In the course of the 1830s, the newly fashioned American Antislavery Society despatched audio system to the hinterlands of New England to “electrify the mass wherever they transfer,” within the phrases of Massachusetts abolitionist Elizur Wright, Jr. For these touring brokers who toured all through Maine in that decade, these occasions served not solely to evangelise the message, but in addition to fundraise and set up native Antislavery Society chapters.

Within the mid-1830s, the 2 most distinguished Antislavery Society brokers on the Maine circuit had been the Rev. David Thurston, of Winthrop, and Charles Lenox Remond, of Salem, Massachusetts. Journalist and legal professional Henry B. Stanton, the husband of famend girls’s rights chief Elizabeth Cady Stanton, additionally made quite a few appearances in Maine starting in 1836. In these days, abolitionists had been nonetheless thought-about troublemakers by most Mainers. They typically confronted hecklers and, often, mobs. As historian Edward Schriver notes, Rev. Thurston didn’t need to cope with any violence throughout his a number of dozen speeches in Maine, however he didn’t persuade many individuals, both. Usually the audio system had been fortunate if even a handful of assembly attendees signed up with the Society. 

Stanton, however, triggered fairly a stir when he arrived in Portland on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 1836. Described by the Lynn Document as a “younger man of very youthful and prepossessing look … [and] surpassing eloquence,” Stanton was recognized to “electrify” audiences along with his appeals to the trigger. Nonetheless, as researcher John L. Myers has written, as quickly as Stanton started his speech on the Pals’ Meetinghouse in Portland, a horn instantly blared and a mob surrounded the constructing, hurling mud and rocks by the home windows. The shouts and the hail of projectiles reportedly didn’t stop till he completed his tackle. The next day, one other mob gathered and constables needed to are available to offer safety, as even Mayor Levi Cutter couldn’t calm them down. 

That October, Stanton returned for the Maine Antislavery Society’s two-year anniversary, however Cutter reneged on his settlement to permit the group to make use of Metropolis Corridor for its assembly after an uproar from the group’s opponents. They ended up gathering in a personal residence that night time.

Anticipating mob violence once more, the group had beforehand written to the mayor asking for police safety, however Cutter replied that such a deployment would “solely improve the evil, & that it was his settled perception that we couldn’t be protected.” Predictably, a riot broke out that night, and based on Myers, “the dedication of the elite of town to revive order prompted [Cutter] to vary his thoughts,” so constables had been despatched out to quell the disturbance. Stanton later described the ebb and circulation of the recognition of Maine’s antislavery motion as “twice lifeless.” He expressed  hope for a “resurrection,” however believed it will take a “sturdy shakeout, a even handed one” to wake Mainers up.

Within the fall 1839, Remond had a very difficult project. The 29-year-old from Salem had turn out to be the primary Black agent of the American Antislavery Society and was generally known as a compelling and passionate orator. In earlier years, the distinguished Portland legal professional and militiaman Samuel Fessenden, Stanton, the Rev. Charles Cone, British abolitionist George Thompson and the fiery writer William Lloyd Garrison had achieved lecture excursions of the state, however seldom had the predominantly white audiences had an precise African-American lecturer communicate earlier than them. 

Remond knew the risks of finishing up his mission. Even white abolitionist audio system typically confronted hostile audiences and occasional violence. For a “coloured” speaker, the dangers had been even larger, particularly as a result of it’s possible that the majority Mainers had by no means interacted with an individual of coloration. On the time, there have been only one,355 free Black residents in Maine, out of a complete of twenty-two,634 in New England. However Remond was undeterred, driving his horse and wagon by backcountry dust roads to cities, cities and rural hamlets within the sparsely populated, closely wooded state, from Saco, Portland and Bangor to Alfred, Moderation Village (Hollis), Farmington, Gilead, Bethel, Bowdoin, Bristol, Union and Camden.

As Remond recounted in a letter to the Augusta abolitionist newspaper Advocate of Freedom, dated Oct. 27, 1839, it was on tour by Hampden and Orrington the place he encountered a few of his most belligerent audiences. The primary incident occurred when he was pelted with eggs on his method into Hampden Academy one Thursday night to ship a speech. Ignoring the antagonists, Remond went into the assembly, the place he was challenged to a debate by none aside from Democratic State Consultant Hannibal Hamlin, the long run Vice President of the US underneath Lincoln. Remond rose to recount the incident he had simply skilled exterior when instantly a commotion broke out.

At this second some inhuman fellows aimed plenty of stones and eggs at my head — which thank GOD, missed the mark, and handed with nice swiftness by the window behind me. Instantly there was screaming and a simultaneous rush for the door — the women had been apparently a lot alarmed. With out transferring from place, I requested the viewers to renew their seats, as there was no hurt meant to any particular person however myself; and if as a way to put down the trigger wherein I used to be engaged, it was needed I ought to be pelted with eggs, be it so; that if I should be stoned, be it so; that if they need to stroll over my prostrate and bleeding physique, be it so; for whereas I lived, and a single slave clanks his chain upon the soil which gave me beginning, I’ll train the prerogative of pondering and talking in his behalf, although slaveholders, mobocrats, eggs and brickbats multiply as quick and thick as locusts of Egypt. 

Remond then proceeded to spend a half hour laying out his case for the formation of an area Antislavery Society. Rep. Hamlin countered with an hour-long rebuttal wherein he introduced up the standard anti-abolitionist speaking level that releasing enslaved folks would represent a “gross violation” of the U.S. Structure, and concluded with the conviction that the last word purpose of the abolitionists was to advertise equality and race mixing. One other opponent claimed emancipation was only a few years away, however that the unconventional abolitionists had been going to set it again 50 years, as antislavery societies “utterly defeated the objects and needs of the buddies of emancipation in Kentucky.”

The following night time, in Orrington, Remond’s speech was enthusiastically acquired, and the locals instantly set to work drafting a structure for a brand new Antislavery Society. Nonetheless, whereas Remond was contained in the constructing, “some evil minded individuals” sporting black face had sabotaged his horse-drawn carriage by reducing his harness and the highest lining of the chaise, thus stopping his return to Bangor. The repairs value him roughly $1,000 in as we speak’s cash. 

“It was ascertained that these mischievous beings crossed the river from Hampden, with their faces painted black, and had been probably the identical who insulted me the night earlier than; however for every offense I can forgive them,” wrote Remond. “If the buddies of order and fact in Orrington will detect the perpetrators, and thus repair the stigma the place it belongs, the reason for the poor slave will probably be superior.”

Regardless of the harassment he endured, Remond made many associates in Maine, and the next 12 months girls in Bangor raised cash to ship him to the World Antislavery Society Conference in London.

The assaults and intimidation Remond confronted had been quite common throughout the Jacksonian Age, and never simply at abolitionist conferences. Mass uprisings had been a well-known occurence within the 18^th century United States. As we wrote in an earlier column, such actions had been typically considered as a quasi-legitimate type of protest towards British rule, and had been accepted by native authorities so long as they didn’t go too far. In contrast, the early years of the republic had been a time of relative restraint. In response to historian David Grimstead, there have been few such incidents within the first many years of the 19^th century, however from the late 1820s to the late 1830s the variety of riots within the U.S. dramatically resurged.

Throughout this era, participation in political affairs was changing into much more common amongst white males as extra states dropped property {qualifications} and taxes for voting, and voter turnout climbed. Though most historians now agree that such adjustments had been underway even earlier than his presidency, Andrew Jackson’s lack of formal schooling and denunciations of noblemen dramatically symbolized the ascent of the “widespread man.” Imbued with a way of their pure proper to take part within the democratic course of, these newly politicized people had been typically impatient with the slowness of the authorized system and with such ideas as civil liberties and due course of. Why, they requested, ought to agitators be allowed to come back and sow discord of their communities?

“Defenders of particular riots within the interval talked of the motion not as revolution and even illegality,” Grimstead wrote, “however as an enforcement of justice inside the bonds of society — a direct redressing of ethical wrongs or a removing of social risks that for varied causes couldn’t be dealt with by unusual authorized course of.”

Though President Jackson disliked mobs, his authoritarian type of governance doubtless influenced mob actions. “King Andrew,” as he was referred to as by his Whig opponents, would justify rewarding associates with political appointments and ignoring Supreme Court docket choices he didn’t like by claiming that he was performing straight based on the need of the folks. By the identical token, would-be upholders of the legislation used democratic rhetoric, emphasizing majority rule, to crush the Constitutionally protected rights of unpopular minorities. These “mobocrats” concerned in assaults on abolitionists noticed themselves as implementing legislation and order, not as disrupting it. Whereas some might have sympathized with the slaveholding South, many had been merely apprehensive the abolitionists had been too radical and that their requires “rapid emancipation” would break the younger nation aside.

Will Chapman is the Librarian and Archivist at Museums of the Bethel Historic Society. Andy O’Brien is the communications director for the Maine AFL-CIO. You’ll be able to attain them at will@maineworkingclasshistory.com and andy@maineworkingclasshistory.com.