“Every neighborhood had its death-roll of victims,” historian Ellen Larned wrote, “its shocking casualties—drunken men and women frozen and burnt to death; children starved, women beaten and murdered, promising young men brutalized and lost.”146 In the late 1820s William Fisher, a foreman at a factory in Killingly, Connecticut, became alarmed when his three young sons did not return home after their last day of school. He did not know that teachers and students celebrated the end of the school year with generous toasts of alcoholic beverages—even the youngest students were expected to drink up. Fisher found his sons at the school, intoxicated; his youngest son was unconscious.147
The temperance movement swept through eastern Connecticut; the first temperance society was organized on August 25, 1828, in Canterbury.148 Those who joined pledged to abstain fully from the use of “ardent spirits” as well as refrain from providing drink to friends or employees. Prudence Crandall joined the Canterbury Temperance Society and supported the temperance cause for the rest of her life.
The spring and summer of 1832 brought continued success for the Canterbury Female Seminary. Prudence Crandall had what most women of her time could never have—a professional career in a position of leadership, financial independence, and a life increasingly filled with the promise of security and stature. Crandall’s family supported her work, and her sister Almira worked full time at the school teaching and managing its affairs. The community continued to embrace the school and assisted in its growing enrollment.
8. Prudence Crandall’s school in Canterbury, Connecticut, site of Prudence Crandall Museum.
Prudence Crandall’s School in Canterbury, Connecticut. Collection of the Prudence Crandall Museum, Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, State of Connecticut. Photographer: Dennis Oparowski.
At the end of the school’s busy first year the daughter of a local black farmer approached Prudence Crandall. The young woman knew one of the hired girls at the school and often visited during classes. She asked Crandall if she could enroll as a student; her father earned enough from his farm to pay for her tuition. This simple request likely triggered conflicting thoughts and considerations for Crandall. State law did not require segregation in schools or elsewhere, but social custom assumed separation of the races at most gatherings and functions. Many in the North opposed slavery, but few believed in true equality for blacks.
Crandall understood that if she granted the young woman’s request she might offend her neighbors and supporters. She knew the admission of a black student could threaten the future of her school. Answering the woman’s question required Crandall to reconcile her desire to meet the expectations of her community with the principles she had learned from her family, her faith, and the Friend’s School. As Crandall met the gaze of the anxious, young black woman, she did not have an answer.
2 : Liberators
In the fall of 1831 a young writer sought out William Lloyd Garrison at his Boston office of the Liberator. Maria W. Stewart sat patiently as Garrison read her essays. The first concerned religious faith and “devotional thoughts and aspirations.”1 Garrison’s interest grew as he read other essays by Stewart that called for an end to slavery and revealed the “intelligence and excellence of character” of an exceptional writer.2 Garrison told Stewart he would print some of her essays in the Liberator—and publish the entire collection of her work as a short book.
Maria Stewart’s book likely was the first political manifesto written by a black woman in America.3 “Ye daughters of Africa, awake!” Stewart wrote. “No longer sleep nor slumber, but distinguish yourselves. Show forth to the world that ye are endowed with noble and exalted faculties.”4 Garrison published Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality: The Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build in 1831, and promoted Stewart’s book in the Liberator. “The production is most praiseworthy,” Garrison wrote, “and confers great credit on the talents and piety of its author.”5
Stewart found a unique collaborator in Garrison, a white man willing to publish the opinions of a black woman at a time when the views of women of any color, on any serious subject, were not considered worthy of space in a newspaper.6 Even the progressive Garrison, however, had difficulty in 1831 considering women as journalistic equals. He printed Stewart’s essays in a separate “Ladies Department” section of the Liberator.7
Stewart wrote a brief biography of her life in the introduction to her book. Born in 1803 in Hartford, Connecticut, Maria Miller became an orphan at the age of five and lived with a minister’s family. She helped with household chores and learned scripture, but longed for a more formal education.8 At fifteen, she left the minister’s family and supported herself through various domestic servant jobs. “How long shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles,” Maria wrote.9 During those years she attended church schools and developed an advanced ability to read and write.
She traveled to Boston and met James W. Stewart.10 James was forty-four when he married twenty-three-year-old Maria Miller on August 10, 1826. James served in the War of 1812 and ran a lucrative business of “fitting out,” or finishing, the interior quarters of newly constructed whaling and fishing vessels.11 As a measure of the couple’s standing in the community, Reverend Thomas Paul performed James and Maria’s wedding.12 Paul helped create the first independent black Baptist churches in the United States. His congregation met at the African Meeting House in the Beacon Hill section of Boston—the center of activity for the black community and the abolitionist movement. James and Maria Stewart’s wedding likely took place at the African Meeting House.
At the beginning of December 1829, three years after they married, James Stewart became seriously ill and drafted his will. He died on December 17, 1829.13 Maria and James had no children, and James left a considerable inheritance to Maria. When Maria brought an action in probate court to settle her husband’s affairs, however, four white businessmen filed a separate action featuring a fraudulent Mrs. James Stewart. They succeeded in stealing James Stewart’s estate and left nothing of value for Maria Stewart.14 A friend described Stewart’s experience: “I found her husband had been a gentleman of wealth, and left her amply provided for; but the executors literally robbed and cheated her out of every cent.”15 This was not an unusual fate for the widows of black men. Black businessman and activist David Walker wrote about such cases in Boston: “When a man of colour dies, if he owned any real estate it most generally falls into the hands of some white person. … The wife and children of the deceased may weep and lament if they please, but the estate will be kept snug enough by its white possessor.”16
The meager opportunities available to black women frustrated Stewart: “How long shall a mean set of men flatter us with their smiles, and enrich themselves with our hard earnings?”17 For Stewart, the discussion of ending prejudice and discrimination too often focused on the rights of men. “Look at many of the most worthy and most interesting of us doomed to spend our lives in gentlemen’s kitchens,” Stewart wrote.”18 “Have you prayed the legislature for mercy’s sake to grant you all the rights and privileges of free citizens, that your daughters may rise to that degree of respectability which true merit deserves?”19
Beginning in 1832 Stewart delivered speeches on the issues of slavery and prejudice, often before mixed gatherings of both black men and women. This earned her both admiration and contempt; some in her own community did not appreciate receiving a call to action from a woman.20 Women were expected to refrain from public speaking and avoid controversial issues.
William Lloyd Garrison’s decision to print her speeches in a booklet and in the Liberator bolstered Stewart’s efforts to challenge her community on a broad scale. A network of volunteer agents distributed the Liberator throughout New England.21