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Transcriber’s Note:

Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.


front

title page

[Pg 1]

RIGHT AND WRONG

IN

MASSACHUSETTS.


BY MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN.


There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the nature of the time deceased;
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a clear aim at the main chance of things
As not yet come to life.   Shakespeare.

BOSTON:
DOW & JACKSON’S ANTI-SLAVERY PRESS.
14 Devonshire Street.
1839.


[Pg 3]

RIGHT AND WRONG.


CHAPTER I. RETROSPECTION.

Before bringing forward upon the stage the characters who figurein the drama, I have endeavored to make the reader acquainted withthe ground on which the different scenes were to be acted.

Thierry.

The position of New England in 1829, was a most cheerless onefor Freedom. All the great interests of the country were nearlyor remotely involved in slaveholding, through all their variousarrangements, civil, ecclesiastical, mercantile and matrimonial; yetall disclaimed its alliance. Every body was, in some way or other,actively or passively, sustaining slavery; yet every body disclaimedall responsibility for its existence, opposed all efforts for itsextinction, and was ‘as much anti-slavery as any body else.’ Even thenatural and kindly tide of human sympathy for [Pg 4]suffering, was turnedaway from the service of Freedom by the Colonization Society. Themoving principles of Northern and Southern life, had become inseparablymingled below the surface of events, like the roots of giant treesbeneath the soil.

In the midst of this utter ignorance, iron indifference and basehypocrisy respecting that groundwork of the human soul,—itsFreedom—rose up one to vindicate the grandeur and paramount importanceof its universal claim. He was young—unknown—poor:—“lord ofhis presence, and no wealth beside.” But he had that best of alleducations, self-education, and that best of all qualifications forhis work, an entire devotedness to the principles of liberty which hehad espoused. Every step he took, was characteristic. He was enabledby his ability as a writer, his skill as a practical mechanic, andhis laborious self-denial, to issue the first number of a periodical,without having obtained a single subscriber. To him and to theprinciples he advocated, the important thing was to find readers; whichthe power evinced in his little sheet enabled him to do. Its name wascharacteristic. It was neither a “journal,” nor an “observer,” nor a“register,” nor a “recorder,” nor an “examiner.” He called it THE[Pg 5]LIBERATOR. Any other name would have but feebly expressed the depthand affirmative nature of its principles. Those sacred and fundamentalprinciples found a response in the land, though the hearts from whichit came, were few and far between. The

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