Connecticut
Abolitionism
A
tremendous amount of scholarly energy has been devoted, over the
past generation, to abolitionists and abolitionism, and there
are whole bibliographies on the subject. Connecticut activities
are best traced through the biographies and autobiographies of
Leonard Bacon, Simeon Baldwin, Horace Bushnell, Prudence Crandall,
Jonathan Edwards the younger, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and others.
There is a book. The Underground Railroad in Connecticut,
by Horatio T. Strother (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press,
1962), based on a University of Connecticut master’s thesis.
The work collects as much data as Strother, a black college teacher,
could find, but the reviewer in the New England Quarterly
(Vol. 36, 1963, pp. 126-28) thought it superficial, unsophisticated,
and relying too much on reminiscences, which the author took too
seriously. Nevertheless, the reviewer says, “Skillfully avoiding
the expression of indignation and didacticism, [Strother] allows
events to provide the drama and the moral message.” Strother cites
no works later than 1951; obviously, much work remains to be
done. Three scholars have undertaken some of that work.
Bruser,
Lawrence. “Political Antislavery in Connecticut, 1844-1858.” Doctoral
dissertation, Columbia, 1974. “Connecticut was one of the critical
swing states that held the balance of power between the North
and South in the 1850’s. In order to succeed there, the Republican
Party had to put together the right combination of political factions
and formulate an antislavery appeal that was attuned to the broad
mainstream of Northern life. The obstacles to an antislavery
party in Connecticut were the state’s traditional distrust of
social reform, its intense dislike of Negroes, and its vested
interest in Southern trade. Encouraging the rise of Republicanism
were the inexorable forces of the modern world: a sense of moral
right, the growth of democracy, and the industrial revolution.”
(from the abstract) Bruser’s approach is strongly narrative, but
this is an excellent and valuable contribution to the very small
literature dealing with the era.
Essig,
James D. “Connecticut Ministers and Slavery, 1790-1795. “Journal
of American Studies 15(April, 1981)1:27-44. A brief and desultory
effort to provide Connecticut support for abolitionist groups
elsewhere was marked by regional pride, “ambivalence,” and “defensiveness”
(p. 32), and the sense that “the existence of slavery was distasteful,
even embarrassing, but not really alarming; slaves were sad to
be in bondage; but happy to be in Connecticut.” (p. 40) The Connecticut
Society for the Promotion of Freedom and the Relief of Persons
Unlawfully Holden in Bondage, led by the State’s most prominent
Congregational ministers, was hardly more than a speechifying
society of mutual self-congratulation. As individuals, many of
the members tried to see that the gradual emancipation laws and
anti-slave trade laws were enforced in the state.
Melish,
John Pope. Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and 'Race'
in New England, 1780-1860. Ithaca, Cornell Univ. Press, 1998.
Focus is on Connecticut and Rhode Island. Melish locates a "racialized"
New England as arising out of the necessity to redefine the place
of American blacks as they moved from slavery to freedom. Gradual
abolition -- especially in Connecticut and Rhode Island -- took
over half a century and allowed the parallel, but opposed, classification
of people of color as both free and inferior.
Senior,
Robert C. “New England Congregationalism and the Anti-Slavery
Movement, 1830-1860.” Doctoral dissertation, Yale, 1954. The
cause was not generally a strong one in Connecticut. Leaders
eschewed the immediatism of W. L. Garrison and for the most part
made only ineffectual motions in the direction of real abolitionism,
preferring rather the schemes of the Colonizationists to send
blacks to Africa. Senior points out that among the New England
states Connecticut was the last to form an anti-slavery society—in
1838—and the first to bolt from Garrisonianism—in 1840.
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