To the sophistry of Chandler, Wendell Phillips also made a logical reply.  He asserted that as members of a legal body, the School Committee should have eyes only for such distinctions among their fellow-citizens as the law recognized and pointed out.  Phillips believed that they had precedents for the difference of age and sex, for regulation of health, etc., but that when they opened their eyes to the varied complexion, to difference of race, to diversity of creed, to distinctions of caste, they would seek in vain through the laws and institutions of Massachusetts for any recognition of their prejudice.  He deplored the fact that they had attempted to foist into the legal arrangements of the land a principle utterly repugnant to the State constitution, and that what the sovereignty of the constitution dared not attempt a school committee accomplished.  To Phillips it seemed crassly inconsistent to say that races permitted to intermarry should be debarred by Mr. Chandler’s “sapient committee” from educational contact.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Minority Report, etc., p. 27.]

This agitation continued until 1855 when the opposition had grown too strong to be longer resisted.  The legislature of Massachusetts then enacted a law providing that in determining the qualifications of a scholar to be admitted to any public school no distinction should be made on account of the race, color, or religious opinion of the applicant.  It was further provided that a child excluded from school for any of these reasons might bring suit for damages against the offending town.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Acts and Resolves of the General Court of Mass., 1855, ch. 256.]

In other towns of New England, where the black population was considerable, separate schools were established.  There was one even in Portland, Maine.[1] Efforts in this direction were made in Vermont and New Hampshire, but because of the scarcity of the colored people these States did not have to resort to such segregation.  The Constitution of Vermont was interpreted as extending to Negroes the benefits of the Bill of Rights, making all men free and equal.  Persons of color, therefore, were regarded as men entitled to all the privileges of freemen, among which was that of education at the expense of the State.[2] The framers of the Constitution of New Hampshire were equally liberal in securing this right to the dark race.[3] But when the principal of an academy at Canaan admitted some Negroes to his private institution, a mob, as we have observed above, broke up the institution by moving the building to a swamp, while the officials of the town offered no resistance.  Such a spirit as this accounts for the rise of separate schools in places where the free blacks had the right to attend any institution of learning supported by the State.

[Footnote 1:  Adams, Anti-slavery, etc., p. 142.]

[Footnote 2:  Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions, vol. vi., p. 3762.]