Lydia Maria Child, Isaac T. Hopper: a true life

The case was somewhat similar with Isaac T. Hopper. He had imbibed anti-slavery principles in full flood at the fountain of Quakerism. Their best and greatest men were conspicuous as advocates of those principles. Children were taught to revere those men, and their testimonies were laid up in honorable preservation, to be quoted with solemn formality on safe occasions. Friend Hopper acted as if these professions were in good earnest; and thereby he disturbed his sect, as my Boston friend troubled his family, when he made practical use of their religious teaching.

That many of the modern Quakers should be blinded by bales of cotton, heaped up between their souls and the divine light, is not remarkable; for cotton is an impervious material. But it is a strange anomaly in their history that any one among them should have considered himself guided by the Spirit to undertake the especial mission of discouraging sympathy with the enslaved. A minister belonging to that branch of the Society called ‘Hicksites,’ who usually preached in Rose-street Meeting, New-York, had imbibed very strong prejudices against all modern reforms: and he manifested his aversion with a degree of excitement, in language, tone, and gesture,