The Ghost of Stephen Symonds Foster – Abolitionist

by Barbara Rimkunas

This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, September 28, 2018.

“Slavery was the sin and crime of the north as well as south. It was sustained by the government, it was sanctified by almost the whole religion of the nation,” wrote abolitionist Parker Pillsbury. Pillsbury traveled with and had been trained by a controversial abolitionist named Stephen Symonds Foster. Foster was well-known for provoking crowds in the 1840s with his zero-tolerance stance on the issue of slavery.

Well, of course, one might easily say today, there needed to be a zero-tolerance view of slavery. But in the early part of the 19th century, the issue wasn’t quite so clear. Northerners may have believed that slavery was dying out or even evil, but most understood it to be quite legal. The U.S. Constitution accepted the practice, even if the word “slavery” was not used. Northern industry, including the Exeter Manufacturing company – a cotton textile mill – utilized raw materials that came directly from the hands of enslaved people. Foster, who had studied for the ministry, took issue with northern churches that tacitly accepted the system by refusing to name it as an evil. Pillsbury said of Foster’s beliefs, “the churches of the north were open to southern slave-breeders, slave-traders, slave-hunters and slave-holders, if members of the same, and often even of widely different denominations, both for preaching, baptizing and sacramental supper occasions and purposes.” Having been banned from preaching in his original Congregational denomination, Foster (with Pillsbury frequently in tow) began to worm his way into Sunday services by taking advantage of this open door policy. He would simply arrive for a church service, taking his place among the visiting worshippers, and then stand to speak his mind at some point in the service.

In 1895, the Exeter News-Letter published the following unattributed anecdote. “About 1841…Stephen S. Foster, the noted New Hampshire Abolitionist, and Frederick Douglass were speaking together from an Exeter platform, and in the course of his address, Foster denounced George Washington as a scoundrel and slaveholder. Douglass, the ex-slave, too exceptions to such talk, whereupon Foster turned savagely upon him. On the following Sunday Foster attended the old First church in Exeter, then under the ministry of Rev. William Williams, who had slight sympathy with Abolitionism and very reluctantly gave notice from his pulpit of prayer meetings, occasionally held under the auspices of the late Joshua Getchell, James Page and others, for the overthrow of slavery and in behalf of the slave. Parson Williams was not pleased to see Foster among his hearers, and was most emphatically displeased with the Abolition leader arose in mid-service with the declaration that he was moved by the spirit to address the meeting. Mr Williams replied that the congregation had not been moved by the spirit to listen to him, and requested Foster to keep silence, which he would not do. Forthwith, two young men in the congregation, the late Joseph T. Porter and James W. Odlin, proceeded to eject Foster from the church. Acting on his belief in non-resistance, he lay down in the aisle, but was dragged to the church door and there, it is said, dismissed with a vigorous kick. He seems to have had a penchant for disturbing religious services, and not long afterward for so doing was arrested at Nashua and fined. The fine he refused to pay himself or permit his friends to pay, an in default, suffered imprisonment.”

Early abolitionists, like Foster, were reviled by the local population, not because of the content of their criticism as much as the manner in which they presented it. Dr. William Perry would write, in his Exeter in 1830, that, “the first leaders among the Abolitionists began, it seems to me, in a wrong way. They were abusive of all who did not agree with them. To moderate people they seemed fanatical, and their plans for the abolition of slavery utterly impracticable. They hurled their invectives at church and state, as well as at individuals, so that they antagonized a large portion of the community, injuring their cause thereby. I can remember the bitter feeling which existed against the principal leaders and speakers.”

Pillsbury does not relate the above mentioned incident at the First Congregational Church, but he did record a run in with the same Rev. William Williams in his book, Acts of Anti-Slavery Apostles. “One morning call on a Congregational minister of the place was worthy of remembrance and recall, and that will be all that need be said of our visit to Exeter. We certainly entered his study in a becoming manner and proper and kindly spirit. We gave our names and the object of our coming in tone and temper of which none could complain. But in a blustering, threatening mood and language absolutely abusive, he positively forbade our speaking on our subject in his presence. Mr. Foster told him that we sometimes had to speak to men whether they would hear or forbear. He snatched up his pen with the utmost violence and commanded us to leave him to his work. His large size and great agitation, his lip actually quivering with rage, and the haughty manner in which he stormed at us, strongly reminded us of the caution of him who spake as never man spake: ‘Beware of Men!’” It seems that as belligerent as Foster could be, the Rev. Williams was his match. Even Dr. Perry, who mostly remembers local abolitionists as “good and thoughtful men and women” recalls that Reverend Williams was not a sympathizer. “It was the custom to send in notices of abolition meetings with the other notices on Sunday, but Mr. Williams would not read them. This was the match that lighted the fire of that unhappy quarrel which lasted all the tie he was here, estranged old friends, weakened religion, and ended as far as he was concerned in a council, which I believe, sustained him.” Williams did survive the Ecclesiastical Council held in 1842, but he resigned anyway. The council strongly rebuked his aggressive tone and petty temperament.

Foster continued the battle. He was the cause of an anti-abolitionist riot in Portland, Maine, in 1842. He married an even more famous social reformer, Abby Kelly, an early supporter of women’s suffrage. He broke with other suffrage supporters, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, over the issue of including women’s suffrage with Black suffrage following the Civil War. 

These early Abolitionists may not have been welcomed in Exeter, but they did cause the population to consider the institution of slavery, and their own complicity, with a more measured eye. As Dr. Perry observed, “the apathy that had held the people was disturbed,” and, “I cannot express the bitterness of the whole thing; I must leave it to your imagination.” Turbulent times, indeed.

Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Support the Exeter Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at www.exeterhistory.org

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