May, "they would not
hear me. They shut their ears and rushed upon me with threats of
personal violence."
As there was nothing in the statutes of Connecticut which made the
holding of such a school as that of Miss Crandall's illegal, the good
Canterbury folk procured the passage of a hasty act through the
Legislature, which was then in session, "making it a penal offence,
punishable by fine and imprisonment, for any one in that State keeping a
school to take as his or her pupils the children of colored people of
other States." But the heart of the young Quaker woman was the heart of
a heroine. She dared to disregard the wicked law, was arrested, bound
over for trial, and sent to jail like a common malefactor. It was no
use, persecution could not cow the noble prisoner into submission to the
infamous statute. In her emergency truth raised up friends who rallied
about her in the unparalleled contest which raged around her person and
her school. There was no meanness or maliciousness to which her enemies
did not stoop to crush and ruin her and her cause. "The newspapers of
the county and of the adjoining counties teemed with the grossest
misrepresentations, and the vilest insinuations," says Mr. May, "against
Miss Crandall, her pupils, and her patrons; but for the most part,
peremptorily refused us any room in their columns to explain our
principles and purposes, or to refute the slanders they were
circulating.
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