. Dura D. 
Pratt, and Deacon Edwin Chase. As a precaution, 
Mr. Hunt required them to swear by the living God, 
that they would tell the truth, the whole truth and 
nothing but the truth, relative to the case under trial. 
But instead of so doing, both of them kept back a part 
of it, as did Annanias and Sapphira a part of their 
possessions, and, what was quite as unchristian, testi 
fied to what was palpably false, and what I think they 
must have known was false. None present could fail 
to remark that their memory was all on one side. Mr. 
Pratt testified that I treated him " ungentlemanly." 
On being asked what I said or did that was ungentle- 
manly, he could not recollect, he said, then, but he was 
certain, very, that I treated him ungentlemanly. His 
answers to my questions on the point reminded me of 
the lines I have seen, but cannot now recall where : 

11 I do not like thee, Dr. Fell ; 

The reason why I cannot tell ; 
But this I do know, very well, 
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell." 

So with the reverend gentleman. He knew full well 
that I treated him "ungentlemanly," but wherein 
he could not tell. But finally, being pressed on that 
point, he testified that I told him 1 would preach to 
his people whether he was willing or not. This, in 
his opinion, was ungentlemanly. Well, admitting 
that it would have been, it so happened that I did 
not say it, as brother Preble, who was present, will 
testify. But I did say to Mr. Pratt that I had come 
to Nashua to obtain a hearing in behalf of my en- 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 2/1 

slaved countrymen, and that, if access to the public 
ear through the ordinary channels was denied me, I 
should seek a channel of my own. 

As I do not acknowledge allegiance to any human 
power, I made no defence. I asked the witnesses 
some questions, and said a few words, but they were 
designed to influence the audience present, rather 
than the decision of Mr. Hunt. In that, I felt no 
interest. My only object was to expose the wicked 
ness and hypocrisy of Dura D. Pratt and the majority 
of his church, that they might no longer ensnare the 
ignorant and unwary. 

Mr. Hunt s sentence was, that I pay a fine of three 
dollars and costs of prosecution ; at the same time in 
timating that a repetition of the offence would be fol 
lowed by a much heavier penalty. -I assured him I 
had done my duty in attempting to preach the gospel 
to the Baptists, and it was contrary to my sense of 
propriety to pay a fine for it. And I should, there 
fore, refuse to do it. And, as to threat of augmented 
penalty for similar fidelity in future, I should not be 
at all intimidated by it. And so long as any portion 
of my countrymen were held in slavery, my voice 
would never be silent, till silent in death. 

Mr. Hunt then ordered me to be imprisoned till the 
fine was paid. 

At ten o clock the next day this order was carried 
into effect, by my incarceration in this loathsome 
prison, where duty to God and my countrymen re 
quires me to remain at present. Relief is kindly 
offered me from several sources, whenever I shall 
think proper to accept it. But I feel that the object 
is not yet accomplished that my heavenly Father had 
in view, in sending me to this dismal abode. And 
till that is done, I have no wish to be relieved. To 
one as restless as 1 am, imprisonment is oppressive. 
But I can endure it patiently for His sake who died 
for me. I can now surely "remember them that are 
in bonds, as bound with them." * * 

Bid my friends, one and all, be of good cheer. We 
shall triumph soon. My eye is already on the victory. 
You and I may be called to yield up our lives in the 



272 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

final struggle. Be it so. I am ready. I have already 
passed the bitterness of death. My enemies have 
done their worst. I fear them no longer. Do not 
think me insane, that I write thus. I know in whom 
I have believed, and that a happier state awaits me 
when the toils of life are done. 

Your friend and brother, 

STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 

Brave hero ! But many did call him insane, even 
some of his best, truest friends. I remember once, 
in Faneuil Hall, at an anniversary, we had a discussion 
lasting all an afternoon and evening. Garrison, Rog 
ers, Wendell Phillips, Charles Burleigh and Foster 
were, of course, all on one side. Rev. John Pierpont, 
Theodore Parker, Thomas Earle, of Philadelphia, 
David Lee Child, the gifted husband of the more 
gifted Lydia Maria Child, and probably others, were 
on the opposing side. The house was, crowded in 
every part. Mr. Pierpont was speaking, and with 
quite his usual eloquence and power. I was sitting 
with Foster, down in the body of the hall. Every ear 
seemed to be opened, every eye fixed on the speaker. 
Suddenly, Foster detected what proved a fatal moral 
flaw in the logic. Quietly he rose and addressed the 
chair: "Mr. President." Mr. Pierpcnt, always the 
perfect gentleman in every grace the word implies, 
and never more so than when in debate, ceased speak 
ing and listened. Everybody listened. Foster re 
sumed : "Mr. President, will our friend, Mr. Pier 
pont, allow me to ask him a question just here?" 
" Certainly," was the ready response from the speaker, 
gracefully drawing back from the front of the plat 
form. Foster then proposed his question. I do not 
remember it, but I well recollect that it lighted up 
the whole dark, deep chasm between moral rectitude 
and political expediency, showing Mr. Pierpont far 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 273 

over on the wrong side. All saw it, but none ap 
plauded, though, in that vast throng, thousands must 
have approved. The stillness was almost overpower 
ing. Mr. Pierpont broke it in a manner that at once 
engraved him on the tablets of my memory, and em 
balmed him in my heart s affection forevermore. He 
spoke only this : " Mr. President, some folks say our 
friend Foster is crazy. But I wonder what this audi 
ence think about it?" Only this, when a storm of 
applause burst forth almost rocking the old " Cradle 
of Liberty " to its foundations. Mr. Foster s triumph 
was complete ; but the graceful magnanimity of Mr. 
Pierpont I am sure entitled him to a kingly share in 
all the honors of that memorable scene. 

Mr. Foster, not without reason and propriety, closed 
his pathetic prison epistle with the appeal : " Think 
me not insane because I thus write." 

Insane ! Had a like insanity pervaded a small part 
of the American church, pulpit and people, southern 
slavery would never have attained such proportions in 
the name of republican liberty and protestant Chris 
tian religion, as to demand the blood of half a million 
young men, brave and beautiful, to wash its guilt 
away. 

Insane ! Rogers did not deem him insane. Blaz 
ing down two solid columns of the same page of the 
Herald of Freedom with the letter, went his editorial 
comments, every word of which should be here repro 
duced, in justice to martyr memory and the facts of 
history. On the jail itself he wrote : * It is provi 
dential in Foster s behalf that Amherst jail stands so 
near Chestnut hills and anti-slavery Milford, so that 
the friends of humanity in those favored places can 
come to his relief and comfort in his otherwise soli 
tary confinement. Those two localities abound in 



274 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

ministering spirits to the faithful prisoner. They have 
seen to the cleansing and purification, to some extent, 
of this loathsome receptacle of the victims of clerical 
and deaconish vengeance. They have expurgated 
Foster s department, I understand, of its vermin. The 
character of a people may be judged somewhat by its 
prisons, as well as its deacons and clergy. A savage 
people will support bloody minded incarcerating dea 
cons and dragging out clergy, and filthy, noisome, 
verminous cells, in which to shut up those whom it 
hates and fears." . 

Referring to the justice who tried the cause and 
pronounced the sentence, he said : " The humane 
magistrate who played the part of Pilate in the matter, 
albeit he did not wash his hands as the profligate 
Roman did, fined Foster low, yet so high (three dol 
lars) that he thought in his majestic soul that it would 
deter him from " speaking again in the synagogue, in 
this name." He expressed his trust, I understand, to 
that effect, when pronouncing his solemn sentence. I 
should love to have witnessed the look with which 
Stephen replied to that magnificent suggestion. Poor 
depository of a little brief authority ! He little appre 
hended the character or the calling of the man he was 
dealing with. He might naturally enough suppose 
that one who had abandoned all the prospects of young 
ambition, a pulpit, a chance few young men of the 
time have had before them, (but for his Christian in 
tegrity) a reputation, which had he pursued it, would, 
ere this time, have crowned him thick with literary 
and ecclesiastical honors ; who had abandoned all and 
made himself " of no reputation," would now be driven 
back from the high and solemn duties for the sake of 
which he had done it all, by a three dollar fine ! It was 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 275 

an apprehension worthy the official dignitary who 
could mistake Christian participation in a religious 
meeting for a legal disturbance of that meeting !" 

Mr. Rogers had some time before given his opinion 
of Mr. Foster s right to enter professedly Christian 
assemblies, to plead the cause of the oppressed, in 
language to this effect : " Mr. Foster is the agent 
of the State Anti-Slavery Society, but takes his own 
way of performing the duties of his agency. How far 
the society would approve this new measure we can 
not say. For ourselves, we cannot deny the Christian 
ity of it, and we see not how the meetings he enters 
can, or how they can object to it consistently with 
their Christian profession. They assume to be Chris 
tian assemblies, and to be governed by apostolic rules 
and usages. They would be scandalized to be desig 
nated as any other than Christian meetings. By those 
rules and usages, Foster has undoubted right to en 
ter, uninvited, unpermitted, and be heard. They are 
congregational meetings to be sure, but they claim 
that Congregationalism is Christianity, in its most 
approved form, and has no other than New Testa 
ment organization, principles and usages. As political 
assemblies, they may deny Foster s right. As worldly 
meetings, they may charge him with intrusion. As 
heathen meetings, they may complain and cannot be 
estopped by the plea that Foster comes in as a Chris 
tian, claiming under the usages of a Christian assem 
bly. The reply that they are a heathen and not a 
Christian assembly would put him on a different de 
fense. Whether it would be a defense in that case 
for him to say that, as a man he has a right, and is in 
duty bound to enter any human assembly and cry 
aloud in the paramount behalf of perishing humanity, 



2 -jC) ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVKRY APOSTLES. 

whatever business might be going on there, is another 
question and need not be decided, so long as these 
meetings do not claim to be heathen." 

This, and much more, was written for and published 
in the Herald of Freedom of the first of October, 
1841, in connection with an account of the Hancock 
meeting of that year. 

Whether Mr. Foster was right or wrong in his 
course, was never considered by the clergy at all. 
They assumed that he was wrong, and with equal au 
dacity, they assumed always that they were right in 
ordering him dragged out and sent to prison, or fined, 
or both, at the discretion of a civil magistrate. Thus 
they voluntarily placed themselves, as Christian min 
isters, under the protection of the sword of human, 
worldly authority, while claiming to be, while profes 
sing to be, servants and disciples of the prophesied 
Prince of Peace." Of him who said : "My king 
dom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of 
this world, then would my servants fight * * * 
But now is my kingdom not from hence." 

Nor should readers of these chronicles forget who 
was Mr. Foster, and what was his object in thus seek 
ing the ear, the heart and conscience of the American 
churches and people, "whether they would hear or 
whether they would forbear." He was a Christian 
teacher and minister, not then ordained, though he 
had thoroughly educated and qualified himself to oc 
cupy any pulpit or professor s chair, in college or 
theological seminary. He knew profoundly the his 
tory of the church and its ministry, from the calling 
of Moses and the Levites to Samuel, the earliest 
prophet ; to Isaiah and Ezekiel, and onward to John 
the Baptist and Jesus Christ and his chosen and or 
dained apostles. And when or where in all the Jew- 



ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 277 

ish or Christian scriptures was it ever read or known 
that the priests, prophets, or apostles, were to ask 
leave of the ungodly to preach unto them the doc 
trines of repentance, reformation and righteousness? 
Or when, or where, was it ever read or heard that such 
right, or even duty, was ever forbidden by any " rules 
or usages," still less, laws of divine appointment or 
approval, in any assembly, Jewish or Christian ? 

Mr. Foster, like Mr. Garrison and Mr. Rogers, was 
a Christian and Christian minister and teacher, in all 
that those words of hallowed memory could ever be 
rightly made to mean. And to whom was he sent ? 
Or, if not sent, to whom did he come? To a nation 
of oppressors, the like of whom, under all the circum 
stances, no age had ever seen, from the bondage of 
Israel in Egypt to the enslavement of Anglo Saxons 
by Norman invaders, whose deeds of manumission 
were sometimes recorded on the blank leaves of the 
parish Bible, kept in the church, secure from all inva 
sion or violation as though sanctioned by a "thus 
saith the Lord," with the volume itself. Foster was 
himself part of a nation, (no unimportant part, as be 
came apparent), that in the name of republicanism 
and Christianity, enslaved down to lowest brute-beast 
level, one-sixth part of its entire people. He found 
in his own nation, millions of human, immortal beings, 
without one marriage sanctioned by law, or sanctified 
by religion, among them all ! One-sixth part of the 
habitations of the people, houses of open, known 
prostitution, the holy rights, responsibilities and de 
lights of parentage as utterly unknown, unrecognized, 
as amon^ the beasts of the stable or the stall. Mil 
lions of immortal, accountable human beings, and not 
one of them permitted to learn to read the name of 
the great creator, under pains and penalties, severe, 



278 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 

sometimes almost, as for murder itself ! Millions of 
men, women and children, held accountable to human 
law, as well as divine, of wh6m a commission of the 
synods of South Carolina and Georgia, in the year 
of Christian grace, 1833, declared, as with astonish 
ment : " Who would credit it, that in these years of 
religious revival and benevolent effort, in this Christian 
republic, there are over two millions of human beings 
in the condition of heathen, and, in some respects, 
in worse condition ! From long-continued and close 
observation, we believe that their moral and religious 
condition is such that they may justly be considered 
the heathen of tJiis Christian country, and will bear com 
parison with heathen in any country in the world ! " 

Another writer in that same South Carolina synod, 
ou his own account, calls loudly for missionaries to 
those heathens, saying ; " I hazard the assertion that 
throughout the bounds of our synod, there are at least 
one hundred thousand slaves, speaking the same lan 
guage with ourselves, who never heard of the 
plan of salvation by a redeemer ! " 

To such a people and nation did Stephen Foster 
come with his terrible words of warning, expostulation 
and rebuke. Saw Moses and Aaron any such abom 
ination and outrage