THE OSTRACISM OF AN

T

ABOLITIONIST

HOSE of us born in New England since the Civil War have so care

fully been taught that the North

was ever Abolitionist in its attitude, that it is with not a little shock that we learn of such a case of persecution for opinion's sake as that of the Reverend Joshua Young, D. D., who was driven from his parish at Burlington, Vermont, because he officiated at John Brown's funeral.

Doctor Young is still living in a pleasant little town near Boston, and one day he intends to tell in full the story of his relation to the Abolition movement. Mean

while, I give the account of this minister's connection with John Brown as he himself, a serene white-haired octogenarian, with vivid recollections of the past, recently gave it to me. At first I found him rather reluctant to open anew the old wound of his social ostracism because of sympathy with the cause of the blacks.

They are rather ashamed now up in Burlington at the way I was treated,” he said, "so why go over it all again?"

But when I told him that the rising generation would not and could not believe that New England had ever failed to live up to the lofty anti-slavery sentiments with which we have been taught to associate her, unless the details of such stories as these are made more clear, his interest in a modern rehearsal of the half-century old drama was enkindled, and he speedily brought out his "John Brown Book"

one of the most significant scrap-books it has ever been my privilege to examine the better to retrace with me the various steps that led to his forced resignation of his charge as pastor of the Congregational Unitarian Church, at Burlington.

"From the beginning," said Mr. Young, "I was an Abolitionist. As early as my college days (I was graduated from Bowdoin with the class of '45) I had given my sympathies to the cause of the blacks. And always I admired John Brown as the noblest of men. But the ministry was the work to which I had decided to devote myself, and so, after leaving the Harvard Divinity School in '48, I went at once to what was then known as the New North Church, on Hanover Street, there succeeding as pastor Francis Parkman. This building is still standing, but it is now a Roman Catholic Church.