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William Lloyd Garrison

Frederick Douglass’ Fifth of July Speech Asks ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?’

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? is the popular name of a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass on the Fifth of July 1852 in Rochester, N.Y.

The most famous speech of the orator’s career, it marked a departure from his mentor, Boston abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. In it, Douglass expressed his desire to participate in the political life of the nation, while the more radical Garrison rejected it outright.

Frederick Douglass in 1848.

Garrison thought the U.S. Constitution supported slavery, that the country was built on slavery and that free states should secede from the Union.

Douglass’ Fifth of July speech argued people could interpret the Constitution as opposed to slavery. And it expressed his hope and desire to share in the freedom and justice sought by the Founding Fathers.

In other words, Garrison wanted out of the government created by the Constitution, while Douglass wanted in.

The Fifth of July speech, at 10,000 words, probably took Douglass over an hour to deliver. His sponsors, the ladies of the “Rochester Anti Slavery Sewing Society,” had 100 copies printed of his ‘most able and eloquent oration’ in pamphlet form.

Fifth of July Speech

Douglass starts the Fifth of July speech by telling the white audience that the Fourth of July is the birthday of their independence and freedom. And he tells them their celebration, their ‘jubilee shouts,’ make the chains of the enslaved ‘more heavy and intolerable.’

He acknowledged the achievements of the country’s founders, and his audience’s right to celebrate them:

They succeeded; and today you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary.

But then he asks the rhetorical questions, What am I doing here? Should I celebrate this day?

…why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?

No, he answers just as rhetorically:

The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.

“What to the slave…”

The 46^th paragraph of the speech was perhaps Douglass’ most famous passage.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which lie is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity…

Engraving from the Anti-Slavery Almanac

He grows more and more furious, more and more vituperative:

…your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence.

Shout of liberty and equality, he stormed, are “hollow mockery.”

…your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

The Constitution

He then excoriates religions for their silence on the subject of slavery. But, unlike, Garrison, he defends the U.S. Constitution as a document that rejects slavery.

“Now, take the constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro . slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

Douglass ends the Fifth of July speech on a note of hope. He predicts the Civil War – and the end of slavery.

The Road to the Fifth of July Speech

Born into slavery in Maryland, Douglass rode the Underground Railroad to freedom in 1838 at the age of 20. He settled in New Bedford, Mass., a good choice of residence. The whaling city’s maritime industries were open to African-Americans, and many who escaped from slavery put down roots there. New Bedford by 1853 would have the highest population of African-Americans in the Northeast.

Douglass had taught himself to read while enslaved, and eventually he began to speak out against slavery at abolitionist meetings in New England. He gave his first speech on Nantucket, describing the cruelties of slavery.

William Lloyd Garrison

William Lloyd Garrison, leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society, heard him speak. He decided to put him on the broader abolitionist circuit. Garrison, 13 years older than Douglass, mentored him as he rose to stardom as an abolitionist lecturer.

Douglass moved to Lynn, Mass., in 1841, and then to Rochester, N.Y., in 1852.

Burning the Constitution

Two years later, Garrison publicly burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution. On a hot July 4, 1854, at the Harmony Grove picnic area in Framingham, Mass., he began with a speech. Much as Douglas had, he questioned Fourth of July celebrations.

“To-day, we are called to celebrate the seventy-eighth anniversary of American Independence. In what spirit?” he asked. “With what purpose? to what end?”

He then burned a copy of the hated Fugitive Slave Act as the abolitionist crowd cried “Amen.”

Anti-slavery poster. Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Then he burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution. He called it “the source and parent of all the other atrocities–‘a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell’.'” As it burned, he cried out: “So perish all compromises with tyranny!”

Douglass and Garrison broke over their different views of the Constitution. Douglass later explained:

When I escaped from slavery, and was introduced to the Garrisonians, I adopted very many of their opinions, and defended them just as long as I deemed them true. I was young, had read but little, and naturally took some things on trust. Subsequent experience and reading have led me to examine for myself. This has brought me to other conclusions.

Eventually the two men reconciled after the abolition of slavery.

Such actors as Morgan Freeman, James Earl Jones and Danny Glover have delivered the Fifth of July speech. Watch James Earl Jones read excerpts here. Or watch Douglass’ descendants read excerpts here.

Read the whole speech here.

This story was updated in 2022.

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David Ruggles, the Go-To Conductor on the Underground Railroad

David Ruggles helped 600 enslaved people to freedom during the 1830s despite attempts to kill him, kidnap him and burn down his business. A free black man born in Connecticut, he ultimately paid for his courage. He suffered ill-health, character assassination and a shortened life.

David Ruggles,

David Ruggles wrote fiery articles on the evils of slavery, antagonizing moderate abolitionists as well as slaveholders and advocates. He opened the first bookstore and published the first periodical by a black American. He printed, published, worked as an agent and sold copies of abolitionist newspapers.

Though he mentored such activists as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, David Ruggles has received far less attention, perhaps because of his early death.

He defended his radical views by writing that no one could be neutral on the moral issue of slavery.

David Ruggles

Born to free African-American parents in Lyme, Conn., in 1810, David Ruggles eventually had seven younger brothers and sisters

His family moved to the elite Bean Hill section of Norwich when David was very young. David Ruggles, Sr., his father, worked as a woodcutter and a blacksmith, and his mother a celebrated cook who made fancy cakes. His devout Methodist parents had him educated at the Sabbath School for the Poor in Norwich, a religious charity school.

He was so bright as a young boy that white Bean Hill residents paid for a tutor from Yale to teach him Latin.

At 16 he moved to New York, where he worked as a mariner, a common occupation for black men. Then he opened a grocery store in an African-American enclave in Lower Manhattan. At first he sold liquor, but then he realized the damage it did to the black community. So he stopped selling it.

In New York City, he began to connect with abolitionists of all kinds — black, white, male, female, rich and poor.

And so David Ruggles became active in the temperance and abolitionist movements.

Radical Abolitionist

David Ruggles believed the printed word was an essential tool against slavery. His grocery store at 1 Cortlandt St. started to sell books, pamphlets and periodicals, until a white mob destroyed it.

He began writing for radical abolitionist newspapers and for his own pamphlets against slavery. He enraged moderate abolitionists by attacking the American Colonization Society, which aimed to relocate African-Americans to Africa.

Then in 1835 he began his most dangerous work against slavery. He and several other young black men formed the New York Committee of Vigilance, an interracial group. They put their lives on the line to free kidnapped blacks. They also attacked slavers and helped escaped slaves traveling on the Underground Railroad.

Slave catchers patrolled the streets of Manhattan then, trying to kidnap fugitive slaves or free blacks and then to send them into bondage. David Ruggles and the other members of the Committee of Vigilance confronted the slavers on the streets.

Narrow Escape

In 1836, David Ruggles heard that a Portuguese sea captain held five kidnapped Africans in his ship, planning to sell them in the South. At that time slave trading was illegal but practiced clandestinely. Ruggles obtained a writ of habeas corpus and demanded the authorities take the captives to a local jail until they had a hearing on their status.

He also got the captain arrested on charges of slave trading. Then one night the captain, free on bail, and a slave catcher knocked on David Ruggles’ door and demanded to speak to him. When he refused they tried to break down his door. David Ruggles escaped, returned with a watchman and revealed the two planned to grab him and sell him into slavery.

At that time in New York, any slave brought to the state was free after nine months. Ruggles would go to private homes to tell people they were free.

Frederick Douglass

In 1838, Frederick Douglass escaped bondage in the South, arriving in New York friendless and broke.

“I had been in New York but a few days, when Mr. Ruggles sought me out, and very kindly took me to his boarding-house at the corner of Church and Lespenard Streets,” wrote Douglass. He noted David Ruggles was ‘watched and hemmed in on almost every side,’ but ‘he seemed to be more than a match for his enemies.’

Frederick Douglass

David Ruggles put up Frederick Douglass for a few days and helped him bring his fiancée to New York so they could marry. They wed in his parlor.

The Darg Affair

When Douglass showed up in New York, David Ruggles was enmeshed in a furious controversy involving a slave owner along with two other radical abolitionists, Barney Corse and Isaac T. Hopper. Virginia slaveholder John P. Darg had arrived in New York City with his slave, Thomas Hughes. Hughes came to Hopper’s house asking for help, but Hopper said no. The next day, the New York Sun reported that Hughes stole about $7,000 from Darg.

Corse and Ruggles urged Hughes to return the money, but insisted he should remain free. But Hughes had given or gambled away some of the cash. He returned what he had left to Darg, who then had Corse and Ruggles arrested for grand larceny. Though Ruggles only spent two days in jail, the press trashed him. A cartoon appeared, called ‘The Disappointed Abolitionists,’ suggesting the three had only wanted the reward money.

Moderate abolitionists, fed up with Ruggles’ radicalism, drove him out of the movement. He had written a story in an abolitionist newspaper that a black innkeeper was helping slavers. The infuriated innkeeper sued the newspaper for libel and won a judgment of $600.

The newspaper owner, nearly bankrupted by the fine, began a print campaign against Ruggles. He demanded an accounting of the Committee of Vigilance’s books. When an audit showed $400 missing, David Ruggles had to resign his position with the committee.

Abolitionist Utopia

At just 28 years old, David Ruggles’ crusade against slavery took a heavy toll on his health. He had nearly gone blind and suffered severe bowel problems. A prominent white abolitionist, Lydia Maria Child, invited him to join an abolitionist utopia in Florence, Mass.

The Northampton Association of Education and Industry centered on a community-owned and operated silk mill. Its members sought to create a society in which ‘the rights of all are equal without distinction of sex, color or condition, sect or religion.’

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth belonged, and Frederick Douglass often visited.

David Ruggles moved to the Florence utopia in 1842. Within 18 months he recovered some of his health through the then-popular water cure, or hydrotherapy. He began studying hydrotherapy, then practiced it on wealthy members of the utopia as well as on William Lloyd Garrison.

The utopia disbanded by 1846, but David Ruggles stayed in Florence running his own hydrotherapy hospital. His health, however, declined rapidly in late 1849. He died on Dec. 18, 1849, not yet 40 years old.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Joseph Palmer, Fashion Criminal, Persecuted for Wearing a Beard

In 1830, Joseph Palmer wore a long, flowing beard, considered such a fashion crime then that men attacked him and local authorities threw him in jail.

For more than a century, men had considered facial hair a fashion “don’t.” Since 1720, only Jewish-American men wore beards and moustaches. And Joseph Palmer.

Joseph Palmer was born in 1789 in Notown, a village between Leominster and Fitchburg, Mass., and fought in the War of 1812.

He was described as “an honest, kindly man and good citizen, deeply religious but tolerant, a man of many intellectual interests.”

People considered him eccentric. He wouldn’t serve rum to his hired farmhands because of his belief in temperance. And at the age of 40, he decided to emulate Moses and Jesus by growing a beard.

Joseph Palmer.

Joseph Palmer, Beard Wearer

People harassed and mocked him for wearing a beard. A minister told him he looked like the devil, and he replied, “Mr. Trask, are you not mistaken in your comparison of personages? I have never seen a picture of the ruler of the sulfurous regions with much of a beard, but if I remember correctly, Jesus wore a beard not unlike mine.”

One day in May 1830, Joseph Palmer went to a Fitchburg hotel to deliver meat and cucumbers. Four men approached him with scissors and razors and tried to cut off his beard. Palmer fought back, cutting two of the men’s legs with his jackknife. For defending himself, local authorities arrested him and charged him with unprovoked assault. Judge David Brigham ordered him to pay a $10 fine, $40 in court fees and a $700 bond. Palmer chose to go to the Worcester County Jail instead.

For the first few weeks in jail, he took sick. His jailers beat him, starved him and put him in solitary confinement for months. The other prisoners tried to cut off his beard.

But Joseph Palmer managed to make life difficult for his persecutors. He wrote letters to the Worcester County sheriff complaining of his ill treatment. Once he even sent him all the food he’d been given in a day to show how little he was fed. He also sent letters to the local newspapers, which picked them up.

His case began to embarrass the county, and several delegations came to the jail to ask him to pay his fine and leave. Judge David Brigham visited him with a letter from his mother, begging him to come home. Still he refused. Finally his jailers carried him out of the jail in a chair and set him on the sidewalk.

Fruitlands

The story doesn’t quite end there. Joseph Palmer began to advocate prison reform and an end to slavery. He attended a convention of philanthropists in Boston, where he met William Lloyd Garrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott.

Farmhouse at Fruitlands

He followed Alcott, his daughter Louisa May Alcott and 12 others in founding the utopian community Fruitlands in Harvard, Mass. No one else had any farming experience, and he kept Fruitlands going as long as it did.

When the commune broke up seven months later, Joseph Palmer bought the land and farmed it. He and his wife Nancy welcomed the hoboes, writers and reformers who came to visit over the next 20 years. Neighbors called it ‘Old Palmer’s Home for Tramps.’

Joseph Palmer died in 1873, when beards had once again become fashionable.

Gravestone of Joseph Palmer

A bas-relief of Palmer and his beard are carved into his tombstone in the Evergreen Cemetery in Leominster, Mass. The inscription reads,

Persecuted for wearing the beard.

This story was updated in 2022. Photo of Fruitlands farmhouse by By victorgrigas – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40800910. Photo of Palmer’s grave by romana klee via Flickr, CC by SA 2.0.

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Charles Torrey – The Most Successful, Least Celebrated Abolitionist

In June of 1844, Charles Torrey arrived in Baltimore. He was well-known as an anti-slavery agitator and architect of the Underground Railroad. He had avoided police many times over the years, in Washington and Baltimore, while helping some 400 slaves to freedom in Canada and the northern states.

Sketch of Charles Torrey

Then in Baltimore a slave trader accused him of helping slaves escape. A local tavern owner also accused him of stealing two of his slaves. With specific charges, the police arrested Torrey and tossed him into jail to await trial. It was the last stop in the career of the most successful abolitionist who was largely ignored by history.

Charles Torrey

Torrey was born in Scituate, Mass., in 1813. By 1817 both his mother and father, as well as his sister, had died of tuberculosis. Relatives then raised young Torrey. Schooled at Exeter and Yale, Torrey became a teacher and then minister.

He seized on slavery as the most dangerous evil of the day, and made it his mission to exterminate it. He travelled New England speaking out against the institution. But soon he grew tired of the slow, pacifist approach taken by William Lloyd Garrison and his Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.

William Lloyd Garrison

Torrey first challenged Garrison for leadership of the movement, and failed. He then joined with other radicals in splitting off and creating the Liberty Party in 1840. But he soon grew weary of the political process, and began taking direct action. He spoke with African Americans, both free and enslaved, and he learned the difficulty of simply running away to the North. Further, the penalties for attempting escape were so fierce that many slaves judged it too dangerous to even try.

Direct Action

Torrey and other hot-headed abolitionists decided to take direct action. They travelled to Washington and Baltimore, encouraged slaves to escape. Then they drove them north by wagons to help them disappear into a Quaker-run network of safe houses.

This new breed of abolitionist sought out slaves owned by southern political leaders to stir as much debate as possible. Over the next several years, Torrey freed hundreds of slaves. But his boldness put a target on his back. Southern congressmen grew more outspoken in their denunciation of abolitionists who liberated slaves. They went so far as to declare they should be shot.

In 1842, Torrey, operating as a journalist, attended a convention of slaveholders at Annapolis, Md.. He intended to report on their organized efforts to defend slavery. Police arrested him for inciting illegal activities.

Torrey soon returned to Maryland for his last attack on slavery.

Corrupt Practices

Abolitionists like Torrey faced not just the official opposition to their work. They also had to operate alongside a murky world of slave traders, slave hunters, corrupt police and black spies. There was a robust trade in slaves where free blacks would induce a slave to flee. The free black would keep the slave in captivity, thinking he was on his way to freedom. Only later would he discover he had basically been kidnapped and ransomed back to his owner.

Corrupt police and jailers would work the crowds at the Baltimore black churches looking for escaped slaves. They would tip off slave hunters, who could negotiate to get the slave returned for less than the advertised reward.

Torrey made it his business to publicize these corrupt practices. It wouldn’t take long before he would fall prey to them in Baltimore.

First, a slave hunter lodged a complaint against him (probably fabricated). Then William Heckrotte, tavern owner, accused Torrey of helping a family of slaves escape north.

Stuck in jail, Torrey used the time to help educate black inmates about how to access the Underground Railroad and escape.

Yet his arrest distressed him.

“I have very little desire to become a martyr,” he said in a letter to an uncle. “How I should act in prospect of being called to that glorious host, I do not know.”

Advertisement placed by William Heckrotte seeking the return of his slaves

Martyrdom

Torrey once attempted escape. His former landlady and her daughters regularly visited him. While not abolitionists, they visited Torrey so he could go outside for an hour of fresh air for the visit. The jailers spread a story that he had an improper relationship with one of the women and had the visits stopped. The newspapers reported that Torrey’s wife had hired an investigator to prove the charges and seek divorce.

Torrey hatched a plan to escape to clear his name, but a fellow inmate alerted jailers to the plan. Torrey’s wife would later write and assure him that she did not believe the charges.

After two years in jail awaiting trial, Torrey was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison. He penned a book about his childhood in Scituate, Home! Or the Pilgrims’ Faith Revived, to provide some income for his wife and family.

Torrey even wrote a reconciliatory letter to Garrison, who he had pilloried for his lack of direct action to combat slavery. The letter did little to heal the division between the two.

Torrey’s tuberculosis took a toll in the jailhouse conditions. He died in in prison in May of 1846.

Aftermath

The divisions between the moderate and radical wings of the abolitionist movement followed Torrey to the grave. Though acknowledged by his contemporaries as having freed more slaves via the Underground Railroad than anyone, the staid Park Street Church in Boston withdrew an offer to host his funeral. It was moved to the more progressive Tremont Temple. He was buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.

Park Street Church

In writing the history of the abolitionist movement, the contributions of Torrey and the other advocates of direct action were largely downplayed in the histories of the era, in favor of a version of events that glorified Garrison and his supporters.

During his long incarceration, Torrey gave interviews and wrote letters published in Baltimore. Though he tried to reason with Marylanders, he never lost his harsh edge:

“I make no appeal for sympathy. Let the guilty do that,” he wrote in one broadside. “The states of Maryland and Virginia will go to trial before the tribunal of mankind.”

This story updated in 2022.

Images: Park Street Church By Daderot – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39075427.

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Boston Gentlemen Riot for Slavery

In 1835, a gentlemen riot broke out among people who considered themselves respectable. They even dragged a magazine publisher through the streets of Boston.

Maria Chapman, courtesy Boston Public Library

That year, 147 riots ignited in U.S. cities, with the most frequent violence in Boston, Philadelphia and New York.

In Boston, upper-class men took to the streets to protest abolitionists. New England’s textile industry depended cotton growing, and businessmen worried the anti-slavery movement threatened their mercantile relationships with the South. Female abolitionists also threatened male social dominance.

Gentlemen Riot

Maria Chapman, a wealthy, well-educated socialite, had founded the interracial Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. The group circulated petitions, raised money, wrote and edited publications and corresponded with each other frequently.

On Oct. 21, 1835. British abolitionist George Thompson came to speak to a meeting of 45 abolitionists. Thompson, one of the most important abolitionists in both the U.S. and UK, spoke at the office of William Lloyd Garrison’s anti-slavery publication The Liberator.

The ‘gentlemen,’ who had held a pro-slavery rally at Faneuil Hall the previous month, gathered again on Washington Street. The Boston Commercial Gazette described them as ‘an assemblage of fifteen hundred or two thousand highly respectable gentlemen.’

William Lloyd Garrison

Mayor Theodore Lyman stood on a chair and urged the threatening mob to disperse — to no avail. They then marched to the Liberator’s office on Cornhill Street, now the Boston City Hall plaza. However, they failed to find George Thompson. Then they angrily destroyed the wooden sign that announced the meeting.

Lyman then urged the women to leave for their safety. Maria Chapman refused. “If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere,” she said.

But despite her refusal, the women were escorted through the crowd to safety. The rioters, though, got hold of William Lloyd Garrison, who left through the back door. They then tied him up, handled him roughly and began to drag him through the street. Two working-class brothers rescued Garrison and turned him over to the mayor and several constables.

Protective Custody

Garrison was taken to the Old State House, but a crowd gathered around it. Authorities brought a coach to the door along with 30 or 40 large, strong men. The mayor had called them, all night watchmen. As they tried to put Garrison in the coach, a mob of young men described as merchants’ clerks attacked the bodyguards. Garrison struggled into the coach and the coachman cracked the whip. The merchants’ clerks tried but failed to cut the harness. The horses raced through the crowd and took Garrison to the Leverett Street Jail for his safety.

George Thompson. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

Garrison wrote this graffiti on the wall of the jail:

William Lloyd Garrison was put into this cell on Wednesday afternoon, October 21, 1835, to save him from the violence of a “respectable and influential” mob, who sought to destroy him for preaching the abominable and dangerous doctrine that “all men are created equal” and that all oppression is odious in the sight of God.

Such a Mob

Thompson offered a withering comment about the gentlemen who rioted.

“Such a mob–30 ladies routed and a 6X2 board demolished by 4,000 men,” he said.

Maria Chapman made a decision during the crisis: the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society should hold annual fairs. She and her sisters would run them for years as a major source of funds for the abolitionist cause.

With thanks to Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence by Jack Tager. This story was updated in 2022.

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Simeon Jocelyn and The Great New Haven College That Never Was

In 1831, Simeon Jocelyn thought New Haven would be the perfect place to start a college for educating black men. New Haven disagreed.

Arthur Tappan (pictured) and Simeon Jocelyn proposed opening a college for negroes in 1831.

Arthur Tappan (pictured) and Simeon Jocelyn proposed opening a college for black men in 1831.

At that time, the debate over the future of slavery had many flashpoints. One of them dealt with whether free black men should seek an education. The supporters of slavery hated the idea of black men receiving an education. (Never mind women.) They believed education would inspire them to seek greater power. Jocelyn, a New Haven printmaker and minister at a black church, thought otherwise.

Simeon Jocelyn Has a Plan

New Haven, home to Yale and countless academics, provided a perfect place for a school, he thought, and he bought property to establish a college. Jocelyn, William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan brought the idea to the First Annual Convention of the People of Colour, a gathering of black activist leaders in Pennsylvania in 1831.

The minutes of the Congress explain how the men laid out their plans. The college would cost about $20,000 and supporters would build it in New Haven. They would also establish it on the manual labor system, which, in connection with a scientific education, would allow students to pursue a useful mechanical or agricultural profession.

Further, they argued, a benevolent individual offered to subscribe $1,000 toward the project, provided they could raise a further sum of $19,000 in one year.

New Haven 1849

Why New Haven Indeed

The Congress debated the idea and asked, why New Haven?

1. The site is healthy and beautiful.

2. Its inhabitants are friendly, pious, generous, and humane.

3. Its laws are salutary and protecting to all, without regard to complexion.

4. Boarding is cheap and provisions are good.

5. The situation is as central as any other that can be obtained with the same advantages.

6. The town of New Haven carries on an extensive West India trade, and many of the wealthy coloured residents in the Islands would no doubt send their sons there to be educated, and thus a fresh tie of friendship would be formed, which might be productive of much real good in the end.

And, last, though not least, the classic fame of New Haven is well known, wherever Arts or Sciences have made their appearance.

Image of Yale -- Creator of the Wickedest City

“A View of the Buildings of Yale College at New Haven,” lithograph, published by A. Doolittle & Son, New Haven. Courtesy of the Yale University Manuscripts & Archives Digital Images Database.

Turns out, those arguments misrepresented New Haven – especially with regard to salutary laws protecting all without regard to complexion.

New Haven reacted instantaneously. The city’s mayor and aldermen called a town meeting for September 10, 1831 to outlaw a school for negroes.

The newspapers reported outrage at the idea of black students lowering the morals of the city and intermixing with white society — women in particular.

“Who would think of locating a School or College in a town where forty-nine-fiftieths of the inhabitants are against the project?” one writer asked.

Ties to the South

One newspaper suggested that such a college should go to Cornwall, home of an earlier educational institution for American Indians:

“Cornwall possesses many advantages for such an institution, over other places,” wrote one writer. A big problem with it: the ladies of that town readily give themselves, better for worse, and worse for better, to the colored gentlemen.”

Few, if any, mentioned the many ties Yale University had to the moneyed families of the South. They surely would have resisted educating their children in a city that also welcomed black students to an education.

Despite a strong speech by Roger Sherman Baldwin, of Amistad fame, the town meeting rejected the college overwhelmingly.

In the days after the town meeting, protesters turned up at the homes of both Tappan and Jocelyn. Jocelyn had to give up his ministry. And the controversy set the stage for future battles in Connecticut over the equal treatment of all races.

This story was updated in 2022.

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