The school’s supporters included people from the northern abolitionist network who had known the Crafts since the Boston years — editors, publishers, reformers who had supported the movement for decades and who saw Woodville as one of the institutions that would make emancipation real in the South rather than nominal in law. This support was financial as well as moral.
The accusations that came in 1876 were specifically about money. William was accused of misusing charitable funds — of directing money intended for the school’s educational work toward personal or improper purposes. He denied the accusations and took them to court, suing in Boston for libel. The decision to sue in Boston was logical: that was where many of the accusers were, where the relationships that had produced the accusations existed, where the abolitionist community that needed to make a judgment about who to believe was concentrated.
He lost the case in 1878. The loss was catastrophic in ways that went beyond the verdict. The relationships that had sustained the Crafts’ work — the friendships and networks that had been built over thirty years, from the Boston Vigilance Committee through the England years and into the Reconstruction South — were damaged by the controversy. Allies who had committed resources to Woodville withdrew. The school lost its funding base.
The historical record does not fully resolve the question of what happened with the funds. The sources consulted for this article describe the accusation and the verdict without presenting the specific evidence that drove the outcome. William maintained his innocence. The court found against him. The collapse of the school followed. Whether the accusations were accurate, exaggerated, or entirely false — and what the verdict actually established versus what it failed to establish — would require access to the court record and other primary materials not available here.