The Cummington Antislavery Movement
OVERVIEW
During the three decades preceding the Civil War, from the 1830s to the early 1860s, the small western Massachusetts hilltown of Cummington exhibited a high intensity of abolitionist activity, surprising for a small, remote town of about 1200 inhabitants located in the rocky-sloped Berkshire foothills 20 rough miles from the nearest centers of Northampton and Pittsfield.
Despite the fact that the antislavery activism was considered into the 1850s by the vast majority of Northerners to be extreme and radical, literally hundreds of Cummington residents signed petitions to Congress and the Massachusetts state legislature, participated in Fourth of July picnics, or joined the Cummington antislavery society. Others attended antislavery conventions held annually from 1853 to 1862 in Cummington’s Baptist church where they listened to antislavery luminaries such as William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, and Parker Pillsbury. Still others prayed with preachers C.C. Burleigh or Reverend E.A. Stockman in the nondenominational antislavery church established by Cummington residents in 1854. Others chose to house fugitive slaves coming up from Florence or Huntington as part of the vast Underground Railroad network. Several abolitionists, like Reverend James D. Chapman, persecuted in their native communities for their antislavery views, chose to relocate to the remote but abolitionist-friendly Cummington.
However, not all Cummington residents shared the same outlook. Tensions were high when leaders of the Village Congregational Church excommunicated its veteran deacon Hiram Brown, his wife, daughter and son and their respective spouses in January, 1854. Another time disapproving neighbors retreated behind shuttered windows as antislavery activists passed by in their fourth of July anti slavery parades.
Click for profiles of four Cummington Abolitionists.
During the three decades preceding the Civil War, from the 1830s to the early 1860s, the small western Massachusetts hilltown of Cummington exhibited a high intensity of abolitionist activity, surprising for a small, remote town of about 1200 inhabitants located in the rocky-sloped Berkshire foothills 20 rough miles from the nearest centers of Northampton and Pittsfield.
Despite the fact that the antislavery activism was considered into the 1850s by the vast majority of Northerners to be extreme and radical, literally hundreds of Cummington residents signed petitions to Congress and the Massachusetts state legislature, participated in Fourth of July picnics, or joined the Cummington antislavery society. Others attended antislavery conventions held annually from 1853 to 1862 in Cummington’s Baptist church where they listened to antislavery luminaries such as William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, and Parker Pillsbury. Still others prayed with preachers C.C. Burleigh or Reverend E.A. Stockman in the nondenominational antislavery church established by Cummington residents in 1854. Others chose to house fugitive slaves coming up from Florence or Huntington as part of the vast Underground Railroad network. Several abolitionists, like Reverend James D. Chapman, persecuted in their native communities for their antislavery views, chose to relocate to the remote but abolitionist-friendly Cummington.
However, not all Cummington residents shared the same outlook. Tensions were high when leaders of the Village Congregational Church excommunicated its veteran deacon Hiram Brown, his wife, daughter and son and their respective spouses in January, 1854. Another time disapproving neighbors retreated behind shuttered windows as antislavery activists passed by in their fourth of July anti slavery parades.
Click for profiles of four Cummington Abolitionists.