The Stockwell Letters by Jacqueline Friedland

Author:Jacqueline Friedland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SparkPress

AS THE HOURS TICKED ON, VIGILANCE Committee members came and went from the house, taking turns acting as our own small army against possible intrusion. Each man who entered came prepared with a weapon. Meanwhile, by the evening’s fading light, we drafted sermons that would be put forth the following day.

Higginson would be speaking at the Free Church at Brinsley Hall, home of Worcester Freedom Club, provided he was not yet arrested. His speech would advocate making Worcester truly free by commanding that the populous cease hiding fugitives and rather bring them out into the open. Instead of helping refugees onward to Canada, Higginson would declare, residents must openly refuse to comply with the Fugitive Slave Law and make any runaways free right there in Worcester for all to see. Theodore Parker would deliver an address called “The New Crime Against Humanity” at the Music Hall, campaigning for the creation of organizations to preserve personal liberty and states rights. James Freeman Clarke would perform something similar at the Church of the Disciples, Octavius Brooks would do the same at Frothingham, and so on.

It turned out that Peter Dunbar’s mob never quite materialized. There was some shouting in the street after dark, the hurling about of epithets. Perhaps there were a few bodies more than usual milling about in the nighttime shadows. But the house was all lit up from the inside, near bursting with the energy of our collective ideas as we put our minds together to push for better times. I like to think the naysayers could see the force of it all from well down the road, that even they, in their ignorance, knew better than to come and interfere. If it was simply the presence of many able-bodied men weakening their resolve, so be it. But I choose to believe the former. And so it was that we were able to return to our plans about how to save Anthony Burns and all those in similar straits.

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