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in our land being the greatest sufferers, the most oppressed class, I have felt bound to plead their cause, in season and out of season, to endeavor to put my soul in their souls' stead, and to aid, all in my power, in every right effort for their immediate emancipation.
This duty was impressed upon me at the time I consecrated myself to that gospel which anoints “to preach deliverance to the captive,” “to set at liberty them that are bruised.”
From that time the duty of abstinence as far as practicable from slave-grown products was so clear, that I resolved to make the effort “to provide things honest” in this respect.
Since then our family has been supplied with free-labor groceries, and, to some extent, with cotton goods unstained by slavery.
The labors of the devoted Benjamin Lundy, and his “Genius of universal emancipation” published in Baltimore, added to the untiring exertions of Clarkson, Wilberforce, and others in England, including Elizabeth Heyrick, whose work on slavery aroused them to a change in their mode of action, and of William Lloyd Garrison, in Boston, prepared the way for a convention in Philadelphia, in 1833, to take the ground of immediate, not gradual, emancipation, and to impress the duty of unconditional liberty, without expatriation.
In 1834 the Philadelphia Female A. S. Society was formed, and, being actively associated in the efforts for the slaves' redemption, I have travelled thousands of miles in this country, holding meetings in some of the slave States, have been in the midst of mobs and violence, and have shared abundantly in the odium attached to the name of an uncompromising modern abolitionist, as well as partaken richly of the sweet return of peace attendant on those who would “undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke.”
In 1840, a World's Anti-slavery Convention was called in London.
Women from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia,
This text is part of:
S. M. Betts and Company. Hartford, Conn. 1871.
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