Noyes Academy Part 11

The students

In 1834, the South viewed the education of Blacks as enabling the enslaved to murder their enslavers. In 1831, Nat Turner, an enslaved man in Virginia, managed to do just that, and his literacy was thought to have enabled him. Probably did. The South responded by making it illegal to teach Blacks to read and write.

The hurdles faced by the abolitionists in their efforts to end slavery were legion. In addition to all the other suspicions white people had about these strangers, abolitionists had to convince white people in the North that Blacks were not inherently dangerous, that they were educable, trustworthy neighbors. The South was very busy painting a different picture and enslavers and their supporters toured the Northern states lecturing on the dangers of Black people.

Untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

Noyes Academy, founded in 1834, was part of an effort (eventually successful) to end slavery in America. This effort was national. International. Canaan got to play a small part in this large story. One of the reasons I am confident that Noyes Academy was not simply a local project but part of a much larger national effort is the sterling makeup of her student body.

Some of the Black students who enrolled in Noyes went on to have significant careers. They didn’t wander into a school in New Hampshire by accident. They were the best and brightest of a generation and they were gathered and brought to Canaan to demonstrate to the nation that Black men and women were capable, educable, and above all, not inherently dangerous.

My writing in this project is an exploration of William Allen Wallace’s telling of the history of Canaan with a particular focus on Noyes Academy. The story of the young Black men and women who spent a moment of their lives in Canaan is much more significant than the story of the school itself, which sadly amounted to nothing.

Untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

Wallace calls attention to four young men and I will limit my discussion of them, more or less, to what is told in the book. Their lives were much too large for this small stage. Remember, Wallace was writing in the late 1800s. He knew what became of these four men.

Page 291

Among the colored people were four youths, whose names deserve record in the story of the school, and some of them have made names that will be illustrious in all future time, when the names and lives of those weak mortals who opposed them, shall only be recorded upon obscure tombstones. These youths were Henry Highland Garnet, Thomas Paul, Thomas S. Sidney and Alexander Crummell.

Garnet was born a slave, his freedom bought by his father, who earned enough to purchase his entire family. He was 19 when he arrived in Canaan. Two years after the destruction of Noyes Academy and his flight from Canaan, he returned to speak at the Old North Church.

Page 292

Two years after these events, Garnet returned to Canaan and lectured in the Congregational Church. There was no disturbance. The vigilance committee failed to appear. He was listened to by an earnest, thoughtful audience, and received much attention from the citizens.

Henry Highland Garnet

He was the guest of Mr. George Harris [one of the founders of Noyes Academy] and he had a reception the same evening. Among the callers was Ben Porter, who had been active in driving him from town. He took Garnet by the hand and told him he had heard his speech, and that he had come there to express to him his sorrow and regret he had felt on account of his bad work on the other occasion. He had only lacked a little moral courage to make him go up at the close of the speech and make public confession to the whole audience.

Ben Porter was Jacob Trussell’s henchman. He was at the head of the July 4 mob, that failed to tear Noyes Academy down. This was the mob turned away by Timothy Tilton. On August 10, the day of the “great hauling” It was Porter who struck the first blow to tear Noyes from its foundation. He was the foreman who organized the doings on the ground. Two years later, he was filled with regret. Garnet was famed for his eloquence.

Even before his arrival at Noyes, Garnet's life had been one of turmoil and adventure. He went on to greatness as a writer, a minister, and a statesman. He married Julia Williams in 1841. I mention it because she, too was a student at Noyes and she, too went on to contribute significantly to the abolitionist movement.

Untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

Another student Wallace mentions is Thomas Paul.

Page 292

Thomas Paul was the son of a late clergyman of Boston, of graceful manners, of amiable and courteous disposition, of respectable talent and attainment, twenty years of age and lighter in his complexion than many of those who denied him the right to study.

Wallace does not mention that Paul’s father, Thomas Paul Sr., was not simply a clergyman. He helped found the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York and Black Baptist churches throughout America. Paul, the son, after fleeing Noyes Academy became the second Black graduate of Dartmouth in 1841. Thomas Paul, Noyes student, was Black royalty.

Thomas S. Sidney did not rise to the prominence of a full Wikipedia entry, but his name is scattered across abolitionist literature.

Alexander Crummell, the youngest of the four (still not sure about Sidney’s age), was 16 in 1835. He lived a life so full of accomplishment and influence that his Wikipedia page is enviably long.

Alexander Crummell

These four students were singled out not only by Wallace, but by Nathanial Peabody Rogers, a giant of the abolitionist movement and likely the moving force behind Noyes Academy.

In a public letter from 1835 included in the Wallace History, Rogers tells of bringing these four students to an abolitionist “celebration” held in Plymouth New Hampshire on July 4, 1835. This was the same moment a mob in Canaan first approached Noyes academy with an eye towards destruction and was turned away. I don’t imagine these young men were spirited away to insure their safety. On the other hand, I don’t imagine they weren’t. The attack on the school was well advertised in advance.

The pressure on these young men must have been enormous. They were the hope of a movement. The following letter by Rogers was published in the Liberator, the major abolitionist newspaper. Wallace includes the letter in his History.

Page 294

A letter written on the 4th of July, 1835, by N. P. Rogers, one of the trustees of the school, to the Liberator in Boston, gives an interesting account of a celebration held at Plymouth, where these young men were present.

Those were the words of Wallace. Below begins the letter published in the Liberator.

The speakers on this occasion failed to respond and they were about to give up that part of their exercises, when George Kimball, Esq., a zealous Abolitionist of Canaan, send word that “if our Anti-slavery was of the standard to deserve the honor,” he would visit us with some fine young men of Noyes Academy, whom he had prevailed upon to come and offer their support on the occasion.

This has to be a set-up for the students to be presented to this audience.

“Hospitality,” he said, “must open its doors in the true spirit of emancipation or we could not expect them.” We promptly accepted the offer and on the third had the honor of welcoming Brother Kimball and his wife and four young gentlemen of the school to our homes.

Rogers goes on to describe in detail the degree of melanization of each student. He was dealing with an audience that would attach significance to skin color and his point, I believe, was these were really and truly Black men despite their obvious accomplishment.

I will give you some account of their history, names and what is quite important now, their color. Paul, son of a Baptist minister, a scholar and a gentleman, quite in advance of the standard of our educated young men, of mitigated color, complexion quite endurable.

Garnet, of full unmitigated, unalleviated, unpardonable blackness, quite “incompatable with freedom,” crippled, with severe lameness, nine years ago a slave in Maryland, an enlightened and refined scholar, a writer and speaker of touching beauty.

Sidney, an orphan literally, as well as by caste, more fortunate in complexion than our friend Paul, even an accomplished scholar, graceful and eloquent orator. It might raise the envy and the emulation of our young patricians at the higher Seminary, coveting the glories of eloquence, to see and hear him speak.

Crummell, a mere boy in years, but in talent, learning and character anything but a boy; black, sable as Touissant of the undeteriorated aspect of that land whence his father was stolen.

Toussaint L'Ouverture was the Haitian general who lead a late 18th century revolution in which the enslaved of Haiti slaughtered their enslavers, terrifying white people everywhere. I imagine that is what Rogers is referring to comparing Garnet's skin color to that of the terrifying Toussaint. Rogers goes on to report that Crummell was reassuringly opposed to the wholesale slaughter of white enslavers.

I talked with him on the subject of insurrection. He denounced it because of its midnight slaughter of women and children. To open war for liberty, he had less objection, but it was too like murder to fall upon unarmed men, a scrupulosity more like knight-errantry than is common in these shrewd times.

The next paragraph contains a reference to Colonialism. This was how most of the North wished to deal with the problem of slavery. Colonialism argued that all Black people should be sent to Africa. Liberia in particular. Liberia, at that time, was wilderness. We did send people to Liberia and they did not prosper.

Untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

And Colonialism (or Colonizationalism) wasn’t even proposing to end slavery. The Black people they sent to Liberia were free Blacks. The enslaved were going to be sent to Liberia, as soon as they were “fit” to survive on their own. Their fitness in this regard was to be determined by their enslavers. The Abolitionists, in contrast, wanted all the enslaved to be freed. And it was to happen immediately.

I asked him before a Colonizationist what the colored people would do with the colony at Liberia, if it were left to them. “Send and bring them home,” said he with animation, “every man of them.” “Every man you find alive,” said young Garnet.

Crummell and Garnet devoted great portions of their own lives trying to support and protect the Black Americans who were forcibly sent to Liberia. Both men remained involved with Liberia until the end of their lives. Garnet was appointed ambassador to Liberia in 1881, with the intent of dying there where his daughter lived. Crummell’s views on Liberia changed when he went there on a program of Christian ministry in the 1850s. He moved to Liberia and tried to encourage American Blacks to join him, eventually returning to the States in the 1870s.

Mr. Garnet was introduced to the audience with a response, prefaced with some beautiful remarks on the contrast of his own feelings with those proper to the joyous day, and supported them in an address of some thirty minutes with great simplicity and pathos.

His response was in substance, that it was the duty of every patriot and Christian to adopt the principles of the abolitionists, for the sure and speedy overthrow of slavery, that every man who walked the American soil might tread it unmolested and free.

There were many passages of touching eloquence in his address, and when he told of the objects that met his earliest vision and shed natural tears, at the remembrance of his own and his parents bondage, I found many moistened eyes in the audience besides my own.

Young Crummell followed Garnet in a spirited and manly speech, which was listened to with much attention. Mr. Sidney was called to the platform under a strong expression of favor, which he amply repaid by a very eloquent address.

The young gentlemen tarried with us until Monday, the 6th, and offered us an opportunity to disperse some of the prejudice and uneasiness we are wont to feel at the fine appearance of our colored brethren. We had the satisfaction of attending our young friends to the house of God on the Sabbath, and their presence proved no interruption to the services. They amalgamated with the congregation.

That was a little bit of a 19th century joke. “They amalgamated with the congregation.” Amalgamation is the word people then used for Black and White people having children together. It was something much to be feared. In this case, it’s just referring to amalgamation in the usual sense of hanging out together.

The pew doors of our yeomanry, too respectable to be sneered down by the dandyism of the land, were opened to them, and they had the satisfaction of associating with their brethren and countrymen and fellow sinners, on proper and Christian footing. This I call practical Anti-slavery.

I cannot untangle what Rogers was talking about with “the dandyism of the land.” The kind pro-slavery mob that was soon to take out Noyes Academy, were already too common in the cities of the North. I think that impulse, the impulse to react violently to abolitionists, is here referred to as a “dandyism” or city view and Rogers is contrasting it with the good yeoman stock that still inhabited the countryside.

Rogers called the whole enterprise “practical Anti-slavery.” It wasn’t just a lot of talking about intangible rights, unimaginable horrors and the notion of equality. Rogers presented the people of Portsmith, New Hampshire with four young men who knocked their socks off. This was supposed to be the plan for the whole enterprise of Noyes Academy.

But Jacob Trussell…