Two capital errors have extensively prevailed, greatly to1 the detriment of the cause of abolition. The first is, a proneness on the part of the advocates of immediate and universal emancipation to overlook or depreciate the influence of woman in the promotion of this cause; and the other is, a similar disposition on the part of the females in our land to undervalue their own power, or, through a misconception of duty, to excuse themselves from engaging in the enterprise. These errors, we repeat, are capital, and should no longer be suffered to prevail. The cause of bleeding humanity is always, legitimately, the cause of woman. Without her powerful assistance, its progress must be slow, difficult, imperfect. A million females, in this country, are recognized and held as property—liable to be sold or used for the gratification of the lust or avarice or convenience of unprincipled speculators— without the least protection for their chastity—cruelly scourged for the most trifling offences—and subjected to unseemly and merciless tasks, to severe privations, and to brutish ignorance! Have these no claims upon the sympathies—prayers—charities—exertions of our white countrywomen?. . .The most important extraneous feature of the second volume of the Liberator was the republication of “Letters2 on American Slavery, addressed to Mr. Thomas Rankin, merchant at Middlebrook, Augusta Co., Va., by John Rankin, Pastor of the Presbyterian Churches of Ripley and Strait Creek, Brown County, Ohio,” of which the first edition was published at Ripley, in the latter State, in 1826.3 Mr. Garrison pronounced them ‘among the most faithful and thrilling productions we have read on ’When woman's heart is bleeding,
Shall woman's voice be hushed?
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the effort to abolish slavery in the colonies.
To this subject he returned later in the following language:
3 The letters themselves appear to have been written in 1824, when their author was about 31 years of age. Following the reprint in the Liberator, an edition in book form was put forth by Garrison & Knapp in 1833, and a fifth edition was published by Isaac Knapp as late as 1838. Still another edition bears the imprint of Charles Whipple, Newburyport, 1836.
The Century Company. , 1885-1889.
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