ble purpose of devoting her school to the
education of colored girls exclusively. She did not know whether her
idea was practicable, and so in her perplexity she turned for counsel to
the editor of the _Liberator_. She went to Boston for this purpose, and
there, at the old Marlboro' Hotel, on Washington street, on the evening
of January 29, 1833, she discussed this business with Mr. Garrison. This
visit and interview confirmed the brave soul in her desire to change her
school into one for the higher education of colored girls. It was
expected that a sufficient number of such pupils could be obtained from
well-to-do colored families in cities like Boston, Providence, and New
York to assure the financial success of the enterprise. When Miss
Crandall had fully matured her plans in the premises she announced them
to the Canterbury public. But if she had announced that she contemplated
opening a college for the spread of contagious diseases among her
townspeople, Canterbury could not possibly have been more agitated and
horrified. Every door in the village was slammed in her face. She was
denounced in town meetings, and there was not chivalry enough to cause a
single neighbor to speak in her defence. Samuel J. May had to come from
an adjoining town for this purpose. "But," says Mr. May, "they would not
hear me. They shut their ears and rushed upon me with threats of
personal violence."

As there was nothing in the statutes of Connecticut which made the
holding of such a school as that of Miss Crandall's illegal, the good
Canterbury folk procured the passage of a hasty act through the
Legislature, which was then in session, "making it a penal offence,
punishable by fine and imprisonment, for any one in that State keeping a
school to take as his or her pupils the children of colored people of
other States." But the heart of the young Quaker woman was the heart of
a heroine. She dared to disregard the wicked law, was arrested, bound
over for trial, and sent to jail like a common malefactor. It was no
use, persecution could not cow the noble prisoner into submission to the
infamous statute. In her emergency truth raised up friends who rallied
about her in the unparalleled contest which raged around her person and
her school. There was no meanness or maliciousness to which her enemies
did not stoop to crush and ruin her and her cause. "The newspapers of
the county and of the adjoining counties teemed with the grossest
misrepresen