[Footnote 3:  Jay, An Inquiry, etc., p. 33; and Special Report of the U.S.  Com. of Ed., pp. 328 et seq.]

[Footnote 4:  Jay, An Inquiry, etc., p. 33.]

Miss Crandall and her pupils were threatened with violence.  Accommodation at the local stores was denied her.  The pupils were insulted.  The house was besmeared and damaged.  An effort was made to invoke the law by which the selectmen might warn any person not an inhabitant of the State to depart under penalty of paying $1.67 for every week he remained after receiving such notice.[1] This failed, but Judson and his followers were still determined that the “nigger school” should never be allowed in Canterbury nor any town of the State.  They appealed to the legislature.  Setting forth in its preamble that the evil to be obviated was the increase of the black population of the commonwealth, that body passed a law providing that no person should establish a school for the instruction of colored people who were not inhabitants of the State of Connecticut, nor should any one harbor or board students brought to the State for this purpose without first obtaining, in writing, the consent of a majority of the civil authority and of the selectmen of the town.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Special Report of the U.S.  Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 331; and May, Letters to A.T.  Judson, Esq., and Others, p. 5.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., p. 5.]

The enactment of this law caused Canterbury to go wild with joy.  Miss Crandall was arrested on the 27th of June, and committed to await her trial at the next session of the Supreme Court.  She and her friends refused to give bond that the officials might go the limit in imprisoning her.  Miss Crandall was placed in a murderer’s cell.  Mr. May, who had stood by her, said when he saw the door locked and the key taken out, “The deed is done, completely done.  It cannot be recalled.  It has passed into the history of our nation and age.”  Miss Crandall was tried the 23d of August, 1833, at Brooklyn, the county seat of the county of Windham.  The jury failed to agree upon a verdict, doubtless because Joseph Eaton, who presided, had given it as his opinion that the law was probably unconstitutional.  At the second trial before Judge Dagget of the Supreme Court, who was an advocate of the law, Miss Crandall was convicted.  Her counsel, however, filed a bill of exceptions and took an appeal to the Court of Errors.  The case came up on the 22d of July, 1834.  The nature of the law was ably discussed by W.W.  Ellsworth and Calvin Goddard, who maintained that it was unconstitutional, and by A.T.  Judson and C.F.  Cleveland, who undertook to prove its constitutionality.  The court reserved its decision, which was never given.  Finding that there were defects in the information prepared by the attorney for the State, the indictment was quashed.  Because of subsequent attempts to destroy the building, Mr. May and Miss Crandall decided to abandon the school.[1]