So they determined to establish a college on the manual-labor
system for the education of colored youth. They appealed for aid to
their benevolent friends, and fixed upon New Haven as the place to build
their institution. Arthur Tappan, with customary beneficence, "purchased
several acres of land, in the southerly part of the city, and made
arrangements for the erection of a suitable building, and furnishing it
with needful supplies, in a way to do honor to the city and country."
The school, however, was never established owing to the violent
hostility of the citizens, who with the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common
Council resolved in public meeting to "_resist_ the establishment of the
proposed college in this place by every lawful means."
The free people of color were derided because of their ignorance by
their persecutors, but when they and their friends proposed a plan to
reduce that ignorance, their persecutors bitterly opposed its execution.
New Haven piety and philanthropy, as embodied in the Colonization
Society, were not bent on the education of this class but on its
emigration to the coast of Africa solely. In such sorry contradictions
and cruelties did American prejudice against color involve American
Christianity and humanity.
This outrage was perpetrated in 1831. Two years afterward Connecticut
enacted altogether the most shameful crime in her history. There lived
in the year 1833, in the town of Canterbury, in that State, an
accomplished young Quaker woman, named Prudence Crandall.
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