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[ 81 ] A s the month of April ended, Prudence Crandall had only three black students at her school. In addition to local opposition, Crandall now battled a dire fiscal situation and realized she could not rely on advertisements in the Liberator to increase enrollment. When she received a letter from Arthur Tappan encouraging her to keep her school open, Crandall saw an opportunity .1 She traveled to Norwich on Monday, April 22, 1833, and boarded a ferry for New York City. Crandall also made a decision concerning Ann Eliza Hammond and the vagrancy charge. While she appreciated the advice of Rev. May to stand firm and persuade Miss Hammond to submit to a whipping if necessary, Crandall did not agree. Crandall could not allow a child in her care to face even the remote possibility of brutal punishment at the hands of the town. With the deadline of the May 2 hearing fast approaching, Crandall paid the fine and ended the matter for the time being.2 The bitter opposition to the school took a toll on Crandall ’s family, particularly her father. Pardon Crandall did not enjoy public attention and wanted to see the controversy brought to an end. “I have advised her often to give up her school and sell her property, and relieve Canterbury from their imagined destruction,” Pardon wrote. “Not that I thought she had committed a crime or had done anything which she had not a perfect right to do. But I wanted peace and quietness.”3 While Pardon privately encouraged his daughter to abandon her plans to educate black women, he stood by her when others criticized her school. Andrew Judson’s attacks in the press moved Pardon to respond. He sent a letter to Judson and Chester Lyon; Lyon was the assessor , sheriff, and judge of probate for Canterbury.4 Par5 : The Black Law [ 82 ] Prudence Crandall’s Legacy don included his letter in a pamphlet titled Fruits of Colonization, which combined letters and editorials critical of Judson and other opponents of Crandall’s school. “The spirit of a father that waketh for the daughter is roused,” Pardon wrote. “I know the consequence. I now come forward to oppose tyranny with my property at stake, my life in my hand.”5 Pardon described how a gang of men came to his house and threatened to destroy his daughter’s schoolhouse unless she closed her school. The men also threatened to attack Pardon’s farm and demanded that he leave Canterbury. “It will be easy to raise a mob and tear down your house,” they said.6 The following day Pardon visited Andrew Judson and accused him of leading the “ungenerous and unrighteous conduct that has been pursued towards my daughter Prudence Crandall.”7 Judson responded with the threat of a lawsuit. “I had rather sue you than to sue her,” Judson told Pardon .8 Pardon said that a lawsuit seemed unnecessary given Judson’s plans to “pass a law that will destroy the school without a series of litigations.”9 Crandall’s impulsive trip to New York City, where she implored Arthur Tappan and the black ministers who supported her school to immediately secure students, resulted in success. By early May 1833, six students arrived from New York City. Shortly thereafter, enrollment swelled from nine to thirteen and then to twenty-two, with students from New York, Philadelphia , Providence, and Boston. Within Connecticut, students came from Canterbury, Griswold, and New Haven.10 Crandall finally had the income she needed to meet her basic expenses. Students filled the schoolhouse, and Crandall immersed herself in the job of teacher and headmistress of a school for black women. “In the midst of this affliction I am as happy as at any moment of my life—I never saw the time when I was the least apprehensive that adversity would harm me,” Prudence wrote. “I have put my hand to the plough and I will never, no never look back—I trust God will help me keep this resolution.”11 Crandall’s work mirrored the ongoing efforts of black leaders and ministers in New York City, who operated schools for members of their congregations with guidance in “morals, literature, and mechanical arts.”12 In the spring of 1833, Reverend Samuel Cornish, Theodore Wright, Peter Williams, and Christopher Rush founded the Phoenix Society. They successfully opened a high school for young black men, and later opened a school for black women.13 Both Arthur Tappan and his brother...

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