The issue of slavery sharply divided the United States before and throughout the Civil War years. The majority of Norwich citizens strongly believed that slavery should be abolished and that the war effort should be supported. They backed their beliefs with strong, decisive actions and it cannot be emphasized enough as to how deeply the lives and families of Norwich were affected.
The purpose of this section of the IconicNorwich website is to provide an overview of the contributions and sacrifices made by Norwichians during this period. The contributions were made before, during and after the war. And, they were provided by various individuals and groups of people. The first of these offerings came in the form of ideas, backed with action. The backdrop of Norwich society encouraged civil rights advocates, such as Sarah Harris Fayerweather, David Ruggles and Aaron Dwight Stevens to launch their personal ideas into action. And, even before the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter many Norwich city, state and national civilian leaders, such as Governor William A. Buckingham and Senator Lafayette Foster fought for the abolishment of slavery.
When the call to arms first arrived, Norwich answered the call with military leaders (both local and national), such as Daniel P. Tyler and Edward Harland. In addition to leaders, Norwich contributed volunteer soldiers and many Norwich women worked diligently to support the soldiers as members of the Soldiers’ Aid Society.
Norwich also donated large sums of money and produced thousands of muskets and other weapons needed to arm the Union Army.
After the war ended and Abraham Lincoln’s death, Norwich’s Lafayette Foster became the Acting Vice-President of the United States. Many memorials were created by Norwichians to show appreciation of sacrifices that were made.
Several years after the war Malcom McGregor Dana wrote a very detailed book about Norwich’s involvement in the Civil War. Many of the details and photos presented in this section were provided by his public domain book. You can read the entire manuscript HERE.
Another excellent, more modern, account of Norwich’s involvement in the Civil War was written by local author, Patricia Staley. Her book contains a much more detailed narrative of this subject. You can borrow a copy of it at Otis Library in Norwich or purchase a copy HERE.
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Civil Rights Advocates
Race discrimination and slavery were hot topics throughout the United States long before any shots were fired during the Civil War. Norwich was the home of several prominent pre-civil war civil rights advocates. One of the earliest was David Ruggles. He grew up in the Bean Hill neighborhood of Norwich and after moving to New York opened the first African American owned bookstore. The store specialized in abolitionist and feminist literature. Only a few years later, Sarah Harris Fayerweather, who grew up in the Jail Hill section of Norwich, was an African American young woman who made a stand for the right to be educated. And, just a couple of years before the Civil War began, Norwich’s Aaron Dwight Steven’s was the second-in-command of the raid on Harper’s Ferry in West Virginia. The raid was an attempt to arm slaves in the southern states to rebel against their owners.
David Ruggles
Thirty years prior to the beginning of the Civil War David Ruggles was an active abolitionist during the period of 1828-1840. He was born in 1810 in Lyme Connecticut and shortly after his birth, he and his family moved to a small hut on Bean Hill in Norwich. His mother was a caterer and his father was both a blacksmith and woodcutter.
Ruggles’ devout Methodist family had him educated at the Sabbath School for the Poor in Norwich, a religious charity school. However, even as a young boy, he was very bright, and white Bean Hill residents paid for a tutor from Yale to teach him Latin. At the age of 16, Ruggles moved to New York City, where he worked as a mariner before opening a grocery store.
In 1828, he opened the first African American-owned bookstore in the United States. This bookstore, located in the present-day Tribeca neighborhood of New York City, specialized in abolitionist and feminist literature. His bookstore was set on fire by white anti-abolitionists in 1833. Soon after that, he and several colleagues established the New York Committee of Vigilance, whose mission was to provide a safe space for runaway slaves.
After publishing several abolitionist based journals and pamphlets, he became the prototype for black activist journalists of his time.
As an active participant of the Underground Railroad movement, Ruggles claimed that he led more than 600 fugitive slaves to their freedom. In October 1838, Ruggles assisted Frederick Douglass (a famous American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman) on his journey to freedom. He reunited Douglass with his fiance Anna Murray. Rev. James Pennington, a self-emancipated slave, married Murray and Douglass in Ruggles’ home shortly thereafter.
In 1841 Ruggles moved from New York to a radical Utopian commune called Northhampton Association of Education and Industry, in the present-day village of Florence, Massachusetts. At this point in his life, his health was failing. He died in 1849 and was buried in Norwich, Yantic Cemetery.
The David Ruggles Freedom Tower, which stands proudly in front of Norwich City hall, commemorates the contributions of his life’s work.
Acknowledgements
“David Ruggles: The Hazards of Anit-Slavery Journalism”, by Graham Russell Hodges
ThoughtCo.com
The complete list of sources may be found by clicking the “Bibliography” button, and, then typing “Ruggles” in the SEARCH box.
1812-1878 Sarah Harris FayerWeather
Twenty nine years before the Civil War began, Sarah Harris Fayerweather, stood up for her rights and provided a fine example for how to begin to swing the pendulum of needed change. Simply put, she deeply desired to learn and to be able to teach others, and she was willing to stand up to the establishment to help make it happen. However, her journey, which began in Norwich, was anything but simple or easy.
Perhaps her bravery and actions displayed in 1832 sowed seeds of fairness in the hearts Norwich citizens who congregated at Breed Hall to discuss issues of slavery and pending war in 1861.
Sarah Harris was born on April 16, 1812 in Norwich. She was the daughter of William Monteflora Harris and Sally Prentice Harris, both of whom were free farmers and resided in the Jail Hill section of Norwich.
At the age of 20 Sarah Harris requested admission to the Canterbury Female Boarding School operated by Prudence Crandall. In a letter to William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper, The Liberator, Crandall recalls Sarah’s visit: “A colored girl of respectability – a professor of religion – and daughter of honorable parents, called on me sometime during the month of September last, and said in a very earnest manner, ‘Miss Crandall, I want to get a little more learning, enough if possible to teach colored children, and if you will admit me into your school I shall forever be under the greatest obligation to you. If you think it will be the means of injuring you, I will not insist on the favor.'”
After brief deliberation, Crandall admitted her to the school in September 1832 as the first black student. Shortly thereafter many parents of the other students demanded that Miss Crandall expel Sarah. When she refused, most of the other students withdrew. Faced with severe opposition from the Canterbury community, Crandall closed the existing school – only to reopen in 1833 in order to teach a group of solely African-American students.
in South Kingston Rhode Island
Sarah continued to attend the school in the face of harassment and adversity until Crandall, afraid for her pupils’ safety, after a mob converged on the school on the evening of Sarah’s marriage, closed the school permanently.
On September 9, 1834 Sarah married George Fayerweather Jr. in a double wedding ceremony with her brother and his bride in Canterbury. George was an accomplished blacksmith. The couple moved to New London in 1841 and then later to South Kingston Rhode Island in 1855. They lived in George’s blacksmith shop shown in the photo above. The house/shop was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
Sarah Fayerweather joined the Kingston Anti-Slavery Society, attended antislavery meetings held by the American Anti-Slavery Society in various cities across the North, maintained a correspondence with her former teacher Prudence Crandall and former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and subscribed to The Liberator until Garrison ceased publishing it in 1865. She also maintained an active church life, joining the Sunday school class at Kingston’s Congregational church.
Sarah gave birth to five children. She named her first child Prudence Crandall. Sarah Harris Fayerweather is buried in South Kingston, Rhode Island in the Old Fernwood cemetery.
In 1970 Fayerweather Hall, a dormitory on the campus of University of Rhode Island, was named in honor of Sarah Harris Fayerweather. The Fayerweather Craft Guild, located in Kingston at the site of the Fayerweather family’s former home and blacksmith shop, is also named in her honor.
Acknowledgements
Wikipedia
Wikimedia Commons
The complete list of sources may be found by clicking the “Bibliography” button, and, then typing “Sarah Harris” in the SEARCH box.
Aaron Dwight Stevens
Aaron Dwight Stevens was an abolitionist and chief military aide to John Brown during Brown’s failed raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia.
He moved to Norwich at a young age when his father, also named Aaron, became the choir director of the First Congregational Church. Dwight ran away from home at the age of 16 and volunteered to serve in the Mexican-American War.
After meeting John Brown at the Nebraska/Kansas state line in August of 1856, Dwight became one of Brown’s bravest and most devoted followers. On December 20, 1858 Dwight Stevens and his party of seven rode into Missouri with the intent of freeing a female slave.
According to Stevens’s own account, while entering the home, Stevens saw Cruise reaching for a weapon and shot him dead. In subsequent years, Stevens freely admitted the killing but disliked talking about it. “You might call it a case of self-defense,” he recounted, “or you might say that I had no business in there, and that the old man was right.”
Two years before the beginning of the Civil War, Steven’s participated in John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry. Dwight Stevens and 21 others wanted to initiate a slave revolt in the Southern states by taking over the United States arsenal. The plan was to capture wagonloads of rifles from the arsenal and distribute them to slaves in the area. The raid has been been called a “dress rehearsal” for the Civil War. After the raid failed, Stevens was captured and thrown into jail. Throughout his imprisonment, he never waivered from his conviction that the Harpers Ferry raid was just.
He was convicted of conspiring with slaves to revolt and was executed on March 16, 1860, the day after his 29th birthday, in Charles Town, West Virginia.
The Info Source is an excellent resource that chronicles the life of Aaron Dwight Stevens.
Acknowledgements
Kansas Historical Society
The complete list of sources may be found by clicking the “Bibliography” button, and, then typing “Stevens” in the SEARCH box.