Prudence Crandall

The two most famous trials in the history of Connecticut are those of Prudence Crandall and the Amistad Africans. There is a considerable body of literature about each, but neither has been fully examined in its legal or constitutional aspects, though three large manuscript works have been completed about Crandall, one by one of the authors of this bibliog­raphy.

Prudence Crandall ran a school for girls in Canterbury during the 1830s. She began to enroll black girls; the white parents withdrew their children, and Crandall made the school one exclusively for blacks. She involved William Lloyd Garrison and other prominent and wealthy abolitionists in her cause, and they attempted to set up a test case for the United States Supreme Court to determine whether free Negroes were citizens within the meaning of the United States Constitution. The people of Canterbury got the General Assembly to legislate against Miss Crandall’s practice. Three trials ensued; Miss Crandall spent a night in jail but ultimately was permitted to go back to her school. The Connecticut Su­preme Court of Errors dismissed the case in 1833 on a creative technical­ity, and thus the issue was left in abeyance until Roger Taney decided it in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857). But the folks in Canterbury, not to be thwarted, threw rocks and other things at Miss Crandall’s students, tried to burn down her house, and engaged in other obstreperous acts. Miss Crandall got married hastily, packed up, and left town. There is a short, superficial, popular account by Edmund Fuller that completely misses the legal and constitutional significance of the episode: Prudence Crandall: An Incident of Racism in Nineteenth-Century Connecticut (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1971). See also

Child, Alfred Thurston, Jr. “Prudence Crandall and the Canterbury Experi­ment.” Bulletin of the Friends’ Historical Association 22(1933). Crandall was brought up a Quaker, though at the time of this episode she was a member of the Baptist church and ultimately was officially disowned by the Friends for marrying a Baptist minister. This is the Quaker historical journal’s apprecia­tion of her.

Davis, Rodney 0. “Prudence Crandall, Spiritualism, and Populist Era Reform in Kansas.” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 3(Winter, 1980)4:239-54. Crandall—then Mrs. Philleo—spent about fifty years in the Midwest, where she was involved in the women’s suffrage cause and other movements, includ­ing spiritualism.

Friedman, Lawrence J.  “Racism and Sexism in Antebellum America: The Pru­dence Crandall Episode Reconsidered.” Societas 4(Summer, 1974)3:211-27. A thoughtful, sophisticated, and provocative article suggesting that the War of 1812, industrialism, and the women’s movement created insecurities in New England society that underlay the violent response to the Crandall experi­ment.

Fuller, Edmund. “Prudence of Canterbury.” The American Scholar. Summer, 1949. An early sketch by the author of the short, popular book mentioned above. Flimsy.

Jay, William. An Inquiry into the Character and Tendency of The American Colonization and American Anti-Slavery Societies. New York: Leavitt, Lord and Co., 1835. This is the best secondary source for the episode. Jay, an ardent abolitionist, writes sympathetically about Crandall. He was not involved in her affair, but was inti­mate with those who were and was very close to the events.

Kimball, John C. Connecticut’s Canterbury Tale. Hartford: Plimpton, 1888. In 1884, fifty years after the trials, the General Assembly voted a $400 annual pension to Prudence Philleo. This pamphlet, published later, represents Kimball’s ef­forts to persuade the public to do so. See also an anonymous piece in Connec­ticut Magazine 5(July, 1899)7:386-88 that for the most part is based on an ac­count of a Hartford reporter who visited Mrs. Philleo in 1887. It also includes the text of a long speech given in the General Assembly supporting her pen­sion.

Lamed, Ellen D. History of Windham County, Connecticut. Worcester, Mass.: Charles Hamilton, 1858. Vol. 11:490-502 includes a fair account, though inaccurate in some particulars, based in part on correspondence with Mrs. Philleo. No atten­tion to the constitutional issue.

Mansir, Gladys Eliot. “The Drama of Prudence Crandall.” The Connecticut Teacher. March, 1946. A short article by the author of a lengthy manuscript on the sub­ject.

McCarron, Anna T. “Trial of Prudence Crandall for the Crime of Educating Neg­roes in Connecticut.” Connecticut Magazine 12(Summer, 1908)2:225-32. Based on a term paper done for Albert Bushnell Hart at Radcliff. Nothing new.

May, Samuel J. Some Recollections of Our Anti-Slavery Conflict. Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1869. May was the principal figure behind the decision to make Crandall’s experiment a constitutional test. He was intimately involved with every aspect of the matter, and probably—with the exception of Prudence herself— the prime mover in the events. This account was written, it appears, from memory, with the aid of Jay’s account, cited above; and it is not free from er­rors, especially of chronology. But it is virtually a primary source.

Small, Edwin M., and Small, Miriam R. “Prudence Crandall, Champion of Negro Education.” New England Quarterly 17(1944): 506-29. A short, sound account of the event, but again with no legal or constitutional analysis.

Strane, Susan. A Whole-Souled Woman: Prudence Crandall and the Education of Black Women. Ne York: W.W. Norton, 1990. Strane is a journalist. This is a popular work, not a scholarly one, and it is a quick read. Strane misses the constitutional context of Crandall v. the State,  but otherwise her bibliography evinces a fairly sophisticated research job. For non-scholars this is a good work to start with.

Welch, Marris Olive. Prudence Crandall, A Biography. Manchester: Jason Publishers, 1983. This is really a compendium of materials -- long quotations from town meeting minutes, correspondence, newspaper announcements, etc. Welch includes long excerpts from the Crandall trial and the Dred Scott decision (1857), and tries to show their relationship to the principles underlying Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

Wormley, G. Smith. “Prudence Crandall.” Journal of Negro History 8(January, 1923)1:78-80. Small, above, is the same sort of thing and much better and more likely to be found in a public library.