Right and Wrong in Massachusetts by Maria Weston Chapman - HTML preview

CHAPTER V.

THE DENOUEMENT.

What we would think, is not the question here.
The affair speaks for itself, and clearest proofs.—SCHILLER.

The annual meeting of the Massachusetts Society was the time proposed by the confederated agents and secretaries of the National and Massachusetts Societies, for the full development of their plans. Like children playing at draughts, they had calculated their own game, but not the counteracting moves of their antagonists. Mr. Garrison’s unexpected trumpet-blast, threw them into confusion. They were ignorant of the extent of his knowledge, and, in their consternation, did the exact thing, that innocence would by its nature have necessarily avoided—denied the existence of any plot.

Mr. Garrison had spoken of two clergymen in Essex County. Mr. Torrey and Mr. St. Clair, like Scrub in the comedy, were “sure he was talking of them,” and went into a labored denial and explanation; all of which, when examined and condensed, demonstrated that a great amount of time and labor, and by means of the agents and the funds of the Massachusetts and National Societies, had been privately expended in sowing the seed of the new paper.

Mr. Phelps, to whom Mr. Garrison had not alluded, identified himself with the plot, in a series of letters, whose remarkable bitterness was charitably imputed by some to the peevishness of recent illness. Others there were, who received these letters as a proclamation to all concerned, that the writer was no longer “Mr. Garrison’s Brother Phelps;” and as an evidence that the threat of the Recorder had effected its purpose.

The Anti-Slavery Office became a scene of deep interest, both to the devoted friend of the cause, and to the close observer of human nature, while the tide of inquiring comers was on the flood. The innocent regularly brought confirmation that the alarm-note of Mr. Garrison was most fortunately timed. They all recollected some incomprehensible circumstance on which the recent developments had shed a flood of light. Some recalled a conversation with “your agent,” some, a remark of “our secretary,” hinting at a change in the Board, or a way by which clerical opponents might be gained over to the cause; “for we must have all these men.” Abundance of sayings came to mind, by which, when first uttered, they had been exceedingly puzzled, and had finally laid aside as jests or incomprehensible:—having the master-key, they could now unlock them all. Notes and letters by the dozen were forth-coming, from Mr. Torrey and others, marked “confidential.” His correspondents now began to feel that silence was crime. An eagerness to give and receive information, marked the innocent. Not so the guilty. They vehemently denied the existence of any plot,—said that Mr. Garrison was unfit to be entrusted with any important post in the cause, that Non-Resistants were not properly abolitionists,—that slavery was the creature of law—that votes made it, and votes only could unmake it—that though the Liberator did in its columns advocate political action, it was inconsistent in so doing, and that they thought a new paper absolutely necessary.

In this position, the day of the annual meeting found the conflicting principles and men. Bigotry and sectarism were pitted against religious liberty and Christian love,—openness and candor against craft and concealment,—treachery against fidelity,—falsehood against truth, and, (for things that are equal to the same things are equal to one another,) freedom against bondage.

It was the largest anti-slavery gathering ever witnessed in Massachusetts, and a noble sight it was to look upon. It preserved its original heterogeneous character, being composed of old and young, men and women; of every sect, party, condition and color, all filled with the most absorbing interest. Well might every eye be rivetted, and every heart wrapped in earnest attention. It was a turning point in the cause. A strong and mighty wind had come to winnow the wheat from the chaff; the crooked was to be made straight—the hidden was to be revealed:—expectation was wrought up to the top of its bent. The report of the Board of Managers, written by Mr. Garrison, was first read. Men looked wonderingly at one another. “Is this the report that we received such earnest entreaties to come and vote down? we find no fault in it. Are these the opinions of our board of officers, which it is represented to us as so desirable, for opinion’s sake, to change? perhaps we might look farther, and find worse.”

The report was laid aside to afford opportunity for the utterance of the thoughts which were swelling up, to find vent in every mind. The business committee, desirous of affording every facility to debate, opened the way by the introductions of the following resolutions.

Resolved, That the state of the Anti-Slavery cause in this Commonwealth demands the establishment of an ably-conducted, cheap, official organ, to be under the control of the Board of Managers of the State Society, issued weekly to subscribers; to advocate political as well as moral and religious action; to be exclusively confined to the object of the Anti-Slavery cause, and edited by a man or men, who can conscientiously, heartily and consistently advocate all the anti-slavery measures, political as well as moral action; and that the salary of the editor or editors, together with all other necessary expenses thereof, be paid out of the funds of the Society.

Resolved, That the Board of Managers are hereby instructed to make arrangements, if practicable, with the proprietors and editor of the Liberator, to make that paper the organ aforesaid, and under the above restriction; or, if that cannot be done, that they take measures, as soon as practicable, to establish an organ, as recommended in the resolutions passed by the Worcester County North Division Anti-Slavery Society, at its late annual meeting in Fitchburg.

Mr. St. Clair first spoke. He occupied more than an hour in explaining to the meeting that Mr. Torrey had no hand in the Fitchburg resolutions. Mr. Torrey occupied the remainder of the afternoon in denying the existence of any plot, deprecating the fulsome eulogy of abolitionists, when they spoke of the Liberator;—said that its circulation was so small that there was absolute need of another paper, for the purpose of advertising the meetings, and that abolitionists were determined to have a more effectual medium of communication with the electors of Massachusetts. He said, “Mr. St. Clair, and myself, Mr. Phelps and Mr. Stanton, we four, are the originators of this new paper.”

Mr. Stanton replied “I warn the gentleman to be careful of his pronouns. I defy any one to show a letter or a fragment of a letter, to prove that I have been implicated in the plan; for I have mentioned it in but one, and that to a friend in another State.” Mr. Torrey said that it was contemplated to obtain the services of some first-rate editor—Elizur Wright, or John G. Whittier. “Ah! comes the arrow out of that quiver!” inly responded a few earnest listeners. But the general feeling was, that it was only a swelling word used by Mr. Torrey, for effect, so absurd, so impossible did it seem that either of those men could be made to stand in Massachusetts upon the clerical platform of hatred to Mr. Garrison. As soon would Wendell Phillips have been suspected of laboring to accommodate pro-slavery prejudice with a less odious editor in Pennsylvania; or Ellis Gray Loring, of supplying the deficiencies of the Emancipator, by a hostile paper in New York. Mr. Torrey urged the forlorn condition of Massachusetts among her sister states, without an organ; and seemed as much impressed with the mortification of being a member of a Society so sadly unfurnished, as were the slavish Jews, when taunted by the surrounding nations with having no king.

Mr. May did not suffer in the view of what so much affected Mr. Torrey. “We have never wanted means of communication with the public,” he said; “when the Massachusetts Society wants an organ, she sounds a trumpet.” Night was closing round the combatants, and Mr. May moved an indefinite postponement of the whole subject. Mr. Phelps exclaimed against thus “giving the go-by to the most important subject that could come before them.” Mr. May withdrew his motion, and the meeting closed, to meet again in an hour.

Again the throng came together, with added numbers and spirit. Mr. Stanton took the floor, and to the utter astonishment of the meeting, proclaimed that the Liberator had lowered the standard of abolition, that Mr. Garrison was recreant to the cause, and that therefore a new paper was indispensable.

His words opened the flood-gates of many memories. Instantly rushed through the minds of abolitionists all that had passed since he first stood among them, the trusted and beloved; their guide—their companion—their own familiar friend. Grief and indignation strove for the mastery in their hearts as he went on. “A new paper was therefore indispensable. True, it was said that the columns of the Liberator were filled with political matter—but how is that political matter obtained? It is wrought into my frame in head-aches and side-aches, how that political matter is obtained. If lamps could speak, they could tell that it is by taking your agents from the field to furnish it, after the day’s exhausting labor.—There ought to be an editor to do it. Again; what accompanied this political matter, on the other side of the paper? Discussions calculated to nullify its effect. Expressions of opposite opinions. It is not that other subjects are introduced into the Liberator—it is that such other subjects are introduced—subjects so injurious to the cause. Mr. President, I would not injure the Liberator or Mr. Garrison. On the subject of peace, perhaps, he is nearer right than I am. But he has lowered the standard of abolition.”

Mr. Garrison and Mr. Stanton had met continually during the season previous to this attack. They had met as aforetime, brotherly, and Mr. Stanton had never, even by a word, prepared his friend for such a proceeding. Conviction was flashed upon the minds of the audience by every sentence he uttered, that the spurious abolition, which, from its being defended by the ministry, had obtained the name of clerical abolition, had, at last made a conquest of a suitable layman to carry forward its operations. The minds of men rapidly reverted to the clerical effort of 1837 to break up the Massachusetts Society. Again they saw the effort renewed, to cast out its most efficient members. Again the same old war-cry sounded in their ears—“Let them go out from among us, for they are not of us; and the Massachusetts Society must have a new organ!” How many a grieved heart, that had trustingly relied on Stanton to combat this fresh attack on the cause, on thus hearing his proclamation of his own treachery to his comrades, was ready to exclaim,

“Oh had an angel spoke those words to me,
I would not have believed no tongue but Hubert’s.”

All, then, was true; the boast of Mr. St. Clair, that if he were treacherous, then was Stanton and every agent of the Massachusetts Society treacherous too; the declaration of Mr. Torrey—“we four!” No need now, of a conservator of pronouns: the mask was thrown off.

Mr. Garrison indignantly repelled the charge brought against him. “Am I recreant to the cause? who believes it?” “No! No!” burst forth from the crowded aisles and galleries. “Let me ask him a question;” said Mr. Stanton. “Mr. Garrison! do you or do you not believe it a sin to go to the polls?”

The indignant audience did not cry “shame!”—they were too deeply moved for utterance. They were silent in breathless astonishment. Was this Massachusetts? Was it at a meeting of her free-souled sons and daughters, from a platform of toleration so broad that every human being, laboring for immediate emancipation, might stand upon it, that a man presented a creed-measure to his brethren, with the threat to brand every brow as unworthy, that overtopped that little span? Was it in prophetic fear of this disgraceful scene that Massachusetts abolitionists had so early renounced the doctrine of racks and thumb-screws—the idea of reproach for opinion? The same indignant thoughts thronged up for utterance in every heart. Quakers, Calvinists, Unitarians;—Whigs, Democrats, and Non-Resistants;—men of every religious opinion and every political theory—this question insulted them all. Might the believer in the religious duty of voting claim authority to summon to the confessional, all whom he chose to mark for exclusion from the cause, and enter into discussion and condemnation of their belief? Then might every other sectary do the same. The Baptist might banish the Friend—the Methodist might proscribe the Independent—the white man reject the man of color—the women vote that men were disqualified—or men assert the same absurdity with respect to women. If the precious time of a thousand friends of the slave, met to devise measures for making every voter an abolitionist, was to be consumed in making every abolitionist a voter, men felt that a change in their point of agreement—a change in the constitution and the principles that made the constitution, must be effected. The common pass-word must no longer be “immediate emancipation” alone, but every sectarian or partizan must shout his own, and draw his weapon upon every abolitionist who heeded it not. Hatred, wrong, and bondage, unmasked their hideous faces to love, right, and freedom, in the question that so roused every soul in that assembly.

Mr. Garrison promptly answered it, so as not to deny his principles, nor yet to take up the gauge of the non-resistance conflict, which Mr. Stanton had thrown down:—“Sin for me!” “I ask you again,” persisted the infatuated questioner, “do you or do you not believe it a sin to go to the polls?” “Sin for me”—was the same imperturbable reply.

This treacherous interrogatory,[5] fit act of a familiar of the holy office to a heretic, but ineffably disgraceful from the Secretary of the National Anti-Slavery Society to the man on whose motion the National Anti-Slavery Society came into existence, stirred the souls of the abolitionists as if they had seen the slave-driver stand suddenly forth with his scourge and manacles, in visible embodyment of the spiritual tyranny they now felt.

A scene of tempestuous conflict followed, as the whole scope and bearing of the work that had been going on in the Commonwealth under the auspices of the “four,” became apparent. They stood like him who has tampered with the embankments that toil and sacrifice have built between the devouring ocean and a level and fertile land. The indignant feeling of the audience rose to an almost uncontrollable pitch; yet they did restrain it; for the winnowing-time had come, and they must take careful note of men’s conduct now, that they might know who to trust hereafter. Painful and unexpected it was to see Scott, Codding and Geo. Allen swept away, as the whirlwind of debate went on. The resolutions before the meeting were respecting a new paper. But the arguments by which they were sustained, demanded not only a new paper, but new principles—a new constitution—a new society—new officers. Was the true and original test of membership—not an acknowledgment of the justice and necessity of immediate emancipation, but a belief in the religious duty of voting at the polls? Then would those arguments require the dissolution of the Massachusetts Society, another set of men as managers of a new one, and the utter destruction of the Liberator. Yet those who brought forward those arguments, and who, if sincere, were bound by them to destroy the worthless instrumentalities of which they complained, uniformly declared, with the same breath, that nothing was further from their intention than to injure the Liberator, or to cast any imputations against the Board of Managers.

Ellis Gray Loring rose in reply. “On the question of the need of a new paper, I do not wish to speak. A need may exist which I do not perceive. Brethren tell me that there is such a need. I only say that to make such a paper the organ of the Society, and to sustain it at the expense of the Society, over the head of the Liberator would have a tendency to injure the latter. I do not say that gentlemen mean it. They tell us they abjure such a thought. But it is a maxim in law, that the purpose of a man’s acts must be presumed to correspond with their manifest tendency.”

Wendell Phillips argued earnestly against the first resolution. The second was so manifestly a mockery that it was scarcely noticed. The spirit of the meeting rose against the whole intolerant contrivance submitted to its decision. The “four,” when they perceived it, strove, by every parliamentary device, to delay judgment. They strove to divide the resolutions—to refer the matter to a committee—to adjourn the meeting. In vain. The spirit that filled the Marlboro’ Chapel that night, refused to be conjured into a committee-room, or to leave its work unfinished. “Vote it down,” “vote it down,” was the reply to every proposition; till Mr. Loring moved an indefinite postponement, which was almost unanimously carried.

While the fate of the new paper was pending, a doubt was raised by Mr. Phelps and Mr. St.Clair, as to the right of women to a voice in the decision. The question was hardly a debateable one in a society whose constitution welcomed all persons to an equal seat, and whose resolutions had proclaimed that, in the cause of philanthropy, all persons, whether men or women, have the same duties and the same rights. The decision was therefore referred to the President.

It was not for Francis Jackson, whose house had, in 1835, been placed at the disposal of the women, under threats of its destruction, after the mercantile world had decided that they were out of their sphere in the anti-slavery cause—it was not for him to shrink from a just decision because the religious world had taken up the cry. Now, as then, the women had judged for themselves. Here, also, was a responsibility which they did not choose to delegate; and leaving ministers on one side and merchants on the other, they came, according to their wont, each to serve the cause as conscience and judgment should dictate. They came with their husbands and their brethren, from the cities and from the villages. The anti-slavery halls had been ever to them as an altar before which to dedicate their young children to righteousness and freedom. They came with the joyful consciousness that whatever subjects might be adjudged foreign, they, at least, were at home.

“The Chair rules that it is in order for women to vote.”

Not a voice was raised in appeal. The Massachusetts Society dared not, for the slave’s sake—it would not for its own, exile any of its members from its councils.

The report of the Board of Managers was next taken up, and again the friends of the new paper rallied to the attack. Preparatory to action upon it, and as a step towards its condemnation, Mr. St. Clair presented a resolution, affirming it to be the imperious duty of every abolitionist who could conscientiously do so, to go to the polls. The design of this resolution evidently was, to convict the few non-resistants present, of inconsistency as non-resistants or of guilt as abolitionists; and as such the meeting received it. At any other time the resolution would doubtless have passed—the great majority of the Society being voters. But, aroused to vigilant watchfulness of all who were attempting to drive them blindfold into absurdity and intolerance, they refused to make the slightest change on the resolutions of former years. They had never said more, during their whole eight years’ existence as a Society, than that they would not vote for slavery; and they saw too plainly the motives of this novel demand for a resolution worded affirmatively. Neither had they been so bitterly reproached with the introduction of foreign subjects, without learning that the word “duty” or the word “ought,” in relation to forms of civil or church government, on which abolitionists so widely differ, must necessarily open the discussion of the whole vast subject of human society in all its aspects. It would have been impossible, at this moment, to have procured the passage of any resolution whatever, on which the opposition might build enginery by which to cast reproach upon any faithful abolitionist. So plainly had they exhibited their hearts, even while professing the greatest regard for the Society and all its members, that men’s common sense forbade them to afford any facilities for such a purpose.

Mr. Garrison substituted the following resolution, which, being in agreement with the uniform practice of the Society, and in strict conformity to its principles and constitution, was almost unanimously adopted.

“Resolved, That those abolitionists who feel themselves called upon, by a sense of duty, to go to the polls, and yet purposely absent themselves from the polls whenever an opportunity is presented to vote for a friend of the slave—or who, when there, follow their party predilections to the abandonment of their abolition principles—are recreant to their high professions, and unworthy of the name they assume.”

The Society thus refused to turn its attention from its original object—to make every slave a freeman, to the new and inferior one, of making every freeman a voter. The members felt that this latter was their more appropriate business, as citizens of Massachusetts.

After the passage of this resolution, the previous arguments of the “four,” for a new paper, were reiterated against the report, by the Rev. Orange Scott, the Rev. Daniel Wise, and the Rev. Hiram Cummings, of the Methodist Church.

There appeared evidences, however, that the Methodist laity were not so easily won into the toils of the clerical Congregationalists. However much they might love their clergy and their sect, they loved the universal cause of liberty and humanity more. The venerable Seth Sprague expressed this, with feeling and noble simplicity, in answer to Mr. Cummings, of whose church he was a member.

“I love to hear my young brother preach the gospel; but when he talks of politics, it will hardly be considered vanity in me to say I know more about that than he. For forty years I have been in the political harness; and many a day, in that time, have I been out to rouse men up to the polls. Sir, I never found any difficulty in it—they are always ready enough to go; but to make them vote right, after they get there—that’s the rub. And who can do that like my brother Garrison? His paper converted me, politically.

I have had great satisfaction in my old age in going to all the Anti-Slavery meetings within my reach; and as I returned from them, with my heart warmed by the hopes which their union and zeal and harmony had kindled, I thought within myself, I am old now—an old man, and shall not live to see the work of emancipation accomplished. But, on my death-bed, when about to quit this world, I shall joyfully think of those I leave in it, the abolitionists,—a band of brothers—united as the heart of one, to accomplish this great work.—But I cannot say so now!—I cannot say so now!” And the venerable man thought it no shame to weep over the love and confidence he had seen so wantonly betrayed; and all the people wept with him.

The opposition still wished to continue the discussion, though noon was long past, and their words were but repetition upon repetition. Dr. Follen said, “I think discussion should now cease, upon the same principle that bids the miller stop the wheel, when there is no more grain in the hopper.”

The whole unmodified report was accepted—Ayes 183—Noes 24. A better proof than its adoption could not be offered, that the great body of the Massachusetts Society separated that day, with the determination of carrying the work vigorously forward, through means of the elective franchise. They separated, with the triumphant consciousness of a three-days’ battle,

“Won for their ancient freedom, pure and holy!—
For the deliverance of a groaning earth!
For the wronged captive, bleeding, crushed, and lowly,
Their voice went forth.”

It was a painful trial they had passed; painful as when brother meets the visor’d face of brother in civil war. They had hoped that this cup might pass, but they had not refused to drink it; and their eyes were opened, and the bitterness of their grief taken away.

The same Board of Managers having been selected, the acceptance of the report and the rejection of the new paper, were sufficient indications of the course they were expected by the Society to pursue. They therefore suggested to their agents, Mr. St. Clair and Mr. Wise, that, as there existed in the Commonwealth a difference of opinion in regard to the contemplated periodical, and there having been no prospectus or specimen number issued by which it could be judged, it would be proper to use no efforts while engaged in their agency, to further its introduction or extend its circulation.

But those agents were already too deeply involved to heed the suggestion. The paper was already started, as an individual enterprize, in their names, with those of Mr. Phelps, Mr. Scott and others, to the number of twenty-seven, as a publishing committee, Mr. Stanton acting as editor. Various and discordant were the reasons given for persevering in the undertaking, after the demonstration of the Annual Meeting, that its necessity was not of that imperative nature that had been represented.

Mr. Stanton stated that it was a satellite of the Liberator, and that he could have wished it had been named “the Liberator Junior.” Mr. John E. Fuller, on the contrary, when men who had never professed to be abolitionists hesitated to take it, gave them to understand that it was “to put down Garrison.” Mr. Wise described it as an “anti non-resistance paper,” and Mr. St. Clair as “a plan of Mr. Garrison’s own, warmly advocated by the wealthy and influential Dr. Farnsworth.”

They went on to procure subscribers in connection with their lectures, and at the expense of the Massachusetts Society. Mr. Scott and Mr. Stanton were no less active in the same way, at the expense of the National Society.

The paper was named “The Massachusetts Abolitionist;” and when the array of its twenty-seven god-fathers appeared, Mr. Garrison directed public attention to them, as the nucleus of a hostile society in Massachusetts. This they individually denied; but the nature of the case, as well as their course as individuals, prevented their denial from obtaining credence. Colonization—American Union—Clerical Appeal—those embodyings of the spirit of the reluctant age with which abolitionists were in conflict,—had all been baffled. But the spirit yet lived, subtler from added experience, and this was the new tabernacle it had built. All these movements had, at their first appearance, comprised some of the faithful, but deceived. Great forbearance was therefore to be exercised, and great efforts made to unmask the deceit.

This could only be effected by calling the attention of abolitionists to the personal conduct of the men; as the paper itself was purposely kept free from any thing which could enlighten the friends at a distance as to the enmity of its conductors to the Massachusetts Society. Their scheme could not, at first, be fairly judged by those who did not witness its less public manifestations. It was like the fabled mermaid, seated where it could delude the unwary mariner;—above the water, fair and human—beneath, terminating in scaly and horrible deformity. Those could not fairly judge it, who did not know that its principal supporters, at the very moment that they disclaimed hostility to the Massachusetts Society, were laboring at county meetings to disjoin the Counties from the State organization, and to divert funds from its treasury; while, at the same time, they labored to produce the most unfavorable impression from the fact that its pledge to the central treasury yet remained unpaid.

The Massachusetts Society was like a ship struggling with a heavy sea. No sooner was one wave surmounted, than another threatened its destruction. The next came in the shape of an answer from the New York Committee to the invitation to collect the money due, by whatever means they chose, provided that they should but acknowledge the existence of the Massachusetts Society. It contained a refusal on the part of the Committee to abide by the contract (the final limitation of which had not yet arrived,) and declared their intention to proceed as if neither contract nor Massachusetts Society were in existence. Such a step would be so fatal to harmonious and efficient action—so destructive to the Massachusetts Society,—so disgraceful to the New York Committee, that, in the hope that a last strenuous effort might prevail against it, a special deputation was instantly sent to New York, to confer with the brethren, face to face.

Arguments, remonstrance, entreaty, were alike in vain. One of the Committee thought that “New York should assume the entire control of the Anti-Slavery funds, paying to Massachusetts such an allowance as should be necessary for carrying on the cause in that State, which sum would not, he supposed, be large.” All the New York brethren remained firm in their determination;—neither modification—mitigation—nor even what the merchant often grants his bankrupt creditor,—extension,—could be obtained.

The Massachusetts brethren felt it necessary to allude to the new paper, and its injurious effects on the treasury and the cause. The reply of the New York brethren was, “We are neutral.”

Fatal rock! to which the blind, the feeble, and the faltering cling, as the tide of controversy rises which is to overwhelm them, but on which the unfaithful merely pretend to find anchorage!

The Massachusetts brethren turned to their homes in sorrow and surprise at the determination they had been unable to move. Only one course remained for the preservation of their Society. Its injury, if not its destruction, would be the necessary consequence of hesitating to adopt it, and they announced their intention of public remonstrance against the conduct of the Ex. Committee, and a reference of the whole case to their common constituents—the abolitionists of Massachusetts. Grief, they must, at all events, have felt: but astonishment at the result of their conference would have been spared, had they been informed that it was, on one side, but a mere form, the whole affair having been decided, a week previous, by the issue of a circular, of which the following is an extract, signed by Messrs. Stanton, Tappan, Leavitt, Birney, and the most prominent of the New York Board.

“The amount which the Massachusetts Board had “guaranteed” to pay to this Society by the first of February just passed, was $7,500. Of that sum, but $3,920 have been received, leaving $3,680 due to this Society. From recent consultations had with the Massachusetts Board, we are fully authorized in saying, that the Board will not be able to pay this sum, much less the additional sum of $2,500 to fall due on the first of May next; nor do we believe it will be received from the abolitionists of Massachusetts, unless the Executive Committee of the American Society send their own agents into the field to raise it. To the adoption of this latter course they feel impelled by a sense of the duties they owe the slave. They feel constrained to abandon this “arrangement” for the following, among other reasons:

1. It works badly for this Society. Much the greater part of the $3,920 received from Massachusetts, has been raised at the expense of this Society, as the following statement shows. It was collected as follows:

Thus, of the $3,920 received from Massachusetts, since this arrangement was entered into, only about $1,000 at the utmost, have been raised by the Massachusetts Society. Nearly all the residue has been raised by the American Society. We ask any candid man, if this is “carrying out the plan,” as contemplated by the resolution of the Annual Meeting? And is it not suicidal for this Society to pursue such a “plan” any longer?”

Ah, what a rent was here, in the love—the trusting reverence with which Massachusetts abolitionists had persisted, against their better judgments, in looking to New York! What a document to cast before her faithful men,—this new style of account-current, in which what they had paid, was equally placed to their discredit with what they had not paid! What a reproach to her high-souled women, who had unreservedly dedicated themselves to the cause![6] What a shock to behold the anti-slavery enterprize presented in this degrading view to the gaze of the world! The American A. S. Society, placed, by this act of its committee, in the attitude of glorying in the collectorship of coppers!—the Parent Society, (as it had ever been affectionately and deferentially called,) busied like Saturn, in devouring its progeny!

This act created a necessity for a procedure still more vigorous than had been contemplated. The integrity and usefulness and good name of the National Society must, if possible, be rescued from the jeopardy in which this course of the committee had placed them. More than the existence of the Massachusetts Society was at stake—the cause was endangered by the conduct of the committee at this moment. It was painful to meet them on the low ground of dollars and cents; but they had taken the field there, and there they must, of consequence, be met and rebuked.

The Massachusetts Board, therefore, not only issued an address to the Abolitionists of the State, as they had given notice of their purpose to do, calling on them to assume the conduct of the affair, but they, at the same time, gave solemn warning of the perilous crisis, and appointed the quarterly State meeting, as a suitable time for its consideration.

More confirmation greeted the Massachusetts brethren on their return, of the fact that their agents were undermining the ground on which the Society stood.

Mr. St. Clair had concerted with the Rev. S. Hopkins Emery, and two or three other clergymen, comprising one third of the Bristol county board of officers, and, in the absence of the rest, they passed resolutions hostile to the Massachusetts Society, making that county auxiliary to the plans of the New York Committee, and nominating himself as a county agent. He had forwarded his resignation of his commission as an agent of the State board,—Mr. Wise shortly afterwards followed his example, and both were thereupon appointed agents of the N. York Committee, in which capacity they continued to labor in alienating the counties, and circulating the new paper.

Boards of Managers and the people they aim to manage, not unfrequently differ, in the anti-slavery cause, as in all other causes; and therefore it was that the Massachusetts Board, feeling no love of management or rule, were in the habit, on every extraordinary case, of referring its decision to their constituents, as the only way of presenting to each one the opportunity to discharge his individual duty to the Society, and as the best method of obtaining the manifold advantages of discussion.

The town and parish societies, in various parts of the State, began to meet for the consideration of this matter, which was felt to be one involving more than a single glance could unriddle.

Those members of the Boston Female Society, who had the interests of the slave most at heart, communicated with their officers, for the purpose of calling a meeting. Their request was not complied with. Again they applied, to the number of forty-five, which number was deemed a sufficient assurance that a meeting was seriously required by the members. Notwithstanding the remonstrances of two of the counsellors, the President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer, the identical individuals who, in 1837, refused to sustain the cause against the incursions of spiritual wickedness, still refused to notify a meeting.

Every moment stands at the juncture of two eternities, and is therefore of solemn consequence; but the importance of making use of this, was more than ordinarily apparent.

The women of Lynn were standing alone and unsupported at the post of danger;—the Massachusetts Society in peril, never more needed or better deserved support;—a hope existed that George Thompson might again be induced to visit America by a timely and earnest effort to second the invitation of the Young Men’s Convention, with the necessary funds;—Henry Clay, from his place in the Senate, was calling upon his fair countrywomen “to desist from anti-slavery efforts;”—this was the moment taken by the officers of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society to labor harder to make it desist, than they had ever before done to induce it to go forward. They visited the members personally, assuring them that it was unconstitutional to call a special meeting[7]—that the board saw no necessity for one, and finally entreated them to take their names from the requisition. As one among other reasons why they should do so, the President said that she apprehended there was a design on the part of some, to recall George Thompson, and, as he left the country in debt, his return would, from that circumstance, be a prejudice to the cause, and she was therefore anxious to prevent a meeting!!

By labors like this, a meeting was hindered at the time; but as one wrong step ever demands another to sustain it, preparation was made for the Society’s impending quarterly meeting, which could not be prevented, by the use of a sectarian gathering-word, which did not fail to rally all the unworthy members:—“Come and help us to put down the Unitarians.” Not one in fifty of the members were of that denomination, and the few who were, had ever been remarkable for the joy and good faith with which they met all who differed from them in opinion, and the heartiness with which they condemned the sins against freedom committed by their own sect. Mr. Phelps, now the pastor of the Free Church, was also affording his aid to unjustifiable sectarism, and, by a meeting thus drawn together, was a majority obtained who left undone all that the interests of the slave most loudly demanded should be done. A majority, in behalf of whom the President declared at that meeting that “as to the difficulty between the Massachusetts Society and the Executive Committee, the ladies did not understand it—they had not come prepared to go into it,—it would take too much time—why should we enter into the quarrels that were going on?” Yet, after that very meeting, the President, and Secretary, as a committee on the fair for raising funds, issued an address, without the knowledge but in the name of the whole Society, in which they argued the necessity that existed that all the women of Massachusetts should send their funds to New-York, because the Massachusetts Society had failed to meet its stated payments!! This circular was committed to one of the agents of the new paper, to be distributed in the country, with instructions to keep it private in the city from those in whose name it was issued.

The minority of the Society, who were neither ignorant nor unprepared, and who neither grudged their time nor themselves wholly, when the Anti-Slavery cause called for the sacrifice, were much pained to find that into this little sluice, opened at the time of the clerical appeal, had rushed the cold and bitter waters of indifference, and sectarism and chicanery, in a flood that threatened to sink the little vessel that had, in earlier days, done good service to the cause. But they knew their place as a minority, and prepared to fulfil that duty in another capacity, that they were prevented from discharging in this. The Massachusetts Society,—the parent and pioneer of all the rest, must not suffer for its fidelity, because the officers of the Boston Female Society had done wrong.

They were, besides, a very large and efficient minority, numbering among them the women who had first originated and mainly sustained, for four successive years, the plan of raising funds by means of an annual fair, and they did not permit themselves to be hindered on this occasion, any more than in former years, by the smallness of the pivot on which the duty of the moment turned. They knew that, for a season, it would appear trifling;—they also knew that it really was the type and representative of a principle,—one of the many indications now observable of that stage in the progress of reform, when minds a little enlarged by its principles, begin to resist, in alarm, the philosophical necessity of a further widening process, and, to avoid it, return to their original state.

But to resume the Chronological order of events.

The tenth wave seemed about to break upon the Massachusetts Society. The Board of Managers looked around them upon the circumstances of their case, for indications of the will of Providence. They were ready and desirous to cast down the painful staff of office. Better men, they wished, might be found to sustain it—but each looked on the other and said, “Where can his fellow be found, for clear-sighted devotion and faithfulness.”

Once more they decided to mount the breach together, for the cause’s sake. Had it been only for themselves, they would have scorned to stand one instant, in the humiliating posture in which the conduct of the New York Committee had placed them. But it was for the slave—for their brethren throughout the State, who had confided in them; and they doubted not that those brethren would throng up to the rescue. This mutual confidence was not misplaced. The members of the Society came together in great numbers, with the determination of paying up all arrearages, and, if possible, staying the destructive collision of feeling which they saw going on.

The New York Committee were not absent. Thither came Birney, and Torrey, and Stanton, and Tappan, and St. Clair, and Phelps, and Scott; and face to face they met Garrison, and Loring, and Phillips, and Chapman, and Follen, and French, and Brimblecom, in the presence of all the people. Men from the counties were there, to tell how those who should be acting as financial agents, were laboring to complete the division which had, more than any thing else, occasioned the deficiency in the funds. Men from the towns were there, to hand over their purses with the declaration that to their delay the deficiency should, in part, be charged, and not to their Board of officers. The indignant members from New Bedford were there, who had forwarded eight hundred and fifty dollars for the slave, and had seen it used for the purpose of casting reproach on the Massachusetts Society. And there, too, was Lynn, and Andover, and Plymouth, and Reading, and Abington, and the representatives of fifty other towns, where the Anti-Slavery enterprize had first struck root and borne the most abundant fruits—all earnestly bent upon conciliation—upon healing the breach, and upon sustaining the Massachusetts Society.

In the course of discussion, many things before unknown appeared. The New York Committee excused themselves by the plea of necessity. They were dunned daily themselves, and they had been compelled to this course to get the money. “Had they got it?” asked Wendell Phillips, “had not all the sources been stopped by this proceeding, against which they had been warned? Why could they not have co-operated—why could they not still co-operate harmoniously with the State Board? why should their agents, Mr. Stanton, one of themselves, among the number, make terms with the County Boards, which they had denied to the State Board? Mr. Stanton could, it appeared, co-operate with Mr. Torrey, in Essex, raising funds for the county treasury, and receiving only a part of them again for the National Treasury—why could he not extend co-operation, on better terms, to us in Boston?” The fact appeared that money had been forwarded to New York by the hand of agents on account of the pledge, which had never been credited accordingly. Men saw that there had been no delay or hesitancy in “taking the Massachusetts Board by the throat, and crying, Pay what thou owest,” and they inquired why their own attempts to liquidate the debt, had not been noticed.[8] The live-long day the discussion went on, the perplexity in which men’s minds had been involved becoming clearer and clearer, till after as complete an investigation of the case as could be made, and the most determined opposition on the part of the New York Committee and those engaged in the new paper, the meeting sustained the course of the Massachusetts Society, by the passage of the following resolution: ayes 142—noes 23.

Resolved, That the course pursued by the Board of Managers of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, in relation to the difficulty now existing between that Board and the Executive Committee of the Parent Society, meets our hearty approval.

Wendell Phillips now renewed the offer of harmonious co-operation.

Resolved, That we are ready harmoniously to co-operate with the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society, in the collection of funds within this Commonwealth, provided they will act with us under the arrangement of June last.

Hereupon the long-denied and painfully-concealed hostility to the Massachusetts Society burst forth, and the attempts to cast out Mr. Garrison, or to sink the Society with him, were renewed. Mr. Tappan saw no reason why the Committee should expect to receive the money at all, unless by taking the matter entirely out of the hands of the Massachusetts Society. The Managers could offer no better guarantee than at first.

“We can—we do offer a better guarantee,” replied Wendell Phillips. “We are in a far better condition to meet this pledge, than before. The political campaign in the Fourth District is at an end, and will no longer absorb the funds, or the energies of the agents. We are stronger as a Board; we have a new General Agent; we are awake, throughout the State, to the emergency.”

Mr. Stanton seemed to suppose that membership in the Massachusetts Society implied an obligation never to change one’s views on other subjects; for he read extracts from the Liberator, proving that Mr. Garrison had changed his opinions as to the principles of civil government, since the first establishment of that paper. Rev. George Allen burst into vehement invective. “I am ready,” said he, pointing to Mr. Garrison, “to attack the wolf in his very den, with the bleeding relics of his mangled victims yet between his teeth.” Mr. Birney, to the utter astonishment of the meeting, descended to the proscriptive ground first assumed by Mr. Stanton, and intimated that no non-resistant could consistently or honorably remain a member of the Anti-Slavery Society.

Men’s minds went back to the days of the clerical appeal, when Birney, then an editor in Ohio, had been tried and found wanting. That deficiency, so long veiled with silent and brotherly care by those whom he yielded up to the enemy, now defied concealment. He proclaimed his sympathy and knowledge with that of the N. Y. Committee, in the recent plottings. “WE felt the need of this new paper in Massachusetts.”

A sudden light burst upon the meeting. All this whole long day’s labored ringing of changes upon “dollars”—“contract”—“non-fulfilment”—“null and void”—all the foregone course of the Committee,—it was only a pretence, then, for keeping hostile agents in the State to work the Society’s destruction, under pretence of obtaining money! This debt of a few thousand dollars—men now saw why the wound it had made should be so dangerous. It was like the scratch of a poisoned weapon—slight, but possibly mortal.

Rodney French, of New Bedford, informed the meeting of the manner in which the funds of abolitionists had been necessarily absorbed; those of the clear-sighted, in sustaining the cause against the insidious attacks it had been undergoing—those of the blinded, in unsuspectingly co-operating with the disguised enemy. “Had this paper been presented in its true colors,” said he, “no funds would have been swallowed up by it in our county of Bristol. But men have been deceived, and they are now finding it out. Let me beseech our National Committee to change the ground they have taken. I do entreat them to meet us like brothers, and accede to this resolution. It is an olive-branch. The money will easily be raised by this harmonious co-operation—confidence will be preserved, and the slave in his chains will rejoice.” Abby Kelly, the delegate from Millbury, followed in the same strain. “Let us even make ourselves beggars,” she said, “for the slave, who is denied the poor privilege of begging!” and she pledged herself to pay fifty dollars of the amount necessary to be raised, and her town of Millbury three times that sum. John A. Collins, the General Agent of the Massachusetts Society, stepped upon the platform, with securities to the amount of seven hundred dollars, in his hands, and begged Mr. Birney, who had risen to speak, to give way for a moment, that he might announce them to the meeting. Mr. Birney waved him aside—“We do not want your pledges!” and proceeded to reply to Rodney French.—“If the gentleman supposes that I will be the bearer of such a proposition as the one contained in this resolution, to my colleagues at New York, let me tell him that he has altogether mistaken my character.”

No more remained to be said. Wendell Phillips immediately withdrew the resolution so decisively repulsed.

Mr. Tappan commented with severity upon the “disgraceful scene he had witnessed,” and counselled a division in the Society, saying that were he resident in Massachusetts as he was in New York, he should endeavor to effect it.

A division in the Society, because the Society had determined, for the slave’s sake, to continue to exist; and had sustained its Board of Managers in their efforts for its preservation! here, then, was another layman, ready to do the bidding of the ministry in breaking up the Massachusetts Society. He might not be doing it intentionally, but doing it men saw he was, by this counsel.

The meeting separated, but not till multitudes had been disenchanted by that eight hours’ session of many a fond belief, that, till then, had stood undoubted in their minds.

The friends resolved in their inmost spirits, as they departed, to pay the utmost farthing of this pledge, notwithstanding the afflicting disclosure the Committee had made of their motives for having all along refused harmonious co-operation for its redemption.

This day had been a painful one for the Massachusetts Board; but they knew that they had done right, and therefore felt no anxiety as to the result.

They were sustained by the abolitionists of the State, and they rejoiced at it; not for themselves, but as a proof of the fidelity of their brethren to the cause. They had been sustained against the most determined hostility. A statement of the case, in the form best calculated to injure the Society, had, previous to the meeting, been scattered broad-cast over the State, under the direction of Mr. Stanton. It was matter of astonishment that so much effort to do injury should not have produced a greater effect. Truth was mighty, and had prevailed, to strip the difficulty of one of its disguises—the cloak of the mere dun, and show it in the attitude of the assassin.

The effect of the meeting was magical. The friends, in all parts of the State, rallied together and mulcted themselves afresh. How prompt were their donations, how fervent and brotherly their expressions of confidence, how painful their solicitude at the developments made by the New York Committee, how forbearing their course with regard to its doings, the resolutions and correspondence of that period, testify. The Committee returned to New York, still keeping in the field, at the public expense, the agents who had been creating a division. The work went vigorously on, notwithstanding the drawback this occasioned. All this imbroglio had been caused, in the first instance, by men of the orthodox Congregational sect, and it was fitting that the honor of that sect should be vindicated by the laborious fidelity of others of its members. That the money was raised,—five or six thousand dollars in the space of two months, for the most part in very small sums, so that the State Treasurer was enabled to authorize the draft of the N. York Committee before the final payment became due, was owing mainly to the self-devoting labors of orthodox Congregational licentiates, of the Theological Seminary at Andover. From that sect came the bane—from that sect came also the antidote.

At that moment of general and anxious effort for the payment of the pledge, private circulars were issued by Mr. Phelps, in behalf of the publishing committee of the new paper, in which he urged men to devote all their funds to its establishment, for this, among other reasons, that they would then know what became of their money. This showed the origin of the rumors which had been circulated, that the Massachusetts Society fraudulently permitted its funds to be used to sustain the Liberator; and that it paid an editorial stipend—(“a fat salary” as the term was,) to Mr. Garrison. These reports, false as they were, came with an ill grace from those who, it is to be hoped unknowingly, received from Mr. James Boutelle, one of their agents, money entrusted to him for the payment of the pledge, but who appropriated it to the “Massachusetts Abolitionist.”

All these labors were in vain.—The pledge was redeemed, against all opposition.

Next came the Annual Meeting of the National Society, where men from all the States met to consult for the good of the cause.

In full National Assembly, they resisted the idea that a difference of mind respecting forms of government was a disqualification for membership in the Society. They preserved inviolate the ancient broad foundation. They resisted, as the Massachusetts Society had done, any attempt to deprive women of their constitutional and inalienable right “to know, and utter, and to argue freely,” in this National Council. A resolution was also reported by the financial committee of the Society, that thirty-five thousand dollars was as large a sum as could be advantageously placed at the disposal of the Executive Committee during the year; as they deemed that more could be effected for the cause by a local than by a central expenditure.

The Society also earnestly requested the Executive Committee to send no agents into the States, except with the advice of the State Societies. This salutary measure was strenuously opposed by those connected with the new paper in Massachusetts. Previous to the meeting, they labored personally and by correspondence, to secure the attendance of such as would co-operate with them for the exclusion of women, and of the non-resisting members. The Executive Committee, too, were, some of them, no less active to the same effect. Mr. Birney issued an article in the Emancipator, the organ of the whole Society, and sustained from its treasury, in which he asserted not only that a part of the members were unfitted, by their religious principles, for a place in the Society, but argued the merits of their principles per se, representing them as identical with those of the bloody and licentious Anabaptists of the sixteenth century.

These labors all fell short of their aim. Still, as at first, the Society continued odious by the presence of its founder:—he, into whose heart God had put strength not to deny his individual principles, though their sacrifice was demanded by those whose love and approbation had heretofore been so dear, and who, through four dangerous and toilsome years, had stood with him, shoulder to shoulder, in the forefront of the battle against slavery. Oh that evil tongues and times had not been too mighty for their integrity! May every one of them yet be enabled to see that any infringement of the principles of Freedom, is a hindrance to the emancipation of the slave, not to be removed by thousands of gold and silver, or the mightiest physical array. May God of his infinite mercy grant us, as a NATIONAL ASSOCIATION of Americans, for the redemption of our country from slavery, the grace to see, that, as we can never give what we cease to possess, so our labors for the emancipation of the slave must be in vain, after the insulted angel of freedom has departed.

The Massachusetts Board of Officers met immediately after this meeting, and decided to raise five thousand dollars, for the year 1839-40, as the proportion which ought to be borne by their State, of the thirty-five thousand dollars specified by the Financial Committee, as the proper appropriation to the central treasury. They notified the Executive Committee of this pledge, upon the understanding that all money raised in Massachusetts should be credited to its redemption, and that no agents of the New York Committee should labor in the State without the concurrence of the State Board.

To this communication, Mr. Stanton, in behalf of the committee, replied, that they had still two agents in the field, (Mr. St. Clair and Mr. Wise,) and he inquired whether any objection would be made to their remaining in that capacity!!!

The New England Convention followed quickly upon the tread of the National Meeting. This occasion had ever been, among abolitionists, a hallowed festival, to which each came to receive from all the rest whatever they might be able to give of comfort, and of knowledge, and of cheer, and to bid them all be sharers in his own full jubilee of heart.

Here they had enjoyed their last earthly communion with the early-called and tenderly-beloved, who had been caught up out of the thick of the battle into heaven; and, therefore, the returns and the memories of this day,

——“Like spots of earth where angels’ feet had stepped,
Were holy.”——

A shadow marred the customary brightness of the day, to those who had witnessed those workings of the spirit of treachery and intolerance, which have been traced in the preceding pages.

Their forebodings were justified. This spirit made one more attempt to rend them as it departed; but, failing in its purpose, it deserted the foundation it had been unable to destroy. The intention of forming a hostile Society had frequently been charged home upon the members of the publishing committee of the new paper, and as often strenously denied. Yet, here it stood, at length, a new organization in Massachusetts, giving, as its reason for coming into existence, the recreancy, i.e. the tolerance of the old. That it differed from the old Society, in not seeing that every real interest of mankind must be universal, and necessarily gather up all men in the prosecution of its march, was narrow, short-sighted, unfortunate. That its founders had not openly announced themselves at the time when Dr. Hawes consulted with leading abolitionists nearly a year before, and that they had ever since been carrying on a concealed warfare upon the old Society, in the mask of friendship and brotherhood, must be very differently characterized.

Elizur Wright, Jr., so well known and loved of abolitionists, in days that were past, was carried away in the toils—another layman, in the clutches of the power that constitutes in New England the strongest obstacle to emancipation. He became a Secretary of the new organization, and the editor of the Massachusetts Abolitionist, and immediately strove to justify his course by asserting the recreancy of the Massachusetts Society. He was like the child drifting from the shore, after having un-moored his little bark, who cried out that the land was rushing backward, as the treacherous waves bore him swiftly away. In the New England Convention of 1836, he had deprecated division, in a church so corrupted by slavery, that nothing but division could save it from destruction. In 1839, he was wrought upon by the circumstances with which the corrupt leaders of that same corrupt body had surrounded him, to labor on their behalf, for a division in the anti-slavery ranks. Those who recollected his course then, possessed a key to his present proceedings.

Some of the leaders of the new movement appeared in the N. England Convention, after their secession, and gave reasons for their conduct. The reason of the Rev. John Le Bosquet was, that they felt conscientiously obliged to impede the free and conscientious action of women in the anti-slavery cause. The Rev. Mr. Trask said that they wished to afford an opportunity for men of name and influence, in church and state, to come and take the conduct of the anti-slavery enterprise;—men who now took no interest in it, and never would do so, unless they were made officers. Elizur Wright thought the new organization needed, because the old Society had refused to pronounce the act of voting at the polls a fundamental principle—a test of membership—Christian duty. That ninety-nine hundredths of the Society actually and conscientiously went to the polls, was nothing so long as those remained members, in as good standing as himself, who conscientiously refused to go. The Rev. Mr. Torrey’s reasons were all these, with “others which had never yet been given by any one.” Mr. Garrison, deeply pained by the wounds inflicted on the cause, had said, with much feeling, “I could weep tears of blood over this division, if it would avail to stay its evils.” Mr. Torrey, ridiculing his emotion, remarked that, “to see the gentleman weep tears of blood, would indeed be a curious physiological fact.”

Disconcerted as the exclusive councils of the framers of the new organization had frequently been by the intrusive “common people,” they took, from that experience, a hint in modelling their new constitution. Not every one who signed it was to be permitted to vote in their Society, however strictly his vote might be required of him at the polls. Only one gentleman for every twenty-five members was to have the privilege of uniting with the officers and agents of the Society in the transaction of business.

Of the two chief pretences for such an organization—the first, that the subject of women’s rights to sustain civil and ecclesiastical offices &c. had been “dragged in,” and “hitched on,” (as the phrases were,) was an entirely false pretence, that subject never having been introduced in the Massachusetts Society. Women had, indeed, persisted in exercising the rights and duties of members, which they could not be prevented from doing without a violation of the letter and spirit of the Society’s constitution, and if the necessity of a new organization was grounded on this circumstance, its contrivers were plainly hypocritical in striving to make it auxiliary to the National Society, which also admitted women. They intimated, that they hoped to be able to make that Society recede from its ground next year;—but honestly bigoted minds, conscientiously opposed to women’s acting in the anti-slavery cause on their own responsibility, would surely never begin their course of opposition by the sin of co-operation for a year. The second pretence, that the old Society had become a no-government society, was without a shadow of foundation. The strongest political resolution it had ever adopted, to which Mr. Stanton’s resolution in 1837 was feeble, had been passed this year. But, then it had refused to cast out Mr. Garrison: “ay! there’s the rub!” This exclamation of the Prince of Denmark, when his mind was occupied with the question, “to be or not to be,” conveys, in this connection, a summary of the reasons which decided the new organization “to be.”

The New England convention decided that such an association, so gathered, so founded and so organized, could not give aid to any organization upon the old basis, which it had deserted and condemned; and they notified the Executive Committee at New York of the same. The hostility of its founders to the Massachusetts Society—the difference it had made as to the fundamental principles, the exclusiveness of its foundation—its mathematical position, working the same derangement in the anti-slavery system as a new planet in the orbit of the earth might do in the solar system,—all forbade it fraternal greeting or long life.

The course the New York Committee should take in action, would be the measure of their own worth to the cause. So opposite were these two Societies, that one or the other must needs be unworthy of the affiliation. If the New York Committee should, after their well-remembered wont, think neutrality possible, still to be neutral would be to spare the criminal; and “Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur.”

From the new organization thus formed, it was planned to send out division unto every local Society. Mr. St. Clair, and Mr. Wise, who had been the Swiss of this warfare, at one time during the year, the agents of the Massachusetts Board, at another, of the new paper, at another, of the New York Committee, were now made the agents of the new organization, for completing the work of division.

This having been done, Mr. Stanton no longer delayed to intimate to the Massachusetts Board “that it would be the aim of the New-York Committee to comply, as far as they could conscientiously, with the advice of their constituents as to agents.”

What was the new organization, then, in reality?—men asked themselves. Its designs were unmasked by abolitionists in Massachusetts, as the Annual Meeting, the Quarterly Meeting, the Bristol County Meeting, the Essex County Meeting, the Plymouth County Meeting, the Worcester County Meetings, the Middlesex County Meeting, and the multiplied meetings of town Societies had conclusively proved. It was but an agent of the New York Committee, under the name of an organization. What would be its effect? to fulfil the wishes of pro-slavery divines, by multiplying nominal abolitionists of its own spirit, as millstones about the neck of the cause. May the New-York Committee dare to claim credit for veracity, if they but

“Keep the word of promise to the ear,
And break it to the sense?—”

When, at the Judgment, they shall stand up face to face with the New England band of early abolitionists who so loved and trusted them, what more can each one of them say than this:—“My mouth has never lied to thee!”

What is the attitude of the contending hosts of freedom and slavery in Massachusetts, at the present time—the summer of 1839? The unfaithful have turned to flight, overpowered by the subtlety and fury of a pro-slavery church and ministry;—have dishonored their Master, by conceding that such a church and ministry are his;—have forsaken and betrayed the faithful, offering them up as a propitiation to this ecclesiastical pro-slavery;—have devised a new anti-slavery organization on hypocritical and false pretences, behind which to disguise their apostacy for a season.

The faithful, undismayed by treachery, undeterred by obloquy and persecution, unshaken by abuse, strengthened by experience, relying neither on a pro-slavery church, government, or ministry, but on GOD, and themselves as his ready instruments, have bound themselves more firmly to the cause and to each other, and are laboring with increased ardor in the promulgation of the truth which alone can save this slaveholding people.