She was denounced in town meetings, and there was not chivalry enough to cause a single neighbor to speak in her defence.

Samuel J.May had to come from an adjoining town for this purpose.

"But," says Mr.May, "they would not hear me.

They shut their ears and rushed upon me with threats of personal violence." As there was nothing in the statutes of Connecticut which made the holding of such a school as that of Miss Crandall's illegal, the good Canterbury folk procured the passage of a hasty act through the Legislature, which was then in session, "making it a penal offence, punishable by fine and imprisonment, for any one in that State keeping a school to take as his or her pupils the children of colored people of other States." But the heart of the young Quaker woman was the heart of a heroine.

She dared to disregard the wicked law, was arrested, bound over for trial, and sent to jail like a common malefactor.