CHAPTER V. NEW ENGLAND, THE EASTERN STATES, AND THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAUSE. THE friends of the mission in New York were ready to welcome and speed me on in the further progress of it. The acceptance and success which have followed the efforts in Washington and Philadelphia, of which they had heard, encouraged the expectation that the people of New England would be not less cordial. To Drs. Budington and Thompson I owed many kind introductions by the way, while the conductors of the provincial press heralded my progress. The younger and active sons of Mr. W. E. Dodge (Messrs. Phelps and Dodge of New York), acted as if I had been committed specially to their care. Under the personal guidance of the Rev. G. S. Dodge, I started from New York for New Haven, via Stamford, Norwalk, and Bridgeport. Norwalk is a summer retreat for ramblers in Connecticut. Bridgeport is at the mouth of the Pequannock river, on the Long Island Sound, and is a port for New York steamers. I was much pleased with New Haven. Its umbrageous paths, and streets, and numerous villas embedded among trees and shrubbery, fully entitle it to be called a city of Elms in Elmsland. These trees are cared for by municipal regulations, many of them being encircled ten or twelve feet up the stem by a preparation intended to prevent insects which would consume the foliage from creeping up from the soil. The squares are adorned by lines of these trees, some of them as old as the earliest plantation. It was arranged that I should reach New YALE COLLEGE, NEW HAVEN. 171 Haven in time for the "commencement" at Yale College, which is famed for having sent out more graduates than any other institution in America. The buildings of this college and three churches, which are conspicuously placed in front, and stand apart, distant from each other, in grounds ornamented with old trees, give special attraction to the site. Besides college halls, apartments devoted to the fine arts and libraries, chapel and chambers for commons, etc., there are other edifices, which the munificence of patrons have erected and endowed. New Haven contained a population of 20,345 in 1850, which had increased in 1860 to 39,267, and was still expanding at the time of my visit. I had been invited to be the guest of two friends whose society I equally coveted. I therefore pleaded permission to divide my time with them. Dr. Bacon accepted me for the first few days, and Mr. Pelatiah Perit, long an honoured merchant at New York, entertained me for the residue of my stay. I reached my destination on Saturday, the 25th July, and found all arrangements for my services complete. On Sunday morning I preached for Dr. Bacon. On Monday evening it was my privilege to embody in a lecture the subject and objects of my mission, and on Tuesday I met from eighty to one hundred ministerial brethren, who conferred in free discussion on the response which should be adopted. The assembly was large on Monday evening, and the resolutions passed on the succeeding day were evidence of the favour with which my mission was regarded. Dr. Nadal, Mr. Eustise, Professor Fisher, Mr. Wood, Dr. Patton, Dr. Bacon, and others took part in the discussion. Subjoined are the minutes forwarded afterwards. MINUTES OF A CONFERENCE OF CHRISTIAN MINISTERS HELD AT NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT. July 27th and 28th, 1863.-At a public assembly including many Christian ministers resident in New Haven and in other parts of Connecticut, with some from other states, convened in the church edifice of the First Church of Christ in New Haven, Monday evening, July 27th, 1863, The Reverend Dr. Massie, as delegate from a conference of ministers held at Manchester, in England, presented the address of the conference "to ministers and pastors of all Christian Denominations throughout the United States of America." Whereupon the ministers present, the Reverend Joel Hawes, D.D., Pastor of the First Church of Christ, in Hartford, acting as chairman, resolved to meet in friendly conference with Dr. Massie, on the morrow, at two o'clock, p.m., in the lecture-room of the North Church, and appointed the Reverend Leonard Bacon, D.D., Pastor of the First Church in New Haven, Edward A. Lawrence, D.D., Professor in the Theological Institute at East Windsor Hill, and B. H. Nadal, D.D., Pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal Church in New Haven, to prepare a suitable response. Tuesday, July 28th.-The Conference of Ministers met according to appointment. The Rev. Samuel W. S. Dutton, D.D., of New Haven, was appointed chairman, and the Reverend Leonard Woolsey Bacon, of Stamford, secretary. The committee appointed to prepare a suitable response to the address presented by the Reverend Dr. Massie, reported through their chairman, submitting a series of resolutions to be adopted by the conference. The report was accepted, and after a free discussion, in which the Reverend Professor Fisher, William Patton, D.D., William T. Eustise, and Bernard H. Nadal, D.D., of New Haven, C. W. Clapp of Rockville, Professor Lawrence of East Windsor Hill, George J. Wood of Guildford, Edward Beecher, D.D., of Galesbury, Illinois, and William Ives Budington, D.D., of Brooklyn, New York, with others, took part, the resolutions were unanimously adopted as follows: Resolved.-1. That we receive with grateful sensibility the fraternal "Address" of the conference at Manchester, with the exposition of it by their delegate, setting forth the sympathy with which thousands of Christian ministers in Great Britain regard our country in its conflict with a great rebellion that has for its avowed purpose the perpetuation CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT versus REBELLION. 173 and indefinite extension of an atrocious slave trade, and the establishment of an empire founded on slavery. 2. That for ourselves, and for evangelical ministers generally in this country, we gratefully acknowledge the efforts of those Christian ministers and laymen in Great Britain who have manfully, and in the face of opposition, asserted the righteousness of our cause as a nation in this conflict. 3. That while we rejoice in the signatures of more than four thousand ministers in Great Britain to a letter responding to the fraternal appeal of Protestant pastors and ministers in France, and expressive of sympathy with our nation at this crisis of our destiny and the world's, our joy would be greatly enlarged if we had more and clearer evidence of sympathy from the more than six thousand non-subscribers in the ministry of the voluntary churches, and the more than sixteen thousand non-subscribers among the clergy of the English and Scotch established churches. 4. That, as a nation at war with rebellion, we are contending in the Armageddon of the world for the conservative principle of established order and peaceful reformation against revolutionary violence, and have, therefore, a right to cordial sympathy from all the intelligent and honest friends of established governments. We are contending for the principle of constitutional government by constitutional majorities in lawful elections, against the principle of government by the will and arbitrary force of armed minorities, and, therefore, have a right to cordial sympathy from all the honest and intelligent friends of constitutional liberty and popular self-government in every nation. And we are contending for the freedom and dignity of labour against the tyrannical usurpations and demands of a system that identifies labour with the lowest human degradation, and have, therefore, a right to the most outspoken sympathy from all philanthropists throughout the civilized world. 5. That, with rare exceptions, the evangelical ministers of New England, and generally throughout the Free States of the Union, have the credentials of their fidelity to God and to the gospel against slavery, in the hatred and execration which are poured on them as a class by the defenders of slavery, and the sympathizers with rebellion. 6. That we entreat our British brethren not to believe the accusations which have been or may be preferred against us by men who find it for their interest to be regarded as the only American opponents of slavery, and not to hold us responsible for the strange things which exceptional and erratic men may say in apology for slavery, as if they were our representatives. 7. That our confidence for the abolition of slavery in this land is in the providence of a righteous God, who cannot permit a system so stupendous in its wickedness to be permanent under his government of the world, and that we devoutly accept as a pledge of the restoration and perpetuity of our union, the necessity which God has laid upon us of conquering or being conquered, and, therefore, of exterminating slavery or becoming ourselves enslaved. The Conference then adjourned without day. SAMUEL W. S. DUTTON, Chairman. The services connected with the "Commencement" at Yale College were to me novel and interesting, though I could only be present at some of them. The concio ad clerum was delivered on "the Christian Sabbath" by Rev. J. N. Burton of Hartford, Dr. G. Beecher led the devotion. Gentlemen of all professions and positions attended and took part in the proceedings as alumni. The governor of the state, Mr. Buckingham, Major-General Anderson (who commanded at FORT SUMTER when the rebellion began), Professor Lieber, Mr. Perit, late President of the Chamber of Commerce, New York; Dr. Dwight, son of the distinguished theologian who had been President of this College; Professors Silliman, Dr. Patton, and Dr. Woolsey; missionaries returned from Palestine and other Eastern lands, and professors from colleges in the far West-all mingled in celebration and in commemoration of the deceased and distinguished alumni; an orator being selected from the graduates of several periods, some as far back as 1813 |