86 FACTS RELATING TO GROTON, MASSACHUSETTS. 



from us ; but we ought to allow him to act on his own convictions. 

 He is not a weak misguided man, led into difificulties by others ; 

 and whether we or he has judged best, as to what will promote the 

 cause of emancipation, time must determine. To us it seems that 

 such efforts only exasperate the slave power, and do more harm 

 than good. But if he chooses to give his life, as Mr. Torrey ^ did, to 

 sustain the opposite opinion, his position as a martyr to that opinion 

 should disarm all severity of criticism upon him. Prudent men, in 

 a crisis like this, deprecate every act that tends to make wider the 

 breach between the north and south. Yet in the compass of God's 

 plans, the ultraisms of both south and north are embraced as 

 elements of working out his problems. He will bring order out of 

 confusion and light out of darkness, and will use the folly as well as 

 the wisdom of all agents, as the instruments of his purposes. If 

 then a man of superior talents, like Mr. Chaplin, after studying his 

 subjects so long, comes to the conclusion that he can best promote 

 the end of his existence by surrendering himself as a martyr in this 

 form, we ought not to make him less a martyr by our sympathies, 

 nor more a martyr by our frowns. He is of age, let him think and 

 act for himself 



"The Puritan Recorder," Boston, August 22, 1850. 



William Lawrence Chaplin was the youngest child of 

 the Reverend Daniel and Susanna (Prescott) Chaplin, and 

 born at Groton, on October 27, 1796. He began to attend 

 school at Groton Academy in the year 1S04, then under the 

 preceptorship of Mr. Butler, and entered Harvard College in 

 the autumn of 18 19. His name appears in the annual cata- 

 logue of that institution for four successive years, but he did 

 not graduate. He stood well in his class, and excelled par- 

 ticularly in Latin ; and his leaving had no connection either 

 with his rank or deportment. A " rebellion " broke out in 

 the college during his Senior year, when thirty-four of his 

 classmates were dismissed, but he was not in any way impli- 

 cated. Mr. Chaplin studied law with Judge Dana, of Groton, 

 and was admitted to the Middlesex bar in June, 1829, but he 



1 This allusion is to the Rev. Charles Turner Torrey (1813-1846), of Balti- 

 more, who was detected in an attempt to aid some slaves to escape from Mary- 

 land, and was sentenced to a long imprisonment in the state prison, where he 

 died of consumption on May 9, 1846. 



