Counting Noses

The first meeting of the proprietors of Noyes Academy took place on August 15, 1834. The founders of the country’s first co-ed integrated school were full of energy and spirit. They imagined that they were doing great things and great results were on the horizon.

William Allen Wallace, author of History of Canaan NH was not in Canaan when the events surrounding Noyes Academy took place. Every first-hand account in the book is from an outside source. He draws heavily from one or more diaries and from letters. I do not have proof, but I strongly suspect one of the diaries belonged to Wallace’s older brother James Burns Wallace and another to his younger brother Oscar.

The following book passage is from the an August 15 diary entry. This is likely not a diary entry from either James or Oscar. (Paragraph Breaks Added)

Page 256

Friday, August 15.  Attended the meeting of the proprietors of the Academy. N. Currier, Esq., was called to the chair, which he took without making a speech, as he never pretended to be an orator. I was much gratified with the proceedings of the meeting, 17 trustees were chosen.

Mr. Kimball spoke with considerable warmth and energy on the wrongs of slavery. N. P. Rogers was present and spoke cheeringly of the future of this school.

Mr. [Elijah] Blaisdell with his usual malignant disposition, bitterly opposed the object of the meeting, as subversive of the cause of good morals. Elijah does not win confidence in his assertions for his bitterness.

Several resolutions were passed, among others it was resolved and approved that Dr. Cox of N. Y. City a notorious abolitionist, a friend, be among the trustees. Great events are on the gale.

Elijah Blaisedell, Gary Hamel, 2024 This was created from a photograph of Elijah Blaisdell included in Wallace's History

The supporters of the school were on a roll. On July 4, 1834, they announced that their new school, Noyes Academy would be accepting Black students. On August 15, the shareholders in the school, which was a private enterprise, met and approved of the integration plan. They named a slate of trustees that in addition to the Canaan founders included two Black men and many of the leaders of the nascent abolitionist movement.

They took the fact that no one had done anything to stop them as proof that they had popular support. Perhaps they did. But that August 15 shareholders meeting might better be thought of as the starting gun for the opposition.

Page 258

The opponents of the negro part of the plan were not idle. They gathered together in caucus, after the meeting of the proprietors, and decided that a “town meeting” should be called to procure if possible an unfriendly expression from the voting population of the town. […]

There was another reason aside from the social aspect of the affair, that led them to a public expression of disapproval of the negro question in the school. The Southern politicians were getting excited at the spread of Abolition sentiments, and it was a fondly cherished belief of our good men, that they could contribute something towards soothing their Southern brethren, by passing resolutions, denouncing the Abolitionists, having them published in the New Hampshire Patriot, signed by the selectmen and clerk and then sending carefully marked copies to their senators and representatives in Congress.

It was only a murmuring ripple of popular opinion, not very loud as yet but harsh, a murmur that was to develop an untamed wild beast.

Although Noyes Academy took place at the start of the abolitionist movement, Wallace is writing this story after the Civil War. When he writes about “a murmur that was to develop an untamed wild beast” he is speaking about the violence soon to erupt not only in Canaan, but all around the North as the issue of slavery became ever more urgent and discordant.

Old North Church, Gary Hamel, 2024

At the August 15 sharehholders meeting, Trussell and the opponents had tried and failed to persuade the school’s proprietors to abandon their plan to bring Blacks to Canaan. On September 11, Trussell held a town meeting. It was clear that this wasn’t going to be a reasoned discussion of the issues. This was going to be a rally, the purpose of which was to whip up anxiety about abolitionism in general and Blacks in specific. Wallace describes what took place at the September 11 “town meeting.”

Page 260

Great efforts were made to rally the disaffected and to create disaffection. Mr. Blaisdell took hold of the growing sentiment of opposition, petted it, rubbed it the wrong way of the fur, to irritate it, then presented the resolutions, all of which together with his speech, were duly reported in the New Hampshire Patriot.

Pointless language digression: “rubbed it the wrong way of the fur” is the original version of our “rubbed me the wrong way.” The original gives me shivers. Wallace continues:

No one raised an objection, no friends of the school took part in the meeting. The number voting for the unfriendly resolutions was 86, out of over 300 votes on the check list. The friends of the school were jubilant and considered themselves to be a strong and decided majority among the people.

To recap, the opponents of the school called the meeting and at the meeting a majority of those who attended, 86 people, voted in favor of the resolutions opposing the school. The opponents of the school could rightly claim that the majority of the meeting was with them.

But the school’s supporters counted noses differently. They saw it as the opposition being able to muster only 86 of the potential 300 votes in town. They then made the happy assumption that everyone who didn’t show up and vote in opposition to the school must have been on their side.

Wallace continues:

Poor, deluded mortals! Little did they realize the aggrieved spirit that animated those 86 votes. So firmly convinced that they were attending to their own affairs, and that no one ought to molest them, they took measures to open the Academy.

Abolitionism was always a Utopian proposition, but never more so than at its beginning when what they demanded was beyond conception.

The position taken by abolitionists was that slavery was a moral abomination and must end right now. Waiting even another day to correct the situation was to collaborate with evil.

This sounds great to us. We all heartily agree with that proposition. But it wasn’t at all obvious to the people of 1834. They were terrified of Black people. Nat Turner’s slave uprising was just three years prior. Sixty white people had been killed. In 1834, most white people took this as a preview of how slavery might end. It wasn’t hard to whip them up against the integrated school to be filled with imported Black students.

And the South wasn’t silent on these points. Just as abolitionist orators toured the North, gathering crowds and making speeches, southern enslavers traveled north and regaled New Englanders with tales of lawless and sub-human people only made safe by whip and chains.

Untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

The opponents of the school, like almost everyone in the North, were opposed to slavery. At that September 11 town meeting various resosolutionagainst the school were adopted. The second of those resolutions passed by residents opposing the school stated their opposition to slavery. And the third resolution wished well to the “African race.”

The mass of individuals in the North did want slavery to end, but gradually and not in such a way that Black people came to live among them. The scheme everyone got behind was called Colonialism. Under this plan, Blacks would be returned to Africa, Liberia specifically. But not all at once. First, we would send off all free Blacks. And then, as their white overlords made them civil and ready, the slaves would be freed and would also be sent to Liberia.

So, everything was in hand, we just had to let the plan play out.

Liberia was hard to survive. Blacks who were sent there died in droves. But at least the North comforted themselves with their plan. And they knew they were good people because they passed resolutions deploring slavery every chance they got.

Untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

Another digression: Henry Highland Garnet, one of the Black students who studied for a short while at Noyes Academy was made America’s ambassador to Liberia in 1881.

Although we think of people unable to see the humanity of Blacks as irredeemably racist, were we alive in 1834, we would undoubtedly be preaching gradualism in exactly the same way we continue to drive cars and eat as much meat as we want while climate change is doing horrifying damage to every creature on earth.

What I want to know is how the abolitionists did it. Right up until the Civil War, abolitionists were considered too extreme to be included in government. Without winning a single election, the abolitionists triumphed. Their victory was so complete that today, we all assume we would have supported the abolitionist cause.

Wallace follows his account of the September 11 town meeting with a passage from one of the diaries Wallace relies on for most of his on-the-scene accounts of the events surrounding Noyes.

Page 260

Under date of the same day [September 11, 1834] the diary says: The people of Canaan assembled this day at the Town House to consider the recent measures of the Abolitionists in reference to the School.

After listening for some time to the mobocratic vituperation of Elijah, a long list of inflammatory resolutions pertinent to the occasion were read and passed. Ah, me! the old Jacobins are determined not to have the n…rs here.

After too much time spent trying to find connections between the Jacobins of the French Revolution and the doings in Canaan, New Hampshire, I came to the conclusion that by calling the school's opponents Jacobins, the diarist is making a joke involving the name Jacob Trussell and the mad violence of the “reign of terror.”

The same joke comes up one more time in Wallace’s History. On page 268, Wallace quotes from a contemporary letter:  “On the 4th of July the “Jacobins,” we call them “Jac’s” from old Jacob, their leader, held a caucus in the hall of E. Martin…”

We don’t think much about the French Revolution. Something, something Marie Antoinette, something, something, guillotine. But in 1834, the Reign of Terror was a mere forty years past. That’s as recent as the 1980s are to us. During the Reign, just a few years time, 16,594 official death sentences were dispensed throughout France. An additional 10,000 to 12,000 people had been executed without trial and 10,000 had died in prison. That is nearly 50,000 people! [Gathered from Wikipedia.]

I bet that many deaths left something of a mark on people’s consciousness. Jacobin could not have been a term thrown around as lightly as it might be today. The abolitionists were genuinely frightened for their safety, and with good cause; after the school was destroyed, several of its founders left town for some years until things cooled down.

The supporters of the school, while staying clear of the town meeting at the south end of Canaan Street, where the meetinghouse is, held a rally of their own at the north end of Canaan Street, at the Old North Church. That meeting will be the focus of next week’s blog post.