Abolitionism acted as a stimulus to Negroes, "like proclaiming life to a valley of dry bones," and calling forth energies and powers never before exercised. "I confess that I am wholly indebted to the Abolition cause for arousing me from apathy and indifference," wrote Sarah Forten in April 1837, "shedding light into a mind which had been too long wrapped in selfish darkness."
Negroes showed their gratitude by naming their organizations after outstanding figures in the movement. Three of the benevolent societies in Albany in 1837 were named after Benjamin Lundy, Arthur Tappan, and Garrison, respectively. In the same year Philadelphia Negroes formed the Leavitt Anti-Slavery Society, named after journalist and lecturer Joshua Leavitt.
In 1840 the national society split in two, a development that caused the Negro abolitionists to make a fuller use of the resources of the Negro community itself. Their efforts were spurred by a corps of new workers, many of them former slaves, who gave a new dimension to the whole movement.
Slavery's critics led charmed lives and were seemingly none the worst for their ordeals. In his famous encounter with the Boston mob in the fall of 1835, Garrison "sustained certain damages to his clothing, but none in his person." 38 To this seeming immunity from harm there was one tragic exception, Elijah P. Lovejoy. A clergyman who had become editor of a religious journal, Observer, Lovejoy moved to Alton, Illinois, in 1836. Here, as in St. Louis, his antislavery views met with determined opposition, his presses being thrown into the river on three separate occasions. On a night in November 1837 Lovejoy was shot and killed as he emerged from a building which the mob, bent on destroying his press, had set on fire. Lovejoy's tragedy was given coverage in the public newspapers and his name became a symbol to reformers.
Negroes were especially moved by the Alton affair. The Colored American carried a front page editorial, bordered in black. Boston Negroes held a memorial service at the Smith Street school, and their example was duplicated at Troy, New York, where a saddened company assembled at the Presbyterian church of Daniel A. Payne. A mass meeting of New York Negroes at the First Colored Presbyterian Church mourned Lovejoy "as the first martyr in the holy cause of abolition in the nation." They held no rights dearer than freedom of speech and of the press, ran one resolution, rights especially vital in supplementing "the dumb eloquence of the down trodden slave." A collection of $60 was raised for Lovejoy's widow, to be sent along with a letter of condolence. A few weeks later Joseph C. Lovejoy, one of the martyr's brothers, spoke at the same church.
The Papal Chapel and Musical Developments
