The Connecticut legislature passed a law against it, and Crandall was arrested and spent a night in jail, bringing national publicity.

The Crandall case [in which a key issue was whether blacks were citizens[3]: 144 ] helped influence the outcome of two of the most fateful Supreme Court decisions, Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857[[4]] and...Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

"[3]: xi In 1831, the town of Canterbury approached Prudence Crandall, a well-educated Quaker teacher,[5] who was teaching in nearby Plainfield.

It was next to that of lawyer, politician, and town clerk Andrew T. Judson, one of her first supporters, who would be at the center of the opposition to the school, once a black girl was admitted.

"The cordiality and friendliness of her reception were gratefully acknowledged by Miss Crandall, her relations with pupils and patrons were most agreeable and harmonious, and it seemed likely that this much-needed institution would become permanently established.

"[6]: 491  Subjects taught included reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, geography, history, chemistry, astronomy, and moral philosophy.

[1]: 658  Prudence related in a letter that "the wife of an Episcopal clergyman who lived in the village told me that if I continued that colored girl in my school it could not be sustained.

"[6]: 492  The school immediately lost the support of the townspeople, which it had enjoyed, and parents began to withdraw their daughters, with the apprehension that a dire calamity was impending over them; that Miss Crandall was the author or instrument of it; that there were powerful conspirators engaged with her in the plot; and that the people of Canterbury should be roused by every consideration of self-preservation as well as self-respect to prevent the accomplishment of the design.

Encouraging her, he supplied her with letters of introduction to philanthropist Arthur Tappan and to leading black families in New York and Providence, Rhode Island, both of which she visited to assess interest in such a school.

The reactions of the "anxious, angry citizens intent to devise some scheme of escape from the crushing calamity of 'a school of nigger girls'" are outlined in the previous section.

Urged on by Judson, a colonizationist whose position was that free blacks should leave the United States and go to Africa, by what means he failed to propose.

The racist townspeople believed that Canterbury would become the center of a vast and lustful colony of free blacks, and that alone would be a threat to the very survival of the United States: [T]he establishment or rendezvous falsely denominated a school was designed by its projectors as the theatre, as the place to promulgate their disgusting doctrines of amalgamation [intermarriage, miscegenation] and their pernicious sentiments of subverting the Union.

"[3]: 195  Behind this are two beliefs, at the time widespread: Add to this the fact that more blacks lived in Connecticut, its southernmost state, than in the rest of New England combined.

While Crandall never listed them publicly, testimony in her trial and other documents reveal that non-Connecticut students came from Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened, That no person shall set up or establish in this State any school, academy, or literary institution, for the instruction or education of colored persons, who are not inhabitants of this State, nor instruct or teach in any school, academy, or other literary institution whatsoever in this State, or harbor or board, for the purpose of attending or being taught or instructed in any such school, academy, or literary institution, any colored person who is not an inhabitant of any town in this State, without the consent, in writing, first obtained of a majority of the civil authority, and also of the selectmen of the town in which such school, academy, or literary institution is situated; and each and every person who shall knowingly do any act forbidden as aforesaid, or shall be aiding or assisting therein, shall, for the first offence, forfeit and pay to the treasurer of this State, a fine of one hundred dollars, and for the second offence shall forfeit and pay a fine of two hundred dollars, and so double for every offence of which he or she shall be convicted.

The storekeepers, the butchers, the milk-pedlers [sic] of the town, all refused to supply their wants; and whenever her father, brother, or other relatives, who happily lived but a few miles off, were seen coming to bring her and her pupils the necessaries of life, they were insulted and threatened.

Her well was defiled with the most offensive filth [manure[3]: 129 ], and her neighbors refused her and the thirsty ones about her even a cup of cold water, leaving them to depend for that essential element upon the scanty supplies that could be brought from her father’s farm.

Nor was this all; the physician of the village refused to minister to any who were sick in Miss Crandall’s family, and the trustees of the church forbade her to come, with any of her pupils, into the House of the Lord.

Their evident hesitation and embarrassment show plainly how much they deprecate the effect of this part of their folly; and therefore I am the more anxious that they should be exposed, if not caught in their own wicked devices.'

"[2] This proved to be the case, as seen in the following quote from the Boston Advocate: This young lady, who is pious, and lovely in person, our informant adds, has actually been thrust into prison in the very cell that Watkins the murderer last occupied!!!

'"[2]: 70  "They stretched to find, if not invented, a technical defect in order to avoid overruling Justice Daggett and deciding the substantive issues.

A letter from England of October 1833 calls Crandall "glorious", and the writer, Charles Stuart, says he is preparing "little parcels of presents" for the girls.

[28] In addition to The Liberator, May, on the recommendation and with the funding of Arthur Tappan, began publishing in the county seat of Brooklyn, Connecticut, a newspaper, The Unionist, specifically to cover the situation.

[29][30][31] The widely publicized episode was one of the first acts of antiabolitionist mobbing that hardened antislavery commitment and discredited colonization, the position that free blacks should be encouraged and helped to "return to Africa".